Discussing FiftyPlusOne's midterm model

 So, FiftyPlusOne (previously FiveThirtyEight) released their midterm forecast and it's looking....pretty reasonable. I largely concur with it in broad ways, although I may differ on details. They give the democrats a 56% chance of winning the senate, a mere point off from my 55% forecast (and theirs was 55% earlier). On actual senate predictions, we vary, they tend to think Michigan has a much higher chance of going blue, whereas they seem to think Nebraska is more likely to go red. Their probability for each race seems far more....likely than my forecast. I tend to be more likely to reach extreme outcomes more easily (like 97% certainty, whereas they'll be at 85%), but these are all methodology issues. 

As discussed in 2024, my model is more simple. It's polling only (outside of placeholder data where I estimate the outcome based on previous cycles), and merely represents a snapshot of where the race IS, not where it may be several months from now. Meanwhile, 538/50+1 likes to do things like do long term forecasts based on fundamentals. I guess if you do a fundamentals model, yeah, youll be more likely to make michigan blue and nebraska red. If anything, that might even be more correct. I just let my model model. Sometimes the data picks up on things that seem counterintuitive, but end up happening, like the blue state weakness in 2024 in states like new jersey, illinois, and new york. So who knows? And I guess you gotta temper certainty when the election is months out and technically anything can happen. Im fine with adjusting things on the fly, but yeah these guys just do things differently.

My own house model is currently more fundamentals based given the sheer lack of polling. They come up with 231 house seats and an 87% chance for democrats. Again, willing to split the difference is this is a long term forecast and not a snapshot. My current model is like 233 with a 97% chance. It was 231 with a 96% chance this morning but RCP updated their GCV polling average and plugging it into my model boosts dems chances. 

I will say that with the lower probability, they account for a higher range of outcomes than mine. In the senate, they seem to think that democrats will get between 47-55 seats, with their median outcome at 51. My own model agrees with 51 being the median (technically 51-52 due to iowa being a tossup), but and my range of outcomes is 46-54. Not a huge difference but it is weird seeing up to 55. Do they really think states like south carolina, montana, or florida can flip? Well, they have a higher probability than my model so I guess they do.

THe house is where this really gets funky. They seem to have outcomes ranging from like 211 on the low end for democrats to around 253 on the high end. My own model has a 95% confidence interval between 220-244 currently. Even if we account for the sudden 1 point shift we're still talking 217-244. This isnt to say outliers outside of these ranges cant happen, but I tend to try to stick to around 95-96% confidence (two tailed). Still looking at their charts, it's the same. If we include extreme outliers they got senate outcomes with 58 dem senate seats and 280something house seats. No way that's gonna happen. My model doesnt even account for extreme possibilities like that, since once we get beyond 99.8-9% or so I'm just like "let's just say it's 100%." 

Again, interesting to see the methodology differences here. I'll stick to my own model out of pride but yeah. We'll see. I find my model tracks pretty well in practice. Aint perfect, but i aint expecting it to be. Again, it's the AK47 of election models. Simple, easily accessible, it just works. Might not be the most accurate or sophisticated in the world but it gets the job done. Sophisticated models are a double edged sword, the additional complexity allows more accuracy in theory, but given the raw noise of probability, it can backfire. We'll see who is more accurate on election day. At least it's better than their 2024 "50% no matter what" forecast they seemed to have. 

Speaking of 2024, let's look at their final forecast.

So, they had it 50-50, and the deciding factor was polling error. That's about where I was. Funny how I can have a simple model, they have a complex one, and they end up in the same place more or less. Goes to show how even the best models are gonna have error and inaccuracies, same as mine. On the state level they seemed to do what my model did, with MI and WI leaning left, but they also though PA leaned slightly left too. So they technically had harris winning. I know it's being really nitpicky, given a 0.6% difference between theirs and my model, but mine was actually ever so slightly more accurate in that regard (although I was personally even more bullish toward harris where i thought the error would go in her favor). Still, they knew that polling was gonna be inaccurate, and estimated it being off by 3.8 points in either direction. And yeah....that would lead to either 226-312 as we saw.....or 319-219, depending the direction it went in. 

