And then there's climate change...

 *sigh*, sorry to continue being a bummer tonight, but I've seen several streamers I follow talking about the so called "Super El Nino" happening this year. I've heard all kinds of apocalyptic crap about this, how this could trigger a global famine, to how it could cause the southwest to run out of water, and while I asked a weather obsessed friend about it they didn't seem to have strong opinions on any of that happening, he did mention the 1877 one where a famine did happen. 

Either way, it did lead to a larger discussion on climate change on vaush's stream tonight. And uh...yeah...dystopian future. Look, I'm not gonna say the worst of the worst outcomes is gonna happen, it could, I'm not an expert and aint gonna be inclined to give into hysteria, but vaush has a point here. We humans are so fixated on our consumerism and just trying to work to survive, that we're not thinking about the big picture. We are messing with climate patterns that quite literally sustain the very economies we revere so deeply. And we have a choice, we can either do things sustainably and live the way that ends up being perpetually, or we can push our environment to the point of collapse, and then end up living far worse in the future. We are doing the latter. And idk where exactly all the big tipping points are....some suggest they could be in the next 15 years or so, which is really really bad. but we are playing with fire.

Really, we should have been on this. Some knew about this fifty years ago. Like people were sounding the alarms back in the 1970s. And what did we do? Ignore all warnings and just keep charging ahead. If anything, remember the scarcity thing? We REALLY dont wanna give up oil. Even though we should. Reagan went drill baby drill, republicans ignored the issue due to religious fundamentalism and big oil money, and yeah, we let it fester. Democrats refused to act on it. Bernie wanted a green new deal. Biden wanted build back better, which is IMO more sensible given the 30 year timeline we had at the time, but then we only got the inflation reduction act and Trump rolled that back. So now we're way behind again. Because republicans just won't fricking let progress happen. And then they'll attribute the extreme weather conditions to god punishing us for letting gay people get married or something. 

But yeah, this is bad. We are destroying our environment with our economic model, and because it isnt a destruction that causes backlash all at once, we just keep acting like it's normal. Well, as this century progresses, the conditions are gonna get progressively worse until we DO get pushback. And again, this process might start in the next 15 years or so. Hell if super el nino is that bad, it could start this year even. We could see mass famine or displacements in the worst case scenario. Idk if that will happen, but given the fertilizer situation with iran compounding things...eh....maybe? 

That's the thing about capitalism. Without it, the modern world isnt possible at all, BUT...unless you practice it with a sane level of moderation, and clearly control for the worst aspects of it, well...it sucks. it enslaves the populace, and yeah, it's literally destroying the planet for us. We might look back at our world 100 years from now like wtf were we thinking. We had it all and we blew it. If only we decided to embrace a more sustainable version of the model rather than going in with growth at all costs, we could've had a utopia. But scarcity might continue to exist and be WORSE in the future BECAUSE we didnt conserve now. Seriously, if we like...stopped working so much now, we could have a reasonable living standard with a short work week. 100 years from now, we might not be able to grow enough food to feed everyone because the climate changed so much. We might have water refugees fleeing the southwest as it dries up. New Orleans might be in the ocean, as will other coastal cities. And because people are stupid, they'll just continue to assume that that's just how the world is because of sin and we gotta get right with god or some crap. Like holy crap, no, you stupid people, you gotta get right with the environment. Sure, we can use resources from nature to enhance our lives. But that stuff is finite, and if we overuse it and abuse it, we're just risking a catastrophe. Think of a fish tank that has too many fish and gets too filled with poop or runs out of oxygen or something. Yeah. We're at risk of doing that to ourselves. This planet is our fish tank. 

And I know elon musk talks about colonizing mars, we aint fricking colonizing mars. We dont have the tech for it, and if we cant even stave off disaster on our own planet, how can be change a planet with a radically incompatible climate to be compatable with us? The idea is nonsensical. This isnt like starfield where humans are adaptable to a wide variety of environments, but earth is destroyed because of slipspace travel or something. The earth is our only home, we evolved to live on it, and we're messing with systems that are changing it. And if we change it too much, we die. Regardless, this altered earth is still going to be massively more compatible with us than the moon, or mars. Like, think of it this way. The earth is the only planet we know of that supports life. And it's the only planet that likely supports OUR life. We're MADE for this earth, and this earth is made for us. We evolved together. Despite this, we've had five mass extinctions are various forms of "climate change' caused a mass die off of life. The last one was the comet that killed the dinosaurs. And we're working on #6. Seriously, thinking beyond mere lifetimes, and thinking in terms of eons, this might be the next mass extinction event. Caused by us, and our stupidity. This warming of the planet we're causing? Yeah, we might be killing ourselves and the ecosystem off! Seriously. You ever see those memes about like the environment with the house of cards? We dont care about the cards, were at the top. But okay, what happens when enough cards get pulled out of the card house? The whole thing collapses. What do you think we're doing now? And even with all that destruction, a post sixth mass extinction earth will STILL likely be more habitable to current humans than any other planet in this solar system. The idea that we can compensate for our own stupidity here by colonizing the stars is insane. Other planets need to have proper levels of oxygen content, water, the ability to grow food, a good climate, an electromagnetic barrier to shield us from the sun, the right amount of gravity, etc. Any of these variables being off means...we cant live there. And what we're doing is shifting our variables by relatively small amounts that STILL might kill us, but we can somehow overcome much larger fundamental incompatibilities by expanding to the stars? Are we crazy? What crazy pills is elon taking here? Wait, hold on, I know, its ketamine. And being an out of touch billionaire. Those two things can make anyone that grossly out of touch.

But yeah. It's all so stupid. Im not saying we gotta give up all capitalism, or never engage in any consumerism at all. Just cut back somewhat, embrace a world with less work, rethink our energy systems, how we transport people around a bit, etc. We still have time to stop the absolute worst outcomes from occurring. I dont think we have a great window in that regard. As I said, it might only be 15-25 years or something by this point, based on some computer models saying that our economies might be screwed by 2040, and by 2050, I know that's the IPCC's timeline for carbon neutrality. But yeah. All I know is what we're doing isn't sustainable, and future generations are gonna HATE us for what we're doing to them now. Well, that's if they're smart enough to realize what we're doing. They might not. Not just because of climate change leading to a dark age, but also the fact that the wealthy and powerful rely on religious indoctrination to ensure most people are too stupid to realize it. 

Which...to future generations who may or may not read this...yeah. That's why we don't. Our economy is run by the ultra wealthy, and most of us are too stupid to do anything about it. Our economy keeps us in a state of constant scarcity where most of us are working too hard and struggling to survive to care. And those wealthy enough to not struggle dont wanna give up their living standards to accommodate changes. Capitalism keeps us from doing anything. And yeah, we literally got all of these crazy religious people who take the bible literally and think climate change cant happen based on that. Just so you know. Because Im sure a lot of you guys will be like "WHAT ARE WE THINKING?!" basically that. Climate change is an issue for "the future" if it happens at all. We just assume we'll fix it and it'll all just go away, or oh well, it wont be us who deals with it. That's future generations' problem. And again, religious fundamentalism ensures that many will just deny it's even a thing. "Why would god make a world we can destroy?" Yeah...

