Hardkill

Porn was illegal until around the late 1960s and early 1970s and that failed largely because: 1. Too many Americans around that time got fed up with being sexually repressed by societal norms and the government. 2. Adults, especially men still searched for porn films, sex shows, or smut even when that was all illegal before the late 1960s and early 1970s, because of how great the desire for sex and different kinds of sexual activity has always been a part of human nature. Men, especially those who are young adults or middle-aged, crave for porn and sexual variety generally more so than women because of differences in levels of androgens such as testosterone between men and women.

I’ve been wondering why Americans have been so persistently pessimistic about the country over roughly the past decade, especially compared with more optimistic periods in the mid-to-late 1980s, the 1990s, and parts of the 2000s before the 2008 financial crisis. To be clear, I’m not arguing that everything is fine today or that Americans have nothing legitimate to worry about. I still have very strong concerns about Trump and the Republican Party, while also remaining very disappointed with much of the Democratic establishment. I also really dislike what I would call the “slopulism” coming from some progressive populists and Leftists—the tendency to reduce extremely complicated economic and political problems to simplistic narratives in which everything is completely rigged, corrupt, collapsing, or controlled by a handful of elites. I’m still seriously worried about American democracy and civil liberties, extreme economic inequality, concentrated wealth and political influence, extreme partisan polarization, and the gridlock that has made governing the country much harder. So my argument isn’t that America has no serious problems. What I’m wondering is why those problems have seemingly prevented Americans from recovering the kind of national optimism that periodically existed during earlier decades, even while many other aspects of American life have improved. Those earlier decades certainly weren’t paradise. The 1980s had high crime, AIDS, the Cold War, and the aftermath of stagflation. The 1990s had recessions, racial unrest, political scandals, etc. The 2000s had 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and growing polarization. Yet Americans still seemed capable of bouncing back into periods of fairly broad optimism. That became much harder after the Great Recession. And what makes this especially strange to me is that it can’t simply be explained by Americans becoming unable to survive economically. Consider what happened after 2008. The country went through the worst financial crisis and recession since the Great Depression. But the Obama years also produced a substantial recovery and reform period. The Recovery Act supported an economy that was hemorrhaging jobs. Dodd-Frank substantially changed financial regulation and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Affordable Care Act produced a major expansion of health-insurance coverage. Obama also signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Fair Sentencing Act, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, same-sex marriage became legal nationwide during his presidency, and the country elected its first African-American president. In 2011, American forces also finally killed Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, unemployment eventually fell from about 10% following the financial crisis to below 5% by the end of Obama’s presidency. Crime continued its long-term decline, while smartphones, medicine, entertainment, transportation safety, and access to information improved dramatically. So by the later Obama years, you could plausibly tell a relatively optimistic story: “We suffered the worst financial collapse since the Depression, avoided another Great Depression, recovered economically, strengthened financial regulation, expanded healthcare, brought unemployment back down, killed bin Laden, expanded civil rights, and continued advancing technologically.” Yet that never became anything resembling the sustained national optimism of the late 1980s or late 1990s. The economic expansion then continued through most of Trump’s first term. By 2017–2019, unemployment was extremely low, inflation remained low, household incomes were rising, and roughly three-quarters of American adults reported that they were doing okay financially or living comfortably. Crime was far below its early-1990s peak, while technology, medicine, entertainment, transportation safety, access to information, healthcare coverage, LGBT rights, and many other aspects of American life were much more advanced than several decades earlier. Leo himself has made this broader point. He has said that the world is “more peaceful and civilized than ever” and has pointed to declining crime, less pollution and smog, safer vehicles, incredible and inexpensive technology, greater social tolerance, and unprecedented access to knowledge. Then came the 2020s. COVID was obviously catastrophic, and the inflation shock imposed real costs on households. But the United States also recovered remarkably quickly from the pandemic recession. Employment rebounded rapidly, unemployment returned to very low levels, and inflation eventually fell dramatically without the severe recession that many economists feared. And I also think it is important not to understate how unusually ambitious Biden’s domestic-policy agenda was relative to recent Democratic administrations. The American Rescue Plan included direct household relief, expanded unemployment assistance, aid to state and local governments, and a temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit. Census found that the Supplemental Poverty Measure child-poverty rate fell from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021, its lowest level on record at the time; the expanded Child Tax Credit alone lifted about 2.9 million children above the poverty line. The law also created a special financial-assistance program for severely underfunded multiemployer pension plans, protecting pension benefits for large numbers of union workers and retirees. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law committed major federal investment to roads, bridges, public transit, water systems, broadband, the electric grid, ports, and other infrastructure, while incorporating labor and domestic-manufacturing provisions. The CHIPS and Science Act put roughly $50 billion through the Commerce Department toward rebuilding domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research capacity, including $39 billion in manufacturing incentives and $11 billion for research and development. The Inflation Reduction Act represented another major departure from recent policy. It created large long-term incentives for clean energy and domestic manufacturing, including provisions encouraging prevailing wages and apprenticeships. It also changed Medicare prescription-drug policy by allowing negotiation of certain drug prices, capping covered insulin at $35 per month for Medicare beneficiaries, imposing a $2,000 annual Part D out-of-pocket cap beginning in 2025, and requiring rebates when certain drug prices rise faster than inflation. His administration also adopted a much more explicitly labor-oriented posture than had been typical of recent Democratic administrations. Biden created a White House task force specifically aimed at encouraging worker organizing and collective bargaining, and his appointees to the NLRB adopted rules and decisions more favorable to union organizing, including the 2023 Cemex framework. The administration also substantially expanded access to Public Service Loan Forgiveness; by October 2024, the Education Department said more than one million public-service workers had received forgiveness through the program, compared with about 7,000 before the administration took office. So Biden’s domestic agenda combined things that had often been treated separately in recent decades: stronger labor policy + industrial policy + climate investment + infrastructure + expanded healthcare subsidies + prescription-drug reform + redistribution toward families + manufacturing policy + pension protection. Whether someone agrees with all of those policies is a different question. My point is that this was not an administration doing nothing while the country stagnated. The United States also finally ended its 20-year military involvement in Afghanistan, although the withdrawal itself was chaotic and controversial. And yet Americans remained deeply pessimistic about the country and distrustful of its institutions. So what explains this disconnect? Maybe economic inequality is much more important than raw living standards. Even if most people are materially better off than several decades ago, perhaps extreme inequality makes people feel that economic progress is unfairly distributed and gives wealthy individuals and corporations excessive political influence. Maybe it’s political polarization and gridlock. The two sides have become so hostile to one another that perhaps America can no longer have a broadly shared feeling that “the country is doing well.” Whichever party governs, tens of millions of Americans on the other side believe the country is moving in a disastrous direction. Maybe the modern media environment is a huge part of it. We now have 24/7 access to every war, crime, scandal, inequality statistic, political outrage, and cultural conflict happening anywhere. Social-media algorithms also reward anger, fear, and outrage in ways that simply did not exist during the 1980s or 1990s. There’s also accumulated institutional distrust from Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial crisis, congressional gridlock, money in politics, government shutdowns, the disputes surrounding the 2020 election and January 6, COVID politics, etc. But even that raises another question. America went through the Great Depression and WWII, which were vastly more catastrophic than Iraq or the Great Recession, yet institutional trust eventually became extremely high afterward. Maybe the difference was that Americans eventually developed a clear shared narrative: “We survived the Depression, defeated fascism, came home victorious, built a booming economy, expanded the middle class, and made life better.” Something similar could theoretically have developed after 2008: “We survived the financial collapse, avoided another depression, reformed Wall Street, expanded healthcare, brought unemployment back down, killed bin Laden, expanded civil rights, and continued advancing technologically.” And another version could theoretically have developed after COVID: “We survived a once-in-a-century pandemic, rapidly developed vaccines, recovered millions of jobs, brought inflation back down without mass unemployment, finally left Afghanistan, rebuilt infrastructure, invested in domestic manufacturing and clean energy, expanded labor protections, and continued advancing technologically and medically.” But neither became a broadly shared national narrative. Today, even when something goes relatively well, Americans often can’t agree that it was a success. One side sees the ACA as major progress; another sees government overreach. One side sees tighter financial regulation after 2008 as necessary reform; another sees excessive regulation. One side sees COVID vaccines as a triumph of science; another focuses on mandates and government restrictions. One side sees industrial and climate investment as rebuilding American productive capacity; another sees excessive federal spending and intervention. One side sees the post-COVID economy as an impressive recovery and soft landing; another focuses on inflation and permanently higher prices. One side sees leaving Afghanistan as finally ending a failed 20-year war; another sees the withdrawal as humiliating. So maybe the problem isn’t simply that America has stopped progressing. Maybe progress no longer translates into shared national optimism. And that is what I find interesting. It seems possible to recognize enormous material, technological, medical, and social progress while also taking seriously concerns about democracy, civil liberties, extreme inequality, concentrated political power, polarization, gridlock, and failures of both major parties. Those ideas don’t necessarily contradict each other. So why do you think Americans have been so much less optimistic about the country over the past decade than during the more optimistic periods of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s? Is it mainly inequality and concentrated economic power? Political polarization? Gridlock? Social media? Declining social cohesion? Housing affordability? Cultural change? Loss of trust in institutions? Or something deeper psychologically? And if many aspects of American life really have improved, what would actually need to change for Americans to feel broadly optimistic about the country again?

