Discussing HW Unboxed argument for why "nvidia abandoned PC gamers"

 So, hardware unboxed put out a video today discussing how Nvidia stopped appealing to gamers basically because moore's law seems to be breaking down (they didnt frame it that way, but that's basically what happened) and it's hard to get gains like we used to have. I want to analyze this from my own perspective, but I wanna look at it purely from a $200-300 price range mindset, since Nvidia focused on both the high end and the $500 market. I wanna look at the $250ish market, although I will go down to $200 or up to $300 as prices rarely actually follow the exact ranges. I'll be using techpowerup's data and most cards will be 60 series cards, or occasionally 50 series cards. 

They started from the 200 series in 2009, but there wasn't a real $250 200 series card, as the GTS 250 was $150 and the GTX 260 was $450. However, competition from AMD (remember competition, guys?!) eventually forced Nvidia to reduce the 260 to $300, so I'll go with that. 

So the baseline is a GTX 260 from 2009, post price cut.  

This means that in 2010, we got a GTX 460, which was 21% better. 

The 560 ti from 2011 was 46% better.

Both the GTX 660 and 660 ti could count in the next one, but given the 660 was $230 and the 660 ti was $300, and I wanna aim for $250ish, I'll go with the 660. It's not like the difference was huge, we were talking a 13% jump in performance for a 30% increase in price after all. But yeah, we were talking a 21% jump in performance here, although it seemed like a lot more at the time given it had that 2 GB VRAM buffer.

The GTX 760 came in 2013, was 14% better than the 660. It matched the 660 ti for $50 less, which was good, but yeah, it was a mild improvement over the 660.

The 960 in early 2015 wasnt much better. It offered a 17% performance jump over the 760. Of course, as previously discussed, the real value star here was the 970 which was $330, so out of our price range, but yeah. Maxwell was weird in that you had to buy up for it not to suck. 

The 1060 6 GB in 2016 was a whopping 72% better. While Pascal was good for everyone, it was especially good for 60 owners. And it really goes to show that sometimes series that are good for high end buyers arent good for the lower midrange and vice versa. Sometimes you get huge gains like with Maxwell but the 60 series sucks. The same will be true of the next few series. 

Next, I'm going with the 1660 ti, since it was $270 and 27% better. The thing is, with steve's charts, is that while Turing was a raw deal for everyone due to the price increases, the price range he looked at was especially raw. Yeah, the RTX 2060, which was the REAL successor to the 1060, was a whopping 55% better and on par with a GTX 1080. BUT...because they decided to go all in with RT, we ended up seeing the nerfed 1660 ti and later the 1660 super for $270/250. While even the 1660 ti was an okay jump over the 1060, keep in mind, it took over 2 years to get, and we didnt get this until 2019. So this was a poor jump for the money. Still, was it really moore's law coming to an end or corporate greed? Honestly, at this point, I think it was greed. It reminds me of the 200 series back in 2009 except this time we didnt have AMD to properly keep them in check. So they just got able to be complacent.

And honestly, I do think if we didn't see RT cores added to cards, we could've seen a better value to cards. Like the  5600 XT was barely slower than the 2060 and cost $280. So yeah, I see no reason why the 2060 should've cost more than $300, it was all that RT crap nvidia forced on the industry IMO. 

The 3000 series was actually HORRIBLE for buyers. the 3060 was $330 and the 3060 ti was $400. HWunboxed looked at the 3060 ti, which was seen as a good jump over the 2060, and maybe it was, BUT....looking at it from the perspective of a sub $300 buyer, yeah no, we were basically priced out of the market. THe pandemic screwed us and when we did see a sub $300 card it was the 3050 in 2022, and yeah, HORRIBLE card. Worse than the 1660 ti in raw numbers. It was a joke. 6% DOWNGRADE.

Now, on the AMD side, we did originally see the 6600 and 6600 XT compete with the 3060 and 3060 ti, but given they couldnt compete on features and value that way, they could compete on price and eventually they dropped the 6600 and 6650 XT under $300, which is when I finally upgraded my poor 1060. And that's what I run today. 