Anyway, enough ranting for tonight. I just wanted to cover that given everyone is freaking out about super el nino possible causing a mass famine next year. And maybe it can happen, maybe it wont. Im not an expert. But yeah. This just...isn't good. Anyone who denies climate change is a fool. Our weather has been erratic AF this year and it's all climate change. Heck, it's been erratic for years now. ANd yes, summers are hotter than they were when I was a kid. And winters are typically less cold and less snowy. This is all happening. But people have their heads in the sand on it. 

Why it's hard to get excited for "the future" these days

 So, I keep getting spammed with these annoying starlink commercials where it's like some old guy talking about "the future" and how "it's hard to predict the future, but I'm sure it's gonna be fantastic" or something like that.

My knee jerk reaction to the commercial is "F U Elon Musk"...but...honestly, it's kind of a frustrating realization to realize that I'm no longer the optimist I used to be about "the future." I was a more OG technofuturist. I've ALWAYS liked the future, and the idea of new technology, like pocketable computers (smartphones), and flying cars, and robots that do all of the work for us, but it seems like unless you're some ###hole tech CEO, the masses have lost their enthusiasm for the future, and so have I in a way.

I mean, this is kind of an expansion of what we were talking about the other day about how college grads are booing tech CEOs going on about how AI is changing everything. I should LOVE AI and LOVE the future. But I also can't blame people for being pissed at this tech for taking their jobs. And it pains me to actually sympathize with literal luddites, but here's the thing. All this "future" stuff is all well and good, but a lot of the time, it's fundamentally incompatible with our existing social institutions. Capitalism is a system based on scarcity. it's based on the perpetuation of scarcity. It's based on manipulating peoples' wants and needs to pressure them to work to produce more stuff, while simultaneously monetizing the crap out of things. And I think that's what kills "futurism" for a lot of us. Capitalism just ruins everything. 

Now, I'm gonna preface this again by saying, I'm NOT a full on leftist. Capitalism is the best system we have at this current stage of our development, and it will need to be necessary well into the future. Even with these futuristic sci fi aesthetics, we're probably gonna need to rely on some level of capitalism for that stuff to work. After all, it is capitalism that spurs technological development. yes, the state can help direct resources, but between a capitalist economy where these ###hole CEOs innovate to make a profit and a state run economy where state bureaucrats have to be the ones to make things happen and often don't, the decentralized structure of capitalism is gonna be better. Obviously we should have some mix of both, and I am for a mix of both, but yeah. Capitalism is necessary. You do socialism and society seems stuck in a perpetual time warp of the era that the socialism was implemented in, which is why most socialist countries (minus modern day china, itself a hybrid economy) end up looking like they're perpetually stuck in the 1950s. Because guess when many of them implemented socialism? Exactly.

But at the same time, capitalism, especially the more purist forms of capitalism we've trended toward since the mid 20th century, well...it seems like no matter how technologically advance things become, they still suck. We talk about robots taking the jobs, but we don't ask "well how will we take care of people when robots take the jobs?" We just talk about "creating new jobs", which itself is dystopian, and output the burden on individuals to sink or swim. Meanwhile systemically, we have a "war on normal people" while main streets are turning into ghost towns, major metropolises do look futuristic but then rent is insane amounts and it's difficult to get anywhere because high population density, car centric infrastructure, and jobism aren't really compatible with each other. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. 

Smartphones give us access to unlimited amounts of information, but then much of it is paywalled, and those phones become "leashes" for our employers to get ahold of us at any time. Despite all the labor saving devices, our lives are as fast and busy as ever and it's stressing us out. We can't afford things. When we can, they break on us because of planned obsolescence, yeah, we literally make stuff designed to break or go obsolete to keep people on a never ending cycle of consumption. Tech CEOs start going on about "the future" but it's never something where we're like "WOW WE WANT THAT" but rather its forced on us. AI has some uses, but it's not THAT amazing of a technology, and yet CEOs talk about "the future" where they sell "intelligence" to us on tap. We build datacenters that spike our electricity costs and suck up our water and create massive levels of pollution for this tech, which many of us dont want, and we're always told we're gonna be "left behind" if we dont embrace it. And while being "left behind" sounds like a blessing given the modern context, because they control the infrastructure and the institutions we depend on, we end up being forced to embrace it or being "left behind" literally means using old deprecated tech that doesnt work any more and not being able to do our jobs and getting fired.  

On the energy thing. We should embrace green energy. We should want "free energy", but the wealthy dont want that. They want us on oil and gas because it's energy they can control us with. If they cant charge us for it, then it's a bad idea, capitalism is designed to create constant dependence on the system, it's not freedom like it's sold as, it's a cycle of dependence sold to us AS freedom.

Btw...that's the core problem. Capitalism can't become too efficient at meeting peoples' needs, or it might obsolete itself. This cycle of dependence was created intentionally. It was created a hundred years ago, ironically by FDR, who I normally see as a hero. But in this case, he was a villain. The wealthy and powerful feared a society in which people didn't have to work, and had no desire to consume. They feared capitalism would automate itself out of existence. So instead they created consumerism to keep us on a cycle of work and consumption. ANd then as all that new deal stuff was rolled back half a century later, we went back to the gilded age more or less. We're in a new gilded age. And that's the problem, and this system was designed to enslave us.

And in this system, what are we getting from "the future?" We're getting mass surveillance as palantir decides to spy on us en masse and create massive blackmail databases on us. We're getting robot dogs that kill people. We're getting the president of the united states declaring people with "anti capitalist" beliefs as potential terrorists and putting us on watch lists. Technology is becoming dystopian, rather than utopian.

Rather than living in like star trek, or the jetsons, or futurama, we're getting something more like say, total recall, where the martian government kept people paying for air to keep them in a state of constant desperation to work for them. It didnt matter if there was tech that would auto terraform the planet into an earth like state, the control and desperation that scarcity created was the point. And they'd kill anyone who actually tried to end their control over people. And that's kinda where our society is. We invade foreign countries, force capitalism and dependence on them, bomb them if they disagree with us, and now we're trying to mass surveil people. Given trump's alliance with big tech, we're heading toward like a form of techno fascism or techno feudalism, than anything star trek like. We're heading toward a future like cyberpunk 2077 where people are in a constant state of poverty and desperation while corporations control everything. Basically, we're not going toward the good futures, we're going toward the bad futures.

Look, i love the aesthetics of futurism and the whole idea of the future being all sci fi technology that makes our lives better, but I'm kind of realizing this is full on incompatible with our social systems. It doesn't matter how great the future is on paper, as long as we dont deal with our underlying social institutions, it's gonna suck, and in some cases, this new tech might make our lives worse. Robots that do all the work dont matter if now we have to figure out how millions of people get paid, because our social institutions are designed around work. And btw, I do have answers on that, at least in the transition, but will we implement them? Lol nope. Because the rich people control everything and they dont wanna give up anything to the peasants. So they're destroying the fabric of society, won't allow the proper changes to make lives better for the masses, and stuff gets worse.

