Discussing the DSA's new platform

 So...a lot of people are freaking out about the DSA lately. Centrist democrats are yipping like little dogs over them, and the right is screaming about "communism", with them basically trying to start a full blown red scare. Mike Johnson even wants more war funding to "fight communism on our own shores." Wtf? He wants to declare war on socialists in the US? That's insane, and probably unconstitutional, if anyone is a threat to our country and its freedoms, it's these fascists on the right who want to weaponize the military against US citizens. They're even talking about criminalizing democratic socialists. This is INSANE. Like, by my estimation, the dangerous ones are the right wing ones pushing stuff like this. Anyway, let's look at the DSA's platform, which is causing this firestorm of controversy. 

I'm on mobile so I won't quote. You can read it yourself, it's not very long, but I will be going over the general sections and focusing on individual policies when needed. 

"Workers deserve more"

I already have mixed views on the preamble. It's not necessarily capitalism itself that's the problem, it's forced labor. And both capitalism and socialism have forced labor. If anything, the problem with socialism is it's worse. And if you read between the lines here, yeah, they're not for liberation. THey mention "you work as much as you're able and no more than needed." Who decides? "You enjoy your work", do I? 

THen they talk about not having bills, because they socialized all basic needs. Okay, but without prices to ration resources, how do we decide who gets what? LIke, this is where I fundamentally differ. I'm a human centered capitalist. I support "CAPITALISM", as in, the market system. I dont mind the idea of decommodifying industries where SEVERE market failures exist, I mean, Canada has single payer healthcare, some places have free college, we can debate how to fix housing, etc., but yeah. Socialists, as we know, kinda go too far. And a lot of this is kinda giving off warning bells of "too good to be true." Theres a reason a lot of americans are so skeptical of policies to improve lives, and anyone can promise stuff, but how many can deliver? Like that's the thing, I wanna solve many of the same problems they do, I just don't want to abolish capitalism to do it. When "democratic socialists" are basically pushing social democracy that's one thing but I kinda know already what kinds of policies these guys are gonna want and there's a reason my own ideal platform varies from them. 

Then they talk about your day off, okay, cool. I like the idea of days off and working less, I'm just not sure how much they'll deliver here. And then they mention not worrying about costs or going back to work. Again, prices are needed to ration resources. You get rid of bills and price structures and you get this big government telling you what you get. Basically literal communism, ya know, the scary kind. I dont mind making things easier and more affordable for people. Hell, I'm the UBI guy, but I go with UBI as an alternative to all this communism crap. And dreading going back to work, I get that, but would a socialist state actually liberate people there? UBI gives people a buffer against poverty and wage slavery, but it doesnt eliminate all work incentives. If anything, it's intended to offer a balance between that ideal and pragmatic realities. 

"How did we get here?"

While I dont deny that capitalism is part of the problem, again, our ideological outlooks are a bit different. Ultimately, the economic coercion to labor is the problem. If people had a UBI, people would be free to say no, within reason. I mean, again, UBI doesnt eliminate ALL of capitalism's incentive structure, but it's not intended to. Work is still socially useful and needed, and a more passive approach to incentivizing people is better than the inevitable coercion that comes with eliminating capitalism altogether. For all the talk of "no one has to work and everything is free, yay!", we've seen how THAT works. One of the reason communism sucked was because they replaced the coercion of capitalism with coercion of the state.

Still, they have a point about billionaires and the like. THe ruling class does keep us in a state of constant scarcity, poverty, and going from crisis to crisis to keep us in line, and to keep us occupied. And yeah, what Mike Johnson is proposing is basically right wing authoritarianism. I do believe that there are solutions to our problems, which currently go ignored because both the republicans and democrats are controlled by capital. HOWEVER, I'm remaining skeptical of these guys solutions because their vision is too good to be true and not even I'd oversell it that much. Again, I try to offer a more pragmatic way of doing things without fully destroying the existing system, which would make things worse.

"Thriving Working Class Communities"

So here we finally get to the policy aspects. 

"Freedom to flourish"- Pushes for paid family leave, 32 hour work week, a living wage, free college, and student debt. All pretty based.

"Healthcare for all"- Based. I mean, keep in mind the only reason I'm no longer full M4A is because of costs. But if you dont have a UBI you can do it. So this is a philosophy difference but I do support M4A in theory. I just know it's expensive AF and I'd rather do UBI.