The fact is....yeah, the industry is a joke, and it literally required AMD to compete to bring the prices down. This is why I personally go with the corporate greed theory from Nvidia, rather than just blaming it all on reduced gains and TSMC increasing wafer value as gains dry up. Nvidia COULD HAVE released a cheaper 2000 series, they didn't, because they wanted to push ray tracing. They COULD HAVE released a better card then the 3050, they didn't because during the pandemic, they were gouging people and didnt care. And it literally required no one buying AMD's cards to make THEM bring the prices down. Which brings us to 2023. 

In 2023, we got the 4060. It was $300, but hey, that's within the price range, and it was the cheapest 4000 series card. And it was a STAGGERING 90% better. Gee, does this mean they made 90% gains all at once? No. In steve's chart, the $500 price range saw a rather small gain as the 4060 ti was basically...just the 3060 ti again. But going from the 3050 to the 4060, we saw MASSIVE gains. Because Nvidia was screwing us all along. They gave us the nerfed 1660 ti because they wanted to do ray tracing. They gave us the 3050 which had more features but was somehow WORSE than the 1660 ti. And while everyone was glazing the 3000 series for the gains it gave us, if you were in my price range, the 3000 series was crap. I mean, sure, the gains were there on paper, same with the 6000 series. BUT, and this is the big but, it wasnt until the COVID pandemic crashed the market and AMD had to actually compete that we saw actual gains for us $200-300 buyers. Nvidia literally ignored us both with the 2000 series and 3000 series, giving us joke releases and keeping the actual gains over the $300 mark. Like with the GTX 200 series in 2009, it took AMD coming in to save the day, which is why in 2023, we saw a new normal for prices. The RX 7000 series and RTX 4000 series followed the discounted AMD pricing scheme, and that became the new normal. The market finally corrected itself, and we got a ton of gains all at once.

This brings us to the RTX 5000 series. If we use the 4060 as a baseline, there were 2 options in 2025 for us on the nvidia side. The RTX 5050 was another joke of a release at $250 where much like the 3050, it was worse than its predecessor, giving us a 3% reduction in performance. However, similar to the 660/660 ti situation, there was also a $300 5060, which is 23% better than the 4060. If anything, the numbers seem kinda wonky. I would've thought 3050 to 4060 was more like 60%, and the 4060 to 5060 was more like 40-50%, but hey, Im going by TPU's numbers. Some of their numbers did seem off at times. But I digress. Either way, then RAMpocalypse happened, and we're talking $280 for the 5050 and $340 for the 5060. I cant blame Nvidia for that, but yeah, that's the market. So....given what I spent for my 6650 XT in 2022, and how it offers 3060/4060/5050 level performance, I can't complain about my current GPU. This is what the market is.

With that said, let's do some steve like comparisons.

GTX 460 (2010) -> GTX 960 (2015) = 134% performance gains

This is largely in line with Steve's $500-550 card analysis where they got a 140% gain over the same era.

 GTX 960 (2015) -> GTX 1660 ti (2020) = 119% performance gains

This is markedly LESS. Steve reports almost twice the performance gains over this time. Sub $300 buyers got shafted here. TO be fair they had an extra generation in theirs, but yeah, most of the gains went to much higher price brackets, if you wanted a sub $300 card, you basically got pascal, and then one more boost and that was it. And keep in mind, the 3050 in 2022 was even WORSE. That WAS the 3000 series equivalent for my price range. The 3060 was quite a bit better, but it was $330 and Nvidia kept it that high until AMD forced their hand. Again, this is why I go with the Nvidia = greedy argument. There's no reason they couldn't offer the cards a bit cheaper. They were eventually forced to by AMD to stop them from cannibalizing their sales. I mean when I bought, I was getting the 4060 tier 6650 XT for CHEAPER than the 3050. It was a joke. Dont tell me we COULDN'T see cheaper Nvidia cards, they chose NOT to deliver those gains. 

