Discussing the 9050 and the low end GPU market again

 So, Hardware Unboxed got their hands on a 9050 and reviewed it, skewering it and labeling it as "ewaste." And idk, I feel like in light of my own discussions on the market, people are missing the point. 

In a normal market, this wouldnt be an acceptable product. It's basically an RX 6600 tier performer (so basically, 7x GT 1030) for $280. For reference, the 9060 XT launched at $300 and was often found for $270. And yeah, this thing kinda had RX 6500 XT vibes, as that was basically a $200 product released during COVID. With that said my biggest fear is that just like the RX 6500 XT marked the end of the sub $200 market in a way, I hope that this doesnt mark the end of the $300 market.

Either way, we discussed what options sub $300 buyers (and even up to $500 or so) buyers have, things aren't great. Quite frankly, given the RX 7600 being $260, this is DOA. It's slightly weaker, and it costs more. However, it's mostly being pushed in third world markets, and I know many of those markets struggle with AMD card availability. Would I recommend it as a product if you live in these regions? Maybe. I dont know enough about pricing in those regions on forums, but I know any time I recommend AMD cards they always say they're more expensive than Nvidia. But all in all, I'm glad SOME budget options still exist. 

I would agree that by rights, this should be a <$200 card. I mean, the 6600 was $200ish FOUR YEARS AGO. And we clearly havent moved since then. We briefly moved price/performance wise in 2025 with the introduction of the 5060 and 9060 XT 8 GB available at $300 or less, but that was....very short lived, and now 2022 is looking good compared to what exists now. 

But yeah, in recent analyses, a huge thing I've lamented is how few options exist for the sub $300 market and well, this is one of them now, at least in some regions of the world. It's not awful. Not great, but again, we're talking 7 GT 1030s for the price of 2.8 GT 1030s. Given the average gamer games on a card that is around 8 GT 1030s these days, give or take, and has 8 GB RAM, give or take, eh......it'll hit that level of performance.

If the RX 7600 were ever to disappear from the market, and we end up dealing with the entire sub $300 market being ewaste, we'd miss this tier of card at that money. Kinda like how I kinda wish RX 6500 XTs and GTX 1650s still existed for people who wanna buy a card for around $150. Again, I know the standards are super low here, but if the goal is to get affordable GPUs into the hands of more gamers in a fundamentally broken market, well, it is what it is. It'll play anything PS5 tier fine, probably at comparable to slightly worse quality settings. It passes my sniff test of the "minimum acceptable GPU" in 2026, at least if you use the 8 GB version. The 4 GB version? Avoid like the plague. If 4 GB cripples a 6500 XT, its gonna cripple this. Not even sure why that even exists. But yeah, the review here was the 8 GB, so I dont understand the hate. 

I mean, I do, but the assumptions behind said hate assume a market that clearly doesnt exist right now and not all of that is just greed by the GPU manufacturers. RAMpocalypse is destroying any positive movement in price/performance. At this point I'm shifting to maintaining the current market, and while a $280 7x GT 1030 GPU isn't great, it aint terrible given options on the market include stuff like a 4x GT 1030 card for $200, and a 5x one for $260 (referring to the RTX 3050 here...). Again, if you dont have access to the RX 7600 or 5050, it's a not awful deal. Maybe a bit overpriced. I'd probably try to keep this under $250 tbqh, but eh....market's gonna market. I guess that would be my biggest complaint. Should be a little cheaper given I'd still recommend a 7600 or 5050 over this, but it's not AWFUL. If the price were lowered to say, $220 or so, I'd say it's a decent value in the current economy. 

Discussing the rift among "democratic socialists"

 So....the reaction to Francesca Hong losing has made me realize that yeah, there's a serious rift among democratic socialists. And it actually makes a lot of sense, given my feelings about the term over the years, and how I've increasingly become a lot more critical of them. 

We see this difference manifest between Bernie and AOC refusing to endorse Fran Hong and leftists blaming them for their loss. I mean, from my viewpoint, the calculus was clear. Hong was a bit crazy, out of touch, and politically toxic. She couldnt win, and Bernie and AOC distanced themselves from her. I did the same thing. I didnt wanna write an article outright blasting her when she was still technically my preferred candidate on policy, so I punted the issue too. I mean, I understood the argument that Crowley was more electable because the data literally said that.

