So let's discuss 2028...

 So....let's have a more serious discussion about 2028, and what awaits us in this upcoming potential dumpster fire of an election cycle. 

Republicans

Up to election day 2026, the 2028 republican primary has mostly been a two way race between JD Vance and Marco Rubio. I'm not sure if this pattern is gonna stick given how badly the republicans just got smashed. people are saying Vance's career is functionally over, and while Rubio is rumored to resign as secretary of state soon and very quickly distance himself from the Trump administration, the point is, if this is the field, people are toast.

Lurking conservative circles, it comes off like a lot of these guys are looking to shift to DeSantis. I mean, I can see why. He's MAGA enough to attract the base, but also distant enough from the current administration to not be as much of a liability. Still, given how extremely he's governed Florida, I don't think that he's really well positioned to be the nominee either. I think the public is turning on MAGA not JUST for economic reasons, but also all the fascism, and well, he'd kinda continue it. Of course, that IS what the BASE wants. As I've said previously, the base is extreme, even if the public turns on it. And a lot of MAGAts are basically going in the direction of "well MAGA lost because we weren't extreme ENOUGH!" So this might be a F around and find out move for them. 

Beyond that, you got other candidates. RFK Jr, who has been a disaster. Wouldnt be surprised if even his base is turning on them. I heard that measles coming back kinda pissed off some in rural southern communities who are dealing with it. Nikki Haley is a good moderate candidate. Like Marco Rubio without the baggage. But she's Indian, and as we saw with Ramaswamy, some racists would rather vote for a democrat than vote for an Indian for some reason. Ted Cruz, Tucker Carlson, and a few others are on there too but have very little support. Kinda dismal. 

If I were a republican, of those options, I'd want Haley, just saying. I think the GOP needs to moderate and come back to sanity, and Haley is a very accomplished moderate who would make a decent commander in chief. I'd never vote for her as a democrat, but meh, if I were conservative still, and I really thought about it like I did back then, yeah, I'd go Haley. Or maybe Chris Christie or Mike Pence if they ran. Just get away from MAGA and go back in the moderate direction.

Of course, the propensity of MAGA to keep electing batcrap insane extremist psychopaths is also part of why I left, so...yeah. let's face it, that republican party of yesteryear is dead, and we're more likely to see the groypers take over than to see them moderate. 

Democrats

I'm gonna be honest. I am NOT happy with my choices of democrats. Long story short, the moderates are too moderate, and AOC just...isn't it for me. There are around five viable candidates. Kamala Harris is polling the best in the primary aggregates, although she's kinda the default option. After her 2024 campaign, I've soured on her. I could've kinda got behind her if she still had the same progressive flair that she did in 2020, but bleh. Gavin Newsom has some anti trump flair, but other than that he's kinda a centrist. Buttigieg is also quite centrist, kinda like a Joe Biden who never tried to compromise with the left. John ossoff is basically a wannabe Obama. And AOC...well...let's explain AOC a bit since I just got some grief from a leftist tonight for not being gung ho on her.

AOC is a leftist, but I'm not really. Sure, Im to the left of the rest of the democratic party, but I'm more a Yang style human centered capitalism, and she's more a conventional leftist. I want UBI, a public option, and build back better style climate policy, and she is more into the green new deal and medicare for all (single payer). I mean, is it better than the centrists who wanna do nothing? Sure, but I kinda occupy that wing of the party to the right of DSA, but not quite centrist. ya know, kinda like Mallory McMorrow, or James Talarico in a way. my biggest "leftist" style instinct is UBI these days, otherwise, I've moderated to make more fiscal room for it. Still, would I take a "democratic centrist" over a centrist? Absolutely. I am just kinda holding my breath hoping a better candidate comes out of the woodwork. I would actually like to see Yang run as a democrat again. Although he does have flaws too. 

Beyond that, let's be real about AOC....she's not gonna be elected. Look at the polling data above. She's the only leftist candidate at 12.5% of the electorate, and the rest of the field is going to coalesce behind some centrist. And for anyone thinking AOC can improve her numbers, eh....I've seen this before. It's 2020 all over again. She can maybe pull off a win in a divided field, but the centrists will consolidate behind one of those four candidates again, or maybe even whoever else breaks through, and then we lose.

Even if she made it to the general, and there IS polling data on this...can we talk about her numbers? She's literally the only candidate with consistent losses to the both Vance and Rubio across ALL polls so far. Yeah, you also have one Harris poll that's R+5 vs Rubio, but at least another poll suggests she can win. AOC is uniquely bad polling wise and the country is NOT in the mood for a democratic socialist right now. Sadly, the moderates are winning the ideological war right now, and if we ran AOC, it would do more harm than good. Hell, none of the candidates have the bonkers numbers I suggested yesterday with my simulation model. The best one is Buttigieg being around D+5, the others are around D+2-3 with AOC being like R+4. 

Let's look at what this looks like electorally.