GTX 1660 ti (2020) -> RTX 5050 (2025) = 74% performance gains

GTX 1660 ti (2020) -> RTX 5060 (2025) = 120% performance gains

I'm providing both here because RAMpocalypse is a thing and at this point the 5050 is THE go to sub $300 Nvidia card, but yeah, different story than what Steve shows. While gamers got stronger gains higher up in the 2015-2020 range because of the 3000 series, us in the $200-300 price range didnt get those gains until the 2020s. If you go by the 5050 numbers, which might be best given RAMpocalypse screwing up the market, we got 75% performance gains. If we go by the 5060 being a solid card over a 4060 VRAM notwithstanding, yeah, the gains we got in the 2020s have been bonkers. Why? Because Nvidia was holding out, and it took AMD to shake up the market and actually give the bottom a raise in performance.

And keep in mind, this market IS now the bottom. back in 2010, it was the midrange. It was the price/performance zone. Even then, the $150-200 zone often had good value. I mean, the GTS 250, the 450, the 750 ti, the 1050 ti, yeah, remember those? Those were a thing until the pandemic. They dont even exist now. And honestly, even older cards like the 6600 are drying up now, rather than giving people decent sub $200 options. One could argue it's not viable given 8 GB RAM costs like $100 in and of itself, but a even up to around 8 months ago, it was more like $25, and yeah, they could give us cheaper cards. No reason there isn't a real $150 3050 tier card or something. They could have made it happen. Again, I'll be more generous now, but yeah.

So...what will I conclude?

Well, I'd be inclined to agree that to SOME degree, yeah, maybe Nvidia cant deliver the strong gains we saw up until 2016-2017 or so. Maybe they did need to slow down. Series take 2 years to deliver the gains we once saw yearly. But honestly, for the sub $300 range, I think market forces as in, lack of competition, relative monopoly, drive GPU price/performance. Nvidia just doesnt care about mainstream gamers who rely on those $200-300 "60" type cards that much and if they can get away with it, they'd rather sell to people who pay more, be it enthusiasts, or AI datacenters. it's not that they can't make money off of gamers, it's that they can make a lot MORE money appealing to wealthy enthusiasts and whales in the AI industry. A relative lack of competition combined with economic shocks like COVID and the AI thing have made it where Nvidia would rather produce cards for a lot more money for rich people who will buy them regardless of cost, while not caring all that much about mainstream gamers. $250 buyers? Dont make them laugh when people will spend $500+ on GPUs to play games at super high frame rates/resolutions with ray tracing on, and they can sell to datacenters who will pay thousands per GPU because they're being funded by literal billionaires and even that one trillionaire who have seemingly infinite sums of money to throw at the project. 

That's how I see it at least. Again, are things advancing as much as they did? Not really. But is Nvidia holding out on lower income buyers who used to be their bread and butter? Yes, yes they are. Again, my own analysis shows me what really determines prices is competition from AMD. If AMD can make GPUs for less, they'll do so to cut into Nvidia's margins, and that will force Nvidia to lower their prices to compete. Happened in 2009 with the 200 series, happened again with the 2000-4000 series. Nvidia tried to raise prices, price lower income buyers out of the market to force them to buy up, but one the economic shocks waned and competition came in, the market corrected itself in a big way.  

Discussing Jasmine Crockett refusing to endorse James Talerico

 So...Jasmine Crockett seems unwilling to endorse James Talerico, and I have some thoughts on this. As you guys know, I supported Crockett for this specific primary, as I thought her aggressive attitude is what we needed to counter Trump and Trumpism. I also aint necessarily too hot on James Talerico and his very overt Christianity, being a formerly Christian secular humanist. I also aint big on "blue no matter who", as you guys know. I was one of the OG bernie or busters in 2016.