"Housing for all"- New public housing, check, regulating investment properties, not a bad idea, universal rent control....uh no, that causes long term shortages. Right to counsel for all tenants. Eh...maybe? I mean, a mixed bag, but I support the general aims and at least some of this.

"Finish reconstruction"- As far as anti discrimination goes, cool. Indian treaties, okay. Reparations....hard no. I'd rather give cash to all than have some race based program. 

"End mass incarceration and police immunity"- in moderation fine, but they wanna abolish the police and prison system which is just insane.

"Feminism for all"- While there are some good goals here in moderation like eliminating discrimination and guaranteeing bodily autonomy, eh....I'm not sure about some stuff. I know feminists can get weird over crap at times (see: metoo, weird restrictions on gender relations that favor women at the expense of men, etc). so as long as this remains on the moderate side im okay with it, but who am I kidding? These guys are leftists and will always find ways to go too far.

"Green New Deal"- Jobs guarantee. I'm more in favor of a "build back better" or yang 2020 style proposal. GND often comes at the expense of a UBI, so I'm very critical here. 

So....on their economic platform, where does that leave me? Well, based on those proposals, it's not extreme. It's a decent "new deal liberal" platform, not a socialist one. They dont seem to be abolishing capitalism. But they do go too far at times. Rent control is bad, abolishing police and prisons is bad, idpol crap aint great, and the green new deal is direct competition for my own preferred proposals. Nothing here strikes me as OUTRIGHT offensive outside of the abolishing the police and prisons stuff, but yeah. Obviously I have my differences with these guys at times. Still is this the evil "communism" that we should fear that even I discussed above? No. This is more FDR with more intersectionality. The GOP is off their rocker wanting to criminalize this stuff.

"Working class foreign policy"

"End the US War Machine"- Okay, here's where these guys go full stupid mode. Defund the department of war (defense)? We need SOME defense, we dont need the bloated militarism we got under Trump, but yeah, we need some. End ALL foreign wars and close overseas bases? You realize that not everything we engage in is bad, right? These guys literally do stray into the "hate america" crowd sometimes and its so cringe. Like, seriously, mainstream liberal democratic policies are fine here. 

"Free Palestine"- Eh...nothing really strikes me as too far out there given current circumstances. We should end aid to israel and prosecute war criminals tbqh. THe Netanyahu regime has gone WAAAY too far.

"End blockades, embargoes, and sanctions"- I cant see ending ALL of it, as we do need it to control our enemies, but we shouldnt weaponize this stuff as much as we do. Like the cuba thing. We're just being cruel because we wanna do regime change here. Venezuela, our invasion was unjust. Iran, also unjust but Im not sure we have a realistic path out at this point. Iran seems to be intent on keeping us in and putting on the pain until we meet their demands, and some of THOSE arent realistic either IMO. Like closing all bases or letting them put tolls through the strait of hormuz. Again, there's a lot of complexity to foreign policy and these guys paint with too broad of a brush.

"Abolish ICE"- Eh, while we should stop ICE's reign of terror and move toward a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, they seem to want basically open borders, which is insane to me. 

I mean, this is where DSA often loses the lot. I dont think any of this is some existential threat to the country worth deploying military against its own citizens like the fascists on the right are talking about. But they very quickly lose the plot once you get away from economics and arent living in the real world. of course, the place to defeat them is the ballot box, not with men with guns. Again, what Trump and Johnson are proposing is outright fascist.

"Working class democracy"

"Democracy for all"- based, we should expand voting rights, have universal sufferage, and make DC and certain territories like PR into states. THe reason we dont is because republicans dont wanna lose their institutional advantages.

"A real democracy"- Getting money out of politics, based. Eliminating the electoral college, yeah, it's undemocratic. "Replacing the president and SCOTUS with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to congress"? Wtf? No. I know this is one of those things that is making the right freak out, and I kinda do see this as dangerous. We're supposed to have three coequal branches of government that serve as checks and balances on each other. The people should continue to vote for the president. SCOTUS should remain somewhat independent as well. 