 YIKES. So worse than harris 2024? yeah, Worse than harris 2024. if she somehow made it out of the battle royale that is the primary, with the rest of the party probably teaming up against her like they did with bernie in 2020, she'd go on to lose to both Vance and Rubio. Given the wins we just got last week, this is embarrassing, and the centrists will insist that they were right and that progressives cant win. This isnt Bernie 2016 where he outpolled Clinton by a landslide, or even 2020 where Bernie polled like 1-2 points below Biden but was still arguably electable. She's just uniquely bad polling wise right now. Even Greasy Gavin has better numbers than her at this point. Just yikes.

Meanwhile, most democrats have popular vote margins around D+2-D+5. Let's say a D+3.5 average margin among the centrist candidates, with Harris being the only one who actually struggles at all. 

 Here we win 6 of the 7 swing states with AZ being the only R victory. We have a comfortable 80% chance of victory, and while it is very possible we can underperform, it's also possible that Vance or Rubio won't have the charisma that Trump does. This is not some major 2026 style win, and for all we know, maybe the current polling data is vastly underestimating democrats. I mean, how can the democrats do so good they just cracked Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and Mississippi, but they perform so narrowly here? Maybe the electorate does think differently about presidential races. In 2026, republicans had typical level turnout, but democrats had presidential level turnout. In 2028, we'll have presidential level turnout. So if republicans come out in greater numbers, our margins go down, and we dont get the fancy blowout map we just had last week. And while I am of the opinion elections are won by enthusiasm and you need a progressive to turn out the base, if AOC is just alienating that same electorate where the republicans flat out win numerically, well, that's counterproductive. Think about it. We're in an era of conservative fascism. We gotta focus on winning above anything else. I've been thinking about this for a while, but it's not 2016 any more. The map is different, the zeitgeist is different, and the electorate is just in a different place mentally. We gotta adapt too. Doesnt mean we should give up our ideals (even if I did go in a different direction from the demsocs), but it does mean we gotta be adaptable. Win where we can, but play strategically where we have to. I think a fusionist strategy a la Mallory McMorrow or James Talarico is better than an outright AOC style socialist for a presidential run. We need someone who can get stuff done, but isnt so extreme they alienate the normies. Even if they're not everything I want, I'll vote for them, just to get the most that I can at this current stage of time. That's why Im currently not gonna endorse anyone, go be gung ho on anyone. it's still early. I wanna see who runs, what they run on, what "wing" of the party they represent, and go from there. I certainly dont want the most centrist or corporatist candidate. But neither do I want some leftist with ideas that contradict my own and who can't win. 

At the same time, I'll say this, I'm open to changing my mind. The polling data is still early and post 2024, we MIGHT see a more progressive map. If I had to predict the 2028 election, I'm guessing we're ultimately gonna get a 319-219 map kinda like this:

 I dont think we're flip those R+13 states that mostly went D this past election cycle. But can we win the big 7? Absolutely. And that is my primary goal electorally. As much as I'd like to deal the GOP a generational blow again and again, I dont think its realistic that we replicate last week's wins if the current polling is closer to a more neutral map. Last week was bonkers, but Im not sure we can carry that kind of energy into every cycle, especially if MAGA comes out to vote more strongly in 2028. 

A note on "centrism" in the democratic party

Speaking of 2026 though, I do wanna address this. I know I was watching Kyle Kulinski and he was talking about how the centrists are trying to "rat####" the progressive wing of the party. It is true, they're trying to manufacture consent for centrism, but COME ON, look at the map. We won seats in mostly deep south states. A lot of those new guys ARE going to be more conservative than we like. You ain't gonna run a socialist in say, Kansas and win. I mean, come on. 

WITH THAT SAID, I don't think we should go centrist. As I see it, the American people have legit economic concerns, and if the centrist wing decides to sit on their hands and do nothing, they'll be voted out. Still, that doesnt mean they want leftism. Not everyone who won was Abdul El Sayed. I don't think they're all Adam Hamilton or Scott Colom either, I mean, James Talarico is pretty progressive and populist for Texas. He just codes conservatively because he talks about Jesus nonstop. Annie Andrews seems to be outing herself as like a Warrencrat. She probably won't govern from the center that much. El Sayed, Flannagan, and Jackson are all northern progressives with much more progressive platforms too. So no, we didn't win just centrists. We won people ALL OVER the spectrum. I dont think the hard left is gonna have the numbers to do everything they want. hell, until 2028, I think we're gonna have a very unproductive congress constantly stonewalled by Trump and possibly senate republicans if we keep the filibuster around. But you know what? Again, the answer is compromise between the centrists and progressives. Instead of medicare for all, we go for a public option. Instead of a green new deal, we go for build back better again. Instead of UBI, maybe we'll get some tax credits or something. 

I know, i know, even expecting this might be setting myself up for disappontment, but I'll say, if the democrats DONT do at least SOMETHING, they're gonna be out on their ###es in a few years. if the democrats wanna seal the deal and make this a generational realignment, they gotta act. They cant just do the centrism game here like they did with Clinton, Biden, and Harris. The voters wont stand for it. Again, maybe a socialist cant win, but that doesnt mean we should do nothing either. Im trying to suggest a middle ground here. And in 2028, I'm STILL going to be looking for candidates willing to meet the moment, who move things the furthest in my direction they can, and who are willing to fight for change. AOC looks like she's gonna lose by 3-5 if she runs...but James Talarico just won Texas by TWELVE. if you're saying we can't do ANYTHING because "centrism wins", then STFU, because Talarico isnt exactly a centrist, he's kind of one of those progressive populist fusionists Im talking about. 

