92 Comments

I used to love the show. There was a 5-10 year stretch there where I listened to almost every hour of every day. I listened after they left ESPN for probably 6 months to a year. But Dan’s moral condescending got worse and worse, the show became quite a political echo chamber, and I thought it got away from the fun and lightness that made it so appealing for so long. Dan used to always tell listeners - if you don’t like his takes on race and politics, go elsewhere, you wont’t be missed. So I went elsewhere, and although he makes it clear I’m not missed, I do miss the show I once loved.

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I feel almost the exact same way. After they left ESPN, he just tripled down on his political direction, which is his right to do. He lost me after his response to the Trevor Bauer incident, and his complete denial that Trevor Bauer could be in the right in any regard. But I think Ethan presented one of the most cogent arguments questioning his world view. I really hope others in sports media who share similar views to Dan (Dan Wetzel, Bomani Jones, Jeff Pearlman, Peter King, etc.) read this article.

Also Ethan, not sure if you saw but Skip Bayless did a classic heel turn on Trump the day before the election (not that it matters).

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You got out early. The Michele Tafoya ambush was my tipping point.

https://awfulannouncing.com/podcasts/dan-le-batard-regrets-michele-tafoya-interview.html

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That interview was so fucking bad dude. It wasn’t my breaking point, but it was the last big thing that made me drift away. It could have been such a good interview, Dan and the show seeing what the other side thinks about things, but they, Mike especially, were attacking her from the jump and being openly antagonistic towards her. It’s a shame, especially since without ESPN, *they need to grow the show.* What they’re doing now doesn’t seem conducive to growth

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I remember Mike being especially unhinged

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That was my tipping point as well. And, I'll be honest, I agree with them probably 95% of the time, but I just don't think they understand how condescending they sound when it comes to people they disagree with. Listening to that condescension day after day made me actively want to disagree with them

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That was a low point for sure.

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I would disagree with the Bomani Jones take. Bomani doesn’t take it too seriously and looks for ways to downplay the sanctimony of politics. Listen to his pod the day after the election, it’s lighthearted; he’s making funny observations, etc.

I’m in the same boat as you with the DLS. I miss stugotz. It was so funny when it was good. But I got tired of the moralizing, it just bored me. I enjoy serious political podcasts but get so bored with milquetoast political podcasts that take themselves very serious.

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"you wont’t be missed" is such a red flag of a lack of wisdom. It's another way of saying " I won't entertain dissent or disagreement" or "I'm right, and although I haven't even heard you out, you're wrong".

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The likes of Dan lebatard have absolutely zero self awareness, that is a huge part of the problem as they literally are the problem but cannot realise it, their heads are so far up their collective arses they cannot see how most people either despise them or just ignore them, and how wildly out of touch they are.

Take the Emhoff interview, he loves going on about how Skip and Stephen A have ruined tv yet you don’t ask him about getting the nanny pregnant (which led to her losing her teaching job) or the allegations of hitting his ex in public because she was nice to a valet in Cannes (you know, ‘believe all women’, but I guess it’s ’believe all women but only when it’s convenient for me’) - you want to be taken seriously but you are just as bad, if not worse, than those who you act like you are morally superior to.

And then you’ve got the abortion issue, yeah a lot of people will be pissed off but when push comes to shove how many people are going to prioritise something that will only directly impact them at most a few times in life vs things like grocery/gas prices that have literally made their lives incredibly difficult over the last few years - the only people who actually can prioritise that are people who see the price of eggs going up 60% in 4 years as a mere rounding error, like Dan Lebatard - that the issue would be so much more important than things that impact everyone every single day shows how utterly moronic they are - that an upper east side real estate billionaire can relate to regular people so much better, that the guy who they’ve been calling a racist gets more and more minority support, the ‘Muslim ban’ guy gets the approval of a Muslim mayor in michigan, this sort of stuff doesn’t make them stop and think they’ve got it wrong, never mind anointing a piss poor candidate and trying to gaslight the country into thinking she’s amazing when anyone with a functioning brain can tell she’s way out of depth, and that’s before you get to her VP choice who’s an absolute parody who’s so thick he calls himself a knucklehead in the VP debate.