But...a lot of the more left leaning faction of "leftists" clearly dont feel the same way. They look at Hong's statements about thanksgiving and they're like "I dont see the problem." A lot of it is because a lot of them are leftists who themselves are into the "woke 1" stuff. They dont understand that this stuff is cringe and alienating to most normies. 

Speaking of which, let's separate this into "DSA 1" and "DSA 2" in honor of the "woke" distinction.

DSA 1 is Bernie 2016. It's not really socialism, it's social democracy. It was popular, appealed to political normies, probably would've won 2016 in a landslide. It wasn't woke, it wasnt even leftist. it was often criticized for being too white, full of racist sexist white males (not really not). Early supporters of the movement are in this camp. Bernie being the architect of the modern movement, and early people who made it into congress in the late 2010s like AOC being part of that movement too. This is when I felt personally invested in Bernie's movement.

But then you have DSA2, the literal socialists. These guys are more radical. They're not socdems or liberals at all, they're straight up leftists. They're the ones who adopt any far left cringe I complain about, from wokeness and idpol, to support for literal socialism, the "campism" on foreign policy where america is bad, the free palestine psychos are these guys (as in, the real psycho types I criticize on here), sympathy for authoritarian communist regimes, etc. They're the ones who show up at AOC rallies to scream she's a sell out for crossing some weird red line in their own politics like voting for iron dome that one time. Ya know, the nuts. 

DSA1 was pretty based. They were the first guys to actually say "yeah this system is messed up" and proposed changes to it. They're the ones pushing for REAL social democracy in america and while i dont always agree with their exact prescriptions, ya know, I would happily support them.

DSA 2 is one of the reasons I no longer associate with that movement, trying to make my ideological support for human centered capitalism or social libertarianism clear. Because Im not a LITERAL socialist. I think that stuff is crazy, and these people are unhinged. 

And I feel like when we talk about "democratic socialists" and "DSA" we need to separate these two waves of the movement from one another. When I talk about supporting demsocs for office sometimes, it's normally group 1. Because they're actually out there trying to fight for social democracy. And to some degree they succeed, they win elections. They write legislation, they rarely pass it because there arent enough for them, but they're trying to grow the movement and work within the system. They're not a threat to the system. They just wanna tax the rich to fund safety nets and the like. 

But DSA2, the ones associated with the national DSA movement, they're the ones who are being red scared about. Because they're NUTS. Ive dealt with them, they're the reason i got so many screeds about socialism and free palestine kiddies and blah blah blah. They dont compromise, they want radical change that can sometimes be dangerous, and yeah, at some point, the rest of the political spectrum, including DSA1 has to put their foot down with them and put them in their place. I aint saying we need to red scare the whole left because of them, but we do gotta tell them no, and keep things centered around democracy and some form of market economy. 

And yeah. I feel like, when we look at "democratic socialists", we gotta separate #1 from #2. #1 is part of "the tent" of the broader political left, while #2 should be ostracized by the rest of the left IMO for being too extreme, for their ideas being dangerous, and for them being unpopular and cringe outside of their social circles.

As I always say, America wants change I think. We realize our economy isnt working, and we need a second new deal. I dont always agree with DSA1 on what the solutions should be, they want a job guarantee, I want a UBI, but we can agree that that framework of a new new deal or economic bill of rights is a good one. But we dont want RADICAL change. We dont want an end to capitalism and the start of literal socialism or communism. We dont like wokeism. We dont think the free palestine psychos are always reasonable people. We have limits. We want a better liberalism or progressivism at the end of the day, not literal socialism. We clearly can agree that the third way types arent doing enough. Including the pakman types who CALL themselves socdems but then dont deliver on socdem priorities. DSA1 are the REAL socdems in this country. You look at the goals and how to get there, DSA1 are the ones writing legislation to make it happen. And thats the thing. The reason democratic socialism took off was because they were the only people actually DOING ANYTHING. The third way types are literally just weaponized incompetence. They took off because people wanted change. But since then it feels like the movement is being coopted by a more radical element that wants literal socialism and communism, and who are increasingly turning on DSA1 types for failing to meet their purity tests. Which is...again, what we're seeing here.

Hong was DSA2. She was cringe. She wasnt electable. Bernie and AOC understood that. So they didnt endorse. But now DSA2 is mad about that and see nothing wrong with her. They think AOC is a sell out and while they cant hate bernie too hard, they probably would say something if he werent the goldwater of the whole movement. 