Conclusion

With that said, 2028 is gonna be an ugly king of the hill match on both sides. The top candidates of JD Vance and Marco Rubio on the republican side might implode, and who knows what happens on the democrats. I admit, Im not hot on any specific democrat, but that also makes me uncommitted to any of them. I'm open minded and I will go for the candidate I ultimately decide is best. On AOC, yeah she's the closest policy wise to what I want, but she aint really what I want, and the way it looks so far, she's flat out not electable. Let's be realistic. We're gonna get someone to AOC's right. The real question is how far left can we drag that candidate kicking and screaming while still ensuring they remain electable. And that's what my goal is for 2028. I aint giving up on my ambitions, but I am scaling them down and trying to figure out what we can get away with and what we can't. Again, it's not 2016 any more, and we gotta adapt to the modern era, so let's adapt, or else we'll be left behind. I'll still stand by my ideals, but as far as candidates I'll endorse and vote for, well, let's see where 2028 goes. Im not going to commit to anything at this time. 

My way too early look at the 2028 presidential map

So...I started putting together my model for 2028, it's still early, and one thing I really wondered was "hmm, so what is this map going to look like, what are the states that are going to be in play?" Based on 2024 and how people voted, here's my attempt to create it.

First, assumptions. This is based on actual 2024 presidential election data from wikipedia. You can see how this lines up in my model here: 

 

I'm going to apply a shift to the data based on shifts to the generic congressional vote. In 2024, the baseline generic congressional vote was R+2.7. This will give us an objective measuring stick that we can apply, say, the midterms to. We don't know exactly where the 2028 map will end up yet, but I would assume, relative to 2024, it will likely be to its left. With that said, I constructed this chart specifically to allow for massive electoral shifts to the left. The original version of this, which I created after 2024, stopped at texas, and the shifts we saw this year were so big I couldnt even account for the shift. Like it literally broke the model and its assumptions. That said, I had to redesign the map for this year to allow for much larger shifts to the left. This is why I cut out anything to the left of Maine, while adding a bunch of R+20 states. Because uh, if this midterm was any indication, some of those MIGHT be in play. With that said, let's begin.

So, first, let's start with a relatively neutral map, say, a GCV D+0.

Here, we get a pretty fair map, and one that would have given Harris a mild win in 2024. 286-252. If the republicans can claw back the national environment back to neutrality, they might have a chance. I mean, here, the race is only tilt D, functionally a tossup, with the democrats having a 59% chance of winning. This might be a best case scenario for the republicans this time around, given the depths of hell they have sank to.

With that said, let's say we step things up a notch. Here's a D+4 generic vote environment: 

 

 

This would've been a pretty crushing defeat for the democrats this year if it happened in the senate, the republicans would have overperformed the model by about 5, and the republicans would have kept the senate. This is why, going into 2026, I really thought the senate was a long shot for democrats. While this map would have allowed Harris to capture the 7 swing states pretty comfortably, and put the electoral college well out of reach for Donald Trump, I remember eyeing those R+10-14 states in 2025 and was like, yeah no, no way we're winning the senate, look at how insanely far the democrats would have to pull the national environment. And we see that here. Like, 319 is the ceiling for democrats unless you get some really crazy polling shifts happening.

With that said, let's step up things another notch. Here's the map if the GCV of 8.8% that was predicted this year by RCP actually happened:

For the senate, this STILL looks to the right of the map that was PREDICTED there. I mean, we're seeing Ohio and Maine 2 become tossups, with Iowa, Texas, Alaska, and Florida all become lean R, but in the real world, we actually all these states, minus Florida, go blue. So yeah. This could be what the 2028 map looks like, and if we're around D+9 or so, this is where I would expect the presidential race to be at. But wait, it gets worse (or better, depending on what side you're on).

Here's what a D+12.7 environment looks like, ie, how people ACTUALLY voted in 2026.

Here, the republicans are just...toast. They're losing Ohio by lean/likely D margins depending how you define them (I tend to go by 1/4/8 but I know this sub likes 2/5/10). This isn't far off from the margin Sherrod Brown won his senate race, and still underperforms Amy Acton's vote share. Florida, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas are all lean D. Kansas is a tossup, tilting toward Rs. And now we're seeing states like South Carolina, Missouri, and Indiana go lean R. And keep in mind, we DID flip Kansas, and we DID flip South Carolina in the real world 2026 Senate elections. So again, if you think anything I'm saying is unrealistic, minus maybe Blorida (which in the real world went like R+1-3), uh, yeah, cross reference this with the senate results, we're not very off at all.

And to take things one step further. Let's do a D+15 congressional vote, as if things couldn't get worse for republicans.

Again, we're seeing things that had with the senate happen here. Blue Kansas, for example. South Carolina a tossup. MIssouri is also a tossup. Indiana, Montana, Nebraska, and Utah are all lean R states. Louisiana and Mississippi are likely R, but they're only around R+4-6 here.