"A democratic congress"- Yeah, we should have a larger house, we're capped at 435 to basically give undue influence to the rural vote, which favors conservatives. Proportional repesentation and ranked choice voting are based. Abolishing the senate? Controversial but I aint actually opposed. THe reason the senate exists is some when our country was founded wanted population to decide congress, but smaller states didnt want that so they proposed the senate. We got both chambers as a compromise between the "virginia plan" and the "new jersey plan." I personally am a fan of DEMOCRACY. People should vote, not land. And yeah the senate gives way too much influence to conservatives. Conservatives are crapping their pants and threatening military force against us because these guys are threatening to strip conservatives of their outsized influence over the system and establish REAL democracy. But they HATE the idea of real democracy and wanna rule by minority. Again, the right is authoritarian here. You can even criticize some of this stuff, like some might see abolishing the senate as too radical, but again, like....honestly? THere's a valid argument to be made here. I just dont like how these guys want that one chamber of congress to have power over the other branches. We should have checks and balances here. 

"Economic democracy"- So they basically wanna socialize the biggest corporations and essential industries. Hard no on that one. I like wealth taxes on the super wealthy though.

"Democracy at work"- Despite the name they seem to be talking about unions and union power. I'm pro union so this is fine. 

Overall impression

While there are certainly some cringe elements to this platform that go way too far, and to some degree my own ideological goals differ from these guys, I'd still say I probably support about 70% of this platform, and there's more good than bad. However, I will say that when it bombs, it sometimes bombs really bad. THese guys arent living in the real world on issues like foreign policy, criminal justice, immigration, literal socialism, and some of their more extreme political reforms.

Honestly, we need a moderate version of this that takes the best elements of this and emphasizes those without the bad parts (think an FDR style approach to it), or alternatively, we should go with my own more explicitly capitalist ideas instead like UBI. 

I feel like the most extreme parts of this are what is giving ammo for the right to "red bait" over it. Lke ERMAHGERD, THEY WANT TO ABOLISH THE SENATE AND PUT CONGRESS IN CHARGE OF THE OTHER TWO BRANCHES! ERMAHGERD, THEY WANT TO SOCIALIZE THE ECONOMY! yeah...no. Can we NOT do that? I dont think we should be deploying military force against our own citizens over this and it's insane that the right is floating this (but not surprising, I've been warning you guys trump and his administration have gone fascist for a while), but yeah, I wiill say I outright reject the more extreme elements of this. Again, DSA sometimes gets lost in their own sauce. They're right, we need left wing economic populism and they have some good ideas at times. However, they kinda tied up in their own BS where they unironically think that some of the more extreme stuff is a good idea, and it's not. And you know what? THis is where I agree with the moderate democrats, this crap is gonna cost us elections. It should be rejected and those of us who are sane should distance ourselves from it. 

Still, I remain convinced the real threat to our way of life comes more from Mike Johnson, Trump, and the far right. Those guys are marching us into fascism and talking about criminalizing holding beliefs like this, and they wanna act like the left is the problem? Pulease. After project 2025, they can stfu now and forever about this stuff. 

Air conditioning isn't bad, our energy grid is

 So...France recently blamed the US for...air conditioning causing heat waves. The argument is that our energy needs to power air conditioning is powering climate change, which is thus intensifying the need for air conditioning, which is causing more climate change. This is very misleading. 

The real cause of climate change is fossil fuels. I am of the opinion that the US should NOT have to rely on fossil fuels to power our energy grids. Between wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric, etc., we should be able to have more than enough power to power our energy grid without causing global warming. We should have been working on this fifty years ago. I mean, Jimmy Carter had solar panels on the white house roof. but then the oil companies feared irrelevance, and launched a war on science. The Reagan administration went full "drill baby drill", and religious extremism brainwashed people against climate change even being a thing. So we literally ignored the problem for decades. And now in the 2020s, things are getting so bad we can't ignore it. The US is in a massive drought, this could ultimately impact food output, which is being compounded by the fertilizer crisis from the war with Iran. Europe is experiencing massive heat waves, hell, so is America. I'm only in my 30s and I've noticed a rather large shift in the climate from when I was a kid. From 2010 onward I've noticed summers seem hotter. I've also noticed winters seem to have less snow. And in the 2020s, it's like hell on earth. Every summer is the hottest ever, the climate is changing faster than the worst models predicted. Entire systems might be on the verge of collapse, or reaching a point of no return like the AMOC current in the atlantic. Entire areas of the world and the US might become unlivable. Sea levels are swallowing islands. The American west is becoming uninhabitable as much of it is desert in the first place and now the water that exists is drying up. 