El Sayed, he's DSA1, and calls himself a capitalist. But because he's often associated with DSA he's accused of being a communist.

But then you got people like DAC who won in NYC, that's DSA2. Which is why people got so many issues with her. 

And yeah, I just wanted to point that out. My own stance is clear, DSA1 is part of the larger progressive tent. DSA2 are a bunch of crazies I want little to nothing to do with. Literal socialism, are you insane? No. Hell no. Wokeness is cringe. Campism and free palestine is cringe. Praising communist dictators is cringe. It's all cringe, it's all bad. No one wants this but these whackos. 

And yeah. I just wanted to explain my ever evolving stance on this. 

Election Update 8/14/26

 It's that time of month again. Well there are multiple times a month I do this and you should just expect it to continue to ramp up as we get closer to election update, but time to look at where the elections are going! Lots to discuss this week. 

Senate

As you can tell I'm on mobile again. It's currently 87 degrees outside and it feels like that inside outside of the few rooms with air conditioning so I'm coming to you from tablet again. 

Anyway, to discuss a few removed races:

South Carolina- no one seriously expects this to be competitive, right?

Montana- Well, neither Bankhead nor Bodnar will drop to give the other a shot at winning, and the deadline to do so has passed and it's like R+16, so I'm gonna declare that safe R. It's not a Dan Osborn situation, unfortunately. 

Speaking of Dan Osborn, you might notice I shifted Nebraska to D+1. This isn't due to new data. I realize that the data I have is so old, that I went out seeking new data because I didnt wanna just throw in placeholder data that is lean R or something, so I found the NY times site, which had three polls on it, averaging D+1. I feel like this is more representative of the race than D+5, that was always kinda sketchy. Heck, the polls added arent much better, they're all sponsored by Osborn or affiliates themselves, but still, the alternative is to not have data and to just add R+3 or something as a placeholder. Given its not currently disrupting my forecast, I'll leave it at D+1 since I prefer to let the data speak for itself than to offer my "expert commentary" that ends up being entirely wrong anyway. 

On other races, democrats are doing quite well, but sometimes not as well as I'd expect. Texas, Alaska, and Ohio are all tilting/leaning D. Maine is up 2.3 for Jackson, but this is a bit underwhelming to me, I feel like he should be winning by more. I get the impression he's not as charismatic as pre scandal Platner was. Iowa's tilting R, that's to be expected. So is Michigan. 

I wanna discuss Michigan in more detail since my favorite candidate of the cycle, Abdul El Sayed is there. He IS on the losing side of this, according to polling. I'm not gonna mince words. But....it's still relatively close, and to be fair, Haley Stevens was only like 2 points more electable in the first place. When El Sayed won the nomination, he was at 47%, a new Fox News poll that was R+4 hurt his average there, but Stevens only polled around 1.7 at the time giving her a 66% shot. So she was better, but not like, amazingly better. 

Either way, I find this frustrating. El Sayed is an excellent candidate and I feel like people are just believing racist and Islamophobic lies about him. I hate to say it, I hate accusing people of that, but it's true here. It's like:

EL Sayed: "I'm a capitalist!"

Republicans: "HE'S A COMMUNIST!"

El Sayed: "I love Jewish people"

Republicans: "HE'S AN ANTISEMITE!"

El Sayed: "I love America"

Republicans: "ABDULRAHMAN MOHAMED EL SAYED HATES AMERICA AND WANTS TO IMPOSE SHARIA LAW ON EVERYONE!"

I mean, it's not even subtle. They're just flat out fricking lying about the guy! And it's clear it's working because he's a brown guy from a middle eastern background. It's crazy. Like really, the republicans have nothing on this guy so they're just making crap up about him. And sadly, he's struggling to get into the positives polling wise as a result. 

Anyway, we'll see where this goes, but yeah. Still, even with him struggling, we got about a 56% chance of taking the senate, and are probably gonna get 52 seats, 51 if we ignore Nebraska. Republicans will likely get 48-49 seats with a 44% chance of controlling the chamber (including ties). 

House

Like always, I expect democrats to win the house in a landslide with give or take 230 seats or so. It should be noted that this is a fundamentals based model, since so little polling data exists, especially at this point in the cycle, but the few polling points I see seem to paint an even rosier picture. For example, I've seen data suggesting OH-07 should flip, because Max Miller is running there and he's been accused of domestic abuse to put it lightly. We'll see come election day, and I suspect I might run 2 separate house models just to see what works better, but yeah, for now, this is what my model spits out at me. 