So yeah. This is a preview of what awaits us in 2028. If we get 2026 blowout style numbers we actually COULD see something similar to what happened then happen on the presidential level, with democrats getting 400+ electoral votes.

Of course, a lot can happen in 2 years. We might see the democrats put up a really bad polling candidate like, say, AOC. We could see the GOP get their crap together. Presidential level turnout might simply close the gap allowing republicans to do better, where low propensity lean R voters who sat out the midterms show up for Vance/Rubio/DeSantis. I honestly think there's a high degree of confidence the democrats will take the white house in 2028. Keep in mind, even a neutral generic vote slightly favors the democrats with a 286-252 win. But yeah, given the environment is probably something...between 2024 numbers and 2026 numbers, I would probably give it to democrats. Still, where we end up in 2028 map wise is debatable. If we get a favorable map for the GOP, it's back to the old reliable 7 swing states of 2020 and 2024. However, if we see the democrats able to capitalize on the map they just got for the senate, we could see all of those states that were once unthinkable for democrats to flip to actually be swing states in 2028. We'll have to see I guess.

Why Christians find me so offputting

 So....some Christians find me to be an ###hole. I know it. I don't deny it. I don't really intend to change. But I did want to do some self reflection on it and explain it. It's been an issue I've known about for a while. I've arguably lost friends over it before. And more recently, I got told that I don't understand someone and how offputting simply telling someone to keep their religious ideas to themselves in and not force them on me in the public square, so I want to explain it from my perspective.

In this country, we got a problem with Christian nationalism. We got fundamentalist, evangelical Christians who basically want us to be a "Christian nation" and who basically want the laws and morals of this country to reflect their religion. While they won't explicitly coerce people to convert, their preferred policies basically puts their morality into law, and forces it on the rest of us, and when I tell them I don't want that, they tend to get all uppity about it. Like we're supposed to respect the fact that they literally believe that God told them to advance their religion and that they have higher loyalties to that religion over say, the laws of the constitution. 

The problem is...the rest of us, don't want to live under their morals and their laws. And we DO believe that laws should be secular. I mean, don't get me wrong, despite my own dislike of religion, I fundamentally believe that people have freedom of religion. However, freedom to exercise religion stops when it basically becomes an establishment of religion within government, and it's forced on me. You're free to practice your religion as YOU want, but the second you impose it on me, that's a problem. Like really, am I supposed to be sympathetic with the "no no you dont understand, god commanded this of me, i cant not do this" crap? No, if anything, that makes you even more dangerous because youre literally a zealot. It's basically, because THEY believe that god commanded certain things of them, that god also commanded those things of all of us, and we gotta live according to their laws. In which case, i'm very bluntly gonna tell such people to go F themselves. Like, this is the whole paradox of tolerance at work. And how we can't tolerate the intolerant. Because when we do that, the intolerant will basically destroy tolerance of those different from them themselves.  

But, to be fair, my offputtingness isn't just straight up telling christian nationalists to F off. Even liberal christians sometimes got a problem with me. And I think it comes down to this. I admit, I got my own biases against christianity. Let's just say I was a christian before, I considered it a net negative experience on the whole. I left for a reason. I dont ever wanna go back. Even more so, after leaving the religion, I literally REBUILT MY OWN WORLDVIEW FROM THE GROUND UP. Like full stop. And this sometimes leads to me to conflict with a largely Christian worldview. And Christians have a lot of, shall we call it...privilege in modern society. Like, the world already revolves around them and their morals in the US. It's as natural as breathing air. Even if we exclude the crazy christian nationalist types. Take WORK ETHIC. That stuff as Christian origins. The modern work ethic didnt arise in a vacuum, it literally came from calvinism, and was secularized and twisted into what it is today. And when I come around, with this rebuilt philosophical worldview around secular humanism and the New Atheist perspective, i very much clash with this Christian perspective. 

And it's like that on EVERYTHING politically. A lot of people seem hung up on strange oughts and shoulds with morality and how people SHOULD live their lives, and when I investigate WHY people think a certain way, it becomes obvious that this originates from Christianity. Most christians dont notice it because it's just kind of natural. They dont think about it, they don't challenge it, they dont question it. They just enjoy their religion's philosophical hegemony over their lives, and act like I'm weird for pointing it out and opposing it. And that's the thing. Me simply thinking differently and being on that different level of thought often comes off as a challenge to them. It comes off like "come on now, now you're challenging THIS social convention that we all just take for granted? are you crazy?" No, actually. If anything, I'm sane and rational in everyone else's insane world.

And actually, we see a lot of this crap at play A LOT on our culture. Take the past election cycle. We had abdul el sayed being a muslim. A very inoffensive muslim. Totally not a guy who wants to impose Sharia law on people, but simply NOT having the religious conditioning of christianity made him dangerous. The christian right lost their minds over this guy so hard acting like he wanted to impose islam on everyone simply for existing. And the dude just...didn't have the same christian indoctrination, and people treated him as less American and less trustworthy for it. 

