Has Trump changed my opinion on changing birthright citizenship?

 So, back at the start of this second Trump term, I expressed support for ending birthright citizenship for the children of two illegal immigrants. Given Trump's authoritarian attempts to strip people of citizenship, has my opinion on this matter changed? This comes up for me because David Pakman cited that Trump is trying to strip naturalized citizens of citizenship, and also, strip children of illegal immigrants of citizenship. 

I'm going to say no, but obviously, I have to explain WHY. I never supported exactly how Trump is going about doing this. Obviously, stripping people of citizenship directly sets a really bad precedent as we're seeing with this administration. We should not do that. The reasons should be obvious. It just leads to a petty dictator stripping rights from anyone they don't like. If you have US citizenship, you should have it. I support amending the constitution to deny citizenship specifically to the children of two illegal immigrants who are born in the future. Those who have it legally, should keep it. And obviously, we shouldnt allow the stripping of citizenship from anyone current leader doesn't like. That's scary and dangerous, as we are seeing now. 

The two qualifying differences are basically that I support changing the law, not acting lawlessly, and I support the change affecting people in the future, not people who currently have it retroactively. 

One might wonder why I have such a strong position on this issue. After all, I'm otherwise a liberal and I otherwise typically have a rather progressive stance on immigration. Yes, but I'm also fairly moderate. I was mostly fine with the likes of Clinton, Obama, and Biden on the matter, and they deported lots of illegal immigrants. I just aint pro cruelty. 

And the fact is, I tend to be a bit more nationalist in this regard because of my economic stances. I support a UBI, universal healthcare, etc. The political viability of these programs practically requires a harder stance on immigration. If we have a loophole to allow anyone to just come in and get citizenship, and then we give free money based on citizenship, then we're giving people who come here illegally free money. This will erode support for UBI, and possibly, in the long term, the sustainability of such programs. A more lax immigration approach works better for those with more pro work ideologies, as the argument is that immigrants contribute to the country more than they take away, given how restrictive existing programs are, but again, that stance tends to align more with a neoliberal economic stance of open borders, free markets, and of course, a more pro work pro capitalist political ideology. Given my own ideology is counter to that, a compromise is that I do support a more restrictive approach to immigration and the border in order to make my own economic ideology more viable. 

Just wanna make that clear, since many oppose immigration for more racist or xenophobic reasons. While I would expect anyone coming in to have ideas and ideals compatible with liberal democracy and not be some radical illiberal extremist or a threat to society, I mostly dont care a ton otherwise. Again, it's more a consequence of my specific economic ideology rather than some weird great replacement theory type crap. 

But yeah, I just wanted to clarify my stance on this a bit. 

Discussing "angry white guys for Platner"

 So...the idpol nonsense doesn't stop, and reading the comments in threads discussing this stuff, some self righteous feminists started going on about how they are skeptical of Graham Platner because of all of the "angry white guys" who seem to back him up and downplay the scandals. As an "angry white guy" myself, I wanna explain my perspective.

Ya know, I REALLY hate identity politics. It's just a bunch of nonsense created by centrist libs to divide and conquer within the democratic party. These guys have no real ideas or policies, so they start talking self righteously about race and gender as a distraction from the real issues. And of course, self righteous feminists will roll their eyes as I downplay their pet causes and act like they're not "real issues", but yeah, I ain't a fan of you guys either. You're always out here screaming and acting outraged over something and it's very obvious 90% of it is manufactured rage bait you're falling for. And...again, my historical stance is i dont really care about this stuff either way. It doesn't affect me and as long as you stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours, but get in my way and you make me an enemy. Your choice. We can do this the easy way where i passively support you, being part of the same coalition, or I end up getting all up in your business after you pick fights with mine. 

And that's what's happening here. Graham Platner is a flawed person. Ive discussed some flaws myself. His tattoo, his reddit history, but let's face it, these latest scandals are all rage bait. And sorry, I dont take the rage bait. But....if we start seeing self righteous centrists and feminists manufacturing consent for rat####ing the guy out of a nomination he earned, then you're picking a fight with me. 