Governors

I have yet to prune the governors' data like I did with the senate. Namely because there are still races expected to be competitive that have zero data like Kansas. On the flip side, Maine has data and seems just slightly out of the 12 point range, but still close enough to it that I feel I should include him. 

I'd say the biggest story of the week is David Crowley winning the nomination for Wisconsin governor, and now I can confidently shift the race from lean R (Hong data) to lean D (Crowley data). Really, I know I'm a progressive, I know I tend to like DSA candidates, and I know a lot of leftists are acting like Bernie and AOC failed her by not endorsing, but if you notice, I didn't endorse Hong either. Because she couldn't win. For the most part I had her at a 23% shot at winning, and while a last minute poll bumped it up to like R+1.7 with a 34% shot at winning or so, uh...yeah....Crowley polled better. Barnes when he was in polled much better. I wish Barnes was the nominee as he was more progressive (but not crazy about it) and polled even better, but given my focus this cycle is on winning, and given a governorship in a state that isnt mine isn't likely to advance the progressive agenda I want in a meaningful way, well...I can live with Crowley. I mean, I just really wanna beat the republicans this time, ya know? Kinda important for the future of democracy.

Conclusion

With that said what can we conclude? That a lot has changed, but the overall picture hasn't. Democrats are still expected to take the house. The senate is in play when in a normal election year it shouldn't be, and in the senate a lot of races are more or less tossups, meaning that polling error and the size of the predicted blue wave is gonna matter a lot more than candidate quality for the most party. Democrats could win the senate Democrats could win the senate in a 54-46 sweep, while a republican overperformance could knock it down to 49-51 or even less for democrats. It really depends where the pieces end up lying.

But yeah, that's where stuff is right now. I'll do the next one of these toward the end of the month unless there's a massive shakeup I feel should be reported. 

Why I won't make a CPU buying guide (although this post kinda is one)

 So, I've spent a lot of time on discussing GPUs, what's good to buy, etc. I considered doing the same for CPUs, but won't. There's a big reason for this. When you buy a CPU, you aren't buying one in a vacuum. You need a motherboard to put it in, and RAM to go with it. While CPUs used to be relatively straight forward, varying and volatile platform costs make it hard to plan a build. On the low end, we can put together a Ryzen 5 5500 with 16 GB DDR4 RAM build for $250, on the other extreme, you got a 9800X3D with 32 GB DDR5 for almost $1000. 

Generally speaking, if you live near microcenter, consider their combos. They're generally the best bang for the buck, although significantly less good than they were than I bought (not their fault, it's RAMpocalypse). If anything, their 6 core X3D bundles probably are the best bang for your buck you can get for gaming. On the intel side, the Core Ultra 5 250k+ is solid, but less good for gaming, although you get more CPU power.

That's another thing. CPU power scaling is weird, and the spectrum is a lot flatter than GPUs. As I indicated the difference between a $100 GPU and a top of the line one is a scale of around 37x performance, with an average gamer having a CPU around 8x as powerful as the weakest one.

The difference between a ryzen 5 5500 and a 9800X3D is only going to be on a scale of around 3x performance, going from the worst to the best (use the ryzen 5 3600 to estimate the 5500's performance). And most CPUs fall in the middle between them, with anything less than the 5600x being an outdated architecture, and anything more than the 7800X3D or 14900k being an outlier the other direction. Most games seem to differ only around 60% between say, the 5600x and the 7800X3D, with most modern mid range CPUs performing in between. Cheaper DDR4 compatible CPUs will perform a bit lower, whereas more expensive chips with DDR5 perform a bit higher, but yeah, most CPUs perform pretty close to each other.

This is largely because CPU tech has stagnated, with Ryzen 5000, 7000, 9000 and intel core 12-14th gen and modern core ultra processors all performing similarly to each other. Only AM5 X3Ds and really low end/dated processors stand out from the pack either way. Most just kinda perform similarly. Core counts don't matter as much currently. While higher core count processors MIGHT come in use in the future, odds are at this rate that current architectures will become dated before you see a difference. As it stands, factors like latency, cache, clock speed, and IPC matter a lot more than raw power. X3D proceessors are rather unimpressive on traditional computing tasks, but are phenomenal for gaming. Intel processors loaded up to the gills with cores might be impressive workstation systems but are kinda average at gaming. As such, it's hard to offer straightforward recommendations. 