In the house, they came to roughly the same conclusion I did. Slight dem advantage but virtually a dead heat. In the senate they gave the republicans a 92% shot whereas my model was at 87%....and yeah. Very minor differences. Again. Really goes to show how my model punches above its weight. Only slight differences from theirs as of election day. 

So interesting model, let's see how ours compare in 2026. 

Discussing the decline of Halo

 So...Halo "Campaign Evolved" released recently to mixed reception and there's been a lot of talk about the decline of Halo. The new game is basically combat evolved (Halo 1) again, but remade. While the game comes off as a cash grab, and some aspects of it like the cut scenes and voice acting are mid, it doesn't look bad. My big issue with it is I don't have an interest spending $50 on a remake. I'm gonna just play MCC and if I want to recommend halo to people, I'll still recommend MCC as you get 6 games for the price of one. While there were some awesome sales of it and those sales have dried up since the older version directly competes with the remake, Id still recommend MCC full price for those who wanna get into the series. 

But yeah. A lot of people are saying the series isn't what it once was. And after listening to Asmongold watch some weirdo anti woke right winger going on about how halo went woke and how 343 hates the military and religion or something, I wanted to discuss it myself. Because that opinion? Well, let's just say its really really dumb. 

The deevolution of single player

 A lot of people really point to the handing off of the franchise to 343 studios after Halo Reach as the beginning of the fall of the series, and while 343 certainly isn't innocent, I am of the opinion decline was inevitable. As I see it, the OG trilogy was perfect. Halo 1-3 had a complete story arc that was coherent, made sense, and was 10/10. The series was complete after that, and Halo 3 was the zenith of the series. There was no going back after that. 

While Halo 4 and 343's takeover of the series did bring a lot of negative changes. The art style was grittier and felt off. The lore was heavily retconned to allow for the new forerunner enemy, and it just generally missed the mark. The real problem began soon after Halo 3. You see, after Halo 3, the series was complete, it was perfect. And I'm not gonna lie, i think the decline started with ODST and Reach. 

 ODST felt mediocre. It focused on these ODST marines and not chief, and I just generally found the story uninteresting. The environments were bland and felt repetitive. The lack of flood and ONLY covenant made the game feel one dimensional. While most halo games feature battlefields in different biomes against different factions of enemies, ODST represented a shift toward one bland biome more or less, and one faction. This made the campaign feel more one dimensional.  

Halo Reach was also controversial for me. While the environments had more variety than ODST, it just felt like the same problems, and while people blame 343 and 4 for retconning the canon, Reach's story line seemed to contradict the book "The Fall of Reach" and I really didnt like that. After Reach, I stopped caring about Halo for a while. I got bored with the series. 1-3 were amazing, ODST and Reach felt mid, and I kinda skipped 4 until I found it in a bargain bin years later. 

4 did butcher the canon further. But at this point, i didn't care. I started checking out at the tail end of Bungie's control of the franchise, and I honestly believe ODST and Reach were the beginning of the decline. However, 4 clearly continued that direction. 

Honestly? I blame capitalism for this one. With a commercial success like Halo, the franchise had to continue putting out games and expanding. Even if the game was complete. Now, ODST and Reach were somewhat logical expansions. ODST was a short story between 2 and 3, Reach was a prequel. They had material for new games. But going on into a new arc beyond 3 was probably a mistake. The flood were taken care of, the war with the covenant was over. It was a good time to just end the franchise. But again, money machine had to make more money, so they persisted with new games. And 343 just wasn't up to the task of bringing the franchise into the future. 

Despite this, 4 wasnt even a bad game. The forerunners were a crime against halo lore, and not as fun of a faction as the flood, but they did add some variety to the game. And the environments were good, the campaigns were good. There's a reason halo 4 is my 4th favorite halo campaign ahead of ODST and reach but behind the trilogy. It wasnt bad. Wasnt amazing, but wasn't bad. 

Now 5...5 was bad. I didnt play it since I didnt own an xbox one and they never ported it to PC, but I did watch a full play through of it. And it was kind of a crime against the franchise. It just suuuuuckkkkkeeeedddd. Like, wtf were they thinking? Game play looked okay, but yeah, I can see why this one flopped. 