Atheists get the same treatment. A lot of evangelicals will believe atheists cant be trusted to be moral because they dont believe a god is watching them to keep them in check. Like lacking that belief system just makes them less trustworthy. And electing them to public office, forget it. A lot of the christian right fundamentally opposes secular humanism as an ideology and will wage an entire culture war against the progressive left, which doesnt share their values. 

The fact is, these guys cant tolerate ANYTHING that doesnt reflect their values, and I'll not only NOT reflect their values, but fight them on it push comes to shove and that really just leaves a bad taste in peoples' mouths. And that's the thing, going back to me. Just as they will quickly lose their crap when anything doesnt reflect their value system by default, I'll also point out when something is at odds with mine, or even point out the christian origins of some practice (like work ethic) that I quite frankly find irrational. And just doing this seems to send a lot of christians into a tizzy. They'll be like "we get it, you hate god, can you shut up already?" And my opinion is this. No. I won't shut up until you guys stop imposing your crap on me by default. Again, to these guys, christianity is as natural to them as water is to a fish. It's something so natural to them that when an environment lacks it, they'll VERY quickly notice and see it as hostile, ya know, kinda like how lacking air for us means we suffocate, even though you cant SEE air. You know? 

And again, that's my beef. I'm the guy that will point out and call out the influence this religion has and explain why I dont think why things should work that way, and how they should work instead, to which they just write me off as some ###hole atheist who wont stop dunking on their religion.

But to go back to say, Abdul El Sayed, I'll say this in my defense. He's muslim. And yet, I have no problem with him, despite not being any more favorable to Islam than I am to Christianity. Why? Because Abdul isn't trying to impose his islam onto me and my life. If I went over to say, Saudi Arabia, I'd have far MORE problems with living over there than i do in the US with Christianity. Because they're even more fundamentalist, and they do impose their beliefs onto others. Hell, I'd never go over to a country like that, because I dont wanna be beheaded to have my rights taken away for not believing in their religion. And I wouldnt wanna be forced to live according to their laws. I reject theocracy, and I also reject the implicit culture being based on a religion i dont even believe in.

The same is true of Christianity. And while I get it, after leaving religion, I was an "angsty atheist" for a while. A lot of us are like that in the aftermath of leaving. It's kind of a trauma response associated with the massive worldview shift you go through in leaving religion. For a while you just feel angry and cant help but dunk on your old religion. But eventually that gets boring, you kinda wanna move beyond the whole "hey did you know what sucks? christianity" part of your ex christian life, and it generally becomes more a live and let live situation. It's more, okay, you can believe what you want. You might even have decent reasons if your faith in god is based on like, personal anecdotal experiences or whatever (keep in mind even I have my own spirituality these days). Just...dont try to impose that crap onto me.

But again, that goes back to why a lot of us feel like we still gotta fight in political terms. Because this religion has this weird cultural hegemony over us, and we often are forced to live in ways we otherwise wouldnt want to because a bunch of religious people think that's just the way things should be and we're wrong if we dont think that even if it's irrational and has no real purpose outside of that religion. And even worse, we DO have religious fundamentalists who wanna make their morals the law of the land, and we DO have to take exception to that, because we quite frankly DONT WANNA BE GOVERNED BY THAT CRAP! Like again, it's fine if you have your beliefs, and you wanna practice privately, and you wanna live and let live. My problem these days mostly comes down to religion being imposed on me, and me wanting to live a life free of their, quite frankly, irrational and unjustifiable religious beliefs. And I'm sorry if I'm an "angstheist" or whatever for thinking that, but that's how I think, and I'm not sorry for that at all. 

And yeah, that's just my view on it, after significant self reflection about it over time.  

Discussing the idea that real innovation is a $300 console

 So, some ex Playstation guy is finally making sense saying what the PS6 eventually needs isn't more teraflops and ray tracing, but to do what we're already doing cheaper. 

And uh, this is kind of a no brainer for me. As I said, we've reached peak gaming. We're not seeing a lot of progress from more raw specs. We're just getting more unoptimized games that look slightly better than the previous generation, on hardware that costs way too much money, with the games costing way too much money, and the situation feeling unaffordable. As I look toward the future, I'm literally thinking, if hardware doesn't come down in price, I'm checking out next gen. I mean, Im not very satisfied with the state of modern gaming in general and find myself drawn more and more to the previous generations where games are cheaper and still fun to play. Obviously not all past games are winner, but the same is true today. The best still hold up though. And if the cost of entry is gonna be high for next gen, it's just...well...forget that, i'm going to just double down on that retro direction. 