 If I were to try, at the low end, I'd generally recommend AM4. You can get an Ryzen 5 5500, a motherboard, and 16 GB DDR4 for around $250-300. 

If you stick with the platform, a better CPU generally gets more expensive, with a 5600x, 5700x, or 5800x costing another $100-150, bringing the total up to around $400ish give or take. if you go up to 32 GB DDR4, you can spend $500, and if you get a 5800X3D, you can be spending up to around $600-700. 

Some would say a 5800X3D build in unattractive because you could just buy AM5 at that point. You can spend $200 less on a processor, but spend maybe $200 more on expensive DDR5 RAM instead, and have a viable long term upgrade path. And if you go all out, again, it's like $1k for a 9800X3D style build without sales. 

Where does intel fit into this? Well, sadly, it kinda doesn't. While LGA1700 used to be an attractive option, the CPUs have gotten expensive, it's only worth investing in with DDR4, at which point you can probably save money and go with an AM4 build instead, as they perform about the same. In order to get the most out of a higher end intel processor, you need a Z series board, which is expensive, and even then with DDR4 memory, you're gonna be held back by the RAM itself. I wouldnt recommend going LGA1700 on DDR5 at all at this point. Not cost effective.

For DDR5 intel, you want to go for a core ultra 250k+ or 270k+. But then you're spending $400 on RAM, and while you get a stronger processor in real terms than AMD's, it won't matter in gaming, which are limited to 6-8 core / 12-16 thread processors anyway.  Honestly, I'd only go this route if you really care about productivity more than gaming performance, or you otherwise have a legit bias against AMD (for example, I went intel 3 years ago because AM5 was a notoriously buggy and unstable platform at the time). 

With that said, if you want a budget experience, go for a cheap AM4 processsor with cheap DDR4 RAM. if you want a premium experience, go for an AM5 X3D processor with DDR5, and if you want a middle ground option, you can go either way. Given a choice between a 5800X3D or Ryzen 7600x/9600x/7700x/9700x build, I'd probably go for the latter at a similar price point, but this is where the individual parts you want matters more than the CPU itself. Down below I actually find the 5800X3D to be more affordable. 

And yeah, that's basically it. 

And again, the budget experience is gonna be...well...a budget experience, a premium experience will be 3x as good while costing 4x as much, and a midrange experience will be somewhere in between, while costing something in between the other two.  

If I were to provide a few sample builds, I'd provide the following:

Ryzen 5 5500- $253

Ryzen 5 5600x- $359

Intel Core i5 14400f (equivalent to 5700x/5800x)- $417 

Ryzen 7 5800x- $436

Ryzen 7 5800x 32 GB- $516

Ryzen 7 5800X3D 32 GB- $634

Ryzen 5 7600x- $687

Intel Core Ultra 5 250kf+ (no OC/XMP ability)- $748 

Ryzen 7 7700x- $755

 Ryzen 7 7800X3D- $907

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- $1058

Of course, do your own research, I just threw these together, you might find a better deal, or you might find parts go better with other motherboards, etc. I know AM5 X3D CPUs in particular have problems with certain motherboards (Asrock and Asus seem most affected) so keep that in mind too. 

I did throw a couple intel CPUs in where they made sense. The problem is, they often don't. Higher end ones require expensive Z series boards to get the most out of them. While they perform similarly to the 7000 series CPUs on DDR5, on DDR4, they're more comparable to the 5000 series. The 14400f makes sense here, but otherwise they largely don't.  

And yeah. It's a rough market, but this is the best I can do. And again, to do the whole how many X the lowest end one is:

 Ryzen 5 5600x- ~1.3x  R5 5500

 Ryzen 5 5800x- ~1.3x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 5800X3D- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 7600x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7700x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7800X3D- ~2x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- ~2.2x R5 5500

For that I tried to use techspot/hwunboxed's data to get averages. 

But yeah, as I said, it's a lot flatter than the GPUs are. While I would recommend going at least midrange (5600x-7700x tier performance) if you can afford it, there's no shame in getting the 5500 and it's a great budget CPU for the money. Beats the crap out of the GT 1030 on the GPU side of things that's for sure (seriously, that's like having core 2 quad tier performance still on the market in comparison, it's a joke).  