And did I forget to mention how dystopian everything is and how we're on a constant cycle of paying for things that are supposed to make our lives better, but in reality just make things harder and more complicated, and how we're ruining the environment, and how we're creating tools of mass surveillance and oppression? 

Yeah...

Like, again, I wanna believe in "the future", but until we start fixing our social institutions, we're going toward the more dystopian science fiction worlds, not the actual good ones. 

Defending the public option and dumping on McMorrow's weak answers

 So, Emma Vigeland got to interview Mallory McMcmorrow and MAN that didn't go very well. McMorrow just comes off so bad in practice. Like, she's terrible as a politician. On public option over M4A she went into like incoherent defenses about how republicans in office would F it up, when they F it up anyway and yeah. She just comes off as weak and fake. 

With that said, I wanna try to explain how I'd defend a public option. My answers don't translate to McMcmorrow because im not a weak moderate trying to masquerade as a progressive, I am a progressive in my own right, but yeah.

Defending McMorrow's point better than she did

 Okay, so this isn't my primary reason to be pro public option, but I'll put it this way. If you go M4A, you put all your eggs in one basket. And it's the government basket, meaning if the government screws up, healthcare struggles for many. Conservatives claim that government healthcare can lead to rationing and death panels. It doesn't have to, but imagine DOGE getting their hands on it and cutting it. They WOULD be the types to just start killing off the old and sick because it's too expensive, while simultaneously claiming that government healthcare cant work. it's bad enough when the GOP guts the ACA or a public option, but imagine if this is our ONLY healthcare option. The whole country is screwed. Currently there are prohibitions on taxpayer funds to be used on things like abortions. Abortions are healthcare. How can we maintain access to reproductive healthcare for women if the government runs the whole system and the right is willing to enforce their twisted ideology through the government? They could effectively just ban abortion on the federal level because the government is the only game in town.

I mean, maybe private options should at least exist. We both want universal healthcare. We just differ in what it looks like. It's fine if we have medicare for all who want it, to use a term some moderate public option supporters have used, but there is still room for private markets in healthcare, and I'm not sure a one size fits all approach works. 

Really, that's all that needs to be said. It's that simple. Basically, I argued McMorrow's point better than McMorrow.

Now, to go further:

My own defense of a public option over single payer

 Look, I like the idea of single payer, it's a very elegant solution to healthcare, but it's also insanely expensive. It cost $3 trillion in 2020, with $1-1.2 trillion already coming from government give or take. It would take $2 trillion to fund. And Bernie struggled to fund it himself. Last I checked his own plan had a gap of a few hundred billion in practice. Not fatal, but not great. We could work with it, and many who are dead set with it could probably tweak things to make it work...except....

Now it's $5 trillion a year. And we need $3 trillion. And I just can't make the numbers work. Now, again, I could, if this were my only priority, but it's not. I also wanna fund a $4.6 trillion UBI plan that most progressives dont actively advocate for in their campaigns. Seriously, I kind of have different ideas than a lot of progressives. Most model themselves off of Bernie Sanders. My own plans are closer to Yang. Sanders doesn't have UBI as a priority. That's why that lane of progressive can fund it and I cannot. And while you might say, "well, then screw your UBI this is more important." Well....agree to disagree.

The fact is, to make universal healthcare work, I'd have to cut my UBI in half, or move to a negative income tax. Both of which would compromise my UBI. I would rather compromise on healthcare. My own goals are to end poverty and free people from the coercion of employment. UBI is more of a swiss army knife of policies. It's central. Traditional progressives are still jobists. And while medicare for all would unlink healthcare from employment itself (again, it's more elegant), eh...if I'm forced to compromise, it's on healthcare. 

I'll defend this. My public option plan is based on medicare extra for all. It's a public option that automatically opts in all uninsured people. It bills them in line with their income. People with no income or, with a UBI, just a basic income, pay nothing. They get free healthcare. Those who work pay a bit of their salaries, like 2-8% based on their income, but here's the thing, if we had a single payer plan, these guys would be paying 4-5% or so anyway under Bernie's plan. And that might end up being higher, like 6% or something to make the numbers actually work. So you're paying either way, it's just a matter of how. You can pay for the public option, or pay for private insurance. THose who are employed probably still get private insurance. They can buy into medicare extra though. Those who are unemployed or underemployed have it worst under the current system. This would ensure everyone has automatic coverage. Currently you have to pay like $400 a month on the private market with a $9200 deductible. That's like $14400 in healthcare costs. Medicare extra would reduce these significantly, with a $5000 deductible max, say, 2% of your income at a low wage job monthly, that's like...$400 a year at $10 an hour. So you're saving $9k already versus the current system. Then my UBI gives you $16000 a year, or say, I did a half UBI at $8000 with medicare for all. Yeah, you can see how my plan very obviously benefits people. Just the UBI alone offsets whatever higher deductibles they'd have under UBI. 

 EDIT: Was in a hurry earlier, want to correct myself and point out that the deductibles and out of pocket costs likely also scale with income, so low income people pay very little at all, even if they are on the hook for some of it. It's generally people above 400-600% of the federal poverty line who pay full boat under such a plan, and for those people....there's always the private market if they want it cheaper.  

 Conclusion 

With that said....eh, I think a public option is quite defensible here, given my full economic package. Again, if you dont prioritize UBI and want a traditional bernie progressive, that's an ideological disagreement and a disagreement on priorities. We can agree to disagree. But as a UBI stan, I stand by my ideas. And if you dont like my ideas, vote for someone else, what can I say? 

And yeah, that's how I defend a public option. I dont expect everyone to agree with me, if anything, I straight up tell people "if you dont like my ideas vote for someone else", but yeah. I feel like this kind of defense is better than mcmorrow stuttering all over and not coherently defending anything. Seriously, why is she so bad at this? This is why I flipped on her so hard. She was originally my preferred candidate in the michigan race but then she crapped the bed so hard that now I'm in the el sayed camp. I really dont want weak liberals susceptible to corporate money here. McMorrow seems too compromised to support tbqh. She's supposed to be the middle ground soft progressive candidate but more and more she just reminds me of Kamala Harris. Bleh. Fauxgressive. 

Discussing college graduates booing speeches about AI

 So...this is, in a sense, yet another "battle of the cringe." in one corner, we got college grads indoctrinated into wanting to work after college, and who likely have tons of student loan debt, and in the other, we have out of touch tech CEOs giving speeches about how AI is amazing at commencement ceremonies.

 People might think I'm punching down on the college grads, and in a way I am, but as someone who was in that situation, and still technically is despite graduating over a decade ago, here's how I see it. We shouldnt want to work. We want to work, because we've been conditioned to work. We're told that's how life is and if you wanna survive, you need to work. We tell people to go to college so they dont end up in a dead end job, and when people leave school, they kinda hope not to end up in a dead end job. 

But then the tech bros are taking their jobs. And they're pissed off at the tech bros waxing quasi religious about how amazing AI is and blah blah blah when it's making their lives miserable. You can't blame the kids to some degree for wanting the existing social contract to...you know...work. 