And infinite....well....5 sucked so bad that arc off screen, fast forwarding to the aftermath of untold events not directly seen in game. Again, did I mention 343 are terrible story tellers? They are. Anyway, infinite kinda had some of the same issues as ODST and reach. Mostly fighting a single faction. This time in an open world...where the world felt mostly like a bunch of the same. The game played like halo far cry edition. The open world was mildly fun, the actual campaign sucked. The story kinda sucked. The environments were boring and repetitive. It was mid. And yeah. Halo infinite is a game i struggle to play in the hierarchy because its just so different than the others. Based purely off of the traditional campaign it feels awful, but i did enjoy the open world and some moments here and there. I cant hate it, but I dont particularly love it, now that I've sat on it for a few years now. It's okay. Somewhere in the tier with ODST and reach IMO maybe. 

And now we got this remake that no one asked for, that while not terrible from what I've seen of it, seems lacking in the delivery, and it seems clear that the creators are so creatively bankrupt they're in the "let's recreate our own best hits because anything else we do just pisses people off", not realizing how the community is a bunch of whiny people stuck in the mid 2000s and who hate on anything new, even if it's just the old repackaged (there, I said it). To me it just screams that they have no idea what they're doing, they wanna make money, but their actual own ideas suck, seem to destroy the lore and make the franchise worse and worse, so they're playing it safe and still somehow fail. 

But yeah, to sum it up....343 taking over the franchise with 4 marks where the public acknowledges decline, but again, I kinda fell out of love with the series with ODST and Reach. Even those games, which are very revered by the community, just felt mid compared to the original trilogy. I'm of the opinion that the series probably should have stopped and had nowhere to go after 3. It was complete, it was perfect, and trying to expand it was a mistake. Even I was like "why dont they do reach?" at the time, but even that ended up kinda butchering the franchise for me. It just didn't land.

Multiplayer

 So I didnt play multiplayer at the time. i didnt get into it until 2019 with MCC on PC. But tracing what happened, my opinion kind of follows my single player logic as well. 

Honestly, here's an unpopular opinion. Halo was never actually good. like most early FPS games, it was actually rather awkward and didn't age well. It took off because it just happened to be in the right place at the right time, coinciding with the rise of console online multiplayer, and halo 2 just happened to be the face of xbox live at the time. Halo 3 ended up continuing that trend, and while neither 2 nor 3 were BAD, I mean...were they really good? In retrospect, no. But again, right place at the right time. 

So why did they decline? Because they were darned if they did and darned if they didnt. Because the OG games werent really good, they needed to evolve and modernize. but because the halo community is rather...conservative to the point that they see the introduction of sprint as a cancer on the franchise, any innovations to try to improve it end up being divisive. So adding power ups like sprint and armor lock ended up alienating the purists, meaning reach was the beginning of the decline. Again, 2 and 3 were seen as perfect on the eyes of the community, but as the series tried to evolve and modernize with reach, the chances ended up dividing the community.

4 tried to make the series more like call of duty, which caused the purists to lose their crap, because many online FPS communities think emulating COD in any way is evil and causes insane derangement syndrome. But yeah, loadouts? People lost their crap, even though i didn't think they were bad. ANd of course, sprint. OMG WE CANT HAVE SPRINT IN A HALO GAME! THATS HERESY! Like, really, wtf are we doing here? I really hate the halo community sometimes, they're so dumb. But at the same time, that's the problem. The series struggled to adapt and bring in new audiences, and old audiences freaked out over changes made to the game.

5 overhauled the game and added insane movement mechanics. It seemed to be an overcompensation of 4 being "too casual" so they made 5 a hardcore sweatfest. Which just alienated the casual half of the community. Fun fact, I DID play some halo 5, as 5 has a PC version that can only play custom games. So I have played it. Feels like crap, it's a total hot mess partially due to poor optimization and partially due to the game genuinely kinda sucking, but yeah, suffice to say I was impressed and it's by far the worst single player experience barring maybe CE's multiplayer mode. 

Actually I skipped one. Halo 2 anniversary remade parts of halo 2 in halo 4's engine. It's in MCC, it was fun, arguably the best halo game prior to infinite MP wise, but again, community freaked out. Apparently because it didnt play EXACTLY like 2004 halo 2 it was bad. Like, really, halo purists are something else. Hell half of them complain about MCC halo 2 and 3 because the netcode is slightly different than the xbox live versions of the OG games or...something. Idk. Again, the community is one of the most miserable I've ever met. Nothing makes them happy, not even remakes. 