Yeah...air conditioning, in terms of power use, is contributing to this. However, wanna know what else is contributing? Literally all of modern life. Your computer contributes to climate change. Cars contribute, and those NEED to run on fossil fuels. While the actual physical grid could be powered by cleaner energy, cars are more problematic. And if we wanna go into my thing, what about work culture? What about forcing people to commute to offices we dont need and not letting them work from home? What about forcing everyone to get a job so number on spreadsheet goes up? What about all this AI crap where we're building tons of data centers to meet demand for AI that doesnt exist yet in what seems to be the economic bubble of the 2020s? That's taking up TONS of electricity, tons of water, it's distorting the whole hardware market. We're killing the climate over this stupid crap. But sure, let's blame the one thing we do to try to keep us cool and comfortable.  

 In a lot of ways, blaming people for their habits seems to be missing the point. A lot of people on the left notice this. There's a lot of lecturing about what individuals can do to solve climate change, when in reality, most of it is driven by the interests of the ultra wealthy. They fly around on private jets everywhere, their enterprises destroy the environment on a massive scale, and they basically force all of us into their system of economic dependence. But how dare we not want to use pasta straws or keep cool in the summer. Ya know? It's dumb. 

Anyway, that's how I view the issue. The bulk of the issue is caused by the wealthy, it's caused by the powerful, and it's caused by those evil and batcrap insane ideologies I pointed out in the previous post. We should have nipped this in the bud 50 years ago but some rich people decided they wouldnt profit off of it and it would make them sad so let's drive the planet into the gutter so oil companies can continue to make tons of money. Even though it's a disaster waiting to happen since it's a finite resource, the supply is dwindling, it'll eventually become scarce, and our economy is functionally dependent on it. 

Really....short term profits are what's really killing us. Right wing ideology is killing us. Infinite growth on a finite planet is killing us. A refusal to invest in solar, wind, and nuclear is killing us. We should have a world with air conditioning, but that air conditioning being powered by an actually sustainable power grid that doesnt contribute to climate change. And you know what? We were mostly on the right track with Biden, I admit, we couldve done a little better than the inflation reduction act, but it was the best he could pass at the time. Beats Trump's spiteful mentality of ripping that up because screw democrats and then basically going back to an unfettered focus of fossil fuels...and then blowing up THAT market because of his dumb foreign policy decisions. 

Anyway, it just seems really dumb to blame air conditioning for climate change in particular because when you make Americans choose between comfort and the environment you're making the problem worse since most are short sighted and will choose comfort. And even worse, it's a fricking false choice. We should have sustainable energy AND air conditioning. And Im gonna be honest, I'd rather energy go to powering AC in summer than to all this AI crap. 

And yeah, that's how I see it.  

Discussing celebrating death and virtue signalling

 So another right winger died (Lindsey Graham), and while I wouldnt normally talk about it, since, my general view on these sorts of things is if I don't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say anything at all, a lot of left wing content creators I follow are absolutely giddy at this guy dying. And...idk, it rubs me the wrong way.

I guess I understand it if the guy is REALLY REALLY bad. I know I was doing a victory lap when we killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. But...other than that, I try to avoid doing that. It sets a bad precedent. While I might think a lot of right wingers are vile people, I generally want everyone to have a good life no matter how misguided they are. I might dislike or hate people, but I dont' generally actively wish harm on them. I guess it can be said some obituaries are read with great satisfaction, but I'm meh on graham. He was a right winger. He really liked war. he was anti gay rights, despite being in the closet himself, and I've found out WAAAAY too much about this man's sex life today.  Like stuff I wish I can purge from my memory because oh god, why. 