Why do I so vigorously defend people like Platner? or Bernie for that matter, given the Bernie bro attacks? Because these guys are the only ones who wanna do F all to fix the system. You centrist feminists are oh so happy to sit in the sidelines being your little upper class brunch libs and ignoring issues like healthcare, or improving conditions for the working class, or UBI, but the second someone dares criticize your sacred cow of identity politics, or some progressive wins, you seem so outraged I sometimes wonder if you'd rather a republican win than my own candidate.

And...as far as my own role in the democratic party, i'm sick of this crap. We white guys are always the whipping boys of the party. We're just expected to shut up and let everyone else speak because privilege. But I dont care about "privilege", and to be frank, I dont care all that much about your weird causes. I just want my life to improve. 

Since 2024, we've heard a lot of talk about why white guys dont vote for democrats. And quite frankly, it's this. being a white male democrat with progressive interests feels like an exercise in self hatred sometimes. Because we're just expected to put up with everyone else's crap, while what we care about is not just ignored, but the second someone who actually represents us becomes popular, you guys are always interested in tanking them. And then you act like WE'RE the bad guys because we get angry and defensive. Yeah, we tend to do that when you're STABBING US IN THE BACK! 

If you want to win white guys over, you gotta actually appeal to them. That means toning down this stupid idpol nonsense. I aint saying you cant have your causes. But when you interject those causes where you get in OUR way, is it any surprise you make enemies out of us? When you start calling us "Bernie Bros", or start going on about "angry white guys for platner", is it any surprise when we get...angry and defensive? Again, stay out of our way and we stay out of ours. The good thing about the "I dont care" attitude is you can make it work for or against your causes. We'll passively support your stuff as long as you dont pick fights with us. But when you try to force us to drop everything and care about your stupid pet causes...well, yeah, that's when you pick a fight. 

Oh, and because Im intelligent and see through the crocodile tears, let's about about what's REALLY going on. The people pulling the strings are concern trolling about platner to lay the groundwork for rat####ing him institutionally and replacing him with mills. Or sabotaging his support in the general, causing collins to win, so you can turn around and say "see? a progressive can't win, guess you better support the crappy centrist next time." But yeah. It's manufacturing consent. We see through it. And we get defensive because hey, he's our guy. We LIKE him mostly. I aint saying he's perfect. But really, it's like the wealthy and powerful are like STOP FOCUSING ON HIS PLATFORM, HE'S BAD, HES SEXIST, HES A WIFE BEATER, BLAH BLAH BLAH! and trying to spin things in the worst possible way to sabotage him. Because that's what they do. They dont want us to focus on things WE actually care about. They wanna distract him with bullcrap, create all these fake divisions within the democratic party, and turn on him.

And you? If youre an angry feminist? Either youre falling for it, or you're complicit yourself. Either way, this is exactly the kind of crap that drives a lot of white guys into the arms of maga. In reality, most of us probably dont care about your BS. Again, you stay out of our way, we stay out of yours. Like the media was talking abortion and roe v wade being struck down. I'm PRO roe v wade. I didnt want it struck down. Is it my #1 issue? No. But it does motivate me, and I'm an ally on the issue. I might have a slightly different philosophy about it being a guy, but an ally is an ally, right? But it seems like, in my experience with dealing with pro choice feminists, they cant stay out of their way, screeching about WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN while saying we shouldnt have an opinion. Again, it's like you guys are TRYING to alienate us, holy crap, shut up and stay out of your own way FFS. 

And yeah. Rant over. I'm just sick and tired of this crap. I am what I am. If you think I'm a chud, screw you, I probably think you're an uppity SJW. But you know what? I'm NOT MAGA, I'm NOT a traditionalist, and I'm actually pretty friendly to your causes IF ONLY DONT ACTIVELY PISS ME OFF.  Seriously, you guys literally gotta work at alienating me, but for some reason you keep managing to do it. Shut up and get out of your own way. 