Halo infinite was decent IMO, it attempted to modernize the series, and it hit all the right notes, but then the devs mismanaged it horribly in the early years due to sheer laziness and incompetence, and new content was painfully slow to the point that by the time the game got new content in meaningful amounts like 95% of players were gone for good by that point. I remember BTB went down like a month after launch and the devs took TWO MONTHS to fix it. They literally put the game out the door right before christmas and went on vacation until january and if the game went to hell in the mean time, well...so be it. Make do with what it was. And then they took a month to fix it after. yeah, they did that. Again they butchered it.

Still, there were a lot of aspects outside of their control too. The fact is, by 2021, gaming changed. Multiplayer changed. Everything was battle royales and soon extraction shooters (the new big thing recently), and traditional multiplayer shooters are dying. And halo just....is no longer the name it was back in the 2000s. People want something different. They want hyper competitiveness. Large worlds, streaming. I mean, as a millennial, i hate those changes too. But yeah, Halo just cant adapt to the modern era well. It was by far the best, most modern feeling halo game after playing all of MCC and finding it dated, but does that save it?

And the community. OMFG the community. It reminds me of the UT4 days and how THAT series imploded. They're so miserable they make the battlefield boomers look sane. They complain about sprint, they complain about the game being free. They complain about cosmetics. They just find tons of reasons to complain. Dont get me wrong, there were legit criticisms of infinite. But the criticisms that often got heard and repeated were often just....sheer stupidity. Seriously. This series is basically unreal tournament at this point. It's DOA and doesnt even realize it. They cant bring in new audiences, the old audience complains about everything they do. They cant win. The series had its moment back in the 2000s, it probably should've ended gracefully back then, and the fact that they keep making game after game that has the same core issues with failing to make the community happy while failing to bring in new audiences is just evidence that it no longer has the sauce and should probably just be abandoned like UT was. I hate to say it, I like halo itself, BUT....yeah, its way past its prime and its never gonna be the cash cow it was back in the day. 

And now we got campaign evolved, a remake of 1. It has no multiplayer, but yeah...same issues on the SP side. The purists hate it, picking it apart for not being exactly like the 2001 version. IM not sure new audiences are interested. I dont think it looks terrible but having watched a few hours of it it looks cringe. I dont feel motivated to buy it at all. It feels like a cash grab, and yeah. Again, I just feel like the series is dead and people dont even realize it yet. There's no salvaging it. i guess remakes to make money machine go brr is the best they can do. But that's about it. And even then....it's not like the remake is superior to the original in every way either. 

So...yeah. That's my view. I just wanted to share it.  

Once again, if you can't vote for El Sayed, leave the democratic party already

 So...this is being aimed more at the "other side." I came across comments from a communist who was like "I just can't vote for El Sayed, he's not for communism, he just wants a nicer version of capitalism." Cool. Can I like, plaster these comments everywhere I end up encountering the OTHER group of people screaming he's a raging leftist? Seriously. That's the point. Almost no one wants LITERAL leftist. Most people who claim to like socialism just want more government services, they dont want literal communism. And with fear of literal communists infiltrating the DSA and democratic party whipping up a red scare, I'd rather social democratic movements distance themselves from communists, and communists to distance themselves from social democrats. 

Seriously, if you just want more government services with higher taxes, fine. If you want to basically have literal communism, not fine. Just like with the centrists, it's like, get out of the democratic party, for all our sakes. Seriously, if these guys stay they're gonna pose long term issues. We can't allow them in the tent. They're just poison the rest of the tent. They're gonna make us all look like loons at best, and at worst, if they do take over the party that's scary. Again, It's fine if we have a liberal/democratic "tea party", it's NOT fine if we have a liberal/democratic version of "MAGA". One movement was about getting the party back to its roots. The other led to authoritarianism. I know, I know, the one movement did lead to the other in a way, BUT, that's where the line is for me. Someone like Abdul El Sayed is a based candidate Im happy to support. But if you're a literal communist, no. Just no. 

I'm tired of craplibs, I'm also tired of literal communists who make us all look bad. I'm putting my foot down on this one. 