But that's the thing. it doesn't. It quite frankly never did. It's always been a sham, and we should've wanted to change it for a while now. But we never do. We just end up talking about creating more jobs, while we're all indoctrinated to want more jobs, and rather than use technology to free us from labor, we cheer on our own enslavement by calling for the creation of more jobs, to fulfill a social contract that sucks and is increasingly unnecessary in the first place. 

Which is why I cringe at the whole jobist sentiments we see where people are anti AI because it "steals jobs." This is just luddism. I cant blame people for being pissed, but I feel like people are pissed at the wrong thing. The tech bros are right in a way, these technologies have the potential to revolutionize society. HOWEVER, for those changes to benefit the masses, that underlying social contract has to change. 

Will those tech bro CEOs advocate for the right changes? I dont think so. Like, a decade ago, I thought Elon Musk was one of the more sensible billionaires...because he talked about wanting UBI. But even then the cracks were obvious in his worldview. For example, he had a batcrap insane work ethic, wanted his employees to have a batcrap insane work ethic, and honestly, if UBI existed, he'd have no power over his employees to force his batcrap insane work ethic on them. Then the guy got involved with the Trump administration, outed himself as a nazi, made up nonsense about mass welfare fraud at doge to justify undermining social safety nets, and we saw the guy's true colors. This google CEO...I'd imagine he's cut from a similar cloth. Most of them are after all. They talk a big game about AI this and AI that, but i dont think they fully recognize what AI actually means for the labor force and our social contract. I mean....AI is all well and good, doing away with labor is all well and good. HOWEVER, if you aren't gonna advocate for proper solutions to the problems AI creates for our existing social systems, please STFU about it. Because yeah....we need to make those changes. And dont get me wrong, I'm PRO those changes. I DONT want a world where we all have to work for a living in an era where it's nowhere near as necessary as it was in the past. I've long since known we're literally just creating jobs to fulfill a social contract that shouldnt even exist any more, which is why im so blase on the subject. Like...we shouldnt want to work. We should want machines to do work. We should want to liberate people from work. But until we start establishing ways to take care of people outside of the work force, like a UBI, universal healthcare, etc., all we're doing by imposing these technologies on the masses is ruining their futures, just like my future was ruined. 

Idk, the reason I think the students are cringe is because I feel like the last thing we should want is to preserve this system of work and jobs, and yet people turn into massive luddites and rage against the machines in order to do so. it's nonsensical to me. Again, we shouldnt want to work. And if technology creates a jobless future, that's fine, as long as we take care of people outside of jobs. 

But again, the billionaires dont want that. They think "oh goody I save on labor costs", without realizing they're destroying their own work force. And then they oppose any changes to make the world better. Which is the real problem here. The real problem with AI and the tech is the billionaire class. It's the fact that they wield the tech, they use it to ruin peoples' lives, and then they oppose the changes necessary to make such a system work.

Again, if you're pro AI, you should also be pro UBI. If you arent pro UBI and you're pro AI, you're part of the problem. With that said, I guess the billionaires are the cringier faction. After all, the students are just victims of a social system that forced them to make certain life choices while then screwing them out of the upside that justified said choices in the first place. Their worst crime is...wanting the existing social contract to work after spending their whole lives doing everything right to get the best deal they can within it. The billionaires are ruining the economic system for the rest of us while opposing any positive change to fix things. So I'll always side with the workers over the billionaires on that one.

Still. I do feel like the whole "I want to work thing" is cringe luddism. Do we really wanna work? Or were we forced to work in a system that told us if we dont our lives are gonna be miserable?  Because im gonna be honest, as someone who graduated college and quickly found the system of work not...working...I deprogrammed myself from that where I honestly checked out of that system mentally. And I kinda just see that system for what it is: slavery without calling it such. Idk. I just encourage others to think the same way, rather than going in a direction of hating on labor saving technology in the name of preserving jobs we shouldnt want to do any more. 

Why the democratic enthusiasm gap exists

 So...as we saw in my previous article, elections are won by enthusiasm. However, I'd argue that republicans are somewhat less likely to bottom out on enthusiasm and tend to perform relatively strongly regardless, while democrats tend to either perform strongly or bomb. The reasons for this should be obvious if you pay attention to this blog for any length of time, but it's worth building an argument here given the DNC autopsy got me going in this direction.

Basically....it comes down to this. Republicans believe in their own branding, and are super enthusiastic about their party and its goals. The christian nationalists are truly religious psychos who want to see christianity imposed on everyone. The small government people actively want the end of social programs and tax cuts, believing that they'll make more money. On foreign policy, republicans vascillate between not wanting to be involved in war at all (the paleocon position) while simultaneously flipping to X country is the biggest existential threat and we need to blow them up to keep ourselves safe. We saw that recently with iran. Even as trump's policies raise gas prices and cause cascading inflation, the republican base will still insist it's all joe biden's fault, or that Trump is playing 5D chess or something. Admittedly, the GOP is straight up delusional, but the general gist of being a conservative is this. They have goals, the party tangibly works toward those goals, and the base is willing to vote for and fight for those goals. And because the GOP delivers on them, the party will fall on their sword for them. Some of it is delusion. As I said, I woke up, realized what they were selling was crazy, and abandoned them as a party, but those on the inside really believe in that vision of the country, and as we saw with thomas massie, they'll show up to throw out anyone who is seen as standing in the way.

Democrats? it's like we hate ourselves. We have no goals. We're constantly told we can't have goals or "purity test", that we're a "big tent", that we gotta compromise. We lecture voters about how the republicans show up no matter what, and we should too, but without the party being willing to put in the work to do it. They argue with voters and lecture them about what their priorities should be, and try to corral them into voting blue no matter who. And when voters clearly arent interested in what they're selling, they act like passive aggressive little craps going on about how we voted against our interests and dont know what's good for ourselves, and that if only we voted for them this wouldn't be happening.

Admittedly, then the dems lose, the cycle resets, and the republicans are on the clock before the public turns against them and elects democrats again, but they only elect democrats in opposition of republicans. No one really believes in the democrats, their branding, or what they're doing, because they barely have a branding, or goals. For as much as the right claims we want XYZ, and how fired up the republican base is on campaigning against XYZ, when you ask the dems if they want XYZ, they're like 'oh god no, I dont want any of that." I mean, they dont have clear goals and clear priorities. They're rudderless. As such, the second they take power and are forced to govern, not only do they lose independents who flip between the parties, but they tend to lose their own base, including young voters who are typically enthusiastic to vote for them the first time, only to be disappointed they dont govern properly in office. So dems stay home, republicans stay relatively fired up at all times, and republicans end up voting more consistently while dems have wild swings on enthusiasm.

I aint saying republicans dont have enthusiasm issues themselves. 2006/2008? Yeah. Lack of enthusiasm. 2012, lack of enthusiasm. Of course, in those cycles, they campaigned like democrats do, with the party held together by weak opposition to an opposing candidate who is seen as an existential threat, while completely unenthused by their own candidates, because those candidates dont represent their values. Of course, republicans recovered from this relatively quickly. In response to the republican failures of neoconservatism, the tea party was created and injected insane energy into the GOP. The dems just....never had their own tea party. And every time we try to, the establishment seems to fight it harder than they fight the other side. Which really makes you think whose side they're actually on.  This has been the problem with the dems for the past decade, and is the primary lesson any "autopsy" needs to walk away with. Harris lost because she lost millions of voters who voted for Biden. Biden won around 81 million people. harris had 75 million. Where did 6 million people go? Well, some voted for Trump, but a lot of them just stayed home and didnt bother showing up. 