Dear dems, stop this concern trolling over Graham Platner

 So...Platner won his primary decisively, and since then, all I've heard was concern trolling. Oh, more scandals that are worse are yet to come, it's not too late to recall him as the nominee, blah blah blah. And now Im watching MSNBC and they had some idpol feminist going on about women this, women that, and Platner does the bare minimum for women, women women women, black women are thrown under the bus, I'm not sure platner will deliver, but what about the scandals. OMG, shut the hell up. Platner is the nominee. he won by an overwhelming majority. He's a solid candidate. Vote blue no matter who. That's what you always tell me. Stop poisoning the well with this guy. Yeah, he's rough around the edges. A lot of combat vets are. He means well though, he's progessive AF, and he polls 6-7 points better than Janet Mills did. So yeah, it's time to back this guy. You lost the primary, vote blue no matter who, and if you can't do that, then don't even invoke that crap with me again. I've had it. He's our candidate. He's a very solid candidate, and those scandals are nothingburgers mostly. Stow your fake outrage and back the guy up. He cant be any worse than fetterman.

I dont understand how a UBI supporter can be an Elon Musk stan in 2026

 So...this is a brief one, but I actually encountered someone like this on the internet tonight, and it was a baffling experience to say the least. Yes, Elon Musk was a UBI supporter back in the day, like 10 years ago. However, it's become clear since then that the guy will NEVER support an actual functional version of it. The dude is a megalomaniac, he wouldn't wanna pay the taxes to fund it, he wouldn't want to put up with the loss in work ethic it might cause, given he is an employer himself. He's a chud. He's not supportive of liberating the working classes. He just wants to make robots to replace employing people without supporting any policies that would actually take care of the masses otherwise. 

The dude also had his shot. He had trump's ear. If anything it looked like he was the real president, not Trump for a while. And what did he do? he did DOGE. he tried to cut government programs from the bone, making up myths of 150 year olds on social security and tons of welfare fraud to cut spending. He's not a serious character. If he cared about UBI, he would've actively pushed for UBI. He didn't. He doesn't care. These billionaires dont. 

Musk is a lot like Joe Rogan. He kinda thought the idea was cool before he started thinking about the consequences of it, but in practice, once he started thinking through the negative impacts (on him) that such a program would cause, he backed away from supporting it. He's not a real ally to UBI and shouldnt be taken seriously. 

Explaining just how screwed Republicans are in Maine

 So...I had an interesting discussions last night. And....yeah, republicans still think they got a good shot in Maine. They still have this idea that Platner is a weak and vulnerable candidate and that republicans have this massive oppo research folder that they're waiting to spring on him after it's too late to pull him as a candidate. This is cope. It was arguably the republicans who pushed the recent smear pieces, with Platner's ex being a literal former (and possibly current) republican operative. 

And I know the "respectability politics" types are like "YOU CANT JUST NOT BELIEVE WOMEN BECAUSE THEY'RE REPUBLICAN!" Man...you dont know me very well. I'm very much NOT a "believe all women" type, and if there's an explicit conflict of interest, yeah I dont trust the women at all. This reminds me of that one german influencer who tried metooing Till Lindemann after the irish chick accused him herself, where the story is intended to make him look bad, without them actually accusing him of anything SUPER DUPER bad. I dont buy it.

 And yeah. The republicans pushed that before the primary because THEY wanted Platner out. Because they know they're gonna get their clocks cleaned by the guy. Platner is up 7.4% against Collins. In my model, that's a 97% chance of Platner winning. Mills, on the other hand, was down 0.2% vs collins. She only had a 48% chance. 

And yes, republicans do overperform in Maine. 2020's results were a staggering 14 points off, which is a ridiculously high amount. I had Gideon up by 5, Collins won by around 9. Looking into it, Maine is notoriously hard to poll because of ranked choice voting. Republicans tend to get undersampled, and the republican I was arguing against was talking about undecideds breaking hard for Collins. But here's the thing. 49% of people currently want Platner. 41% want Collins. The republicans would need to pick up around 90% of all undecideds just to break even. And even more so, say I did increased the margin of error to say, 7 points to allow for a 14 point shift and even ANTICIPATE a possible 14 point shift. Okay. Well...that still gives me a Z score of 1.06, and Collins only gets around a 15-16% chance. 