European culture hasn’t been able to compete as well as the American culture when it comes to technology and innovation because how much smaller in national economic scale countries like the UK, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, and other individual EU countries are. Smaller national population and economy → smaller domestic market, capital pool, procurement capacity, and specialized ecosystem → greater difficulty supporting the entire innovation-and-scaling system independently. It’s also because of securities laws, pension system, federal research spending, immigration, universities, bankruptcy rules, and long history of venture finance in the US. That being said, the EU has for a very long time been trying to unify all of the countries in the union together so that Europe as a whole can one day compete with US and China at the continental scale. However, the United States and China each possess continental scale within a single national system, whereas Europe’s comparable scale is divided among separate countries. Institutional fragmentation then prevents Europe from using its collective size as effectively as the United States and China use theirs.

and why do you think that is?

I know we're not ready for something like Democratic Socialism and that we won't be until at least several decades or several centuries from now. We still need to get to Social Democracy as soon as possible to truly have the best form of free and fair capitalism. So, if most people are not woke enough to understand the structural problems of capitalism, then does that mean that most people don't know that American Capitalism or Capitalism in the West since the late 1970s/early 1980s has been gutting the middle class more and more to concentrate wealth at the top and cause the extreme corporate power which have corrupted our government?

I know that. Though if most people in the country cared enough about this problem then they or we would need to take collective action by forming the largest grassroots labor movement since the mid 1900s. People these days have lost all sense of sacrifice and the will to fight as warriors in solidarity.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXzyKpjSqMk/?stkn=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Poverty was worse during the late 1900s and early 2000s.

Yeah, but those issues themselves don’t explain why people felt more optimistic about the country during the late 1900s and the aughts than during the 2010s and 2020s

Also, most Americans don’t trust or believe in the government, especially since the election of Reagan in 1980. They trust the private sector and business more and praise billionaires and corporate business leaders for being the “smartest and hardest working people in the world” who deserve to enjoy what they’ve earned and they know what is best for the economy and for the country. That’s part of what makes America so great, right? So, why do people care that the government is being corrupted by billionaires and corporations? I mean I wish most people in the country cared enough about this extreme economic inequality and extreme corporate power, but now I am not sure that they do.

Yeah, I get that. However, that’s always been part of the modern American culture or unchecked capitalism, and like you said before, people in this country have been so addicted to it that they believe that American capitalism is like God’s greatest gift to the country and to the rest of the world. Most Americans believe that’s part of the beauty of American exceptionalism. So, why aren’t most Americans happy with all of that and still believe in the American dream being possible like they were or did during the presidencies of Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama? Also, what about people like Obama saying “Hope and Change”, “Yes, we can!”, “we’ll get through this”, or people like Biden and Bernie Sanders saying “I’ve never been more optimistic in my life about the future” and that “the youngest generations of our country today, who are the future of our country, are the least racist and the most progressive our country has ever had”. I’ll admit that I said before on here that I thought that maybe the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, or 1990s were the “good old days.” Now, I’ve been reconsidering that. After learning so much more about what we have had since the mid 2010s compared to what we had anytime before that, I don’t think I would want to live in the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, or 1990s. I definitely wouldn’t want to live in the aughts either. As you’ve mentioned before, the 2010s and 2020s have had so many positive things happen that didn’t happen during the mid to late 1900s or the aughts.