The real question is, how do you get those people to show up for the dems time and time again? Dems think they can lecture us while projecting weird fantasies of conservatives showing up no matter how crappy their candidates are, ignoring that those voters actually are into that crap. Like, just because a candidate seems terrible to us, those guys have such a radically different value system that things that are repulsive to us...are things they like. They love that cruel, crass, orange jack###. LOVE him. Are so enthused by him that they make stores selling his merch, that his supporters by and put on everything. They turn their personal brand into a political statement. Meanwhile we libs think we're better for NOT having that level of enthusiasm when in reality half of us would rather not vote for our milquetoast, crappy candidates at all. 

The fact is, we do politics wrong on a fundamental level. politics is a battle of ideas. We want to win, because we have a vision we want to see implemented. The biggest problem with the dems is a lack of a coherent vision or set of policies that attempt to implement it. They stand for nothing, chastise you if you actually do have those principles, and then insist you vote for substanceless candidates you'd almost kinda wish would lose to the GOP just to teach these idiots the lesson you've been trying to teach them for a decade now. Because after a while of dealing with the centrists, you're literally that spiteful toward them that you stop caring, because neither of them make your life better, and you kinda stop caring who wins. Which is why I hate them so much.

Really, do I really need to put it this plainly? I only vote democrat to stop the encroachment of literal fascism at this point. The standard democrat is so bland and substanceless, and the aggressive bullying campaign to try to force me to vote for them so offputting, that I'd almost rather NOT vote for these guys, just to teach them a lesson. That's where I was in 2016 and 2020. I'm only a bit more sympathetic toward them because I do realize that we need to beat the fascists.

BUT...as I stated in the previous article, if we cant seal the deal, flip the script, and run a change candidate who does realign the parties in a positive way, the republicans are just gonna win again. 2030 is likely to be a red wave. 2032 is a tossup, although historically I'd favor the incumbent there. And we're likely to be back in the same situation by 2032 if we really drop the ball, or 2036 if we dont. If we wanna avoid that fate, the alternative is a transformational FDR style candidate with a strong vision that becomes so popular people will crawl over broken glass to vote for the guy. of course, that actually means the kinds of transformational change the party has been trying to avoid for a good decade now. That said, it's not looking good. But yeah, that's what we really need.  

Summing up every election cycle since 2004 in a nutshell

 So....the DNC autopsy had this section where it started with 2008, and it went through every election cycle and summed it up. I'm gonna do so from my own perspective, and I'll outline why I think things swung a certain way and why it turned out as it did. Im going back to 2004 because it's the first cycle I'd say I was politically aware for, and I still think it's relevant. 

2004- Red Wave

Bush rode a high after 9/11 where the GOP was able to win elections it otherwise would have lost. While the party took power in 2000 and by conventional knowledge I'd expect 2002 to be blue and 2004 to be up for debate, 2002 was deep red because the country unified around Bush. This started to fade by 2004 somewhat, as democrats turned against the Iraq War, but generally speaking, Bush was able to hold his coalition together enough to seal a win.

I dont think Kerry was a compelling candidate either. I mean, he kinda just seemed like another third way centrist and republican enthusiasm just seemed...higher. I was a republican at the time, and while I couldnt vote, I would've done so in Bush's favor, both based on Christian moral values (see: abortion, gay marriage), but also the war in Iraq, as I was inclined to believe democrats just hated America and were unpatriotic at the time. Still, it was a narrow win, showing the dem coalition had some support. But yeah, I would argue there was an enthusiasm gap there in favor of republicans.

2006- Blue Wave

 The democrats won big in 2006 as the country turned hard on Bush and the republicans. The war in iraq dragged on, there were no WMDs and with troop surges and fear of a draft, a lot of Americans wanted out of the war. On the domestic front, Bush dropping the ball on Katrina, and rising gas prices also contributed to poor conservative performance. This is the first election I could vote in and I did a split ticket. Some Rs, some Ds. I tended to view myself as a republican still, but I was moderating somewhat quickly, realizing that the Bush years werent all they were cracked up to be. 

2008- Blue wave

Bush's troubles got even worse. Iraq was massively unpopular. The national debt was a growing concern. The Great Depression devastated him. By this point, I feel like we were experiencing a full on national rejection of Bush's neoconservatism. Obama offered a left wing vision of "hope and change", but his campaign felt vapid AF. Still, didnt stop a lot of super enthusiastic college students from voting for him. Really, the enthusiasm for Obama made him seem very overrated for me. Still, conservative circles felt like a funeral at the time, so...yeah. Like the writing was on the wall, we were screwed, no one really liked McCain. He represented Bush's brand of conservatism that was unpopular. You start seeing faint outlines of what the tea party would become as people wanted a return to a more pure form of conservatism, and I was a bit of a ron paul stan in this era. Ultimately, we fell in line behind McCain on the right, as we were convinced Obama was a massive threat who had to be stopped and he was some raging communist, but ultimately, the enthusiasm for "hope and change" won. Again, I cite an enthusiasm gap here. I really do believe elections are won or lost on enthusiasm.

2010- Red Wave

 Obama's enthusiasm waned as he got into office though. Progressives were unhappy he governed like a moderate. That massive army of college students stayed home. Conservatives were fired up over the national debt, Obamacare, and Obama "ruining" the country in vague ways, and the right distanced itself from neoconservatism and embraced something closer to the libertarian conservatism that I was supportive of at the time. The Ron Paul movement might have failed in a way, but it also gave rise to the tea party, which took the aggressive approach of attacking the democrats on all fronts and stopping progress at all costs. This lack of progress frustrated democrats, and the republicans were still fired up. Again, enthusiasm gap.

2012- Blue Wave

Im speaking for myself, but I feel like people got what they voted for in 2010...and they didnt like it. The agenda was too extreme, and people seeing it in action were like NO, NOT LIKE THIS. For some, it might have been just a disagreement in strategy, for me, I kinda just realized that conservative ideas were actually bad and abandoned the GOP. A lot led to my own decision here. Deconversion from Christianity, the great recession, Bush's foreign policy, and of course, just seeing conservative ideals put into practice. 

Romney was also a weak candidate. He wasnt extreme enough for the tea party, so enthusiasm was low there, and he wasn't resonating during the great recession. As it turns out, trying to slash social programs to give rich people tax cuts in order to "create jobs" isn't popular, and Romney came off as an out of touch rich person who was fronting an extreme tea party agenda behind him. It didn't resonate, and people rallied around Obama and the democrats. 

This election cycle is what defined my own politics more than any other. I shifted left during this cycle, and the politics of it still shape my politics today. Between my secular humanism and anti fundamentalist christianity mindset, to the anti trickle down narratives that culminated in UBI centric human centered capitalism for me. Nowadays, we dont think much about 2012, but I feel like I was at that proper age range where its lessons just...resonated. 