Explaining why centrist democrats are moderate republicans on an ideological level

 So...I thought I would explain exactly why I call out centrist democrats so hard and believe them to be basically moderate republicans, or at least have more in common with moderate republicans than social democrats.

Explaining the spectrum

I tend to believe in this general 7 point likert scale for politics

1) Communists

2) Democratic socialists

3) Social democrats

4) The great melting pot of moderate liberalism

5) "Centrists"/moderate republicans

6) Conservatives

7) Fascists

I'm around #3 on that scale. 5 is where moderate republicans and even some centrist democrats start blending together. The political overton window since the 1980s has ranged between 4 and 6. DSA candidates are #2, actual socdems are #3. Illiberal extremists are 1/7. 

Discussing worldviews

With that said, I wanna do a brief dissection of a moderate third way democrat's worldview. 

Theology/Philosophy- Variable, but for the sake of argument, many of them are Christian. However, they're mainline Christians, not fundamentalists. They tend to have one foot in the Christian worldview and one foot in the secular worldview. They'll profess beliefs in Christianity and reverence for its doctrines, but also tend to not take stuff literally at times. This leads to a fragmented worldview similar to what I had in the late 2000s/early 2010s. They'll be surprisingly reasonable one minute but then fall for the same old religious BS at the same time. Again, kinda all over the place. Examples of this are Hillary Clinton, a methodist, her pro life VP, Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, a catholic, John kerry, also catholic, etc.

Some can also be new atheists though, especially older generation ones like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins, who are boomers and have always had that more moderate liberal mindset. 

Morality- Due to the conflicting nature of their metaphysical worldview, you get that leaking into their morality. Probably stage 4 on kohlberg's stages of morality, indicating they still get their morality from external sources and have a relatively fixed understanding of the world. May have some conservative brain rot in there as a result. Think Hillary Clinton, who was pro life personally but pro choice politically. Anti homosexuality personally, but pro LGBT rights publicly. Internalize the protestant work ethic and as a result generally believe all humans should work and inherently believe in a more limited role to safety nets. Think clinton again with "god given potential" rhetoric, Biden with "work has dignity" rhetoric, etc. It stems from this inherently conservative mindset driven by Christianity. Like, you generally dont have the free thinking secular humanist stuff, even if their religious worldview is tempered somewhat with humanism. 

Psychology/sociology- Due to the undercurrents of Christianity, still believe in free will, moral accountability, personal responsibility, and probably believe that humans are sinful or evil in some way. They dont deny social sciences like the right do, but these moral beliefs do leech into their politics.

Law/politics- They're less likely to support overt christian nationalism, but the christian worldview leaks into their morality, which thus influences their politics, serving as a moderator. They tend to believe a lot of similar things as the right, but more in a "let's not get carried away with it" sort of way. Again, they might have issues with abortion, or LGBT rights, where they come out in favor of it when public support is on that side, but if it isn't, they'll be fine with throwing those issues under the bus and upholding a moderate consensus. Again, public position vs private position.

Economics- The same is true with economics. Their morals are basically the same as conservatives. Capitalism inherently good, it has SOME flaws, but ultimately more pro capitalist then, say, I would be. Still believe everyone must work, focus on "equality of opportunity" and job creation. Limited support of safety nets, and this is where they bristle up against progressives.

Progressives tend to not be limited by this christian impulse. They're more willing to acknowledge that these systems exist for humans, not humans for the systems, and are more willing to change things. Progressives often support large, universalist safety nets, and centrists just freak out about that. You cant just tax people and redistribute wealth, that's immoral. Like, imagine the hard right believes that everyone should work and what people get they get, and if you dont get enough you deserve to suffer. Moderate liberals look at that system, recognize the moral justness of it, but due to being moderated by humanist impulses, want to soften the edges of it. But still, they dont go far enough because they ultimately believe in the same moral system conservatives do, just with more nuance.  And then you have "the left" come in and question the very ideals underlying the system for whatever reason and they end up having a moral panic, saying I CANT SUPPORT THAT and blah blah blah. Which is why in this moment, they're joining republicans in this weird mccarthyist fervor to punch left at social democrats. because despite claiming to support social democracy, their morals are still fundamentally conservative in nature. And I realize it, and they seem to not see it that way.

