Summary
The 2024 race for Montana’s Senate seat, once seen as a near-certain Republican gain, has tightened unexpectedly, with Democratic incumbent Jon Tester showing a late polling advantage over GOP challenger Tim Sheehy.
Sheehy’s lead has diminished amid scrutiny of his story about a bullet wound he claims to have suffered during a deployment in Afghanistan. Discrepancies in his account, including conflicting explanations about a 2015 incident in Glacier National Park, have cast doubt on his credibility.
This polling shift has unsettled Republicans, with former Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci describing their reaction as a “meltdown.”
Thank you, ladies! You are proving your power this election!
How? After all of the hard work and death threats and fascism, you’d think the Republicans had this one in the bag!
I’m really hoping that fascists are more likely to talk to poll takers than go to the voting booth.
why bother voting if you think it’s rigged and going to storm the capital anyway?
I was thinking about this earlier, if Harris comes out on top, violence is to be expected. They’ve already barricaded up the white house, Harris’s house and the capital building - just cuz of all the voting that’s taking place at none of those places.
If another insurrection is planned, and we all know there has to be a couple plans floating around various rougher elements, what do they think they’re going to do? Especially against Biden, who willingly abdicated power, but in the face of a coup and newly emboldened by the supreme court, do we really think Biden would look at the situation and capitulate? Or would he bear the cross, do some unspeakables, pull killdozer out of storage, light 'er up and tian’anmen square the insurgency? Surrender or hold the union together like Lincoln? Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, that’s his peer group not Gingrich, McDonnell, or Boehner. Biden would assess another insurrection from that perspective.
Another attempted coup, against a ready and reinforced national guard, would be fucking suicide. Some schmuck voice actor might think he’s real tough with a grenade launcher - until the Blackhawks and Bradley’s roll out.
Does the national guard have an A-10 over there? God I hope they do. That’s just the kid in me, growing up playing Contra, watching A-team, Platoon, Hamburger Hill and Full Metal Jacket. The sound of the A-10 and seeing one fly over the capital strafing a coup. That’d just be to too much for me. I might stroke out right there.
Now do Texas, and Florida, and Georgia and
Georgia already has two Democratic Senators. You’re welcome.
Please vote out the republicans for how poorly they treated Zooey Zephyr.
I mean, vote out Republicans because they’re absolute scum, but your thing works too.
Since most of you probably don’t know anyone who lives in MT I will volunteer as the official Lemmy representative of the state. In the event that Tester wins this seat please send all letters of congratulations and gift baskets to me.
Until there is a total of 60 votes one way or another, both sides can effectively veto bills forever with a filibuster in the senate. Still, in the absence of said filibuster it’s nice to be able to pass legislation through the senate.
Good to see the needle moving from the insanity that has been the last ~9 years of politics but there is so much foundational damage that simply won’t build any bridges to bring the country back to it’s center. Maybe if we’re lucky it will lessen the extremist rhetoric especially after trump is out of the running… but i’m not holding my breath.
Note that Harris has called for eliminating the Filibuster should dems get a trifecta
Harris says she would support ending the filibuster to bring back Roe v. Wade
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/23/nx-s1-5123955/kamala-harris-abortion-roe-v-wade-filibuster
honest question, are we not wary of how republicans would operate with no filibuster?
Realistically, given a condition where it stood in their way, they’d probably just eliminate it themselves
We know exactly how they’d act, since they eliminated the filibuster for judicial nominees so they could pack the court. Holding ourselves to some standard they will immediately violate when they can get any advantage is stupid.
They can also just remove it if they have the majority
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They already killed it for Supreme Court nominees when it suited them. If they really wanted something they’d kill it for that
By 2017, roles had reversed — Republicans held the majority in the Senate, and President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office.
After Senate Democrats, now in the minority, filibustered the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch — Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court — McConnell engineered his own “nuclear option.”
The Republican-controlled Senate voted 52-48 to reduce the vote threshold for confirming nominees to the Supreme Court from 60 to 51, per The New York Times.
Never expect them to act in good faith. They have already repeatedly trampled norms
Practically speaking, this election cycle is the hardest for Democrats in the Senate. There are 23 seats currently held by Democrats (and Independants organizing with them) up for reelection, vs. only 10 Republicans.
In the 2026 election, barring any additional vacancies due to retirements or deaths, there will be 13 Democrats defending seats vs. 20 Republicans. In 2028, the split is 15 - 19.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classes_of_United_States_senators
If the Democrats do keep the Senate and reform the Filibuster, then unless there is some radical change in political alignments Democrats will be favored to hold on to the Senate until at least 2030. There is a lot of work Democrats can do during those 6 years that might be impossible with the Filibuster in place, as it currently is implemented.
I would argue that keeping the Senate is just as important as winning the Presidency. Perhaps more so. If Trump wins but Democrats keep the Senate, they can use their power to ratify Cabinet officers to keep the worst of the worst appointments out. Likewise, if Harris wins but Republicans take the Senate, I doubt any of Harris’s judicial appointments will be approved at all.
It’s not really restraining them at the moment.
Then make them own their choices. As long as they can stick with this limbo there’s plausible deniability that no one sees. Or require it to be a speaking filibuster. In Minnesota, the conservatives had control of all the levers until they “caught the car” on banning marriage equality. At a state level, that woke a bunch of complacent people up and now we have a democratic trifecta after a lot of work since then. That can happen at the federal level too and that’s what we are learning from Dobbs.
50 is also big for confirming judges.
50 + having the majority means you get to avoid stupid shit like McConnell appointment blocking
Too late for polls now. Only voting is left. So go out and do it if you haven’t already
Montana has those Big Blue skies!!