2014 - Red Wave

However, Obama ended up being a lame duck. While he originally came off as the adult in the room and tried compromise with the GOP it very much didn't work. And while that reasonableness gap made me support Obama in 2012, by 2014 it was getting old. by this point, I was entirely polarized against the GOP, and I was really wanting the democrats to fight back. But they didn't. Here in PA, we went blue to get rid of our tea party governor tom corbett, but it seems like nationally, the dems did poorly. It seemed like it was a combination of gerrymandering from the 2011 redistricting combined with low enthusiasm TBQH. And for me, my solution was this: we need to create a blue wave so big it BTFOs the republicans. The democrats need to FIGHT, not just sit back and compromise and play nice. Really, dems arent enthused, and Obama was just this lightning rod that made the remains of what seemed like a dying GOP very polarized against him. But yeah. it did seem like eventually, the GOP coalition would die. The dems just gotta be more assertive, and given the lagging impacts of the recession, they needed to offer change.

2016 - Red Wave

As I stated, this didnt have to be a red wave. I think that the continuation of 2014 dynamics is what killed us. Clinton was very demotivational. No one really liked her. it seemed like she ran on this idea that it was her turn, and her entire campaign was designed to bully people into voting for her. Seriously, I have never seen such an out of touch campaign. Holy crap, as demonstrated in the previous article, she THREW it away! And then trump, he tapped into a lot of latent populist anger in the country over the economy, and that really swung it for him. Yes yes, racism, christian nationalism, and all that crap mattered too. but the dems would face that regardless, the GOP is just a party of voltorbs. A bunch of really pissed off people on the brink of a mass chain reaction of self destructs. But they are(were) a minority, and the dems should easily defeat these people if they embraced a more populist strategy. They didn't. And this is where the root of our current problems lies. This was a realigning cycle. And we got the crap realignment.

2018- Blue Wave

While trump's base remained very loyal to him, the rest of the country quickly turned against the buffoon. Dems went into full TDS mode (IMO), acting like he was 2nd term trump in his first term, and that just served to radicalize the trumpers more IMO as they realized no matter what they did WE'D act like a bunch of angry voltorbs too, and they just took the lesson I was hoping we'd learn and ran with it. Still, the dems were very fired up and independents swung against the trump coalition hard, leading to a comfortable win for the dems.

2020- Blue Wave

While the first mid term after a new president seems to swing hard against said president, the reelection tends to favor the president more weakly. Both bases are fired up, and typically, the status quo is maintained. Still, Trump BARELY won in 2016, and it seemed like a fluke, and Trump massively F-ed up COVID. So people swung against him for Biden. Still, the dems did seem to have some lagging enthusiasm as Biden was just more Hillary, and the win wasnt as strong or decisive as it should have been. While dems had high vote totals, they seemed to vote more against trump than for Biden IMO, and Trump STILL maintained a strong showing, showing that his 2016 base of support wasnt a fluke. And of course, when they lost, Trump screamed it was rigged and his supporters threw a temper tantrum at the capitol. It seems like Trump's biggest legacy up to this point was division. People were polarized either for or against him. But what happens after the dems retake the white house? Well, if it's true that the dems are only winning because of opposition to trump, and not enthusiasm for democrats, you can expect that enthusiasm to dissolve and the republicans to start winning again.

 2022- Red Trickle

And sadly, this is basically what happened. The 2021 local elections were really bad for democrats, and 2022 looked like it was gonna be an apocalpytic red wave. Enthusiasm for democrats was very low, and republicans were still fired up. However, the republicans made one mistake: overturning roe v wade. The second this happened, the polls shifted more toward democrats, and while the republicans still took the house, the democrats minimized the damage and it was a pretty good night for them. So this was a bit of a stay of execution for the democratic party, where they got to walk away with a soft "win." 

2024- Red Wave

However, that surge of adrenaline that spared the democrats in 2022 wore off by 2024. The democrats reached very low enthusiasm levels, while the GOP was fired up. Biden was NEVER gonna win. He was ALWAYS behind. And post debate, the bottom REALLY fell out where the dems were forced to pressure him to drop out and replaced him with Harris. Harris did bring some enthusiasm back in the into the party, but quickly lost it as she ran another centrist tone deaf campaign. While the election was close, Donald Trump prevailed, and the democrats once again suffered from an enthusiasm gap that proved fatal to them.

Future election predictions

2026- Blue wave

2026 is shaping up to be a blue wave as independent voters turn against Trump in a big way, and democratic enthusiasm has recovered as Trump is once again a target of ire by the party. I would expect democrats to win big and republicans to lose big. See: 2006, 2018.

2028- Blue wave

I expect 2028 to be a lot like 2020 or 2008 in that there's high energy for democrats, especially to remove a highly unpopular administration. However, the exact nature of the campaign remains to be seen. Will this simply be another oppositional campaign with little substance behind it, or will the democrats run someone transformational? Where we go from there depends on these answers.

2030- Red wave

With the democrats presumably having a trifecta, they have 2 years to get things done before they lose power. The republicans will likely be fired up against the democrats, and democratic enthusiasm will likely start to wane. If the dems simply run another oppositional campaign and govern from the center again, I expect the dem enthusiasm to drop a lot. If the dems run a more popular agenda, I expect the results to be better for them. Still, I'd give an edge to the republicans. See: 2010, 2022. 

2032- Blue wave

Second term reelections tend to be purpleish in my experience, but I generally favor the incumbent (see: 2004, 2012). 2020 and 2024 flipped because of extreme circumstances in 2020, and both 2016 and 2020 being close elections themselves, meaning Trump/Biden had nowhere to go but down, and couldn't clear the hurdle needed to comfortably win a reelection. Still, Id expect 2028 to be a much more decisive dem election than 2020. And I do think that lingering republican skepticism post trump, the loss of support as the GOP enters a post trump era, and the dems having enough of a buffer to guard against mild to moderate enthusiasm loss will lead to a situation where the democrat narrowly wins here. 

2034- Red wave

I expect a 2006/2014 style red wave here as the president's party experiences a widespread loss of support and enthusiasm while the GOP is fired up against them to happen here.

2036- Red wave

Unless the democrats REALLY knock it out of the park with a highly transformational candidate (see: 1940, 1988), I would expect them to lose to a republican in 2036. At which point, the 8 year cycle reverses itself. 

Past that: 2038- blue wave, 2040- red wave, 2042- blue wave, 2044- blue wave, 2046- red wave, 2048- blue wave, 2050- red wave, 2052- red wave. 

It's possible something anomalous can throw off the cycle, but yeah, politics is pretty cyclical and I would generally expect that overall cycle to continue to happen into the future for the most part.

Conclusions

So what can we conclude?

1) With exceptions, American politics is driven by 8 year cycles in which the public generally votes against the current incumbents. 

2) Underlying the cycle, elections are won or lost by enthusiasm. It's easier for opposition parties to run on high enthusiasm as they can just attack the existing governing party, while incumbent parties need to govern. Most americans seem to vote against current people hoping the other party will be better.

3) This cycle can be disrupted in times of significant division, and where the president's party's enthusiasm really bombs (or was never high to begin with due to a narrow initial win). 