As I see it, progress is exactly what this guy said. What made progress happen technologically is moore's law. Because we could roughly double processing power every 18 months, after about 4-5 years, we'd have 8x the power for generally the same amount of money. And because gaming was in its infancy in the 90s and even early 2000s still, generational leaps in compute power could cause generational leaps in gaming in general. However, eventually, we get to the point where enough is enough. I'd say gaming was "mature" by generation 7, although generation 8's processing power allowed for more open worlds, higher resolutions, and better frame rates. But that's where things started to stagnate. Now gen 9 just feels like gen 8 game play wise, just with slightly better graphics, but also jankier games, and it feels like with moore's law beginning to break down, the whole industry is beginning to cannibalize itself. And something has to give. For me, the answer is obvious. Rather than focus on making things better, we SHOULD focus on doing the same thing more cheaply. Like, at this point, we got smartphones as powerful as PS4s. If you have at least a snapdragon 8 gen 2 and 8 GB ram, congrats, you got a potential PS4 in raw processing power in your pocket. And that could play games like fallout 4, the witcher 3, and battlefield 4, 1, and 5. Why do we NEED more? And that's where "next gen" has fallen flat. For as great as cyberpunk is, what does it offer other than higher fidelity graphics that GTA V didn't? And remember, the original version of that could run on a PS3, and some people with more powerful phones are emulating the PC version on their phones. Starfield, was it better than fallout 4 or skyrim? I doubt anyone would say it was. Borderlands 4 is a joke while borderlands 2 runs on a potato these days. There's no reason the overwhelming majority of PS5 titles can't be scaled down graphically to run on phones, and with that PC emulation I mentioned, i wouldnt be surprised if Valve eventually did make a full blown arm/android solution for steam that's official. 

And for me, that's the future I want. To be able to play my games on ANY device. I mean Im not a console guy, I dont wanna be tethered to an ecosystem designed to extract maximum revenue from me. I want my games to run on ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. I want to be able to play doom on my toaster or smart fridge, in theory, assuming it had an operating system that allowed installing programs. 

I dont want more power. I want more versatility. I want to see my games run on cheaper and cheaper devices. And I want new games to run on existing hardware. Keep in mind, if Im gonna be paying for a new system, a new GPU, a new CPU, Im gonna want better games that look noticably better and do something different from games in the past. Ray tracing isnt it. And given games look "good enough" and have looked "good enough" for about 10 years by this point, Im not really interested in higher fidelity graphics at a price I cant afford.

But if I can run GTA5 (or even 6 when it comes out) on say, my phone, or some $300 mini PC or something, yeah, that's a big fricking deal. And i aint saying every game has to be scaled down to run on mobile. BUT...it shouldnt be scaled up to run on hardware no one can reasonably afford either. It's a balance.  

Reminder: elections are won by enthusiasm

 So....as the data on how people voted in 2026 comes out, the message is clear, the public wants change and what drove democrats to victory was enthusiasm. A huge wave of voters who didnt vote in 2024 came out to support democrats, while republicans were relatively demotivated and stayed home. 

This isnt super surprising given my analysis of previous elections. Wave elections tend to involve that. The base in power stays home, and the base out of power comes out in large numbers against the opposition. And we had a lot of people who stayed out in 2024 who came out this year. And they're PISSED. 

Why do I mention this? Because I've seen this happen before. People came out in massive numbers in 2008 for Barack Obama, but then they stayed home in subsequent elections, with democrats ignoring them and going in the direction of appealing to high propensity moderates who they believed to be more reliable. Of course, this strategy was a failure and just demotivated the lower propensity voters. But now with Trump screwing up THIS BADLY people came out in DROVES. 

And I just wanna say this. My thesis here is the same as it was during the Obama era. If democrats want to remain top dog, they have to do what the people want. Their governance has to be popular. They cant just sit on their hands and do nothing and then scold people for not turning out. You want these people out every election? You gotta do what they want. That means getting cost of living down, fixing the economy (including healthcare!), and holding the Trump administration accountable for crimes. Rolling back disastrous immigration enforcement, without being for "open borders." You need to keep these people invested so they come out again and again. Thats what Obama didnt do. When 2008 happened, he forgave the bankers who caused it, implemented mild reforms that only kinda sorta solved the problems. And then that massive wave Obama had evaporated and republicans came out and voted AGAINST Obama. 

We can say "well those people need to come out and vote every time", but think of it from the perspective of people seeing coming out as an inconvenience. It takes time and energy to come out and vote. People arent going to do it if they dont feel invested or they feel like both sides suck and nothing is gonna change because it's all corrupt. What's driving this wave is that Trump is just SO FRICKING AWFUL that people who dont normally come out and coming out to stop him and to fix the economy at least somewhat. But if democrats wanna KEEP those voters, they gotta actually do what they want them to do. And they gotta make it EASIER to vote, not harder. Republicans wanna make it harder because they WANT to demotivate people, the lower turnout, the better they do. Democrats need to expand voting to make it easy and convenient, and they gotta give people a reason to support them. That's how things work. This is human nature. You can scold people all you want, but you gotta motivate people and democrats suck at it. Democracy belongs to the voters, not to the party and the politicians. They're our SERVANTS. We are their BOSSES. We just fired a bunch of republicans and hired a bunch of democrats. But democrats gotta perform or the people will fire them again. It's that simple. 

So I hope democrats actually do things with their power. Dont just sit on their hands and let bygones be bygones. REIN. TRUMP. IN. FIX. HIS. CRAP. And fix the other stuff we've BEEN complaining about while were at it. It's that simple. 