But yeah. To me, he was just a rank and file right winger. A typical conservative. Someone who pre trump hated him, but then got on board the trump train and sold his soul to the movement. His values were just that, typical right wing chrsitian values. His views on war were that of a typical neocon. Now, that doesn't make him a GOOD person, dont get me wrong. I mean, I pretty much view right wing ideology as evil, but again, it's just a very much standard and common evil in today's world. Part of my interest in politics is destroying Graham's ideology. But that doesnt mean I want him to die. Rather, I want him to change, or at least for those adherents to lose influence over time as millennials and zoomers start flexing their political muscles. I will celebrate a progressive victory way harder than I will a man's death, because that's the right way of doing things. Celebrating a guy's death feels icky to me. First of all, it's one of those things conservatives do. Conservatives have an ideology, and they want people who dont follow it to suffer. If anything that's the source of much of the evil that drives them. And when it seems like the left celebrates a guy dying, it's like they're doing the same thing. but I try to avoid thinking that these people deserve anything. They might be vile, but again, I want them to live well. I want them to stop rolling around in their own moral filth. The world sucks because of these people, but I genuinely want them to realize that, like I once did, and to change. Despite right wing ideology being evil and much of what's wrong with the world, most individual right wingers arent bad people, they're ignorant and misguided people. I dont want the world to burn, I want the world to learn. And one guy's death doesnt mean much if he's just gonna be replaced by someone just as bad. 

Second, I don't like the weird virtue signalling the left is doing recently. We saw it recently with the other graham, graham platner. About how people are falling over themselves to point out that they always thought that something was fishy about the guy and they were the first to point it out and they were always on the "right side" of history. And as I said, I dont care. Im not interested in virtue. If anything, one thing that i value about the right politically,.which is why I've been using the rumors about mcconnell's death to make a point about the right and power, is that the right fights for their ideals. And they do so effectively. The left virtue signals, the right organizes, seizes power structures, and focuses on indoctrinating their views into the masses. That's why they're the dominant ideological force and the left isn't. They control the levers of power, they control the education system. They formulate policy in their image, and they indoctrinate the next generation with its ideas. They understand politics is a battle of ideas and they will fight to make sure theirs remain dominant. And that's the thing. The right is basically a handful of rich people who knows what they're doing is ####ed but they do it anyway to preserve their extreme wealth (the epstein class) followed by a bunch of useful idiots brainwashed into these ways of thinking by religion, the education system (or lack thereof), etc. And that's where I fight, I focus on ideas, I focus on attacking the core values, and the structures that keep us brainwashed. As an ex right winger, I want right wing ideas to die, but that doesnt mean I want right wingers themselves to die. As an ex right winger, I want them to learn like I did. 

But the left...well....they're just interested in weird public displays of morality, virtue signalling, and believing that those who dont share their virtues deserve to suffer. Which doesnt make them much better than the right. It just makes them look like out of touch self righteous A-hats to be honest. No one actually likes these people. The game amongst themselves is weird virtue signalling and having to be more moral than each other, or to all be in the same clique hugboxing about how morally superior they are while doing F all to advance the causes in the real world.

Again, the right siezes power. They aim for the power structures, they aim for the centers of propaganda. They're focused on enforcing and reinforcing a political ideology, and making it self replicating like a mind virus. Graham is just one guy in this whole system. And he comes off to be as a true believer. Maybe one who is closeted, but let me say something about that. Religion makes it where those urges seem like "sin". So rather than approach the situation for what it is, these guys remain closeted, fighting that "lifestyle" as they call it publicly, but engaging in it privately because hey guess what, they actually have those urges, and doesnt have a proper worldview for handle that properly. The worldview pathologizes that stuff, it makes them live unhealthily as a result, but rather than abandon the worldview, they maintain the beliefs, leading to this conflict. it's not as hypocritical as the left wants it to be. Graham probably genuinely believed that stuff was sinful. But he also recognized that he was a sinner himself. Just the nature of christian self loathing. That mind virus does that.

Again, I try to be charitable to the people to some degree, while recognizing that what's evil is the ideology. And the ideology didnt start with people like lindsey graham. He's just a believer in it, just like the rest of them. A lot of people on the right genuinely believe in what they're fighting for. And while yes, what they're fighting for is complete and utter crap, they dont know better. I would know, I was one of them, I was in that mindset at one time. People like LIndsey graham arent evil as much as they're horribly ignorant. And it's the IDEAS that should be condemned as evil, not the people. 

So...RIP Lindsey Graham. Hope you're having some freaky you know what in heaven if that exists. You know you want to, and God, to my knowledge, doesn't actually care. I guess your life review was kinda crap but eh....that's gonna happen. But hey, you didnt know on earth. So you couldn't have known better, right? I guess that's what life here is, a learning experience. So...learn from it and move on I guess. 