However, let's be frank. I wasn't on board with party unity because of deep philosophical principles, significant policy differences from the democratic party, and the feeling that I was being explicitly mistreated by the democratic party. And I think it's fine, in theory at least, to refuse to endorse a democrat if there are significant sincerely held differences between candidates. I would be more likely to hold my nose in THIS environment, but yeah, I can at least understand an argument for it. And yes, this includes the free palestine kiddies. I might criticize the actual ideas, but if you legit dont fit in the democratic party, or its culture, or accept its ideologies and policies, I can see an argument for it for refusing to endorse an opponent.

However....let's be honest, was there a HUGE difference in policy between the two? I really didnt notice a ton. I liked Crockett better primarily because Talerico's religion was a turnoff and I liked Crockett's confrontational attitude toward Trump. But policy wise? They seemed pretty similar. Progressives seem to like Talerico more for some reason and he's seen as further left, but honestly? I'm not really seeing it. Again, could be my anti religion stance, but yeah. He seemed to frame progressive ideas from a relatively conservative framing and I found it a turnoff.

Of course, this is TEXAS. It's literally THE "Yeehaw" state. I'm not gonna expect a member of the atheist community of Austin to win there any time soon, as based as those guys are in my view. It's a heavily religious state, I can see an argument for a religious candidate who can actually speak that language convincingly to win over Christian voters, and even more so, look at my electoral prediction today, HE CAN WIN! Talerico is actually leading there, and has a 60% shot at taking the seat. IN FRICKING TEXAS! So yeah, endorse that crap. We need to take the senate, the people chose Talerico over Crockett, and honestly, Crockett needs to get over herself. She's acting really petty here. REALLY petty. And over what? What does she offer here that Talerico can't deliver? It isn't much. It was mostly what flavor of center left lane of democrat you want. Do you want white Christian McMorrow or sassy black woman McMorrow? That's what it came down to. Theyre not functionally that much different in practice.

So yeah, I kinda have to condemn Crockett for being such a sore loser. Again, if she offered something, as in, genuinely offered something that Talerico wasnt delivering on, I could see the argument. But she isn't. She's just being petty. So...yeah, Texans, support James Talerico. He's a decent enough candidate for texas, the differences I have with him arent deal breakers, if anything, if I could theoretically vote for this guy, well....so can you. I arguably have greater differences between myself and him than Crockett does, given Crockett is another bog standard middle of the road semi progressive democrat. Do the right thing guys, there's absolutely NO reason for this to be this contentious.

Briefly discussing the "memorandum of understanding" with Iran

 So, Trump has a tentative deal with Iran, and democrats are losing their crap over it, calling it a "surrender" and how he's giving the farm away. The big sticking point seems to be the $300 billion in reparations Trump is giving them.

Now, here's my stance on this. i think the terms are fair. Trump NEVER should have invaded, and when he did, he severely underestimated them. He thought he was gonna bomb them, it was gonna be easy, but he bit off more than he could chew. You see, Iran doesnt have to BEAT us to beat us. It's asymmetrical warfare. In situations like that, all you need to do is to make continuing the war painful in hopes that the other side will back off, and that's what Iran did. They didnt need to beat our navy. They just had to close the strait and make it unsafe for ships to pass through, greatly disrupting global trade. And we couldnt really stop them from doing this. We got a huge conventional military, they got underhanded terrorism and guerilla tactics.

For us to win the war directly, we would have needed a ground invasion of the country. And Iran is....a much larger country than Iraq or Afghanistan, with very mountainous terrain. It could have cost hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions over time, thousands of American lives, like, say we take the 4k death toll from Iraq and multiply it by 4, that's 16k servicepeople killed. Trump already boosted our military budget by $500 billion this year just to fight this war. $300 billion to end it is a small price to pay all things considered. It might look horribly optically, but that's the conundrum Trump forced us into. 

And I wanna focus on that here, ALL of this is Trump's fault. This was an unforced error. He did this because he wanted to. He thought he could go in, bomb some stuff, get out, and distract from the Epstein files. but thats the problem with these wars in the middle east. You break it, you bought it. You invade a country, upend its leadership, it takes years to get out, and often times, things are no better when we leave. The Taliban took over Afghanistan again when we left in 2021, after 20 years of occupation. Iraq's provisional government got overrun by ISIS. Here, we replaced Khamenei with Khamenei, and gotta pay them reparations for breaking their crap. Okay, fair. 