Jews have always been persecuted for centuries by everyone else who aren't them.

I hope he wins. This is going to be a very hard race for him.

Are you for the Republican party?

I am skeptical of the idea or notion that "They want to lose. Only explanation." You don't think they want to win any power? Also, winning elections is extremely important for all of the professionals involved in the business of promoting the Democratic Party.

If Democratic pundits, analysts, strategists, and politicians said that Harris lost in 2024 because of racism and sexism, then why aren't they only promoting for ONLY male politicians, especially white male Democrats, in their party to run for president? Also, why do they think that it is a good idea to float Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, as a possible Democratic presidential candidate? I don't see how he could ever win the near future.

Have you thoroughly studied history? Economic populism has always been popular during times when enough people in a country feel fucked over by extreme economic inequality and economic injustice. This is not the beginning of the rise of neoliberalism like in the late 1970s, Reaganomics in the 1980s, the maintenance of Reaganomics during the H. W. Bush era, Third Way Clintonomics in the 1990s — which essentially consolidated Reaganomics in a New Democrat way — or Bush-era Reagan-style economics. Modern conservative economics no longer works, and quite frankly, it never really did in the long run. We are no longer even in an era where the country wanted to try liberal economics for the first time in a very long time, as it did during the Obama era. Obama himself, along with many of the people who supported him back then, wanted to make liberal economics work by cooperating with Republicans in the spirit of bipartisanship. But Republicans in Congress became unprecedented obstructionists against Obama, his party, and his economic agenda. Obama did many good, if not great, things in economic policy. On net, he became the first truly liberal Democratic president in policy since LBJ in the 1960s. He helped save the economy from the worst crisis and recession since the Great Depression, left the economy strong in many major ways, helped bail out the auto industry, and worked with Democrats in Congress to enact the most significant and successful health care reform since Medicare and Medicaid under LBJ. He also enacted major financial regulation, significantly reduced unjust sentencing for racial minorities, helped advance fair pay for women, pushed for and signed into law the first major federal regulation of how tobacco is made, marketed, and sold, reversed the direction of the annual deficit, broadly reversed the overall war-spending trajectory from Bush’s expansionary war years, and so on. However, all of that still was not enough. Too many people were still left behind economically by the end of his presidency, especially too many working-class people, poor people, rural people, and Black and brown people. That is one major reason Trump was able to take advantage of discontent with the system through his charismatic demagoguery, including his promise to make the economy dramatically better by bringing the country back to the supposed “good old days” of white Christian America: “Make America Great Again.” Of course, his version of that was never going to work in the end because of how stupid, incompetent, and psychopathic he has always been, along with how exclusionary and outdated his right-wing economic populism is, especially in this day and age. Biden, believe it or not, came the closest to enacting the kind of economic populism our country desperately needs, even though during his 2020 presidential run, he coded as an old moderate and pro-establishment politician who wanted to restore normalcy. Why do you think that during his presidency, he kept talking about the rising problem of corporate greed and the growing need for labor unions more than any president since FDR or Truman in the 1940s? And he did not just talk about it. Biden, his administration, and Democrats in Congress did more to enact economic populist policies for the working class than at any point since LBJ in the 1960s, and they enacted more pro-union policies than any presidency since FDR or Truman in the 1940s. And yet, Biden and his party still did not do enough. Trump won again in 2024 in large part because too many people in the country still felt that the economy was not fair or affordable enough for the little guy. Of course, Trump has betrayed the people once again and has run the economy with even greater idiocy than ever before, which anyone with enough brain cells and good-quality information in their head knew was going to happen. But the underlying point remains: economic populism, particularly liberal and progressive economic populism, must be employed by Democrats in the tradition of TR, Wilson, FDR, and LBJ. Otherwise, our democracy and all of our freedoms could very well vanish before we know it. And by the way, national polls have shown that a clear majority of Democratic voters view socialism more favorably than capitalism, while many Republican voters now say they prefer a strongman or right-wing authoritarian figure like Trump to rule the country, including “their leader” dominating the economy in a soft, modern version of fascistic economic nationalism: private capitalism plus strongman state direction. In fact, one major reason TR, Wilson, and especially FDR enacted their revolutionary economic programs was not just to make the economy more free and fair for everyone. It was to save capitalism, save democracy, and save our other American rights. Now, one major reason greater economic populism has still been so hard to enact in contemporary times is that we no longer have the same level of trust in government or social trust that we had in the mid-1900s. However, once things get bad enough in this country, people will have no choice but to desperately demand that the government enact historic economic populist reforms — and we are already starting to see that happen now. Otherwise, there has to be a mass movement powerful enough to pressure both the public and political elites to support those reforms. That has been slowly but steadily happening in this country since the 2010s. Even establishment and moderate Democratic politicians and strategists are starting to understand this, although many of them still have not fully internalized it yet. And if they do not, many of these establishment and moderate Democrats will lose their careers to democratic socialist or more left-wing challengers — which is already happening as we speak.

