Communion

Oh.. budget!

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The video made me smile so much for how much passion and effort she puts into everything. She deserves the world and more. Genuinely a perfect pop star.

No, it's why it's important that Jewish identity in America be understood as being a white ethnic group benefitting from proximity to and inclusion within whiteness. When the lens steps outside of this understanding, things can become conspiratorial. That antisemitism is not a systemic issue endorsed by the government is marked by things like Jewish Americans, especially Jewish New Yorkers, enjoying largely high incomes, housing security, job and education attainment, etc. (And thus the contradiction that Zohran Mamdani still receives ire from Jewish Americans within NYC despite over-sized anti-discrimination funding that similar white ethnic cohorts to Jewish Americans - like Irish and Italian American groups - would not receive, exposing that the issue is indeed determined by support for Israel for many.)

There are also several interesting observations to make: Will the media treat this shift amongst Jewish voters as a moral rot and failure in the same way that Arab Americans staying home in November 2024 was framed by the media at large? Outside of a few House districts, Jewish Americans are simply not large enough of a population to meaningfully decide elections, which leads to... Polls were largely accurate in 2024's presidential election. Harris was in the margin of error for all of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. It was the massive backlash in deep blue places with large young, urban, populations of color where Dems took the biggest of blows. And as the trends develop, it becomes clear that those demographics are more aligned with pro-Palestine Dems than pro-Israel Dems. See: Hochul's weakness appearing to be being weak amongst both pro-Israel Dems flipping to Republicans and young progressives.

There being people who think Pennsylvania is a non-coastal state….. Yet them Philly girls stay CROWDING the Jersey Shore every summer so EXPLAIN.

I mean... this is, again, down to the issue of people not wanting to discuss policies. I think a lot of people who acknowledge what "hasn't worked" (what do we even mean?) are being polite and acknowledging that they personally disagree with the ways some communist nations have gone about specific policies, like enforcement, but are not co-signing the idea that all policies are wrong. It's entirely possible to support central planning as an economic model but then also hold the view that ideas like "socialism in one state" don't work, and that they don't work not as a failure of a socialist policy, but a global capitalist economy. Is "socialism in one state" struggling to work in Cuba because ~communism is abstractly evil~ or because a tiny tourist island economy can in isolation centrally plan its industry and successfully distribute wealth domestically (advancements in health, high literacy rates), but then cannot do such when sanctioned by the most powerful nation in the world? (The irony being that Cuba was certainly not practicing socialism in one state, and often tried as much international collaboration as possible, so what does it mean when the capitalist nation sanctions the socialist nation and tries to stop it from sending its surplus of well-educated doctors from working in and aiding similar countries in need?) For example, I think it's odd and veers into intellectually lazy when people smear nations like Cuba as failing despite having many of the social policies the West claims to support, but then these same people are confused why many socialists are then drawn to support Dengist China and its market socialism. Some may go: "China isn't socialist!!! It's capitalist!!!". Okay... so then let me have the version of capitalism where the government gets to lock up for life billionaires when acting in ways that will disrupt the social cohesion of the nation and expropriate their wealth without compensation, or can takeover entire industry when necessary to ensure building more housing and infrastructure.

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Also I think part of people not understanding polls in past years just further exasperates the way polls are misunderstood in following years. Like... the polls accurately showed that every swing state was a toss-up in 2024. We knew Harris wasn't going to win AZ, for example. I remember talking with @Armani. on here about crosstabs showing results for Latino males as a major red flag. The hope was she'd squeak a win in WI-MI-PA. The actual shocker from 2024 was the major shift in blue states - because pollsters weren't looking for it - amongst traditional Dem voting bases. And while I think it is literally only limited to what it means for blue states like NJ, the NJ Governor's race in 2025 is proof those shifts were a mirage. In fact, the few pollsters who had meaningful errors in 2025's races were ones who changed their polling on the idea that somehow they missed Trump voters in 2024. Conservative black Dem, Val Demings, lost by 16 points in 2022. That the race is much closer for 2026 with Nixon despite that the proclaimed fundamentals - Nixon's DSA association, her having out-and-proud progressive stances - should mean she should be doing worse than Demings is why trying to use Nixon as an example of underperformance doesn't work. To where I'm not actually sure what you're trying to point out. The Senate is explicitly built to try and stop progressive politicians from being elected. It's not even an ideology issue when polling shows Abdul - the only* person of color running in a competitive seat - is still winning despite having numerous hurdles no other candidate has completely removed from his policies. *- Yes, Mary Peltola is half-native. I don't care when she's running in a state that's 20% Native and she's campaigning so far right her campaign is basically just talking about fishing, ****-talking Kamala Harris, and using slurs like ****** and the r-slur and Republicans STILL find her too far left ddd. Something like 4-in-10 voters in Michigan said they wouldn't want to have a Muslim president (only less than an Atheist president). Abdul El-Sayed winning Michigan by 2 points would still then be more important than Jon Ossoff winning Georgia by 9 points. Like yes electing progressives is hard. It's also the moral duty! That's the literal point of progressivism! ddd

@ClashAndBurn dddd just to be clear sis, not hostility or hate! I was catching up and didn't realize how consecutive those replies would be. Not to be a Little Nixonster, but I just don't agree with the idea that a black woman aligned with the DSA polling at only a single-digit loss in FLORIDA is somehow evidence of an underperformance. I reject the premise that Alex Vindman would be polling better. I also just don't find poll hysteria or sensationalism helpful no matter whether it's liberals claiming polls over-poll Republicans and that Dems will de-facto overperform (like claimed in the past) or people in the inverse, whether left or right, contributing to the idea of pollsters underestimating Republicans. I worry it veers into anti-intellectualism to not have a sober, realistic understanding of polling and what polling actually shows each cycle. If we try to define the actual parameters, a huge win for Dems would not be margin this cycle, but by number of seats held. None of the flipped Senate seats, if they occur, will likely be huge margins of victory, but it'd still be huge to clip several seats by +1 or +2 margins than not flipping them. The polling has always showed it'll be a battle of how high Democratic enthusiasm can go vs how low Republican turnout can go. That's the de-facto reality of an unpopular party getting to be the opposition party to an even more unpopular party in power. Neither candidate in Texas' Senate race may even hit 50%, for example, but Talarico beating Paxton by 48% D to 47% R is still a win. A win is a win, etc. By the same token, that means a 2-3 point margin of error means, yes, many seats are up in the air and the result will literally just come down to turnout... but that's what the polls are literally saying! That kind of hysterical "BLUE WAVE CANCELLED! RED TSUNAMI SECRETLY COMING!!" rhetoric from places like Twitter just doesn't actually align with the actual science of the polling data and doesn't feel like it serves a purpose. Dems electeds should be open to where polls show they can perform, but that can't actually be conveyed if the inverse is just "EVERYTHING IS DEATH AND DESPAIR, THERE IS NO POINT TO EVEN TRYING, GIVE IT UP!!". You and @woohoo have made me consider asking my doctor for anxiety meds ddd.

Sis this is a psyop ass post. I get pessimism but the pessimism can't distort facts.

Just for the record, Michigan doesn't have party registration in this way. The figures are not "Republicans are making up more of the early mail vote this year than 2024 at this point in time," it's "Republican-voting counties are making up more of the early mail vote this year than 2024 at this point in time."

Isn't Venezuela now a US colony?