That, sadly, is

the mindset of the majority of voters in Texas (rural, and dogshit-eating conservative). It's what we have to deal with in Texas. Every God Damn day.

I believe the only answer is to get more non-voters to vote. But that is the heaviest of lifts here.

Early indications suggest

... he's going to run against "the far left", the "extremist left", etc. and so on.

You know, that scary communist boogie man under your bed.

Beto is the favorite

He's just not the best.

We won't know his D challenger until

the evening of March 6.

And I'm voting for Sema.

https://www.semafortexas.us/

Australia didn't confiscate IIRC

They banned, and they did a buyback.

Welcome to DU.

Really?

Not even the Republicans I know

(and please note that I live in Texas) were swayed.

I heard comments from some the week before the election that indicated Trump's loss was fait accompli. Does anyone remember hearing that?

There were very, very few people who were undecided about who to vote for a year before November 2016 (when all those GOP debates with 20 candidates, like Michele Bachmann and Carly Fiorina, were happening).

I saw essentially no ads on social media -- I have adblockers aggressively employed, and this was before FB adjusted their algos to embed more of them in the side panel and in the timeline -- and the premise that anyone could influence political opinion, or have their own influenced, by Facebook posts or Tweets is something I just find laughable. Especially given that it was Trump who emerged as the nominee, a notion most Republicans simply weren't accepting as late as spring of 2016.

The memes, bots, group pages, etc. hardened political opinions. They did not change them. I believe the most influence they could have possibly had was on suppressing voter turnout with the various firehoses of negativity spewing all around. But even that does not explain why black voters stayed home.

In sum: the Russians tried to influence the election. They did not succeed. Even the indictments themselves do not connect those dots. The AP likened it to a burglar jiggling your doorknob.

In this analogy, the suspect gets arrested and charged with attempted burglary. But he didn't steal anything (fortunately).

Ask yourself this: if we are so concerned about the government spying on our online activities, wiretapping our phones, etc. then why didn't some federal law enforcement agency intervene and stop the Russians? Did they fail, as with the FBI not acting to stop the Parkland shooter?

Remember also that GWB received much rightful blame for failing to act to stop the 9/11 hijackers, at a time when there were not so many of these terrorism "safeguards" (sic) in place as today.

Yes, Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for election meddling in December of 2016. If you accept the premise that the Russians hack -- err, influenced the election in some significant way (but like Bigfoot, there's still no solid proof) ... wouldn't you also have to conclude that Obama's DOJ or FBI or CIA or someone should have moved faster to stop them?

Such as before November of 2016?

If the Russians have been doing this stuff since 2014 ... why weren't they arrested, charged, and indicted years ago? Did our government look the other way because of not wanting to rock the boat diplomatically with Putin? "Diplomatic immunity"?

I don't know the answers here. Maybe they were no more interested in starting a New Cold War than the rest of us. Buy what's been going on in Syria and other places around the world seems to undermine that logic.

And I think that is

probably due to suppression and voting machines (and Scott Walker and all of his machinations) than it is anything else.

It was awesome

At this point

what difference does it make?