If he really died, then this is very sad news. That being said, like Leo, I too am not surprised. Bipolar must've got the best of him.

Ok, so then who do you think can inspire economic populism like TR or FDR could?

I’m not going to pretend this new Platner situation doesn’t change the race. It obviously does. A serious allegation that he denies, combined with major Democratic figures pulling support, is a major candidate-quality crisis. But I also don’t think this proves that the original pro-Platner argument was stupid or that Collins was always safe. The argument was that Maine is a blue-leaning state, Collins is vulnerable, and a working-class anti-corruption/economic-populist message could beat her. I still think that lane is real. What may have changed is whether Platner himself is still a viable messenger for that lane. There’s a difference between saying “Platner’s message could beat Collins” and saying “Platner can survive any scandal and still beat Collins.” Those are not the same claim. The first claim was based on real political fundamentals: Maine’s Democratic lean, Collins’s vulnerability, anti-billionaire/anti-corruption energy, and Democratic voters wanting fighters instead of safe technocrats. It’s also becoming more clear to me why this is not really the same as Trump, even though I initially thought that comparison was stronger. Trump survived worse scandals and crimes because the MAGA coalition treats scandal as persecution: “They’re only attacking him because he fights for us.” His voters often folded his corruption, legal problems, and personal misconduct into a broader anti-establishment identity. Trump could lose moderates nationally and still win because he had massive conservative consolidation and a national grievance machine behind him. Platner does not have that same shield. He is running as a Democrat in Maine, not as the leader of a cult-like national movement. He needs moderates, independents, ticket-splitters, liberal women, progressives, and anti-Collins voters. Democratic coalitions are also much more likely than MAGA coalitions to police their own candidates over sexual misconduct or character scandals. That may be unfair compared to Trump, but it is politically real. It’s also not really the same as Bill Clinton in 1992. Clinton had character and infidelity scandals before he first won the presidency, but the heavier public record of sexual harassment, assault, or rape allegations mostly came during his presidency, near the end of it, or afterward. In 1992, the public image was more “womanizer/infidelity/character problem” than a fully developed sexual-misconduct crisis before the general election. Platner’s crisis is happening before the general election, after he won the nomination, while the party still has to decide whether to support him, abandon him, or replace him. Maine makes this especially important. Maine is blue-leaning, but it has a lot of independents and a ticket-splitting tradition. Collins has survived before by winning voters who may dislike the national GOP but still see her as familiar, moderate, or safer. If enough independents decide Platner is too risky, and if enough Democrats/liberals/progressives feel demoralized or morally conflicted and stay home, that could absolutely hand Collins reelection. So the lesson should not be “economic populism cannot win.” That would be the wrong lesson. The lesson is that a must-win anti-oligarchy campaign cannot depend on a poorly vetted or personally damaged candidate. The message may still be powerful, but the messenger may have become fatally flawed. So if your point is “Platner had serious risk,” fair enough. But I hope your point isn't “this proves the whole economic-populist theory was wrong,” I don’t buy that. A candidate can collapse without the political lane collapsing. Dunking after a late-breaking scandal is not the same thing as disproving the original electoral theory.

