Regardless of everything that has happened and how it has been covered...

that I'm concerned about.. in the swing states.

Besides, those midterms are over a year away.

Covid and the economy are the only issues that are going to matter. Beyond that, like every election, turnout will matter more than any issue. Elections are largely turnout contests and not issue driven.

they were this year for 2022.. but they're in 2022 for 2023.

Glad I asked.. I've been worried.

TY! But they have to have Good Reasons to GOTV & Turnout!

Voters sure as hell had Good Reasons to Turnout in 2020 & 2018!

Please check your state if not sure.

Those are state offices. Still important but outside of what I was talking about

...and running elections. Extremely important to get 2021 right, or 2022 is a cluster fuck.

have had with Brexit, Covid Response and other failed policies.

is what matters now. There is no benefit to taking our eyes and energies off of the 2022 elections.

There are two things I have studied cllosely, and actively participated in, for the many decades of my long life: boxing and politics. I know, without question, that the fighter who is not concerned about his next fight, but is instead focused on the one after that, will get his ass kicked. Hence, my focus on 2022.

More, I know that there is absolutely no way that Afghanistan will not be an important issue in 2022. No matter if we wish otherwise, we live in the real world. Afghanistan will still be a mess in 2022, and a global issue. Either China or Russia will likely become the most important partner with them, and republicans will seek to blame President Biden for the hell that Bush & Cheney created.

It is naive, at best, to think Afghanistan won't be an issue next year. It already is.

And most people agree with getting out even if they did.

We should be celebrating what is happening instead of being down dobber about it. The press wants to be negative? Fine. We can’t change that by trying to fight them. We should have people on there that instead say that this is a decision to be celebrated not condemned.

By the time voting for midterms happens this will no longer be a story. What is likely to still be a story though is dead Americans at the hands of Republican governors and state legislatures.

on emotion. And we know that republicans always campaign on naked emotion, especially when it comes to a mistaken notion of patriotism. Losing a war has consequences, as the republicans found out after Nixon and Vietnam -- though obviously Watergate et al played a role.

Likewise, in the republican playbook, they will reverse course from the deaths during the Trump year, and blame Biden for the on-going covid crisis. It is important to recognize that the current republican party has gone from amoral to immoral, and that they are going to campaign on the synergy of emotion and ignorance.

I agree 100% that we should be engaged in a campaign to correct all the misinformation and disinformation regarding Afghanista. I attended my uncle's burial ceremony last Friday at a National Cemetery in NYS. One of the speakers was one of the guys who had served with my uncle. At the reception, he was seated at the table next to mine, and was giving me the hairy eyeball that his generationtended to view long-haired, bearded youth back in the day. He was arguing about Afghanistan with my cousin, a retired military man.

Being without any social graces, I said, "I thought the mission was to kill those who attacked us on 9/11. Something like having special forces block any path to Pakistan while bombing Tora Bora. It didn't include making the defense industry rich by sacrificing our military." He got up, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Exactly! You're god-damned right!"

To say watergate played a role is a massive understatement.

I just can’t look and try to find doom and gloom. It will not serve us well at all.

and can say that I have never been a "doom and gloom" subscriber. Exactly the opposite. I learned to be fully prepared, back when I boxed, for every opponent. I studied both their strengths and weaknesses. Then I exploited both. Those lessons made me a happy, optimistic young man, one featured in a major boxing magazine as a young teen. I continue that same approach these days, both as a trainer, and political activist. Hence, every fighter I have trained since 1975 has been a Golden Gloves champion. More, almost every political campaign in our state that I have been involved in has had success during those same decades.

Being "doom and gloom" -- or, "gloom and doome" -- is a waste of time. Ignoring our opposition's strengths and weaknesses is equally an exercise in ignorance. Neither applies to me, while the second surely applies to anyone who says Afghanistan will fade quietly into the past.

Also, if one studies history -- or for those of us old enough to remember -- the end of the war and Watergate were, in some ways, connected.

This is the worst thing a president ever done. They forget Reagan leaving our troops defenseless in Lebanon. 241 U.S. troops was killed in Beirut Lebanon by a truck bomb in 1983. When Trump pulled out of Syria he left the Kurds behind to get slaughtered.

done all we can, and there is no point in staying there. Trump negotiated one of his worst in Afghanistan, and there is little Biden can do at this point. Biden has handled it well. It was always going to be a shit show IMHO. And Cable news, which I had stopped watching, is now out and out lying in order to improve their ratings. My hope is that we have planted a seed and perhaps in time the people of Afghanistan will rise up and throw out the Taliban. They have to be the ones to do it...we can't.

willing to do the right thing regardless of political risk, has hired and appointed competent public servants, is not out to enrich himself, sees the good in all people, doesn't threaten people or states that didn't vote for him, has empathy, etc.

I wish media would have a bigger picture view and realize that even with the best intentions things often don't work out perfectly...and that at least we aren't led by a person with bad intentions. instead they are reporting as though this is huge political drama born of malice and/or incompetence.

Many do care about the Afghan people, but most do not.

It will be forgotten.

but I seem to remember that a lot of people (and the mdeia)were outraged by the incident and his first Defense Secretary Les Aspin was pressured to resign afterwards. That, among other things, snowballed into a massive Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms. It was not pretty.

However, the problem is how the withdrawal is viewed. The more hysterics there are surrounding the coverage of the withdrawal the more people might be lead to believe that there is something wrong with Biden or that he's incompetent and *that* could harm Biden. But maybe as long as nothing extremely bad happens, it won't ultimately matter once the media coverage calms down. If you're a low-information voter regularly listening to somebody like Tucker Carlson during the past week, you might however be convinced that CNN (which he believes is controlled by and representative of the Democratic Party) is turning on Biden, that Biden is senile and incompetent and even his aides are turning on him and his family members and friends are getting worried about his intellectual and cognitive abilities.


If you're being fed THAT kind of information, who knows?