Correction: Mitch McConnell is alive

 Okay, so lately I've been implying that Mitch McConnell is probably dead and that they were delaying announcing his death until the deadline for a special election has passed. Well, he's alive. Lindsey Graham just died though. Just wanted to offer a correction. Ya know, keep things as factual as possible on here. 

You shouldn't have to apologize for being right

 So....some house candidate in Michigan came out and basically said that a lot of black political leaders "defang the white left", and that this is a "big problem for left politics in this country." He's being pressured to apologize and walk back the comments. 

I see no falsehoods there. Again, I got nothing against most black voters, but let's be honest, a lot of the congressional black caucus tends to be very much in bed with the democratic establishment, and democrats LOVE to weaponize these guys against white progressives. We saw it in 2016 with the "Bernie Bro" narratives. "You see, you white progressives, you dont understand the black vote!" and crap like that. Told Sanders doesnt appeal to black people, told by really annoying centristy types we can't cater to white working class voters without alienating african American voters, blah blah blah. The democrats use race as a wedge issue to split up the left. They did it as recently as 2024 by making South Carolina the first primary state specifically because they knew the old, conservative, black voters there would back Biden, crushing a potential primary challenge.

I mean, I hate this crap we're we're just expected to apologize for everything. We saw this recently with Platner, where it's like we're just supposed to apologize for supporting him in the first place just because he turned out to be a sex pest. I mean, yeah, he is a sex pest, and yeah, his political career is over at this point, but a lot of us male progressives are getting put through the wringer because OMG HOW COULD WE SUPPORT SOMEONE LIKE THAT, along side weird discussions about rape culture and crap. Easy, the dude wanted to give us universal healthcare and his opponents didn't. Believe it or not, ideas like medicare for all, or in my case, UBI, are very important to us, and that's what really motivates us to support the left. but when the left wavers on those topics, and even worse, starts delving into toxic idpol to shame us for daring to hold reasonable opinions, then a lot of us are alienated from the movement, and then we're scratching our heads like we were in 2024-2025 wondering why we're losing young white males. It's because not only are the democrats not offering coherent, effective solutions to improve their lives, but they're hostile to their very existence. It's like they WANNA repel these guys. Because everything is a shame fest about how we need to STFU, they dont' care about our issues, and we gotta care more about POC and women and THEIR issues. And let's not forget LGBT+ too. Gotta drop everything for that 0.6% of the population that's trans and if we dont make their issues front and center we're "throwing them under the bus." 

Again, I have nothing against racial minorities, women, or the LGBT+ community. And I dont even see their issues as inherent opposed to mine. BUT...the democrats tend to use these issues to drive a wedge in potential progressive coalition to keep us infighting amongst ourselves. And quite frankly, that's all this guy pointed out. he wasn't wrong, he shouldn't have to apologize, and I'm sick of this weird moral shaming we're doing. So....just as I'm not sorry for backing Platner, I'm not sorry over comments like this. Sometimes we need people to be blunt and to say the thing, and while I understand it may offend some, I really REALLY don't care. I'm so fricking done with trying to contort my opinion and fit within their overton window. Again, I got nothing against any identity groups on a personal level, quite frankly, I only care when idpol is weaponized against my own interests. And yeah, maybe I'm a crass, stereotypical bernie bro. Oh well, boo hoo, that's who I am. I ain't apologizing for who I am, what I stand for, and calling BS out when I see it. Sick and tired of the moral policing on this side of the political aisle. 

I make no apologies for my former Platner support

 I know this is kinda edgy, but given the obsession on the left with regretting supporting Platner, and the desire to be "right", and all the oneupsmanship over who is more moral and who noticed the red flags first, I just wanna say, I don't care. I mean, this should be obvious, I already blasted the center with their obsession with respectability politics, but the far left is also doing this stuff, going on about how flawed he is, with some pointing out that they never liked him and how they were vindicated, blah blah.