Defending Schumer on not funding Angie Nixon

 So...as we know, I'm very critical of Chuck Schumer. However, he also is kind of the mastermind of the victory we just had. He controlled the democrats' purse strings and decided who got funded and who didn't. And he didn't fund Angie Nixon in Florida, and a lot of progressive are blasting him over it, claiming it was ideological. Maybe it was. The centrists want the party to remain centrist and I know Schumer did pick some stinkers for the primaries like Janet Mills for example. He was also for Haley Stevens in Michigan. BUT....he did come around to support Troy Jackson, and Abdul El Sayed, and he has been willing to at times support progressives when the populace arm wrestled him into doing it.

On Angie Nixon....I'll explain why he didn't put money into it. It was FLORIDA. For most of the cycle, Florida has been an R+6-8 state. By my own statistics, Nixon had around a five percent chance of winning, and while we were lucky, we werent THAT lucky. Progressives argue if only we put a few million into that race, we could have flipped it a few more points. The problem is, let's go back to before the election. We got my election map, and we want a majority. What do we do?

Well, the answer is simple. We put the money where it does the most good. We dont know what direction the polling error is going in. If anything, I spent most of the cycle saying this map is TOO good as it is, and that we should play defensively to make sure we can get a simple majority. I get it, in hindsight, we overperformed this map. But we very well could've underperformed. if instead of getting D+3, we got R+3, then we'd be struggling just to get a simple majority. We'd be struggling to get Maine and Kansas and Ohio and Texas. We can say goodbye to Alaska in such a situation, and Iowa, and getting South Carolina and Mississippi? Dont make me laugh. 

I went into 2026 with this thesis. Flipping the senate was darned near impossible. Not only would we need to hold Michigan and flip North Carolina and Maine, we'd need to break into Trump+13 states like Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Alaska. I thought, okay, maybe we can get Ohio if Brown runs, but how can we get the other four? But then the map came to us. And we started seeing most of those, minus florida, flip in the polls. And we even got Kansas to flip. And that's the thing. Those states were COMPETITIVE. We COULD win. We were straight up favored, and even if the polls flipped the other way, we could put up a fight. And then you gotta keep in mind other things going on. South Carolina came within a point or two, with Annie Andrews' internals showing a dead heat. So Schumer was like, a few million for South Carolina. And both campaigns seemed to get a whiff of something happening in Mississippi. A bit of a long shot, but hey, even spending a little money there could force the GOP to divert funds away from more important battlegrounds. I wouldnt expect to win there, but I could see an argument for funding it. 

But Florida? It was too long of a long shot. Republicans outspent the democrats. Democrats had scarce resources relatively speaking and had to allocate them well. In a state where we had a 15% or 30% chance of winning, spreading a couple million there could cause the GOP to divert more of its massive war chest playing defense. But when you start getting R+6, or R+8, it's like, forget it. Sure theres a 5% shot but thats like betting on a 20-1 horse at the races. Okay, a 5-1 like Mississippi, okay, cant hurt to put a $2 bet down. 2-1 like South Carolina, yeah, play that crap. but 18-1 or 20-1 or whatever? Youre throwing money away. Just approaching it from a gambling perspective. 

And imagine this. The winnings of betting on a 20-1 horse pays the same as a 2-1 one. It isnt like a casino, one win is one senator. So yeah, your allocation is best spent on the races where we're already favored, or where when not favored, it's still within a reasonable realm of possibility. 

All in all, think about it in terms of the denotations of races we have. "Safe" races, you just dont invest in. No return on investment. You could blow your whole bank account there, and not get any returns. Likely races can flip, but they're long shots. Maybe you'll get 1 or 2 a cycle, but normally they dont flip. Leans, tilts, and tossups are where the money is. And Schumer did play it beautifully from that perspective, he put the money into the races he knew he could flip, he put a little investment into races that were lean R, but didnt go overboard with them, and he focused on what he could win.

On election night, the odds just went in our favor. We overperformed the benchmarks and now people are saying, gee if only we invested in florida, maybe we could've flipped it. Unlikely. it was a likely R state. And if anything, something I've been critical of democrats doing is doing weird gambling ventures into lean/likely R states at the expense of losing their home turf. I was critical of the dems and schumer in particular when we lost rust belt states we should've had locked down because the democrats were too busy trying to flip Georgia and Texas TEN YEARS AGO. Ya know? Like, I never thought we should've invested in the south back then. Well, I felt the same way about Florida here. The others, the math speaks for itself. We were favored to win in Ohio and Texas and Alaska and EVEN KANSAS FOR SOME REASON?! WTF! But hey, from a numerical perspective, if that's where Kansas was at as a state, DO IT! And you know, depending on what internals were saying, yeah, put some money down on South Carolina and Mississippi. Aint saying it'll pay off, but as long as it doesnt come at the expense of more important states, even if we dont win, it can force the republicans to spend money there to defend stuff. I just dont think Florida had that going for it this time. It was almost always gonna lose, and the fact that we overperformed like we did was something we couldnt predict with any certainty before hand. Sure, it was on the table. But I think playing the board like the polling error would go in the republicans' direction on election day was a safer assumption. Again, the goal was securing at least 51, and probably ending up with 53-54. Anything beyond that was a bonus. 

