Corporations likely came in requesting things to open back up else a lot of the corporate donor money would stop. It was not a good move to fold, imo, they likely are aiming to make this a next year’s issue.
If Republicans vote against the concession then that will make even Republican voters upset, since so many people depend on having lower health insurance premiums via the ACA subsidies.
That makes a lot of sense.
If progressive policy can just be sold to the people in Mormon Church I could see a swing. It’s not like their own internal policies don’t line up pretty one-to-one with progressive goals for helping each other.
The only issue I see is just that they want their followers to be looking at the Mormon Church as the provider, rather than the state. The state could easily subsidize residents, which would in-turn would free up some of the financial burdens of the Mormon Church, but who knows if they could be convinced that it’s a win-win for everyone.
Utah feels like one of those slept on states that could go Blue. When I was traveling through SLC, it felt no different to me compared to other big PNW cities.
I’m still half tempted to move there just for how beautiful the towns and views are out there.
Some are taking those wins and passing progressives policies at the state level, but I completely agree regarding Dems in the Federal Senate.
If Dems are smart they would use the failure to deliver on that promise by Republicans and the possibility of another shutdown to pass positive legislation leading up to midterms.
Blue states need to implement their own public healthcare options. The longer we rely on the Federal government for it, the more likely it gets taken away at this point in time. People living in Purple and Red states will be the ones demanding it if all the Blue states are not even using it.
It’s probably a move to appease the corporate donors. I believe it kicks the can for the shutdown to be next year since it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen again.
Dems made them promise to put those ACA measures back in next year. They can light a fire under Republicans during midterms if they don’t stick to their word and there could even be another shutdown which would tank Republicans at the polls.
It was a weak move to cave this time around, but there’s a lot of room to demand even more when it’s right around midterms.
I think it’s more about kicking the can to next year than being about strategy. The best move would have been holding out this year as well as doing all that next year.
Corporate Democratic Senators were probably feeling the squeeze from their donors and some voters. For sure they’ll try to hold Republicans to their word by midterms.
I feel like the plan they’re going for now is to make the shutdown a next year’s problem. It’s pretty much guaranteed to happen again at this point in 2026, right around re-elections again too.
If the pinky swear promises don’t come to fruition, then it’s likely going to be a worse shutdown than this one was. That doesn’t bode well for Republicans at midterms if those promises aren’t kept by that same token.
What will suck is people are going to have another year of higher costs because of the knock-on effects of the tariffs and higher insurance premiums now due to the ACA cuts.
Blue states need to be making up the difference for what the Federal government has failed to deliver on. We need each other more than ever to weather the storm of financial hardship caused by the Republicans in office.
If it was any other candidates then I feel it probably would have been closer. The establishment was off their rockers thinking they could run Cuomo again, especially up against Mamdani.
I agree with you, the RCV and FPTP can get a bit of prisoner’s dilemma going. I like STAR or Ranked Robin voting more for that reason since you can vote all of your favorite options with equal weight. So you can have 2+ first place votes and so on.
Mamdani also won a plurality of the total votes so even by FPTP standards Mamdani won.
I 100% agree though that having a Ranked Choice style ballot opened up the door for someone like Mamdani though and would do the same for other progressives.
DMs are encouraged to be the guides for players, some players may not even know what type of player they will be until they sit down and play.
I agree there can be quite a range of differences for how people play. A balanced campaign can at least keep both role players and dungeon junkies happy, I feel.
I would say it shouldn’t be something you do often. Maybe if you’re secretly charmed or mind controlled I could see it, but I don’t think there would be too many instances a DM should be hiding a player’s roll.
For sure the DM shouldn’t abuse the player’s trust in those situations either. If it’s a hidden roll, the DM shouldn’t be lying about if the player actually passed the check or not.
I can see the appeal, for instance, of having the party running for their lives to escape a collapsing cave and having players make hidden rolls as they perform strength and dexterity checks on the way out. There can be tension behind not knowing if you pass or fail. Killing a player that way would kinda suck though rather than having some sort of funny outcome if they fail, imo.
I would say you as a player experience the game best when you are not privy to 90% of what happens behind the DM screen. The more mystery there is, the better. Half the point of the screen is for the DM to be able to weigh if certain things trigger and if they do not, imo. I agree that D&D is at its best when a DM loosely has what an idea for the campaign but leave it up to the players to write the story.
I personally had the most fun as a player when the DM was constantly rolling hidden checks, since out of character you feel that danger is lurking. I agree that you wouldn’t want predictable outcomes for whatever happens next, since the fun is in the mystery.
I would say that the DM has a lot of agency to pick and choose what moments you succeed versus fail. The DM may throw a check at you that requires a 30+ to succeed, but you don’t know that in the moment. Likewise, if you’re in a close fight and one of the players scores a natural 20 and a big hit, then I feel it’s a better moment for the story if that enemy drops from that. Rather than having the foe still stand with a couple hp, it dodges the next two rounds of hits, and wipes the party.
The confusion here is there are a few different ways of playing D&D and many different types of DMs out there. The number one rule that matters, imo, is that everyone is having fun and enjoying the game at your table.
Some players don’t want their characters to die, at least non-meaningfully, in a campaign that’s meant to be long-running. D&D is as much about the story as it is about having fun and setting expectations with your players.
If you market the campaign as mostly storytelling and light combat, but then the party rolls up geared for the former but not the later - then people will likely leave feeling frustrated instead of feeling like they had fun when they die to a random encounter. If you don’t set expectations well or prepare people well, then some people will quit playing right there instead of creating a new character.
If I want a high-stakes, combat-geared campaign where people will be expected to create new characters at some point then I feel it’s important to lay that out from session zero.
If I want some middle of road campaign geared towards storytelling and medium combat, even then I’d be letting players know from the start that their characters can die from any encounter if they push their luck too much.
An “open book” test means the test is about to get really hard. So hard that even with the book and ample class time you will still struggle to solve the exam questions and pass the test.
I hate how accurate that sounds. I really hope not, otherwise the Democratic Party really will have learned nothing in over a decade.
I’m skeptical that Harris is the front runner the DNC pushes, they might but I believe we could see a split over Harris, Walz, or Newsome as the front runner in 2028.
Someone like AOC could throw their hat in the ring, which could work but they would have to do hardball quite a lot to get any progressive legislation passed federally. The courts would be trying to check the EO power and be much more limiting than they are currently.
She tried to play towards too many people all at once really. Trump wasn’t committing to anything as he was posturing that he could be either way on an issue, and I think Harris was trying a more toned down version of that. Her bet was that swing state voters were more center or right leaning, but really she almost cemented them being that way with her middle ground approach.
Her actual policy positions were reasonable and passable on their own, but she didn’t bake any risk into her platform. She didn’t try to promise more progressive legislation, which almost assuredly would have helped her and the other Democratic Senators/House members to win their elections.
That’s wild. I feel like situation 1 would be more like a 5 or 6 since it never says Grace got permission to use the coffee machine on the tour.