I mean, idk what you want me to say here. Collins prognosis isn't good. And republicans have a vested interest in ousting the guy. Any talk of some "secret oppo folder" comes off as bluffing. because if I were a republican, and I were in this situation, I'd try some weird psychological warfare to spook the dems out of supporting platner and destroying their "party unity" around the guy. I wouldnt be waving my hand around like "JUST YOU WAIT I HAVE TONS OF OPPO RESEARCH THATS FAR WORSE THAN WHAT WE'VE SEEN", this is bluffing. They're trying to get in our heads and push the democrats toward centrism, because as we know, "conventional knowledge" favors the narrative that "electable" means being "moderate", and being uncontroversial. Platner is neither, so that makes him a target with establishment dems freaking the fudge out because they think the guy is "unelectable." Never mind the fact that he literally has a 7 point polling advantage over his opposition. But thats the thing. Dems ignore polls when they dont favor them. We saw this with Bernie. They insisted that the republicans have a massive oppo research folder on bernie sanders and thats why clinton was more electable and polls dont matter. Meanwhile, same thing. Bernie's electoral fundamentals were WAY better than Clinton's. People LIKED bernie, they didnt like Hillary. It's the same thing here. People dont like Janet Mills. She's boring. She's old. She doesnt stand for anything. People like Platner. If anything, I saw a poll recently on kyle's show where they tried taking platner's comments in the lateast scandal out of context and it actually made him look cool and increased his support. So...that backfired. 

Here's the thing. Respectability politics are dead. I know the pearl clutchers can't accept that, but it's true. We live in a populist era. Scandals that used to sink candidates no longer matter. ANd if your candidate has a certain populist cool factor, they're teflon. And I know, the same people who are attacking platner nonstop HATE this. I see their comments, and how they DESPISE populism. Well, your boos mean nothing, we see what makes you cheer. people want someone who improves their lives. Platner does, Mill doesn't. Populism is here. And its relevant to both parties. Not everyone wants the democrats to be some boring ### whig party. 

With that said, can Platner still lose? Of course he can. My model's 97% chance of him winning is probably overstating it given the sheer unreliability of Maine's polling. But I can't give him less than 84-85% here even correcting for that. I mean, a 14 point swing is just WILD. In reality, I dont think we're safe unless he's up double digits, but he still has one hell of an advantage. And if you think mills is a better candidate, well, you don't know what you're talking about. 

November is gonna be fuuuunnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 So, this isn't an election update per se, I just did one of those last week and my predictions havent changed much other than some texas and generic congressional vote margins, but I do wanna discuss november. 

Trump is crashing out HARD as president. And I've avoided making posts about this in particular, but I have been watching the situation closely for a while now, with the perspective of "let him cook." Because Trump is messing with the one sacred cow of the American people that no president dares mess with, and that's the economy. The economy is perpetually the #1 issue in voters minds, everything in politics is based on the metric "are you better off now than you were four years ago?", and that's one thing you absolutely dont wanna mess up. Because Americans will castigate you on it. 

If you wanna know what propelled the New Deal coalition to the complete and utter success they had from the 30s to 60s, it was the economy. We had the great depression under hoover, he didnt help things, and people elected FDR in a landslide. A generation later, we had stagflation. Jimmy Carter didnt do much wrong, but he was hated because it happened on his watch and then Reagan came in and "fixed" it. 

In 2008, Obama won in part because of the great recession. In 2016, Trump won, and Bernie Sanders arose to prominence, because people didn't believe democrats did a good enough job on it. Trump lost in 2020 because of COVID, but also, arguably, the economy. Then Biden ended up being mini Jimmy Carter again, dealing with inflation that wasnt really his fault and being unfairly blamed for it. And now Trump is doing the full carter and then some. Not only are his policies causing more inflation, but then he attacked Iran, basically recreating the 1970s oil crisis in the 2020s, the effects of which havent fully been realized yet, and basically creating a disaster. 