Anyway i guess this did turn into a CPU buying guide, but it's a brief one and like always, do your own research before buying components, I dont want any responsibility if what i recommend ends up kinda sucking, I'm just throwing builds together on PC part picker with minimal research.  

If you can't vote for Abdul El Sayed, please leave the democratic party part 3

 So....this has become an ongoing series. Part 1 had me blasting centrists who think he's too extreme, part 2 had me blasting communists who think he's too moderate, and now I'm blasting zionists who think he's "anti semitic." 

Yeah...a lot of the time I see people who say they can't vote for El Sayed these days, it always seems to come from zionist types who scream he's "anti semitic." I've also noticed post primary everyone seemed to come around to supporting him, except for some Jewish organizations. Apparently his israel position is enough to piss them off. Well, here's how I see it.

America is a secular democracy. We have freedom of religion, along with constitutional prohibitions on establishing religion in government. What qualifies as 'establishing religion' has been debated over the years, but I tend to go with the interpretation that we should have a separation of church and state, with criteria resembling the Lemon test from lemon v kurtzman. This means laws should have a secular purpose, neither advance nor prohibit religion, and try to keep religion and politics as unentangled as possible. 

With that said, Jews have every right to practice their religion, given they don't violate secular laws or harm other people. However, when they do harm other people, or entangle church and state, then that's a problem, and that seems to be what's expected from our government here. It seems like people want us to cater to their religion and its doctrines, to be super pro Israel and show sympathy to their religion, and someone who simply says "no" and that they're not gonna fund a genocide in the middle east is considered "hateful" of their religion.

We're not. If you're an American Jew, I wish you all of the happiness in the world. Go to synagogue, practice shabbat, do your holidays, I don't care. Whatever makes you happy and doesn't harm other people. But that doesn't mean that the government has to have  explicit sympathy toward your religion, to the point that we just unquestioningly fund a genocidal apartheid state that is doing harm to others in the middle east on a moral basis that seems straight out of the book of Joshua. Muslims have rights too, and deserve their own happiness too. And while yes, Israel has a right to defend itself...within reason....their current policies do not align with that qualifier. Which is why many on the left have taken harsh stances against Israel. 

People need to learn that not enabling a religion's worst impulse to harm others does not equal religious persecution. And honestly, if you can't get behind that, go join the republican party. They're full of Christian nationalists who also have persecution complexes and a weird reverence toward the state of Israel on the basis of their religion that I find creepy as hell. We are the party that wants religious pluralism for all. Not religious domination against all other religions. We do this to protect minority rights, including the rights of Jews. Because everyone deserves to practice their religion without being harmed or persecuted by others.

And btw, that includes Muslims too. I know a lot of the hate toward El Sayed is because he's muslim. It's weird. We seem to expect everyone to default to this judeo-Christian worldview while deeming muslims as "the other.' Meanwhile, Muslims are just people too, and the same rules apply to them. Since El Sayed is following those rules, i have no quarrel with him. I have a quarrel with the people who explicitly wanna inject religion into governmental policy, whether it be domestic policy or foreign policy.  

Really, how can you not vote for this man? This is why I have no sympathy here. If you cant vote for him, you should probably join the party of religious extremism and authoritarianism. This is my candidate. These are my values. I apologize for nothing. Listen to what a candidate SAYS, not what other people acting in bad faith SAY about a candidate. It would solve so many problems. 

Having a brutally honest discussion on "Woke 1"

 Ok, so...I notice some leftists on my youtube feed are attempting to defend "Woke 1" and blasting Bernie and AOC for distancing themselves from Francesca Hong. And...I find it cringe. I admit, I sub to different people for a variety of perspecives. But yeah, these takes, I hate disagree with. 

Look, NO ONE LIKED THE WOKE 1 CRAP. It was a weird hugbox of leftists and virtue signallers that came off as cringe to anyone with any normie instincts. Some people dislike the attempts to laugh it off by saying it makes people look insincere and how it "throws people under the bus", but I'm going to be honest, I believe that this stuff WAS insincere among a lot of people. Maybe not DSA types, but liberals? hell yeah. A lot of it was weaponized cynically to attack economic progressives and distract them from focusing on economic issues. Like, my big critique as a "non woke" leftie has always been that it sucks the air out of the room and stops us from having political discussions about anything else. It also came off as extremely pharasaic. Ya know, like the pharisees? And the bible? And the whole virtue signalling moral gestures that are superficial and fake. A lot of people did that stuff for the social approval. the SJW cult was to liberals and leftists what church is for conservatives, an overt display of external moral superiority followed by a lot of internal social games and hierarchies among the participants. And yeah, the second that stuff became radioactive, a lot of people started distancing themselves from it. 