But since he got booted from espn, he’s probably realise what side his bread is buttered, and his audience is those who are those who think Jan 6 2021 was the worst thing since the civil war (worse than pearl harbour and 9/11 apparently) and that’s how he’s going keep up that nice lifestyle - hopefully the dems realise this is their cold shower moment and bin these people off and just ignore them like normal people.

Will be very interesting the direction max kellerman goes when he’s back tho, if he does the lebatard ‘catnip to the woke’ or if he’s normal.

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Great article Ethan. I think a sweeping Trump win has been the writing on the wall for quite some time, and it’s hard for me to know where to begin with my (mostly female) friends who are genuinely shocked, and then proceed to conclude the main takeaway is that half the country hates women. Like, I don’t like the guy either, but IMO that fundamental incuriosity about the actual voting interests of over half the country is a huge reason why Trump did so well.

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I think Le Batard’s takes would resonate more if he wasn’t taking millions from Draftkings. You listen to him and Billy Corben (who is a great doc film director with severe TDS) talk about all the corruption down here in S Florida but then they run ads for the gambling companies. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me to tune it out.

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My prediction is that most of the terminally online left will double down on this behavior for months to come. It’s the only play in their playbook. They have the self awareness of cantaloupe and only gain sustenance from flexing their moral superiority online.

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The really sad thing is that the online leftists are mad and think that Kamala should have gone FURTHER left. They lack 0 self-awareness. At times, it does feel like Dan LeBatard's show fall into the group that feels they are morally obligated to give the crazy ass leftists time to speak and be heard. For whatever reason. They should be doing the same for folks who feel abandoned by democrats.

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i actually agree that she should have gone further something, whether left or right, and i lean towards going more left because Trump does right better than she would have.

her strategy was just "keep the status quo, roll with biden's staff and policies and try to be right in the center to appeal to the most people" and thats just not what our country wants right now. people hate Joe Biden on both sides, so she should have done something to differentiate herelf and actually have a message or stance

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Sure - broadly speaking it does feel like the left is off-putting right now because of the social/cultural aspects of the left, not the economic aspects.

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I personally can’t wait to see the next ‘trump is hitler’ comparison, the MSG rally one was objectively hilarious (as if nothing happened there since) and that MSNBC clip on it was just amazing in so many ways and illustrated how broken their brains are by him.

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I used to listen to the show on ESPN Radio during my commute. I loved it's sarcastic humor and funny takes on sports. I enjoyed the "looks like" segments and Stugotz weekend observations.

The huge leftist swing on politics really got me to stop listening. The ambush on Michelle Tafoya was the last straw. When she described her experience to Jason Whitlock, she said that the person booking the guests told her that they just want to simply talk about her career as a sideline reporter. Listening to her story, it felt like this was an absolute double cross and a completely unprofessional move.

As you mentioned, there is a myriad of reasons people voted for Trump most of which stemmed from the issues: economy, border, foreign policy, etc... Those are genuine concerns that many people have. You can still mention those things while trying to state your case that the current administration or party in office is still the way to go and maybe even understand and respect the other person's decision and point of view. Not mentioning those things at all shows that you're either ignorant to their concerns or simply don't care.

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They basically "figured out" a loophole that allows them to abandon any sense of decorum or integrity in good conscience. Just state that the other side is evil and they can feel good about making up any fantasy, dehumanizing any person, destroying any lives. Doing it all with zero introspection, zero regard for the inevitable outcomes, zero understanding or compassion for other human beings.

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Pride comes before the fall. The inability to be curious as to why people think differently than you and to solely just believe the worst possible reason for them doing something is an obvious sign of narcissism. We all have blind spots, but Dan's is large. Always stay curious!

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Please return to this! "Personally I think the underrated potential Trump disaster might be some sort of crypto-driven financial crisis, but that’s not really what I want to talk about."

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Agree, I need to hear this theory. The current market cap of Bitcoin isn’t even as big as the annual federal budget deficit, seems too small a thing to cause a crisis.

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Wow another pouty rich media snob crying about their luxury beliefs, get in line Dan. It’s jarring how formally normal, talented people have become so radicalized, social media is the trojan horse of modern society. I don’t believe our biology is setup to handle all the constant “threats” we witness on an hourly basis. Are there problems in the world? Yes, has been his the dawn of time, but good god, every semi-devise issue is packaged as DEFCON 1 now. Just another way politicians rope you into a cause to keep them in power, while they accomplish next to nothing.