History- I wanna include this before wrapping back around to discussing economics more, but I do wanna discuss this a bit too. Because of the fractured worldview, they often dont have a very coherent account of history. Biblical Christianity offers narratives based on myth. The more I study history as a secular progressive, the more driven I am to conflict driven narratives about how our society has been driven by the authoritarian impulses of a ruling class. And that they use the conservative ethic to entrench their power. While I inevitably support some iteration of existing institutions, I'm fine with more heavily reforming things, wanting to avoid the problems associated with "leftism", but I kind of understand how a lot of stuff conservatives and even these liberals take for granted are social constructions that dont always benefit people and they we should challenge some of them. But because those liberals are de facto conservatives, defending that belief system and institutions in its image, they end up punching left, even at social democrats and the like. 

So yeah, basically, the centrist liberal is like half conservative, half humanist. They are willing to debate the nuances of the conservative worldview, tempering that with rationality, but they'll also temper their rationality with belief in tradition and that christian worldview. Again, their philosophical bases are a hot mess, with a lot of them operating from this highly inconsistent moral framework that is held together by duct tape and cognitive dissonance. It works, quite frankly, because IMO, a lot of these guys dont think about this stuff very hard....they're more well read than conservatives, giving them a bit of a superiority complex over the "the world is 6000 years old" guys, but yeah, as someone who was once there, when I thought about it enough, this stuff collapsed like a deck of cards. 

And yeah, that's why when actual progressives start saying the status quo is unjust and start wanting more drastic changes, they lose their crap. From our perspective, the changes are just rational, and without that christian influence in my worldview, moderating doesnt even make sense. Why should we compromise with this weird irrational worldview? That's how I see it. But lacking that irrationality, the moderate will scream about how we dont share their values and start siding with conservatives over us.

Briefly discussing humanism vs marxism-leninism

Now, with that said, let's separate liberal progressivism and social democracy from hardcore leftism. 

Metaphysically, both humanism and MLism start out as atheistic, naturalistic philosophies. Which is why atheism is often associated with MLism and the right screams about atheists killing millions of people. Because MLs did that.

However, when you start delving into MLism, you start noticing that these guys made a state sponsored political religion around the USSR, where Marx is treated as a prophet, his writings as holy doctrines, and where the leftist dictators of the 20th century are also venerated to a large degree. 

Humanists....dont view things this way. We're more moderate and even handed ourselves. We tend to pride ourselves on not having gods, masters, or treating anything as sacred. Just as we question the right and christianity, we question the left and marxism too. While marx does have some valid points about capitalism's flaws, his calls for revolution, abolishing the system, and establishing socialism and communism are a failure. So I would consider humanism a more LIBERAL or social democratic philosophy, while leftism is its own animal. 

On religion, humanists are generally pro first amendment and even if we dont like religion, we're pluralists on the subject. Secularism is about protecting freedom. MLs want state sponsored atheism, not mere secularism. 

And it just diverges from there. Humanists will come back around pointing out capitalism has some advantages and communism never worked, whereas MLs are so dedicated to destroying capitalism that they end up going to weird extremes. 

So make no mistake, leftism is a quasi religion dedicated to destroying capitalism and replacing it with socialism, communism, or anarchism, while secular humanists are more even handed, recognizing that yes capitalism is horribly flawed, but also that it should exist in some form. With me, I tend to have the framework of using sociology to analyze economics both from functionalist and conflict driven perspectives, recognizing value in both, and the two moderating each other, the way for a moderate democrat, christianity and secularism mdoerate each other. But for me, this dualistic approach works, as I can recognize the objective value in something while also seeing how it sucks. 

So for me, I got my own moderating influences in pure rationality that stop me from going down the ML path and drinking their kool aid. I cant say the same of all leftists. I do think the threat of illiberal leftism is a long term threat to be kept an eye on. BUT....let's face it. Centrist libs are just moderate right wingers. So I guess we can create a new scale here. From left to right.

