I was listening to a clip of Michael Smerconish from CNN that just made my blood boil over this weekend. Now, Smerconish is not a right-wing hack or somebody that I intensely dislike (though I disagree with him often), but all this talk about how bad Joe Biden's poll numbers are and talking about how Lyndon B. Johnson declined to seek another term and how Biden might be wise to do the same thing is really starting to depress me even more than I already am depressed about everything bad going on right now. He pointed out how Biden is a decent and honorable person but that he's getting too old and his Presidency is floundering (largely for reasons that he has little or no control over).

Is this a real thing being floated by other Democrats, or is this just idle pundit-speak or wishful thinking? I don't know that Smerconish has any thoughts or motives to suggest this, but are Republicans afraid of having to face Joe Biden again or does "the media" *want* Republicans back in power (for bottom line reasons). Who is seriously driving this narrative/idea? I do remember that some pundits wanted Barack Obama to refuse to run again in 2012 and for Hillary Clinton to replace him, but nobody really took it seriously and Obama won comfortably won 2012 despite his own sagging poll numbers and the midterm congressional defeat. Did pundits ever suggest Trump or any other Republican in political trouble refuse to run for re-election like this (because I don't remember it)? Why is it only Democrats they make this suggestion for?

Not really looking for a debate but is anybody else pissed off by all this talk or know where this is coming from?

Equal parts hilarious and unsettling.

https://twitter.com/johnfugelsang/status/1528374820697788422?s=21&t=zgJqYhmYjzbsXpj4ybxw8Q

1. Not do it at all because it's practically impossible.
2. Go full-on police state, which is never going to be tolerated even in the reddest of red states and I'm not even sure this SCOTUS would back them up.

It's not enough for them to have their "freedom of religion" or their ideological beliefs. They want everybody else to live according to their own beliefs and will not tolerate any attempts from anybody to tell them that they can't discriminate, that they can't tell people what to do with their bodies, who they marry, etc.

Saw this article on MSNBC a few weeks ago- if it helps at all to hear a less negative or not-quite-hopless take on the upcoming midterms:

Anyone else sick and tired of hearing so-called political experts predict that Democrats are going to lose badly in this year's midterms? Apparently it doesn’t matter that in President Joe Biden’s first year, 6.6 million new jobs were reported, the strongest first year of job gains of any president since our government began collecting such data in 1939. Nor does it appear to matter that unemployment is down from 6.7 percent in former President Donald Trump’s last full month in office to 3.8 percent and that wages are up 5 percent over the past year.

There are multiple signs that tell us Democrats could not only hold on to the House but even pick up a few Senate seats.

Pundits tell us it’s an “ironclad” rule — as Fivethirtyeight.com put it — that the president’s party loses congressional seats in midterm elections. Hence, headlines that predict Democrats will lose this November in a “wipeout” and a “bloodbath.” If you listen to these people, you might be tempted to cancel the 2022 election and simply crown the GOP the winners of the House and the Senate............

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/democrats-chances-2022-midterm-elections-are-better-doomsayers-predict-n1290695

Wondering if Tucker is about to come out? #justaskingquestions

How can so many things that we've all taken for granted for years, or in some cases, decades, are now suddenly in question now, in 2022 AD, and that list seems to be growing daily.

Abortion: We know that right-wingers/evangelicals/Republicans have been after Roe for decades, chipping away at it, getting Justices on to SCOTUS that are sympathetic to their position and it looks like they may finally succeed (and soon) in eliminating any guaranteed constitutional right to an abortion.

Birth Control: Once they get rid of Roe, their next target, inexplicably, seems to be Griswold, which guaranteed the right of people to use birth control without government interference. This seems like the stupidest move of all because you won't find hardly anybody nowadays who doesn't use birth control or at least doesn't want government telling anybody that they can't. How this would be considered a political winner beggars belief.

Gay Rights: Right-wingers/evangelicals/Republicans have been trying to figure out ways to not have to comply with Obergefell and seem to want to get rid of that as well as soon as possible so that they can ban it or severely limit in states they control. The fallout from overturning Obergefell and states reinstituting bans would be considerable. Not that they care much about the ensuing chaos, however, again, this is another move that would be massively unpopular among most Americans and even some Republicans, whom have come out in the years since then. This is, of course, to say nothing of somehow overturning Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized consensual sex between members of the same sex would go down in 2022

Interracial Marriage: Indiana Senator (one of mine, sorry) Mike Braun acknowledged that there are almost no limits on how much power states should have over individual and human rights, which even includes being able to have the power to tell mixed-race couples that they shouldn't be allowed to get married, a monstrously racist position that should be enough to drive every last POC from the Republican Party for all eternity. Braun tried to walk back his statements, however, when you're basically arguing state supremacy over just about everything in terms of individual and human rights, this is just the logical extension of that philosophy.

he is just emblematic of the deterioration and degeneration of the Republican Party in general into a syncophantic, anti-democratic, Trumpian white nationalist Q-Anon-based party steeped in conspiracy theories and nativism, racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. We all saw how ugly they've become with the KBJ hearings. These things have always been there more or less, but now they're becoming more open about it all because of Trump

Transgender women have no *Male* privilege. We do not identify as men, nor do we want to be seen as men, nor do we want (or get) any "privilege" afforded to men.

or did nothing, it's just as bad IMHO. One of our branches of government was under attack and the guy who was so aggressive with BLM protesters the summer before did nothing to stop it for hours and it's not even clear that he did anything in the end other than tweeting out his love for his peeps and telling them to go home. But I don't buy that he wasn't still working the phones trying to get Senators in line to object to the certification. In fact, don't we know for sure that he was trying to call people? He was certainly on the phone with McCarthy and didn't he mistakenly place a call to a Senator that was meant for another? Guilty as sin.