Watching a break and nobody running in behind is maddening. Watching a turnover and nobody moving to make space is maddening. Yes too many guys were out of position last year but good lord.

But just if you look at the misery index to get a simple handle on the economy I actually do think it's a little surprising people are so dour on Trump, I think more surprising than Biden given how bad it got and how much they liked him the first term?

I think that's true, though the economy had Clinton era approval six years ago, an underappreciated fact I think? The governor's point is true but also there's a different structural reason: a larger share of voters got their preferred for governor than their preferred president.

Somewhat yes. It's objectively true that people prefer the scenario where their real wages go up 1% at 2% inflation rather than at 4% inflation and might even prefer zero. www.nber.org/papers/w32956

I was doing a bit because people complained about Biden getting a bad deal and said everything was just negative vibes in the media when inflation had come back down in 2024 and that the media was just biased against him and actually real wages went up a lot. Well...here we are.

I know people don't like him here but so far this is the best thing I've read on the shutdown fold www.natesilver.net/p/trump-made...

What was a concession you think was reasonably attainable? To me the win would have been forcing them to nuke the filibuster.

It’s supremely fucking stupid Republicans needed Dem votes for this at all.

Two things I'll say (while reiterating what I said all the way up top that I don't like Schumer and don't think he should be majority leader): 1) we do not have the same Senate that LBJ operated in and should quit thinking that way 2) given this gang was going to defect, Schumer had no way to win.

Like right now I represent: the families of two different people who died by suicide in prisons and at least six different men assaulted by guards in New York State one of who was beaten for speaking out against his sexual assault by guards.

The Trump voter Trump disapprover who necessarily make up the majority of the relevant population probably think more fondly of a Dem who supported GOP priorities than those who don’t? That doesn’t seem that odd.

I think of myself and other Dems. If there were a Republican who supported Joe Biden’s priorities in a swing district even as 20% of Biden voters disapproved of him, I think they’d feel more fondly towards that Republican than to the down the line Republican.

I wasn’t implying that! I was saying that I think people pushing the Golden primary challenge prefer increasing the chances of Paul LePage winning than putting up with being annoyed with Jared Golden, who is annoying.

I don’t think the latter is necessarily true for a general election!

So candidates taking popular positions in their districts matters?