And on nukes....the terms of the deal are still being hashed out, but Iran is promising not to pursue nukes. Basically, this is probably gonna be the Obama deal again, or something similar, which shows what a good "deal maker" Trump is. Tore up the deal in his first term, attacked in his second, and now they're getting some variation of the deal back AND money. Well, that's how it's gonna have to be. I blame Trump for this entirely. More specifically, I blame him for invading, not taking the deal. If I were president coming in after Trump, I'd be offering a similar deal, and probably being hated for it. "Oh, I'm weak, oh I'm surrendering." 

Again, this is how it has to be. They have all the cards, they have the leverage, the only way to weasel out of this is to fight the war and actually WIN, and the cost of that is MUCH higher, and honestly, EVEN THEN, we're probably not gonna get a favorable outcome, given how Iraq and Afghanistan went. Again, this is the best Trump can do. You got a problem with it, blame him for getting us involved in the first place. I wanna make that clear, I dont blame Trump for taking this deal to get out. I blame him for getting us into it in the first place. We never should've invaded, we never should've ripped up the Obama deal. Trump screwed up. This is all on him. 

Election Update 6/19/26

 So, I decided to do another election update since I wanted to discuss the current senate map again.

Senate

 

Woo! Michigan is now blue! The change comes after that newest poll that had Mallory McMorrow at 6% in the primary had El Sayed up by 5 in the general, and Stevens down by 4. So that basically neutralized Haley's advantage, giving both roughly the same odds in the general. Other than that, the map hasnt changed a whole lot. And personally? I would be kind of skeptical. I know it looks too good to be true, but when the dems only have a 60% chance of flipping the senate, and the republicans still have a 40% chance of retaining it, yeah, don't count the GOP out. That's barely better than a coin flip and it's functionally a toss up. A stiff political wind causing mild GOP overperformance and the republicans still win, like so:

So again, don't count the GOP out, they can still win, and if anything I'd think this second map is probably more realistic than what my model is spitting out. We really need more polling to know for sure, and then even then, there's always gonna be some systemic over/under performance that ends up happening in practice. So if the error favors the GOP, like it did in, say, 2024, we could very well be seeing this second map here or some variation of it. Of course error CAN go the other way as well, although given where the the map is, the democrats don't have much more to gain other than Ohio as Florida represents another steep unscalable cliff outside of the margin of error denoting what the absolute floor for the GOP actually is. 

Either way, yeah, while existing polling i have still favors the democrats, minor fluctuations in public opinion could flip the whole thing one way or the other. This brings me to the house.

House

 

So, the generic congressional vote has cratered in the past few weeks, going from the dems having a nearly 10-11 point advantage over their 2024 numbers to being back down around 7-8. Now, don't get me wrong, for the house, this likely won't make much of a difference. Keep in mind in 2020 the GOP BARELY won it as the error fluctuated in their favor (kind of like I just showed with a favorable republican leaning scenario in the senate). Even now, I think a 94-95% shot at dems taking the house is reasonable. It's not a question of what the margins will be. If democrats underperform by 1.5 like predicted above, we could be looking at 227-208, for example. And that's not even considering nuance that might be happening in individual house races that my model doesn't account for. Realistically (assuming an R+4 scenario), we could be looking as low as 222-213. Alternatively, if we go with a D+4 scenario, we could be seeing results as high as 234-201. So I'd say my prediction is probably gonna be around 230 +/-4 seats assuming a moderate over/underperformance. MOE would put it anywhere between 212-223 REP (R+8) and 242-192 DEM (D+8). 

