The one subtle difference, which may not matter, is that what the Tea Party was angry about (Obamacare and taxes, largely) are very ephemeral. They weren’t really hurt by taking a strong pro-“freedom” anti-“Obamacare” position and getting very angry about it (they may have been subtly hurt by a worse public-health regime, but that’s a different debate). A strong anti-vax anti-mask policy will literally kill people. It remains to be seen whether the fallout over these policies will be bad enough and the causes clear enough that it overcomes the noise.
Put another way - how many kids have to die before someone like DeSantis admits he fucked up and allows mask mandates in schools (or, gasp, requires them)? I have to think that parents and friends of dead children are just as angry as Tea Party and MAGA types, right?
But either way, yes, 2022 midterms are likely to be pretty bleak. Best-case is a hold in the Senate, I think, and that’s at best 50-50.
This is the gamble Republicans are making. In a midterm you want to stoke your most aggrieved voters so that they’re motivated to get to the polls, but not in a way that triggers a backlash among less engaged voters and motivates them to get to the polls. 1998 is a clear example of how playing to their base voters worst instincts (i.e. impeachment) blew up in their faces.
My own sense is that right now a lot of suburban parents are anxious about the delta variant, but they aren’t seeing kids dying from it in their communities. If the current surge recedes in the next couple weeks and thing get kinda back to normal, those low-engagement voters will go back about their lives. If it balloons and you do see big numbers of kids getting critically ill or dying, or hospitals reach the breaking point and have to start triaging patients in parking lots, then Republicans may wake the sleeping giant in the midterms.
DeSantis will never admit error. This simply is not allowed. The Red Tribe does not err. They are infallible. They speak with the authority of Jesus. If doubling down isn’t enough, then quadruple down.
I am not as pessimistic as most about 2022. The Afghan withdrawal will be a faded memory. A pandemic that lingers for another year primarily in red states might just be what is needed to change a few minds. Or if nothing else, cull the cult herd enough to diminish their influence.
I dunno, there are plenty of vaccinated folks who’re angry at the non-vaccinated for keeping the restrictions going and mistreating medical staff. Not saying there are as many, but it is there, and I think it could be significant.
WACO, Texas — A Central Texas school district closed its schools until after the Labor Day holiday Tuesday after two teachers died last week of COVID-19.
Connally Independent School District officials closed its five suburban Waco schools for the rest of the week after the Saturday COVID-19 death of Natalia Chansler, 41, a sixth grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High School, said Assistant Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe.
Chansler’s death came days after David McCormick, 59, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High, died of COVID-19, Bottelberghe said.
It was not immediately known if either teacher was vaccinated.
…
The school has had 51 confirmed COVID-19 cases since classes began Aug. 18, Bottelberghe said Monday. She added that more cases had been confirmed in the last few days, but she did not know if any have been directly traced back to Chansler.
…
I’ve wondered if maybe the level of pandemic-related chaos might finally cause some red state defections. It’s possible, but I certainly won’t count on it. In any case, if the GOP manages to win in spite of their awful policies, then the country is toast.
I won’t make predictions this early, so it’s more like a fear than a prediction: the GOP wins the House. Biden initially wins the election in 2024, which is then overturned in the House
About 2.5% of the state’s children caught the disease since coming back to school. The fatality rate for COVID-19 infected children in Florida is and has been approximately 0.0%, so I don’t think any critical mass of dead children will ever materialize.
To the question of how many dead Republicans would sway Republican governors, I think it’s telling how hard DeSantis pushed for vaccinations of the elderly in January and February. By April and May most of our senior citizens had been vaccinated, and DeSantis has not touted vaccines ever since.
Thank God. It’s extremely fortunate that even the Delta variant, which does seem to both infect and be transmitted by children more than the early strains, doesn’t have a high rate of extremely bad outcomes for younger victims.
I think this actually does tie in to your first point. A repeated argument I run up against, particularly as we near the time when children can be vaccinated, is “kids don’t die from COVID, and we don’t know for sure that the vaccine won’t kill them in 10 years, so why vaccinate them now?”
It’s actually a somewhat hard position to argue against because it relies on a combination of the extremely small risk of something really bad happening and the “community” argument that only by vaccinating everyone can we keep COVID from remaining endemic (and thus continually killing some not-0% fraction of elderly and at-risk victims, even if they are vaccinated).
It also pops up in the statistical chicanery folks are using now where if you look at those that actually die from COVID it’s not just the unvaccinated anymore. Since we have very high vaccination rates in the elderly, who are also by far the most likely to die, we will likely continue to see seemingly high rates of vaccinated deaths (just because the base rate of vaccination is so high in the at-risk population). Israel’s data shows some of this behavior, as does the UK I believe.
This will only further drive the anti-vaxx arguments, even though it’s actually an argument in the reverse direction - that we all need to get vaccinated specifically so those at-risk don’t get COVID and die from a breakthrough infection.
I’m not going to talk you out of this, unfortunately.
But there’s more — it’s an exercise in pushing the boundaries of objective reality by turning pro-vaccine vs anti-vaccine into a legitimate “both sides” debate.
No mask mandate. Not sure there is a vaccine mandate for teachers. Two teachers already dead and now the school shut down. The closure would “provide those who are positive with the virus or exposed to others with the virus, the time to isolate and recover.” And when they reopen, the delta will start rip-roaring again.
The chaos the Republicans are causing in the states they are leading needs to be front and center for all elections going forward. I fear the Democrats are lacking attack-dog, Bannon-style messaging that motivates people to vote, and that party leadership just does not have the spine (or stomach) to go for the throat. Basic statistics can be an awesome weapon to show voters what Republican and Democratic governors have been doing to mitigate the pandemic. Sure, you are not going to change the mind of the rabid-red, and their own lying eyes wont change their minds, either. But, Democratic voters need motivation to get to the polls, too. Republicans need to be beaten over their damn heads with their own job performances and their own stupid policies that keep this pandemic going.
Well we’ve proven saying “nice doggie, it’s okay, be good” while the dog tries to rip out your throat doesn’t work and that seems to be the only tactic they have.
I am about 45 percent sure that the democrats aren’t a real political party. They’re like the Washington generals - a team designed to put up a joke of a fight to let the Harlem Globetrotters someone to beat up on.
I’m starting to feel like that’s a more plausible explanation than that they are so consistently inept and repeat the same mistakes over and over again despite what would be the easiest battle in the world in the court of public opinion.
How the fuck do you get to oppose Donald Trump and somehow not get the public on your side and barely motivate your own voters? It’s like you have to be failing on purpose.
You know how people essentially say that I’m nuts for suggesting that Dems go authoritarian?
Maybe that’s what we need. Someone who isn’t afraid to just stand up and say “I will stop the Republican party: I do not give a fuck how I will do it. I will get it done. If I have to use the military to do it, I will. If I have to stack the courts, I will. I think Republicans are a cult. I think most of the country is tired of their shit. I’m tired of their shit. And I’m not going to play by the rules while they make up their own.”
Ignore the initial backlash. Know that if you just dig deep, and have balls, and stay consistent, and stay on message, a majority of people will probably support you.
While I get this sentiment, this may be the time to point out that the Democratic Party controls the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. And that’s facing historically strong institutional biases against their winning control in both of those branches.