Vee

This was true: It's that time again, @DRW50: Done:

Pretty far from a red apocalypse so far, and I look forward to the media tears. I'm gonna take a bit of a break, but I leave you with this:

Magdi Jacobs said this earlier and I now think she is right: The GOP is weak. They project strength but even with gerrymandering and media cover, they're weak on a fundamental level in terms of policy, substance and the candidates they put up, something McConnell was right to critique not long ago. This should've been a wave for them, it wasn't. Even if we lose the Senate (and I don't believe we will), this is not the rout they and their media friends were hoping for. They're weak at core, and if we want to win more than just future rounds of Republican clean-up duty, more Democrats are going to have to learn how to kill them in the media and in campaigning, and we're going to have to build better media for Democrats too, not just a couple liberal voices (who keep getting fired) on networks that are managed by center-right management and ownership. I'm not worried about coming back from this midterm, however it all shakes out. I've lived through several supposed 'permanent Republican majorities' on and off for 20 years and watched them flop and lose. It doesn't last. I'm more worried about Dems getting out of this larger cycle of just swapping places with the GOP and cleaning up Republican messes, then being expected to 'unite' with the GOP and not taking the steps necessary to reform the systemic issues that have undone our system and can make much worse than this possible someday. I'm worried about the systemic problems with our democracy. The Democrats have been positioned for too long by the media and the party itself as the custodial crew any time America goes downhill. Republicans are allowed to have insane psychotic breaks or wild international adventures but it's Democrats who pick up the bill, clean up the house and then get hectored on how to pay for it and keep being nice to Republicans, criticized not to pursue major Dem initiatives. That frame is not sustainable anymore. We can't keep doing 2, 4, 6, 8 year election cycles where Republicans make the country worse, Dems scramble to clean it up in a polite way and then Republicans reap the benefits of their work or the lingering discontent and do it all over again. This is a cycle that is not viable anymore because the right wing plot against America has escalated by leaps and bounds in the last few months and years. They put in the work. Democrats have to act with their own agency, not the small amount of agency afforded to them by pundit brains and Beltway thinking drafting them to clean up Republican messes every cycle. If Republicans are weak, then it is time to finish them as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Warnock and Walker remain on a knife's edge. But: Georgia is very, very tight and may very well mean the balance of the Senate again. We probably won't know tonight. Fetterman has most likely won. And no, there's no red wave. There's a lot of stories like this one emerging:

And now, exciting news from a man whose name has me highly doubtful he can possibly exist: Media pundits are struggling with this one: My realistic best case for this midterm was keeping the Senate, denying the media their beloved red wave and a small GOP House majority. We may be on track for that, or we may not.

Vance takes Ohio, which is awful. But it's not all bad: And now, schadenfreude:

Not a bad night for incumbents in a midterm so far, frankly. Still, don't get too excited about the below as I can't see the House holding. I report, you decide:

As I keep saying and people call me crazy!

No wave:

Oz is down very bad in Philly, not that that necessarily portends for the rest of PA. We'll see. I can't cosign this without more data, but worth noting:

I think it's going to be a rough night no matter what. That's midterms. I just hope we're in for some surprises, and keep the Senate.

I expect it to be a rough ride but can we maybe hold these posts til Wednesday morning lol

Ohhh, I think we know.

I don't believe there was ever any serious affair/temptation towards it portrayed between Monica and Rick on GH in 2002. At least I don't remember one. Yes, Alan chafed at his presence and it was awkward but that was about it IIRC. Which is why it galled me to discover that 5 or 6 years later they abruptly wrote in that Rick and Monica had resumed their affair offscreen shortly before his death, and Alan and Monica were written discussing it as though we were supposed to know.

Very sad but very unsurprising. His life had gone to dark places, then gone even deeper then did it again. I hope he's finally at peace.

Great to see this. I've always been intrigued by how this potential pairing came into the mix - I think dc has said Guza and Taggert(?) brought it up but Agnes dropped it for Trucker and Dinah Lee? Tyler and Collins were very hot together, but this was very bold for the time with the show's leading supercouple male and a Black woman (even if she was a longtime AMC star), and probably even bolder today sadly.

There's been a ton of big stories about it in the last couple months I encourage you to check out. David Zaslav and the new Discovery management have plopped a ton of Discovery 'flip this house', etc. reality content onto HBO Max and have been torching a number of original series that have no physical releases or alternate sources whatsoever, potentially rendering them lost media. All just to try to get tax writeoffs and untangle the massive debt they inherited from this merger. I don't see this union lasting.

It wouldn't shock me. Which is why I still think their much-hailed new Friday the 13th series from Bryan Fuller will end up vaporware, though it sounds very promising. (It always does when Fuller talks up a project he then either quits or watches get cancelled in pre-production, not that that's always his fault.) I can't see them throwing that kind of huge weight behind anything on Peacock if this downward slide continues for them. It's Discovery that is ripping HBO Max apart, having just bought up WB. It's a fire sale and they're callously pillaging both the film and TV libraries - dumping original streaming series without warning, etc. - just to keep the company together after inheriting a ton of debt. Discovery is reality TV/home improvement guys who don't see the value in Max. So Degrassi (among other prospective TV/film projects that pre-dated their merger) getting caught up in that purge doesn't shock me. But Degrassi as a property will outlive this messy Discovery merger, somewhere on some platform.