Governors

 

Not much has changed as far as governor races go. The only difference is I'm swapping out Mandela Barne's data for Francesca Hong's in Wisconsin. Why does Hong do so much worse than Barnes? Well, because she's a Bernie style progressive and it doesn't seem to be landing super well there. However, I recently revisited primary polling there and she's ahead, although it's hard to know exactly wtf is going on there. Also, can we talk about how stupid August primaries are? Jesus Christ, get your crap wrapped up by the end of June so we can get on with the general already. Why are so many states waiting until the last fricking minute? It's ridiculous. Primaries after June 30 shouldn't be a thing. 

Conclusion

While I still think democrats are ahead, their margins are sagging in some situations. Their grip on a senate win is tenuous. It exists on paper, but in practice I do think it's very possible for the GOP to retain control. In all fairness it's kind of a miracle the dems are doing as good as they are there, but yeah dont get your hopes up TOO much. The house advantage is sagging a bit but dems are so far ahead there that they have a lot of room for error. Not so much with the senate. And of course the governor's races haven't changed at all basically, although swapping out the moderate candidate for the progressive one causes us to lose Wisconsin. 

So yeah, that's where we're at. 

Discussing the fall of Mallory McMorrow

 So, Michigan just had a poll come out showing Mallory McMorrow at 6%, and while it could be a flawed outlier, people are scratching their heads at the fall of this candidate. How did she go from #1 to being distant third? I mean, I've been following it, and I have some ideas, so I wanna do a tear down of what I think happened. 

The race is three way

So, as we know, the race is three way between Haley Stevens, the moderate candidate, Abdul El Sayed, the progressive, and Mallory McMorrow, the more middle ground candidate. Originally McMorrow seemed well positioned. El Sayed wasnt taken super seriously and Haley Stevens, at least in my view, is kinda anti charismatic. Like, I find her offputting. Shes very rehearsed, and very generic, and idk she just rubs me the wrong way. Then again I'm a progressive so what would I know? 

Either way, she ran a triangulation strategy in which she was taking both from Stevens and from El Sayed. Like, she could argue she was a bit more moderate and electable than El Sayed, and a bit more progressive than Stevens. And honestly, had she played her hand well, I think would have won. Initially, I thought she had a solid platform, was very well researched, and was an excellent candidate on paper. But then she had to open her big mouth.

Picking fights with El Sayed and the two lanes of the democratic party

So, the democratic party has two lanes. You got progressives, and moderates. You technically have a third group that's idpol based, we discussed that in previous discussions of the democratic party's coalition, and how centrists tend to lock them down to deny progressives access to their votes, but that doesnt seem to be particularly in play here. So you got centrists...and progressives. And while a "moderate" candidate between them CAN triangulate and win, as we know on the national stage, sometimes you just end up in an uncanny valley of suck where you alienate both sides. And that's what happened with McMorrow. She basically picked a fight with El Sayed and his fan base, which gave more attention to El Sayed's campaign and her own, leading to a lot of purity testing, and she ended up imploding.

Heres the thing. For her to succeed, she needed to be the progressive option vs Stevens. THe best thing you could do with El Sayed is keep him marginalized and on the sidelines. If people just think "oh he's too extreme" then people would ignore him. I mean even I ignored him and I read his book. I was like "man he'd probably be good, but I cant see him winning the primary or the general so I guess I'll settle for McMorrow." 

But then, you know all that Hasan derangement syndrome? That came from HER. OMG EL SAYED CAMPAIGNED WITH HASAN PIKER, HES AN EXTREMIST, RAWR! And what this did was pick a fight with the most dogmatic of bernie bros. And even me, who actually liked mcmorrow, but didnt care for this line of attack. I mean, I had nothing against El Sayed, and if anything, this made me look MORE into his campaign, as did a lot of progressives. And El Sayed is the real deal. Whereas McMorrow's weaknesses became more apparent. Not only is the hasan piker thing straight out of the 90s moral panic playbook, which backfires massively in the new generation, but then new battlelines formed between the el sayed camp and the mcmorrow camp. And...uh....McMorrow is kinda all over the place and wishy washy. Like...medicare for all. El Sayed LITERALLY wrote the book on M4A. And ironically, after reading it, and trying to fine tune my own M4A funding plan for my book, I ended up abandoning it, so I went into the public option camp myself, but....you cant question the guy's dedication to the idea. mcMorrow was for a public option and when asked about it, she gives weak and unconvincing answers. And of course, progressives are really riled up over palestine. And El Sayed is stronger on being anti israel, while McMorrow....isn't. She again, takes a weird middle ground she cant defend. So she came off as weak, she came off as bought and paid for, she came off as basically a centrist with more progressive window dressing, and progressives, including myself abandoned her. It's about authenticity. El Sayed is very authentic. Mcmorrow, isn't. El Sayed can say he doesnt take dark money and stuff, El Sayed cant. And in a purity test contest with a more moderate candidate, you cant out progressive El Sayed. So McMorrow's voter base...went to El Sayed.