Again. I don't care. I REALLY don't care. I supported Platner. he was a solid candidate until the rape accusations came out. Susan Collins is a republican. Janet Mills is an establishment centrist. Platner is a progressive. Am I supposed to apologize for backing a progressive? I know on the hard left a lot of this morality and virtue stuff is tied to this weird pharasaic culture of appearing moral and signalling the right virtues, and a lot of it is also driven, quite frankly, by idpol. There's all this talk about feminism and how we need to "believe all women" and how we look like chuds supporting the guy. We got some going on about how it looks bad with the international left because it makes us white male bernie bro types like we'd sell out any group at a moment's notice and uh...what kind of insular fudge is this?! Leftists have such weird ideological brainworms, man.

I'm simple. You run on a progressive platform vs a centrist and a republican, and I support you, period. And Platner was a progressive. I make no apologies for doing this. He was a solid candidate at the time. Do I support him NOW? No. I do believe he should be recalled, and replaced with another progressive. I do believe the accusations are credible, and let's leave it at that. I'm willing to change my mind in light of new evidence, and I DO change my mind in the light of new evidence. And that's how I square this whole circle. Based on the evidence that I had, Platner was the best candidate, period. Hell, you could technically argue he still is given the alternatives, but let's face it, he's so radioactive, no one wants to touch him, not even me. 

Still, if anything, I'll be looking back on this a few months from now asking if it was worth it to abandon him. And I think this is something that we should ask ourselves. Tensions are high right now, but given these accusations are pushed to basically "shock" us out of supporting our nominee and giving a rival faction the opportunity to push their preferred candidate on us, was it worth it? Was it worth it standing on principle to abandon our best chance at a progressive in the seat because he sucks on character issues? If anything, that's how I look at this. At the end of the day, our options are: Susan Collins, a moderate democrat, platner, or another progressive. If we get another progressive, then cool, but I suspect the democrats are gonna push Mills or some moderate on us who is morally compromised in other ways. And we should ask ourselves, is it worth it? Is it worth standing on this vague sense of moral purity and get screwed out of our goals?

That's the real question I'm gonna be asking long term. I mean, as you guys can tell, I kinda agree with the idea that Platner is too morally compromised to continue as nominee, the behaviors uncovered arent just immoral, they're egregiously criminal. BUT...at the end of the day, politics is about power. And us giving up our power to a rival faction that has a vested interest in stabbing us in the back doesn't sit right with me either. Do we see MAGA abandoning Trump because of these kinds of accusations? And sure, you can say that us having standards is what separates us from MAGA, but dang it, I don't wanna simply be "better than" MAGA, I wanna WIN. And if we can't win, we'll be governed by our lessers anyway. There is no value in politics in going down with the ship on principle. I know people kind of think that perspective is morally disgusting, it's slimy, but hey, that's how I see it. If we dont stick to our guns, we end up losing and being ruled by those who ARE willing to go all the way.

Basically, we're screwed. If we do support the guy, we go down with the ship with him. He can't win an election now. Not in his state. He's too compromised and tainted. The public will never got for it. Him staying in the race is the equivalent of handing the seat over to Collins while looking like a total POS in the process. But again, doing the "right" thing also hurts us too. We lose what could have been a decent progressive in the senate in favor of someone who is IMO morally compromised as well, just in another way. 

Honestly, I think we should talk about who is ultimately responsible for this conundrum. It's Platner himself. Platner decided to run with all of these skeletons in his closet, and he imploded because of it. ANd now HE put US in this position in the first place. We shouldnt blame anyone who supported Platner for now things turned out. We should blame Platner himself for running despite these compromises. And yeah, a lot of us were willing to overlook a lot. You gotta do it when they're the only one running on a platform that's good. But his scandals kept escalating until one dropped that was just devastating. Platner shouldnt have run at all. Would someone else have answered the call if he didn't? Im not sure. But honestly, yeah, dont feel bad if you supported the guy. The moral guilt, as far as I'm concrned, isnt on his supporters, its on him. 

With that said, no, I don't make apologies for supporting him. He was the best candidate at the time, the rationale for supporting him was solid in my view. I dont regret the logic associated with it. Im not trying to play the whole "Im the most moral" game. And if anything I feel a twinge of regret from knowingly allowing myself to be manipulated by a rival faction that has a vested interest in wanting him gone so they can push their own candidate on us. Still, given the alternatives, supporting him isnt any better. Morality aside, he cant win anyway. He lost 7 points in the polls in the past month, and that was before this one dropped, he probably would definitely lose the seat for us if he remains in the race. So, we're just screwed, and at the end of the day, the person most responsible for this is platner himself, for running in the first place and putting us in such an uncomfortable position when his scandals came to light. The dude failed his constituents by doing that. And that's how I REALLY see it. 