Of course, this alienated the true believers and the like. YOURE GONNA THROW US UNDER THE BUS! Oh boo hoo. Like really, I'm tired of this. It's the same guilt trip I've heard since 2015 and I've been immune to it. I swear that's another thing. A lot of people in these communities who benefit from this stuff end up being mentally unstable narcissists who use their underprivileged status to get a lot of free internet affection, and if you DARE break their little hugbox, they'll attempt to mod you, punish you, etc. I had this happen last year when the first signs of it ending were happening and I basically told someone that they need to stop making politics all about them. Again, you see where I'm coming from? I HATE this stuff, I've ALWAYS hated this stuff. It's always been fake, it's always been a distraction, it's always been enforced by a lot of weird social hugboxing and heavy internet moderation. And again, normally, I wouldn't mind sharing a coalition with people with other interests, but when the hug box literally sucks the energy out of the room to focus on anything else, it gets old. 

And you know what? I'm not alone. Most normies hate this stuff. A vast majority of people hate it. Not just the right, but also the center and even more blunt and honest members of the social "center left" like me. It appeals to like 1/6 of the population, it turns off about 2/3 of them (1/6 being neutral arguably). And here's the thing. We need to win elections. So....if you went off and went on some online screed about how thanksgiving sucks because colonialism, and the people look at you and think you're a whacko, well....yeah. I get it, inside those hugboxes there's heavy social enforcement where a lot of people were goaded into saying some straight up insane crap at the time, but that's always why I've tried to be that dude in the asch experiment who is like "no, you guys are choosing the wrong line, are you blind?" Social hugboxing will make people blind, socially, where they dont understand how crazy they come off to people outside of their little clique. 

And for people who are true believers who say that they shouldnt have to give that stuff up to run for office...well...DON'T. You can be an influencer trying to change the moral landscape, I am myself. But let's be blunt, do you think me, the autistic unemployed anti work guy would make for a good political candidate? I'd be Doreen Forded and I know it. And I dont wanna give up my perspective ever, so I dont run for office. I just say what I wanna say and try to inspire the world to change. And maybe, someone like Andrew Yang will run for office on views similar to mine. And you know what? Despite having similar views on UBI and even work to SOME degree (more so than most others in society at least), yang can at least sell those ideas to moderates. He's far more electable than say, I am in that regard. Even if I do think he has a lot of shortcomings. But that's the thing, I'm trying to push things where I wanna see them. Im not looking to run for office myself as I know I'd be unpopular to some degree, as Id have lots of baggage in the form of this blog, reddit comments, etc. Rather, I'm trying to win the battle for ideas.

When you run for office, you gotta try to be electable. When you have unpopular opinions, you gotta "hide your power level" as some say on the left, or otherwise do the equivalent of dog whistle politics. You know how the right wing did that? They couldnt just show how racist they were so they hid behind terms like forced bussing, or welfare queens, blah blah blah, Reaganism actually formed as a form of this politics, where small government was actually originally a dog whistle to screwing black people but they had plausible deniability.

Now we're getting to the point we need that on the LEFT. If you wanna do the "anti racist" stuff, you need to distance yourself from woke 1 rhetoric, which was what AOC was trying to do with the "woke 1 was crazy" comment. It's smart politics, and if anything she was trying to cover for Hong with that. She read the room and adjusted her rhetoric to meet the moment. As much as those of us on the left would love to move the overton window to be more blunt (I mean, I'm like this on economics), sometimes you gotta be a little more opaque. Graham Platner understood this trying to distance himself from his reddit history. "Oh I was in a dark place, I dont think like that any more." Maybe he does, maybe he doesnt. People grow and change, but sometimes it is just hiding one's power level. Idk. But yeah, you gotta play that game sometimes. And if you cant do it, well, dont run for office. I sure as fudge aint running. We gotta understand, elections are popularity contests. Leaning into your ideology can help you...if your ideology is popular. But if it's not, well...youre gonna lose. And Hong just had that SJW cringe all over her where she couldnt win elections, and where even Bernie and AOC rightly read the room and refused to endorse. Sorry, not sorry. 

