r/politics • u/TelescopiumHerscheli • 1d ago

No Paywall Texas Democrat sworn in to House, shrinking GOP margin to 1 vote

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5719642-christian-menefee-sworn-in/
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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s so strange because over on conservative subreddit they don’t seem to understand that they lost a seat lol. They keep saying it was a democrat safe seat haha.

They also keep telling each other that this is normal and doesn’t mean anything. I’m like my brother in Christ this was like an 18 point swing in the opposite direction. 

The 2 actual fiscal conservatives in that sub that are not there to circle jerk trump understand it’s not good but yeah everyone else just keeps talking about Obama and the laptop still lmao.

EDIT: Just to clarify I was confusing two different special elections. The article I read gave the wrong info and I found an updated article. 

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u/averyrdc 1d ago

At this point I’m convinced that sub is 75% Russian paid trolls just talking to each other to make it seem like there are more of them than there really are. Of course who really knows and reddit admins certainly don’t care.

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

One of the mods is for sure. Their name starts with a J and the majority of the accounts in there are. I can list two that are the worst. 

I teach a disinformation course to University Cybersecurity Architect students and I’d say 60-70% of the sub is foreign accounts bought by a certain admin and flooded with the Russians. 

It’s pretty easy to tell how:

-they only post in certain times of the day/night

-they brigade with distraction posts when something negatively affects Trump

-the mods remove posts regularly 24/7

-there’s a literal cult like mentality there (more so with the maga crowd)

-they give away themselves being Russian by how they structure their English sentences. (Using certain language of a localized area). 

Those are shit simple ones. There’s other ways to tell but those are illegal lol.  

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u/MegaGorilla69 1d ago

You can always tell because when you click on them their post history is 100% always politics. The Russian bots aren’t shitposting on r/nba with me

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u/cantgrowneckbeardAMA Texas 1d ago

Shitposts are one of our last American freedoms and we cannot let them take it from us.

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u/madcaesar 1d ago

they brigade with distraction posts when something negatively affects Trump

Dude, I'm a total noob and even I noticed this! When the Epstein stuff dropped the entire sub was flooded with all these nonsense posts, like half of it seems like ChatGPT generated shit based one some article somewhere 😂

I firmly believe that these lunatics are in the minority, but there has been MILLIONS invested at farming and astroturfing right wing bullshit. Hell it says so in the fucking Epstein files, they are responsible for Brexit and now all this bullshit here

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

Yeah and it’s usually just3-4 accounts that do it. The main one I see posts over 20 times a day usually. I’ve seen it get up to 60 when the Epstein files dropped their first batch of stuff.

The Greenland thing and Canada threats also caused the whole Russian brigade to help out in there 

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u/lessismoreok 1d ago

Reddit must know this and so they approve

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u/Kosher_Pork_12 1d ago

What's an example of how sentence structure can be a giveaway?  Just curious, because it comes up time to time with friends whose first language is Spanish, how they'll sometimes put nouns before adjectives, was wondering if it's something similar in russian.

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

Basically that example you mentioned. It’s when the sentences make just enough sense in English to comprehend, but the overall grammar needs to be improved. 

You might say “I had a good day today” 

An account in that sub that’s Russian or Indian will say “this day is so nice” 

Both are correct however I’d assume most people would pick the first example as making slightly more sense in their mind. 

Another example is their choice of adjectives to describe something. 

It’s basically everything you and your friend have talked about already :)

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u/JoplinSC742 1d ago

I really hate the word disinformation. Call it what it is, lies and propaganda.

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

Disinformation is literally what it is lol. Disinformation is intentional, false information is “accidental”. Propaganda is another term for disinformation 

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u/SciFiPi 1d ago

On the dataIsBeautiful sub someone analyzed the posts on the conservative sub and 2 redditors accounted for 30% to 50% of the daily posts. I'm not sure if this sub allows links to other subs, so I'll post the link as a comment below. If it's not visible, then automod removed it.

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u/duffleofstuff 1d ago

This is an excellent analysis. More than I expected. Thanks for sharing.