Yeah, you know why Platner raised that much more than Mills and so far even more than Collins? It's bc he raised a lot through a grassroots/small-dollar style donor base, while Collins’ financial ecosystem is much more tied to major donors, national Republican money, super PACs, and outside spending. That is one of the strongest arguments for Platner’s real political strength. Platner is not raising Mills/Collins-style establishment money and calling it enthusiasm. This is much more evidence of grassroots energy, which fits with the poll showing his supporters are more enthusiastic than Collins’ supporters. Platner has been called a "communist" and at the same time he has been called "Nazi" which as Graham himself pointed out makes the whole thing a comical contradiction.

So what? The fact is that he's not. He's a very pro-labor New Deal Democrat and it won't just be DSA who will campaign and spend money for his general election campaign. So, will moderate Democrats and enough pro-business Democratic aligned sources will campaign and spend money for his general election. I wouldn't be surprise if Obama goes out to campaign for him in Maine. Besides, maybe it is better to be aligned with progressivism than to be a Republican like Susan Collins, who enabled the Republican Party and Trump to engage in authoritarianism and take away freedoms related to democracy, voting rights, abortion rights, and consumer protections. Susan Collins has greatly enabled corporate tyranny and has been highly complicit in allowing the rich to rob everyday people, including the working class, blind for their own benefit. Btw, can you believe this shit?

Why would you post something from a radical right-wing source like the NY Post? Also, why do keep saying that he's a communist or even DSA when I told you that he's neither one of those types of candidates? Furthermore, why didn't Janet Mills win the nomination if she wasn't the stronger candidate for the Senate general election in Maine? Again, "It's pretty hard to make the economic case against Trump when people think the economy in your state is so bad" under your watch as governor. Mills reminds me of Hillary Clinton, an eminently qualified leader for a state or for the whole country, but is perceived to be too much for the status quo and too associated with the stained reputation of how corrupt the establishment and Washington all is, which is not what the majority of voters want. Platner again, like Obama and Trump, stands for and inspires change and shows great credibility for fighting against the establishment.

According to Dan Pfieffer: Plattner is far from a perfect candidate, and he could definitely lose, but the polls suggest that Democrats would be slightly worse off with Janet Mills. She has a higher unfavorable rating than Plattner, and 85% of likely voters rate the Maine economy poorly, which is quite a burden for a two-term incumbent governor to overcome. It's pretty hard to make the economic case against Trump when people think the economy in your state is so bad. The big question is what, if anything, else comes out about Plattner between now and Election Day. I am not sure how many more bricks the load can sustain, but this poll shows that absent that, he can definitely win and is probably a slight favorite to do so.”

Platner isn't a DSA. He's a New Deal/pro-labor Democrat with Bill Clinton-like, Obama-like, or Trump-like charisma, but in the way of Teddy Roosevelt or FDR. Btw, dude. It isn't recent college grads disaffected by the 'American dream'. The working class and non-college workers feel betrayed over by the system. In fact, the working class folk and non-college workers are more anti-establishment/populist than college grads and post-grad people are. They, distrust corporations and hate rich people who come off as wealthy elite snobs. They want change with the system. How do you think Obama won in 2008 and in 2012? McCain was an old uninspiring GOP establishment who was tied to the unpopularity of the party in power (Bush and the Republicans) and how terrible the system was. Obama, is a truly one-in-a-generation charismatic candidate who inspired a bold liberal vision for country with Hope and Change. Mitt Romney was another uninspiring establishment GOP candidate tied to the unpopularity of the traditional Republicans and came off as an elitist wealthy financier/corporate oligarch who was for the status quo ante. Trump in 2016 and 2024, despite being born in raised in a super wealthy big business family and has always come off as "self-made billionaire businessman", unlike Romney, Trump was able to present himself as an outsider who's highly anti-establishment, alpha male, charismatic, and strong. People hate the fucking establishment and want bold change more than ever before without any identifying as a Democratic Socialist. Collins is one of the most status quo establishment Republicans with a terrible record of being pro-war while Platner is a patriotic military combat veteran who anti stupid fucking wars. Collins really sounds so out-of-touch, has no real charisma, seems out of element with the working class and rural America. Also, she's showing serious signs of cognitive or neurological decline including memory-related issues and essential tremor. Plus, this is the very first time that she'll be running for re-elaction during a year that's both very anti-Republican and doesn't have Trump or any GOP presidiential nominee on the ballot to help her with GOP voter turnout. Additionally, she has the worst approval rating she's ever had.