And Haley Stevens....the moderate lane candidate, her campaign seemed to come back from the dead. She was floundering, but she basically started cannibalizing McMorrow's moderate base either. Because again, you aint gonna outmoderate the moderate. And Stevens, I think she's kind of a crappy candidate personally, but she's strong in her own right, and if you LIKE centrism, she has that covered. So now Stevens is coming in and eating up the rest of McMorrow's voter base. So who is left to vote for McMorrow? Apparently only 6% of the population. She's uncanny valley of suck. She's too moderate for the progressives, too progressive for the moderates, and she appeals to literally no one now. 

Inevitably, this is gonna happen to a lot of people in that McMorrow lane. I mean, remember Yang's Mayoral run? Caught between the moderate and the progressive. And even the more "center left" lane was eaten up by another candidate. So he got virtually no one. 2020 primary? Caught between Biden and Sanders. McMorrow is more like that, but shes more like an Elizabeth Warren. Not as progressive as Sanders, and then having the tone deaf political instinct of picking a fight with the progressive voter base by launching an ill advised attack on said more progressive candidate. Which causes an ugly civil war, which cannibalizes that center left lane. So...it alienates the progressives, it doesnt win over moderates, and yeah. The voter base collapses into two lanes. Centrist and progressive. And just like Warren didnt fit into either, neither did McMorrow.

In a way, it's kinda frustrating. Because as I've evolved and fine tuned my own platform, I find myself in this theoretical Yang/Warren/McMorrow camp. I mean, I am a progressive at heart, but my policies are going in a bit of a more moderate direction, mainly because I wanna save money to invest in UBI instead, which progressives wont even touch. So my ideology isnt aligned with progressives at this point. I like them more than moderates as moderates are the most worthless people in the democratic coalition, but I'm actually in that more center left middle ground coalition these days. I want a public option, most center left candidates are progressive outside of M4A, M4A is like the big sticking point that unites the hard left. Israel is another sticking point. I mean, as you guys know I'm not a hardcore progressive on Israel/Palestine and find the free palestines kiddies annoying. So idk, i'm falling out with the progressive camp. Im not a centrist, in theory, a McMorrow like candidate appeals to me, but if they cant actually defend their positions, they're just gonna get crushed. And McMorrow just invited the ire of the progressive fan base and her campaign has been cannibalized from both sides.

Now I'm in the El Sayed camp despite liking McMorrow in theory. And again, what kills McMorrow for me in particular is her lack of authenticity. She seems very corporate sponsored, she is very weak on policy, she can't defend her ideas worth a crap. And yeah, it actually kills center left lane candidates in general, that lack of authenticity. I mean, a lot of progressives want someone who isnt bought and owned. And when you got this candidate sponsored by all of these groups that really REALLY hate el sayed, it's like...gee maybe we should go for El Sayed. 

Honestly, even though I find it frustrating, I get it. if I were in michigan i would have been shifted to El Sayed too. I dont want someone controlled by say, the Israel lobby, or the anti M4A people either. I want someone who does what is best for the country. My own ideological concessions come from a position of wanting to further OTHER priorities. Namely UBI. But if youre doing it because youre in with the establishment and support their priorities, well...yeah. Youre gonna lose all progressives. 