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The Democrats don't learn any lessons. When they lost in 2016 they thought the only reason they lost was sexism, not running a bad campaign. Now they only lost b/c of sexism AND racism.

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Wonder if those two campaigns had anything in common...

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Two shit candidates who happened to be women?

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Also they seemed to do pretty well on 2020. People always act like the most recent election is the only election...

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Don't get me wrong, I fuckin' hate Donald Trump but looking at the results of the election, any other take than needing to have a long and hard look at democrats is crazy.

There are massive cultural issues that we (democrats) need to chill out on, and the demonization and moral superiority is like top of the list. Trump is a fucking retard, and that's almost undeniable - what other candidate in the history of our country could have ever gotten away with 'concepts of a plan' answer or the dogs and cats meme; who in their right mind think across the board tariffs would help inflation etc. But most Trump voters swung that way because A.) he's not a democrat, and B.) it seems like nowadays folks are gravitating away from the George Floyd era political correctness.

Dems get caught in this weird space where, we attract insane aspects of extreme left politics and feel the need to give them room and time to speak. We are unable to adequately police that aspect of our side. The Gaza encampments on colleges were insane and no one was able to say that. The tone and language policing is annoying, but people are afraid to admit that. Just go back and look at any relevant/popular movie/sitcom/stand-up act from Obama's term - they would all be seen as insensitive today. I'm reminded of the Dave Rubin tweet 'The right is starting to be good at comedy' - at the time, it was incredibly hilarious thing to write, but now looking back he looks like he was right!

Part of me thinks the Dem L was incoming regardless of who was at the top of the ticket. Folks see Biden/Harris as the pandemic administration (I personally think that's an unfair characterization), and just want to hand the baton to the other team for a bit.

But yeah - Dan LeBatard is a tough listen these days. It's too political in the worst ways. There are times when the show is amazing, but those are mostly when Greg is in studio and they're feeding off of his crazy boomer-ness. The politics is almost always cringe. The breaking point to me was bringing on Hasan Piker, who represents everything that went wrong for the democrats this election.

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"There are massive cultural issues that we (democrats) need to chill out on, and the demonization and moral superiority is like top of the list."

This is all you needed.

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Nov 7
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In the UK, the right lost power after 20 years because of Covid inflation. It certainly wasn't because they became too woke. People see what they want to see, but most voters are extremely low information and have absolutely no idea what Trump will do. Do you think young men under 26 thought about the implications for them if Trump repeals the ACA and they can't be under their parents health care anymore? I promise you, they did not. They voted on owning the libs, and own the libs they shall.

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Tbf it was more than inflation, telling people to stay at home whilst their all getting pissed, the queen sticking to Covid rules for her husbands funeral whilst Boris Johnson and his staff were having parties really did piss people off a lot

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I mean that certainly didn't help

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Yeah I agree that Biden and Harris and likely any Dem would have caught the L just based off of inflation.

"Is that not also true of the GOP?" - I don't know about this one, mostly because the insane parts of the GOP are in lockstep with normies on shit you have already talked about: gas prices, eggs etc. I do agree that Trump's uniqueness as a political mover likely provides him ways to shrug lots of stuff off. It seems like a lot of folks aren't associating him with the rollback of Roe v. Wade which is insane. Leftists also are able to attack Democrats for I/P when Trump (the only legit other option) is saying shit like he's going to let Bibi do whatever he wants, but Leftists feel like attacking him on that issue is a waste of time.

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It's been two days and Trump Derangement Syndrome isn't going anywhere. The reaction is basically "Oh, everyone must just be dumb or racist or hate women." It's mind boggling. Just go back to talking about sports, being funny, and who cares if you offend someone. The cancelling apparatus is dead now.

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I agree that these shows need to worry less about offending people. I think democrats got too caught up in Me Too and George Floyd/BLM. But Trump is a massive piece of shit retard, hopefully we can at least agree on that. It's not deranged to hate a legitimately hatable person.