1) Marxist-Leninists- Left wing crazies

2) "Democratic socialists"- Moderate left wingers, still support the abolition of capitalism, but seem to have learned from some of the mistakes of the #1 guys

3) Secular humanists- Relatively even handed, criticize both christian capitalism and marxism-leninism, end up with reason driven progressivism

4) Moderate liberals- Half secular humanists, and half christian capitalist, end up being the moderate wing of capitalism

5) Conservative christians/capitalists- The real die hard ideological believers in capitalism, tend to support the belief system without limits, ignoring the flaws and downsides

Like that's basically how I'd frame it. 1 and 5 are the extreme versions of ideologies. 2 and 4 are moderate wings that tend to temper their respective ideologies with some level of rationality. And 3s are just the purely rational people who arguably end up supporting some form of interventionist capitalism. You can even say "humanist capitalism" or "human centered capialism", but I'd also say a form of social democracy works here too. 

And in America, the debate is between the 4s and 5s. The "left" is basically 3s, 2s, and occasionally 1s. And given the state of DSA, I think the overall direction of that faction is 2.5, with some being socialists, others being social democrats, but generally agreeing on short term priorities. 

And yeah, being a 3 is frustrating these days, its like you dont fit in anywhere. The 4s and 2s are both obnoxious, not even getting into the 1s and 5s and their weird ideological purism. But yeah. That's how I see it. 

If you can't vote for El Sayed, just leave the democratic party already

 So....centrists complaining around El Sayed always make me roll my eyes. OMG I CANT VOTE FOR HIM! HES A SOCIALIST! *repeats deranged crap heard online*

I mean....the dude's a "capitalist", you realize that right? he said as much in his recent debate with haley stevens. He's basically a socdem. Like an actual socdem. Not a third wayer virtue signalling socdem policy but always backing away from it when its time to put up. That's the thing. While, again, there are some tankie types in DSA and we should be wary of them, a lot of those types are just trying to advocate for actual reformist capitalism. 

Same with the Israel thing. El Sayed focuses his campaign on M4A, but his second priority is basically opposing Israel. he gets a lot of bad faith accusations of anti semitism for that. I swear a lot of americans see a muslim dude criticizing Israel and they just see OBL or something. It's ACTUALLY racist AF. No, the antisemitism is a bad faith accusation, and as a lot of us have been saying, the more you overuse it the more you diminish its impact to the point of giving cover to literal antisemitism. Same with the tankie problem in DSA. Keep calling socdems communists and suddenly it allows actual communists to infiltrate the movement. 

But yeah, if you think El Sayed is SOOOOOO extreme that you cant support him and youd rather support a republican, you probably are closer to the republicans than me. El Sayed aint exactly what I'd do, but he's miles better than stevens, and voting for a republican is just....no. I swear, these guys have views like I had back around 2008ish where I was a liberal/libertarian republican and was willing to vote Clinton but Obama was too extreme for some reason. Same red scare energy here. ANd you know what? Obama didnt usher in socialism, he was actually a rather disappointing and milquetoast lib. El Sayed IS to the left of that, but basically, he's Bernie 2016 lane. Which is basically social democracy, not socialism. 

It always amuses me when these centrists freak out in the face of an actual social democrat. Like so many of them do the David Pakman thing of "I want the nordic model" or something but when someone actually represents it, they act like they're a communist. I highly encourage centrist libs to reevaluate what they're actually for if they're looking at supporting Mike Rogers or Susan Collins over someone like Graham Platner/Troy Jackson or Abdul El Sayed. You might find that maybe you're actually just a moderate republican. 

Yes, capitalism is responsible for the problems of the gaming industry, but we wouldn't have a gaming industry if not for capitalism

 So, the Humanist report made a video about how capitalism is killing the gaming industry. Looking at it again it seemed to be intended to blame systemic problems with capitalism over "wokeness", but honestly, it just seemed like a rant against capitalism, given how Mike Figuredo comes off as one of those DSA type guys. So I wanna give my two cents here.

We wouldn't have a gaming industry without capitalism. Communists dont innovate. They have inefficient state run economies that provide economic security but basically force people to take unfilling state guaranteed jobs. The government dictates what is made and how much is made, and bureaucracy stifles innovation. The only notable contributions to the gaming industry I can think of are tetris, which admittedly was a banger back in the 80s, and tencent, which is a chinese company that licenses a lot of mobile ports and low quality knock off games. Even then, tencent is at least quasi capitalist, since even china realized that they need markets to grow. 

