Many people (including the Big Bang Theory) have noted that if Indy hadn't gone after the Ark, the Nazis still would've found it, still would've opened it and still would've gotten their faces melted off.
However, it occurs to me that this goes one step further...
...if he hadn't gotten involved, instead of transporting the Ark via submarine, they likely would've simply flown it directly to Berlin (which was the original plan)...meaning Belloq wouldn't have had time to convince the powers that be to re-route it to a remote island.
In other words, without Indy getting involved, the Ark likely would've ended up melting off the faces of Hitler and his entire High Command all in one shot, potentially ending WWII right then and there.
Alternatively, if Indy had never traveled to Nepal to find Marion, the Nazis may never have found her or the medallion at all & would've spent the rest of WWII fruitlessly digging up half of Cairo.
I mostly agree w/this thread. I *list* extreme long shot seats for *statewide* races since most people know that a Dem winning in, say, SD is almost impossible, but I still emphasize the more winnable seats. For district-level races, however, I try to stick to competitive seats.
…or at least *potentially* competitive seats. I also include the PVI rating for every district-level race to give people some idea of how tough each district is. Generally I stick to D/R +10 or less, with a few exceptions.
Now there are *other* arguments for helping long shots—building turnout for *their* race can help boost Dem turnout for a winnable *statewide* race, for instance. Just don’t donate to a Dem in an R+30 district thinking that THEY’RE gonna win, outside of an extreme scenario.
@clearchats@PalmerReport The PVI ratings aren’t perfect since they only include the *district* demographics, not the quality of the candidates/etc, but they provide a pretty good baseline. As @PalmerReport notes, a fantastic candidate *may* be able to overcome an R+10 district but there are limits.
It may look like nothing's changed, but both the correlation (R^2) and slope angle have continued to increase.
I expect both of them to see another small bump as the first batch of 6mo - 4yr old children get their 2nd/3rd vaccination doses over the next week or two:
As an aside, for everyone who said Dems were suckers for giving up their leverage on Manchin by voting for the Infrastructure Bill before the BBB bill passed: Manchin's erratic behavior should prove that he would've just as easily let the BIF die as well if he had to.
Splitting the larger bill in half as leverage to get him to vote for one before agreeing to the other made sense on paper, and I supported it at the time, but it assumed that Manchin wouldn't have just said "then neither one passes." I'm now convinced that he would have.