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No it's fine to hate Trump. At this point I can't really respect people that give him rent free space in their head to the point that even if he does something right it's just always wrong.

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Consider expanding your news sources. I see similar TDS reactions, but I have also seen a lot of reflective reactions by individuals and dnc leaders.

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Fair enough. Yesterday was listening to Bloomberg news on the radio and they were essentially getting ready to call the military if he does something that they deem unconstitutional, which is pretty much anything he does or says.

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This is exactly why I stopped listening to the show. Like a lot of people, it helped me through a rough time in my life and was a daily part of my life for years. But man, Dan can be such a hypocrite about this stuff. For a show that has a segment with the dirty demon of debate and the angel of nuance, he really seems to hate nuance when it comes to politics. Our angels vs their demons, our glorious civilization vs their backwards barbarism. That and his incessant shitty takes on race ultimately drove me away, which was legitimately sad to me, as the show had been apart of my life for 7 or so years. It’s sad yet unsurprising that my problems with the show seem to have gotten worse. Save the whales

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I haven’t listened much to Lebatard, but I listen to another host in Cleveland. He’s incredibly nuanced and fair in his sports analysis: if he even slightly exaggerates about something, he almost always catches himself and re-states his point in a more fair way.

And then he gets on Twitter and turns into a caricature of a partisan hack, falling for the lowest IQ tropes that have a 100-0 ratio of which side he criticizes.

I don’t know why media members don’t understand the very obvious thing: if you are even occasionally critical of your own side, you will gain so much more trust.

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I read an article this morning from NYT about the support Trump gained from Muslims in Dearborn, Mich. Then I stumble upon this piece with a passage about Zionists. It appears people are searching for complexities when the answer is the same as it almost always is: The economy.

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Majority of people in Dearborn are Arab-American. It wasn't about the economy, it was about the war. But yes, for the majority of the electorate, it's about the economy.

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Yeah, any discussion of this that doesn't begin with inflation misunderstands the election.

It's also funny because the economy is objectively not even bad, it's just that voters hate inflation.

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The electorate's profound misunderstanding of economics has never stopped it from wildly swinging back and forth looking for someone to blame.

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Zionist is not some newly fashionable term and the fact that the majority of Jews identify as such does not negate the criticisms of the people using it now. Zionists in Israel and the US are explicitly clear about what they want in the Middle East and will drive us into more death and destruction. If I recall, Joe Biden said he considered himself a Zionist, so maybe an article exploring the odd desire of Americans to identify as someone else's nationalist identity would be interesting. Dont want to risk losing subscribers though, right? Saying you're against trans women in sports for the 1000th time will keep the subs coming in, so better to not say you think what Israel is doing in Gaza and Lebanon is bad! No stance for Ethan on that one! Hand-wave away the complexity to get back to why Dan is being a bad liberal!

The Dems are also the ones that have been funding Israel with a blank check for this war, told Muslim voters to fuck off and lost votes because of it, so I'm not sure why you needed to punch left just to say some Jews voted Trump. There are always Jews that vote Republican. The Adelsons have funded Trump from the jump!

I think it's funny too that your first post election article is about LeBatard, a very clear centrist that loves capitalism but has socially liberal views. He runs his show how he wants, something you relate to, but you nitpick him because he isn't connecting with Trump voters? Seriously, go to the Outkick home page. Their political opponents are on the front page, framed explicitly as enemies and mocked over and over and over. Your political/social commentary has gotten so boring and repetitive because your blind spots are more and more obvious. The Dems need to change their approach and understand the electorate and offer something positive to Trump voters. What LeBatard says is not relevant at all.

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You are criticizing him for not being something he never has been. There are plenty of places people can go to read/listen all they want about war in the Middle East. The House of Strauss is not one of them.

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Huh? I'm criticizing his own words. He chose to reference Zionists and support for Israel in an article about LeBatard being mean to Trump voters. And his point was lazy at best by ignoring the massive Dem support for Israel and referencing Florida voters being scared by protests (mostly) outside of Florida. Like, what even is that sentence there for? None of that was needed to prove the thesis of this article about LeBatard, especially with Trump's big gains with Latino voters (maybe thats why he won Florida!!). I'm not looking for foreign policy content, but I also don't enjoy reading the same article every time. I'm just critiquing what he chose to publish and would like to see Ethan interrogate more interesting aspects of our politics since he does talk about it a lot.