And yeah. I just wanted to give a rational defense of Schumer's strategy. I dont trust the guy as far as I can throw him to GOVERN properly, but as far as mastermining the national campaign strategy and allocating the money to maximize his returns, he played the board brilliantly. I literally couldnt have done better myself, and if I got that to say about the guy, I'll give him credit on this one. He was cooking here and it paid off. So let's give him SOME credit here, even if we dont want him as speaker because his boring govrnance style is gonna drive those voters away again.  

Thinking about the future of the republican party

 So, I've kind of discussed this before, but it's very salient now that the Blue Rumbling just happened. What is the future of the republican party? It's unknown and TLDR, it ultimately depends on how democrats govern over the next few years. No matter what path they take, their best path back to relevance is to let democrats implode from their own incompetence. 

As far as 2028 and forward though, they have two directions. Up until the midterms, it seemed obvious Vance and Rubio were the two strongest candidates going into 2028. However, this crushing defeat is causing people to rethink that. People seem to be distancing themselves from the Trump administration like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Vance is seen as DOA. There's talk of Rubio resigning as secretary of state, possibly to position himself as the anti MAGA candidate who had the inside scoop. And yeah, it looks like there's a potential civil war brewing within the party. 

As I see it, there's two directions that the GOP can go, and neither are great for them long term. The rational move, after seeing everything that's happened, would be to moderate. Some are calling for the GOP to get back to its roots in constitutionalism and the republican party of pre Trump. This is arguably the better future for the country, as moderating away from the far right fascist crap is probably for the best. However, I don't see this as a tenable move for them. Here's the reality for the GOP: the GOP is radical because the base as radical. As I said before when discussing republicans vs democrats, the republican politicians fear the voters, the voters fear the democratic politicians. by this I mean that on the left there's a slavish culture of voting blue no matter who, with democrats pushing for candidates that quite frankly make their stomachs turn in the name of "electability", while republicans let their freak flags fly and push for the most extreme and radical candidates who align with their values, regardless of electability. If the republicans push moderates on the party, it is unlikely that the party's voters will accept them. They might even buck the party and go full Nick Fuentes, who basically pushed his supporters to vote democrat because the republicans weren't extreme enough. The republicans have a long history of tarring and feathering RINOs, and the last time the GOP faced a loss this big in 2006 and 2008, the result was the tea party. The republicans are functionally allergic to moderation and won't turn for moderate candidates. Their base is driven by their extreme values, and if a candidate doesn't represent them, a significant number of them won't turn out. It also seems that with Trump throwing out Susie Wiles and replacing her with Stephen Miller, that Trump himself has learned nothing. If anything, the weak link in his administration is him, but instead of doing introspection he's firing people like a dictator punishing his generals for losing a war, and doubling down. 

However, if the republicans double down, they're going to probably repeat this week. The public is totally soured on the republicans in their current state, and only about 1/3 of the country actually likes these guys. So this offers a conundrum. If the republicans moderate, they lose their base. If they go extreme, they lose everyone else. That's the nature of the republican coalition. The democrats have similar issues in their own right, where they cant thread the needle between what parts of their base want and the public wants as well, but not as bad as the GOP right now. The GOP agenda is fundamentally unpopular, but if they moderate, they enter that uncanny valley of suck and kinda lose everyone as well. With that said, if anything, I suspect that the GOP is going to learn nothing from their loss and become even MORE extreme.  

This brings us to what I said earlier, the fate of the GOP is ultimately decided by democrats. When democrats take over, they have to govern. And if they cant govern well, the public is gonna turn ON THEM. And who will they run to? The republicans. And it doesnt matter if they moderate or go extreme, ultimately we will reach a tipping point where people will prefer the devil we dont know over the one we know. Just as the other night was a kneejerk reaction to trump, and not an endorsement of democrats and their agenda, the elections of 2030, 2032, and onward are going to be a reaction to how democrats govern. And if democrats cant stick the landing and all we get over the next four or so years is more hakeem jeffries and chuck schumer doing nothing, well....the republican will be able to come in and be the opposition. It doesnt matter if they're moderate OR extreme. Maybe the memory of Trump will be so scarred into the collective memories of the populace like Hoover and Carter that we WILL see a realignment where people will jsut flock to democrats no matter how poorly they govern, but normally a realignment like that requires not just a bad leader who F-s everything up, but also a good one, or at least a decent one, to set the tone for the next generation of politics. But if we dont get a good leader, we'll just get a turnover like a football team that ran out of downs. 2027, first down, 2028, second down, 2029, third down, 2030, fourth down, either make gains or get a turnover. Tick tock the clock is running as of the democrats getting sworn in, and especially after they retake the presidency in 2028.  This is why I say that the fate of the republicans ultimately depends on what WE do, and we better do it right, or we're gonna lose our newfound power to the other side who will only continue to become more extreme with every loss. And this is why I'm go critical of Schumer and Jeffries for not meeting the moment so far. The populace wants bold action, not wishy washy centrism that accomplishes nothing. We dont need to deliver full on democratic socialism, we don't need to deliver full on UBI centric human centerd capitalism. But we need to deliver SOMETHING. At least do McMorrow/Talarico wing style policy here. If we dont, then we're gonna be dealing with Groypers taking over in 2030 and 2032. And that possibility should scare ALL of us.