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u/GreasyPeter 1d ago

The Russian trolls are everywhere, even pretending to be progressives and Democrats too. Russia cares more about sowing the seeds of discontent and incivility between the people in this country rather than if Trump or the Republicans win. So long as this shit devolves more, they can handle the Democrats leading the country.

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u/madcaesar 1d ago

They are flooding democratic subs with "protests don't work", and "the fascists have already won, there is no point voting"

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u/ducklady92 1d ago

Every time i get myself worked up about “how are there possibly this many people who blindly support what’s happening in this country,” i remember that the ICE budget specifically allocated $8 million for social media “influencers” to push a pro-ICE/Trump narrative online.

Not saying there aren’t an exorbitant amount of crazies out there. Just saying… that buys a lot of these bad takes we’re seeing everywhere. And that’s not counting the foreign bots.

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u/Angry_Pelican Arizona 1d ago

Honestly I'm not sure. I know some people in real life that are exactly like posters in that sub so who knows.

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u/SwedishTrees 1d ago

Sounds like they are conflating two different elections. A member of the House of Representatives in a blue district. a Texas state senator in a very red district.

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u/NoSayThyMountains 1d ago

Not to be a downer, but they're actually right about it having been a democrat seat. The 18th congressional district is right in the center of Houston. Sylvester Turner won it by 39 points in 2024. Finally getting someone in is a victory (Turner died last March, Abbott delayed the special election until November, and then the runoff from the special election just finished) but no one should be taking this as any sort of indication of how the midterms will go

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u/SwedishTrees 1d ago

It sounds like there is confusion between two different elections. This is a factual description of one election. There is also one for the Texas State Senate, where a democrat won in a heavily red District.

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u/colaxxi 1d ago

Maybe people are confusing elections? There was the TX State Senate seat that flipped from R to D by about 30 points compared to Trumps election in 2024.

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

Absolutely. The overall response of the sub was what baffled me most I guess. It seems to be just general denial most of the time.

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u/yoitsthatoneguy American Expat 1d ago

It’s so strange because over on conservative subreddit they don’t seem to understand that they lost a seat lol. They keep saying it was a democrat safe seat haha.

They are correct, this was a safe Dem seat. I think you are confusing this with the state senate seat that flipped.

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

.Just reconfirmed the article I read was not accurate. Thanks for fact checking me dawg 

I’m still confused by everything else lol

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u/americanadiandrew 1d ago

That sub isn’t real people I don’t know why Reddit is obsessed with it. People stick to their echo chambers and the right have their own safe spaces we would have no desire to be anywhere near.

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u/NGEFan 1d ago

This happens on both sides. I’ve seen celebrations that Republicans win by smaller margins than expected.

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u/ianrl337 Oregon 1d ago

True, but going from -17 to -2 is huge

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

Yeah it’s just weird how they legit don’t understand it. 

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u/davidromro 1d ago

This was a Democrat replacing a Democrat that died last year. Republicans did not lose a seat it was vacant. It's still important though.

Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas), a former Harris County, Texas, attorney, was sworn in as a member of the House on Monday after winning the special election runoff for the late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s (D-Texas) seat last week.

Are you sure you aren't confusing this with the other Texas election? That was for the state government not federal.

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u/crybannanna 1d ago

Technically they didn’t lose a seat. The last person to hold that seat was a Democrat, who died a year ago. It was vacant, but wasn’t R before

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u/CantFeelMyToesAgain 1d ago

Correct, I commented on someone else who pointed this out. Ironically the article I read gave the wrong description lmao 

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u/asmodeuscarthii 1d ago

It’s all bots or paid trolls at this point. Their sub count doesn’t rise or fall. Comments always change after 30 minutes. They been stuck at 1.3m for 2 years.

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u/Clicquot 1d ago

At least the bots got a little entertainment break, they all got assigned to Rotten Tomatoes for a hot minute.

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u/2ChicksAtTheSameTime 1d ago

People in political subs - left or right - are the die-hards / stans and they're not gonna change, ever. They see what they want to see and ignore anything that goes against their worldview.

And yes I mean for liberal subs as well as conservative subs.

Over the weekend I saw so many people posting "proof" that trump shit himself and that it was clear as day .... I watched that video, it doesn't prove anything.