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The average person isn't watching the Kamala speeches where she's demanding hostages be set free and that Israel will continue being America's partner. But it's impossible to ignore the fact that the more insane sides of the I/P issue are given oxygen by Democrats. The school encampments were insane, but I don't recall any prominent democrat denouncing or helping figure out a way to get them off of campuses. People see insane shit happening at very liberal universities in NYC and CA and associate that with Democrats, like it or not that's just how it goes.

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You sound like you haven't been paying attention. The Democratic establishment absolutely did not give those campus protests oxygen and they absolutely hated them. They very publicly prevented any pro-Palestine sentiments from being expressed at the convention as well.

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You dont recall prominent dems denouncing the campus protests??? You gotta be kidding me man. Google any of the dem leadership lol. Kamala surrogates were literally making shirts that said "I'm Speaking" after she shut down protestors. Maybe, the media gives it oxygen to suppress the protests since the MSM is broadly pro-Israel? And maybe that's a bad strategy for Dems since they still lose those voters in Florida that apparently would've voted Dem (dubious of that) AND voters in Michigan swing state. Again, there are many reasons the election went the way it did. I was simply making a point that the section on Israel was intellectually lazy (Dems were NOT squishy about Oct 7) and unnecessary for this article.

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It took 2 seconds of googling to find this -

“They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.” - Kamala Harris

It's not hard to surmise that a vast majority of the campus encampments were advocating for a one-state solution which almost no serious voter thinks is a good path for peace. That's an insane position to take, and exactly illustrates my point. Democrats can't just wholesale tell Gaza protesters they've gone too far and need to stop.

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I don't understand what's wrong with that statement. If she said that about the Tea Party, what would you think is wrong with it?

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Dan, please calm down and take a break from this thread. Perhaps consider a break from the news. Go somewhere for the weekend and enjoy life.

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Thanks, brother! Wish I could, but the news just hits so good. I NEED IT. I even leave it on when I'm sleeping! Can't turn it off. Can't miss the news. Kamala should've promised more news and I would've been knocking on doors for her. My life is the news now. Or maybe it always was?

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You literally criticize him for not having a stance on Gaza (and for not having YOUR stance ie not condemning Israel)

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Not true at all. Just pointing out the use of Israel in a weak, anecdotal argument to help his "why Trump won" point while then remaining "neutral" and above the fray. I've repeatedly said in this thread that my point was it was irrelevant to the thesis of this article. LeBatard is not doing pro-Palestine shit. I literally don't care what Ethan's position is, but in every article and pod it comes up he does a wishy-washy, "I don't want to say" thing. It's lame. He has guests on that explicitly state their stance. From an intellectual perspective, just nut up and say it or stop talking about it entirely.

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It's quite a trip looking for 2020 thinkpieces about Rs needing to change their approach after a generational landslide lost. You're more likely to find “Republicans may have lost tonight, but did they actually win?” pieces. Republicans never ever ever ever have to do any soul searching, and certainly never have to govern to the center. Their one vote win is a complete mandate. Dems need to open their hearts to racist failson incels who have abandoned them. But Rs shouldn't worry about losing all these women voters, they don't need them, and ideally they shouldn't be voting anyway. That's man stuff!

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Yeah but what Israel is doing in Gaza and Lebanon is good.

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Yeah is the world better with more Israelis or Hamas and Hezbollah acolytes? I have my answer!

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If I may be semi serious for a moment, nobody should care too much about DL's grandstanding and coping. This is probably the 3rd or 4th time in my not that long life where it felt like the Dem party is doomed and will never win another election. Probably the same number of times it felt like the R party was doomed. This was an inflation-kick-out-incumbents era in the entire western world, why would we be any different? The lesson Dems should learn is the same lesson Rs learned in their 2020 humiliation: not one fucking thing. For the next 4 years, sit back, relax, watch what happens, and then field a decent candidate in 2028. If things go great in Trump 2, then awesome, everybody wins! But if they don't (and when have Rs ever over played their hand after an election), then the backlash to Trump 2 will make the 2020 backlash look like nothing. Everybody needs to relax.

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