 And that's abnormal for presidents. As I normally say, presidents dont control the economy. They might make a few tweaks around the edges, but generally speaking, the economy is like so, the fed controls interest rates, attempts to balance full employment and inflation, jobs are created, people get jobs. Markets are gonna market. Yeah, you can argue some policies can help here and there, but again...market gonna market. The core fundamentals of the economy are generally self driven, with the fed doing most of the heavy lifting. This is why I lean LEFT. Because the way the left need to differentiate themselves is with state involvement in the market to make peoples' lives better. The right will balk that it hurts job creation, but a century of varying administrations under varying policies shows me that, the economy is gonna economy no matter what. The market is gonna market no matter what. You kind of need to be REALLY REALLY special to ACTUALLY mess up the economy in a meaningful way as president. And Donald Trump? Well, he's THAT kind of special. His tariffs are causing inflation, his war in Iran...BIG inflation, he's screwing up. BAD. Like, on a level not seen since Herbert Hoover bad. This guy is herbert hoover and jimmy carter combined at this point. I thought if Biden lost in 2024, given the carter comparisons and the apocalyptic polling that dems were getting, that if he lost, it would be one of those really bad generational losses you REALLY dont wanna be on the wrong side of. Because much like carter, Biden didn't do much wrong, but it didnt stop the public from blaming him anyway. All the republicans had to do was...govern relatively competently and they probably could've spun the next several decades as "remember the Biden economy?" and it would have dissuaded people from voting for democrats. 

But....Trump....MAN. This guy is messing things up hard. And the worst thing for the republicans? he literally doesn't care.  He's not thinking about peoples' finances given his hyperfixation on Iran. He's going on about how he wants a ball room and his name on everything, and all these golden monuments named after him. Ya know, real "let them eat cake" stuff there. And now today, he's like "I love the inflation!"

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As a progressive I'm just like HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!! Like, I get it, Americans are struggling, that part isn't funny, but as you guys know, I actually have answers for that. But...I really can't help but laugh as this guy implodes his political legacy in real time. Trump is gonna be that name no republican is gonna wanna be attached to after this presidency. 

But yeah, keep speaking like this Donald, you're just making us stronger, because the American people are gonna want you OUT after this one. I was gonna post approval numbers, including on the economy, but I seem to have some issues with RCP right now, but yeah, when that's working, look it up. He's probably at sub 40% approval right now, maybe 41-42% because his base is ride or die on him like he's Jim Jones or something. But the rest of the country HATES him. And even on the economy, last I looked his approval is like in the low 30s. He's COOKED. There's a reason my electoral maps have like 97% chance of dems taking the house and I even show them taking the senate despite an extremely hostile map toward democrats (assuming a relatively neutral year). I mean, the republicans are down in TEXAS, IOWA, NEBRASKA, and ALASKA FFS. And they're tied in OHIO last I looked. That's not a good look for them. You start losing THOSE states? That's like the dems losing Minnesota, Virginia, New Mexico, and stuff like that. Ya know...where Biden's numbers were going in 2024 before he dropped out. So....let's just say, this is a pleasantly surprising uno reverse card. Maybe we aren't cooked after all. If anything, maybe the GOP is. I honestly think when we're done with this, the name of Trump will go down in the history books along side the likes of James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter, and nay, be possibly worse than any of them. Because at least the other guys TRIED to not suck. Trump is just by far the worst president this country has ever had. Replace any of the three in modern times with trump and you'd likely get sane governance. Replace any of those three with trump in their own times, and trump would do it worse. What a great way to close out the 6th party system (if the 2028 theory holds true). 

FLAWLESS VICTORY!

 So yeah, Platner won. I don't have much else to say. But I'm very happy about it. It was also a much larger blowout than expected. The results were expected to be like 61-28 or so. That's what was last reported when Mills dropped out and thats what some exit polls were saying today. We went 72-20 so far. Let's GO!!!!!!!!!!!! But yeah, I'm happy, can you tell?

And remember, establishment libs, vote blue no matter who...right? RIGHT?! Yeah, I'm gonna rub it in.