Simulating the effect of a possible democratic voter rebellion in Maine

 So....let's really start thinking about this empirically. I understand my simulation model is kinda flawed, but it's good or close situations like this. With Platner dropping out, let's assume a blank slate for Maine. We don't know who the candidate is, what their polling data will look like and while I've seen internals going around, who knows. Maine is also a very weird state with polling, with Collins being a historic underperformer. So we really don't know where Maine is right now. it was at D+0.7% with Platner still in, but that was pre scandal, and I'm gonna assume it's now closer to R+4. 

In terms of my raw election model, with Maine being neutral, we're at a 50% chance to win the senate, with Maine and Iowa both being coin flips, and the result being 50-48 with either faction gaining up to 2 seats. 

 We could see 52-48 DEMs as Iowa and Maine go democrat. 50-50 if both go republican, or maybe some 51-49 mix as one goes each way. Given how close the other races are, we could see anything from 48-52 REP to 54-46 DEM. It really is up in the air. I mean, ANY of these outcomes is reasonably possible. This is why I'm saying that the senate doesnt RELY on maine, but it does help to win it. There are like 6 races in coin flip range and any of them could go for either party. We might see the republicans sweep all 6, the democrats sweep all 6, or some mix in between. And maine itself doesnt change my main model much given Iowa also being as pivotal here.

With that said, let's discuss simulations. With Maine being at 0.0% or a tie, if I do 100 simulations with my current model, I get:

Dems: 50

Reps: 17

Tie: 33

We can get some variation between sample sizes of 100, but anything within, say, 3-5% of that is probably within the margin of error I'd say. 

With that said, let's change Maine to R+4, simulating an unpopular outcome for replacing platner (or even a possible keeping him on the ballot, since I'd estimate R+4 is about where the race is post scandal)::

 

This is what the main forecast looks like, given it operates on a wave theory of elections, it's not much different, but that can lack some variation. If we assume individual outcomes aren't linked, and we go with another 100 simulations, we get:

Dems: 36

Reps: 35

Tie: 29

It seemed pretty even between the three options with Maine being R+4. And it did hurt the dems' chances at taking the senate. One less seat functionally up or grabs means one less seat to their totals in the simulator a decent amount of the time, meaning that given near 50-50 nature of the senate predictions, means that assuming we dont assume a wave does most of the work here, we could see a lot of weird scenarios happen. Democrats go from a 50% chance of winning in my simulator to a 36% chance, with the republicans making up most of that ground directly, going from 17% to 35%. 

If we want to look at it simply, I'd say this. If Maine is a tossup, the general distribution of results is 50% D, 33% tie, and 17% R. That's 1/2 of the results being D, 1/3 being ties, and 1/6 being R. Given the GOP controls the vice presidency, that's functionally 50-50. 

Assuming that the dems screw up on the platner replacement (or alternatively, if he stays in), we could see a shift to 33% D, 33% R, and 33% tie. All 3 outcomes are roughly as likely as each other, +/- some small amount of variation. That amounts to a 2/3 chance the republicans functionally maintain the senate. 

So yeah, losing Maine WILL hurt the democrats, and it CAN in theory decide the whole thing assuming all the tossups are functionally independent of each other. Whether you see elections like that is another thing. I think in the real world, error is gonna go one way or another, meaning most will go one way or the other. A stronger blue wave will amount to a bluer map, a weaker one will lead to a redder one. Remember what happened in 2024, my map had all kinda of weird combinations of the 7 swing states going red and blue, but in reality what ended up happening was all went red as trump systemically overperformed. Had harris overperformed, we could've seen the states swing back the other way and we could've seen a 319-219 outcome. The same can happen here. So it really depends what kind of model you believe in. With that said, if wave theory of elections turns out to be accurate, we could see a blowout for either side, with Maine not making much of a difference. But assuming the result is somewhere in between and things are a lot more marginal, and individual error on the state level matters a lot more, yeah, losing Maine will functionally destroy the democrats' current electoral advantage in the senate.

Just something more to think about for anyone thinking of protest voting against the eventually democratic nominee in maine.