Honestly McMorrow would've been better off just continuing to ignore El Sayed. Had she not picked a fight with him, people would have continued to ignore him. he was third. THIRD! He wasnt a serious candidate early on. It was mostly mcmorrow vs stevens. And she was WINNING. So....yeah, she screwed up. And it destroyed her campaign. 

Does Graham Platner still "got it"?

 So...I've been noticing a couple things. First of all, the dems are distancing themselves from Platner. I know one sub I was on was talking about how they're quietly removing him from their fundraising graphics. And I was a bit miffed about this because again, WHAT ABOUT VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO, GUYS?! You know? They beat that crap over our heads for 10 years then when the shoe is on the other foot its like they're sabotaging the guy. 

But at the same time, since the scandals broke, polling has been getting worse for him. For a while, he was D+7.5 or so, with a roughly 98% shot at winning. This has dropped to 4.5, which drops his odds to 87%. Still substantive, but keep in mind, polls are a snapshot in time, and the movement is jarring. We dropped 3 points in a few days. And new polls have him at D+2 if we count the two newest ones bombing his average. That gives him a 69% chance of winning in theory, but keep in mind, Maine is weird. Their margin of error can be wonky, and I would expect Collins to overperform. So that 4.5% average is a lot squishier than it may appear. Don't get me wrong, it's still better than what Janet Mills was pulling, but still, we're talking a 2 point advantage vs 7 if we count only the newest polls.

With that said, how should we think about this. The functionalist argument is the dems are distancing themselves because the scandals ARE bad news, they ARE impacting his polling, and yeah he IS a weaker candidate than appeared. You could argue that. But if you were to approach this from a conflict perspective, you could also say the dems have been actively pushing the scandals and hyper emphasizing them to tank him. And I think that that's true too. The democrats are NOT leaning into his strengths. His entire race in corporate media is being framed from a position of his weaknesses. And this includes on MSNBC and from liberals. That's what got me going the other night when the feminists were going on about "angry white guys" which sounds like another bad faith bernie bro esque argument. These centrist libs LOVE to push identity politics to tank economic progressives, which is how you get "angry white guys" in the first place. Beyond that, people act like he IS a nazi because he had the tattoo, even though if anything his political history indicates that he's a reddit communist. But hey, bad faith actors be bad faith actors, and most voters arent educated.

So....with that said, arent the scandals a big deal because the powers that be (who, keep in mind, don't want progressives) are making a big deal of them? I would say so. Now, dont get me wrong, politics is politics and if dems didnt do this republicans would. I mean when you're campaigning the idea is to paint your opponent in the worst light possible, but ya know, I'd expect a bit more support from the dems at this point. Instead we get all this talk that "oh no, these scandals are totally a big deal, should we ignore the will of the voters and replace him?" I'd love to say that if they did that I'd vote green out of spite, but in this election cycle, they kinda got us. We're stuck between a fascist and a hard place, and can't afford to protest vote. Still, these frickers REALLY REALLY make me wanna, oh my gosh I wanna drop the dems so bad. I cant express how alienating they are and how much they make me hate them. Youd think it would be easy to make someone like me like you, but it's like the dems are explicitly trying to be evil too. They just get away with it because given Trump, they're still...the lesser evil. But evil and still evil.

Idk. My opinion, support platner the best you can. Get the republicans out at all costs, then we can flip on the dems and hope the republicans sober up a bit back toward being their NORMAL type of evil, and not this batcrap insane fascist blend of it. But yeah. This is what i was fearing in 2016, a whole political alignment where progressives are sidelined for a generation by a hostile party that we cant realistically leave because the republicans have gone full blown psycho. I hate the fact that we're here. I can't express enough how much I hate modern politics. Anyone who wants to do the right thing gets crushed by this crappy duopoly, and then we gotta vote for the lesser evil because the greater one wants literal third reich style fascism it seems. I hate it.  

Has Trump changed my opinion on changing birthright citizenship?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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