4) Republicans seem to have more consistent enthusiasm. I would credit this due to them having a vision they believe in that they're willing to fight for, as well as an existential fear that the other side fundamentally opposes those values. Democrats, on the other hand, tend to struggle more with enthusiasm, due to the fact that they lack a cohesive brand that cultivates the same level of brand loyalty, and they seem to rely more on sheer opposition to the other side rather than support for their own side. This gives republicans an edge.

5) (Historical observation), during times of party realignments that clearly favor one party, the cycle can be lengthened. The Reagan revolution caused the cycle to last 12 years before Bill Clinton was elected. Franklin Roosevelt led to 20 year period of democratic dominance. Lincoln led to a 16 year period of dominance. Eventually, the ruling coalition will lose enthusiasm, but it can sometimes take much longer during realignment periods, causing the ruling party to control the narrative of politics. Part of the reason the republicans do so well is because we're still in the aftermath of the reagan revolution, with no clear realignment since.

6) While Trump is arguably a realigning figure, this time period represents deepening polarization without a clear ideological winner. The Trump coalition is high enthusiasm for what it is, but it's also small and he tends to lose independents quickly. However, democrats lack the same kind of brand loyalty on their side causing them to bottom out more quickly/easily. If this is a realignment and not a messy dealignment period leading to a more transformational realignment, this situation resembles most closely the Jacksonian democrats vs the whigs, where jackson's coalition had high enthusiasm around a rambunctious populist, while the whigs were a substanceless oppositional party who eventually imploded into irrelevance. 

7) The fate of the 7th party system depends on the democrats. If they are able to wrestle back control of the narrative from the republicans, they can enact generational change that can change the dynamics to make future politics more favorable to them. If they faiil to do so, Trump will be the transformational figure by default, dooming us to another generation of strong republicans and weak democrats. I do not know what direction the country will go in but right now we are on the more negative of these two timelines.

And yeah, that's generally how I view politics, and what my theory of elections is. While politics is cyclical, the republicans are the dominant party and the democrats the more submissive party. Some call this the sun and moon party hypothesis. If you wanna be kinky about it, you could call it the dom and sub hypothesis. Either way, unless the dems sieze the moment and take control of the system from the republicans through a generationally transformative candidate, the democrats are doomed to another generation as the moon and the republicans are all but guaranteed to be the sun party.

And yeah, that's the real lesson dems need to learn AND FAST, because I've been saying variations of this since 2016 and they still havent fricking got the message. 

Briefly discussing the democratic autopsy

 So apparently that autopsy I thought was an autopsy from a few months back wasnt the real autopsy, that was released today after pressure from the democratic party. It's a dumpster fire, but not in the way you'd expect. See the dems weren't hiding it because there were damning lessons in it they didn't want to learn, they were hiding it because it reads like an incomplete work that some intern put together. Seriously, who wrote this?! Fire this person, please. It kinda reminds me of my incomplete book drafts. Actually, that's an insult to my drafts, my drafts are better than this. There's no sources, many sections are missing, and it reads like a college paper a professor had to whip out the red pen and correct, and yeah there's literally red disclaimers everywhere saying there's no citations for data and that this doesn't represent the views of the DNC.

As for the content itself, eh...a lot of it was long and dry for my tastes, it is 200 pages, and it lacks summaries and conclusions because, well, again, it's very obviously incomplete. However, this also hurts readability since my eyes glaze over trying to read this mess, and i cant even go to the summary and be like "oh ok." To be fair as a writer, I kinda get the thought process. My drafts do the same thing, but again, I plan on FIXING that later. This is very obviously incomplete. 

From what I've gathered, they seem to take away SOME decent lessons, like less focus on social issues, more on economics, as well as the idea that they need to try to appeal to voters everywhere rather than doing whatever minmaxing crap they've been doing. So it's not entirely worthless IMO. 

Still...the fact that this became an issue really should highlight an issue the dems have. The reason the dems were pressured to release this is because wide swaths of their voters dont trust them. They thought that they were quashing it because the dems are arrogant and often dont WANT TO learn the right lessons. So rather than take away damning lessons to be learned, people thought they were just deflecting and ignoring the fact that they sucked and need to change. 

Which is...admittedly, the dems biggest issue. The fact is, they don't seem open minded or WILLING to learn from their mistakes. They seem like the kind of party who will ignore all lessons and just keep repeating the same strategy while blaming the voters for not turning up for them. If information came out that was unflattering, it seems very well within their character to ignore it and say "let's move on, shall we? no point dwelling on the past" while the base is like NO, YOU NEED TO LEARN THIS LESSON! 

I mean, if there's anything that should be gleaned from this whole mess, it's THAT. The dems are slow to learn, never actually learn the right lessons, and seem to ignore what people tell them. Hell, and this was a problem with the autopsy itself, dems are so washington brained that they cant stfu about their strategy for more than 5 seconds when talking to voters. When voters tell them what they want, they say "no you see you stupid person, you don't get it" and then go on about their grand plan of how we need to be a big tent, run to the center, and how we can't do the things the voters are asking for because they gotta appeal to completely different voters who might not even vote for them anyway. It's very arrogant and very out of touch. 

And yeah, they do have an issue with minmaxing demographics. They seem to not care at all about white male voters for instance while they'll hugbox themselves to death going on about black voters from safe red states that will NEVER, EVER go blue this election cycle.

With that said, the autopsy seems to emphasize a strategy that attempts to win all voters everywhere, but I still have reservations. yeah, they need to stop ignoring voters who ARE open to voting for them, but in our electoral college system, you need to split states into groups and focus accordingly. Look at my election predictions. I have safe blue and safe red. Likely blue and likely red.  Lean blue and lean red. And then the tossups. This translates to around 7 categories of states. Safes are...safe. You arent gonna lose them, you arent gonna flip them. On the other hand, tossups are your big states to focus on. In 2024, there were 7 of them. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, going from left to right vaguely. Lean blues like Virginia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire were in some danger of flipping, but they generally didn't. The dems had to keep an eye on them, but ultimately, they need less attention than the swings. You dont wanna neglect them, as that's what Clinton did in 2016, but you also dont wanna focus too heavily on them unless you already got a safeish electoral margin (kinda like clinton did in 2016, assuming the blue wall held). On the other hand, and this is a 2016 thing, I'd advise again spending too much time in say, lean R states. it's good to go after them, but you shouldnt abandon your core constituents to win them over. And of course, likely states are tougher to flip than leans, but more on the table than safe/solid states. 

So...when you look at an election prediction, you gotta look at the polling in the various states and focus your attention on your best and easiest path to 270 and expand from there. If you're like Clinton in 2016, you wanna focus on defense. You have the advantage, you wanna not lose states (like she did), and yeah, compete mostly in lean D and tossups. 

 Really, the thing that pissed everyone off about 2016 was that she had a map made in heaven, it took a lot of work to actually lose it, and she lost. She lost most swing states, outside of new hampshire and nevada, and then trump was able to poach states from her back yard because she was too busy F-ing up her political strategy by going down to like, Georgia and Arizona. 2016 was lost my hubris, and I honestly think that the core problems of the democratic party are apparent today.