Discussing last night's primaries

 So...last night had some rather contentious primaries, one of which went to 2:30 AM in terms of counting and much like michigan's last week, came down to the wire when it was supposed to be close. Unlike last week though, the moderate won, and the progressive lost. Now, a lot of centrists are rubbing it in our faces, but quite frankly, I'm okay with this one. If we were gonna lose one, I would hope it would be this one. This one wasn't the one I'd wanna win. Now, I didn't formally endorse anyone on this one, and I didn't for a reason. Because I understood that the progressive running was a terrible candidate, and if she won, she'd probably blow the general. We're talking about Francesca Hong and David Crowley here. 

I'm gonna be honest. While I like Hong and her policies on a personal level, she....couldn't win the general. The thing is, she ended up being one of those twitter brained SJWs who couldnt keep her mouth shut (like I'm one to talk, right?) and has a history of posting awkward screeds about proximity of whiteness and how she hated holidays like thanksgiving because native american genocide. And....that stuff comes off as unpalatable with a significant portion of the electorate. As AOC said, "Woke 1 was crazy', and she's who she was referring to. Btw, you notice Bernie and AOC didn't endorse this lady? That's why. The writing was on the wall. She was politically toxic and would have likely cost the democrats a governorship during a blue wave year. RCP had her down by 3 (the 1.7 accounts for a new poll i didn't see) and my election prediction model had her at a 23% chance of winning. Admittedly, that last D+1 poll would've improved her to 34%, but still, not looking great in a year where democrats are supposed to be dominating. Mandela Barnes, when he was in the race, was AHEAD by 3, and that would have given him a 77% chance in my model. Kind of Hong but in reverse. Id rather be on the 77% side of things than the 23%.

Still, I didn't endorse David Crowley either. While Barnes was a decent candidate in the "McMorrow progressive" lane, David Crowley is more a "Haley Stevens" centrist. And he kinda has his own cringe moments, like saying "establishment is a slur". Still, I don't like Crowley as a candidate. I dont like establishment moderates. And I dont care if hes offended by the term. Still, while I have zero polling data on Crowley, I'm guessing he would perform more similarly to barnes so in my election model, I'm going to just use Barnes' data as a placeholder until I actually get some decent data on him. Which means I'll tentatively shift the race to lean D from lean R. 

Speaking of polling, wasn't Hong supposed to win in a literal landslide? How did this end up getting so close in what should've been like a Hong+18 race? Well, look at the data carefully. Hong performed about exactly where she was supposed to, it was everything else that was off. See, Mandela Barnes was the original candidate running against Hong, but he kinda crapped the bed and couldnt get the base behind him. So last minute, Barnes dropped out, and Crowley jumped in instead. And the polling never really picked up for Crowley. The other 60% of the base was deeply divided between Crowley, Barnes, and other candidates. There were LOTS of undecideds, and everyone just ended up coalescing around Crowley. Hong got around the 39% or so she was supposed to, Crowley just ended up ALSO getting around 39% and won by like 3000 votes. This is a problem with these primary polls with 3+ candidates, you can see a lot of movement between candidates between the polls and election day as the race shifts and polling just didn't account for that. The result was a normally unthinkable result suddenly becoming possible. This is why both Michigan and Wisconsin were so far off, we had 3 person races turn into 2 person races and then the polling didn't pick up how people actually were gonna vote leading to margins that were MASSIVELY off. 

And again....I might not like Crowley, but uh...I also was reluctant to support Hong, for all the obvious reasons. Quite frankly I'm low key relieved Hong lost. Here's the thing. We shouldnt mourn this loss. If she won, she'd go onto the general, lose, and we'd never hear the end of it and how progressives arent electable. As smug as centrists are today, they'd be 10x worse if she choked on the general with a more moderate candidate having a 6 point electability gap here. SO yeah, let them have this one. We got a lot of wins this cycle, we dont need this one and this one would have been bad for our movement long term. 

At least Flannigan won in Minnesota. I didnt pay much attention to that race, but apparently she was the more progressive candidate and people are happy about that. 

Seriously though, we REALLY didn't need Hong winning here. Take the L, support crowley in the general, and we support our progressives in other races where we CAN win.