But yeah, dems have a habit of trying to appeal to people in places they'll never win. Like, again, for all the talk of "OMG THE BLACK VOTE!" Which states will almost never flip to the dems here? South Carolina, where Clyburn is from. Mississippi, Alabama, etc. At this point I'll concede Georgia. 2016, i wouldnt. It was still very likely R back then, but yeah. It's like the dems are obsessed with winning the south when...as you can tell by this map, that's the bible belt, and we shouldnt compromise our message elsewhere trying to flip states we'll never flip. 

At the same time, take pennsylvania, which is very blue here but clinton lost anyway. She had this strategy of "for every working class voter we lose, we'll pick up two moderate republican", so she went all in with pittburgh and philly suburbs, neglecting all of those little islands of blue in between, and rural voters in general. The autopsy points that out. 

But enough with 2016, let's focus on how this applied to 2024.

 So this is the final map on election day. I could post other maps that are a lot redder of where things were under Biden, but this is where things generally were under Harris. 226 relatively safe dem electoral votes (although under Biden many of those "lean dem" states were on the verge of flipping red, with VA actually being red when Biden flipped out). Again, if you're losing and at risk of losing your next line of states after the swing states, you're kinda screwed and you do gotta play some defense to keep them blue. But you also need the actual swing states. Quickest path: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. The old 2016 rust belt strategy still applied. And those, along with nevada, were the most likely to flip. If the dems could maintain the rust belt and arguably nevada, which was very doable in theory, Harris would've won 276-262. 

From there, you wanna focus on the more lean R swing states in the sun belt. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona. Not NECESSARY to win, but within reach enough to be "on the table". So yeah, similar map to 2016 more or less as far as the fundamentals go. I'd expect 2028 to be the same, although 2032 and onward are likely to have some reapportionments that favor republicans (lots of growth in texas and florida). But still, for now, they need to focus on defending their home turf and winning back the rust belt. We can focus on where to go post 2030, I feel like the dems were trying too hard to flip the map as if it were 2032 going as far back as 2016 and it seemed to just be an ill advised strategy. It's not working. And yeah. 

Like...really. That's a key problem the dems have had since 2016. They are trying too hard to prepare for a future 10-20 years down the line instead of winning elections now, and their core strategy has been, IMO, incongruent with what actual voters want. And rather than listen to those voters, they lecture them and talk about winning the south like...that's the big thing they need to do.

They ignore voters like me in the rust belt, who actually are giving them advice for winning the states that are part of their most obvious path to victory, to focus on states that they currently DONT need. 

Yes, post 2030, the rust belt alone is not gonna be sufficient to win elections:

 

 

However, if they kept trying to keep Ohio and Iowa, which were states that went for Obama twice, and used to be a lot more competitive pre Trump, it's very well possible we STILL wouldn't have needed to compete down south. Once again, the "neglect the rust belt in favor of the sun belt" strategy has always been a poor one in my own estimation. perhaps they were gonna lose those states anyway and they knew it, but still, at 261, you dont need a whole lot to continue winning here, the dems, if anything, had an advantage, going back to the Obama era, if they chose to maintain and strengthen that coalition, and didnt give trump such an obvious in to electoral relevance:

Really, this is a pretty reasonable Obama era style map. The whole strategy the dems decided to pursue, to abandon parts of the rust belt to focus on suburbanites and to win the south, has ALWAYS been ill advised. We dont NEED the south. We never did. We just needed to maintain a stronghold along the blue wall and nevada. And the blue wall used to include ohio and iowa too. Remember: Obama won BOTH OF THOSE, TWICE. This is just an Obama map except we lost florida.

Now, again, we've unfortunately been getting the "cursed realignment" in the 7th party system where Trump is gaining ground in a lot of previously blue obama era states like FLorida, and Ohio, and Iowa, which are now all likely to safe R, and we ARE being forced to compete in the sun belt more.

Still...I do think we have one trip up our sleeve, and yes, it is a sun belt state, and that's georgia:

 See, here's the thing. The sun belt is eventually going to flip more D anyway over time, mostly due to demographic changes. We could have easily maintained the Obama strategy well to 2028, and afterward, tried to make more of a pass down south, where demographic shifts brings the voters to us. I honestly dont think that we have to go down there and bring ourselves to them. I think they would eventually come to us, by 2032, 2036, 2040, etc. Georgia in particular has been shifting left at a fast pace where it's soon gonna vote to the left of Pennsylvania. In 2024, it was one of the few states that went further left despite the rest of the country moving hard right. I dont think the sun belt strategy has been working well otherwise. Texas is a tease, although in theory it's moving left as well. Like, in 2026, James Talarico might actually win here. But in 2024...it went R+13, the same as Ohio and Iowa, ya know, states we lost ground in. Arizona isn't as stubborn as texas, it has mark kelly there, and Biden won it in 2020, but it does require a centrist strategy that tends to flip more up north IMO. North Carolina might be more D friendly in the future too. It's been stubbornly red in recent elections, but Obama won it in 2008 and it looks like we will probably win the senate this year. 

So yeah, post 2030, we can appeal to the sun belt somewhat, but I still believe we need to keep the rust belt happy. They're still very relevant deciding states and I think they'll remain easier for democrats to flip than southern states. At this point, yeah, do both, but I still favor a rust belt strategy, and IMO, what wins the rust belt is economic populism and appealing to a broad base of people, not minmaxing. The dems try TOO HARD to win the south that they lose the north. They need to maintain their focus up north, while making passes at the south as the demographics force them to both expand down there, but also, as those same demographics...bring them to us.

The dems have this idea that we need to run to the center to win elections. Even when data supports that assertion, the difference between a leftie and centrist candidate is only like 3 points as we can see in Michigan this cycle. The fundamentals of the states dont change a ton between moderate and progressive candidates. What is gonna win elections is likely more based on enthusiasm and whether that cycle leans right or left, than the individual candidate. And I think a progressive candidate could bring out people more consistently, and fire people up more. So yeah. I do think we need to be a bit more economically progressive/populist, run a rust belt first strategy (while looking to expand into the sun belt as feasible without tainting our brand), and yeah. 

I mean, the fact that trump was able to outplay us by THIS much is as much a democratic failure than it is a republican success. You think that trump of all people was looking at data like this? I doubt it. I think in 2016 he just ran an impassioned campaign based on populism and it resonated. Bernie literally could've had that energy had the dems not quashed it. And yeah, Im gonna keep going back to 2016, but I dont think you can understand 2024, without understanding 2016.  People want something to vote for, they want someone to make their lives better. This shouldnt be rocket science, and the fact that the biggest scandal of this autopsy is that they attempted to cover up an incompetent report, and people thought the cover up was more malicious, points at the real problem with the democrats. They ignore what their own voters want and keep pushing this same crappy strategy on us that just doesn't work. They need to listen to people more and actually change based on voter feedback. They come off as arrogant, tell people what they want, dont listen to people, argue with them instead, and alienate voters. And that's why they lose elections.

Anyway, that's kinda my own third autopsy on this, but I wanted to get that out there as it's important to discuss.