And yes, capitalism today is kinda killing the gaming industry, with its never ending quest of MORE profits, and never being satisfied with enough, I admit it. It's why quality is declining and costs are rising. The industry tries to extract as much money as possible, not simply being satisfied to post profits like it did every year since the 80s and 90s, but always trying to get MORE. That doesn't mean that we should socialize the whole industry though. 

Quite frankly, my answer has always been to respond to corporate greed through consumer action. For every abusive and exploitative practice that a company comes out with, consumers should push back. If consumer pressure isnt enough, we should regulate the industry as we're able. Socialism is only a last resort, and something I'd only be willing to consider in the case of a basic need. Here, the most I advocate for is just regulating blatant anti consumer behavior. Breaking up monopolies. Loosening IP laws. Ironically, that tencent company, while unable to innovate much themselves, is able to force a lot of companies' hands by offering consumers cheaper alternatives, even if those alternatives are inferior and derivitive. And that's what drives capitalism being a good system. Competition. Consumer choice. If anything, a huge problem with the industry is these companies are often shielded by very corporate friendly IP laws that dont allow competition to arise. Gamers are locked into oligopolistic ecosystems. Industries lobby for the legal terminology around buying games to focus on buying "licenses" and people never truly owning products. IP laws attempt to strike down alternative options to the big names that threaten their money. In the hardware industry, RAM is run by a cartel of only a few industries and it costs billions and billions to enter the market and compete. Only 3 companies make GPUs, and one of them has 90% market share. The problems of the gaming industry ultimately come from corporate consolidation, and limiting consumer choice. 

On the topic of wokeness. Ive discussed this before, but eh....I'll admit that there's SOMEWHAT of a problem culturally. These companies lean into DEI, try to expand markets by being more "inclusive", and then alienating core audiences because their "art" is preachy and kinda sucks. Rather than giving consumers what they want, they try to appeal to social justice narratives, and yeah, it kinda sucks. I dont like the social policing we see in the industry either, and some of the artistic directions of some games are kinda cringe. The zeitgeist of my childhood through young adulthood is gone and admittedly it is part of the reason games dont hit the same way.

At the same time, this is greatly exaggerated. Some anti woke types get pissy whenever they see a woman in a game, or someone of a different color or sexuality, even when it's woven into the game in tasteful ways. And honestly, in the grand scheme of things, if I had to put a percentage of how much "wokeness" contributes to the decline of the industry, I'd put the number around 5% off hand. Like, it's not a NONfactor, but it's also not significant either. 

Basically, the core problem is this. It's peak gaming. We have this idea that industries can keep growing forever. They can't. Hardware is plateauing, other issues with capitalism are making it less affordable, the industry doesnt seem to care and wants to go full steam ahead with things. Game studios are bloated, middle management ruins efficiency. We're throwing tons of money at the problem. Consumers are struggling to keep up, and in a plethora of options, not just from the new stuff, but also f2p games existing, low spec games existing, old games existing, they're just not buying any more. So gaming in its traditional form tries to shift to become more premium, thus reducing its consumer base further, while driving mainstream gamers toward esports. WHich is how we got this story of people buying like 1 game a year. People arent buying the AAA blockbusters as much, they're playing roblox and fortnite and decade old games like counter strike, overwatch, etc. They might buy the yearly COD, or even battlefield 6. And even when BF6 is the best selling game of 2025 (and currently my "main game"), they're still laying off the staff that made it because the industry demands too much, while the CEOs get bonuses. 

Well, here's the good thing about capitalism. As I've been saying for years, all of this is unsustainable, and at some point, it WILL collapse. They cant just keep raising prices, while offering inferior products, while laying off staff and extracting all that wealth up to themselves. Eventually, we're gonna have a gaming market crash, and that's when the culling of the industry begins. Capitalism works because its invisible hand is basically natural selection. The most adaptable survive, and the weak will perish. Horrible principle applied to humans themselves, but in terms of industries? Let the process cook. At this point, I welcome a gaming crash, since it will serve as an important market correction that will make the industry serve consumers more again. We dont need socialism, we just need capitalism to actually do its thing. The industry is F-ing around, it just needs to "find out". Hopefully that will happen in the next 5 years or so. And it wont lead to some dystopian mess like us all streaming games from chromebooks with locked down operating systems or some crap. Im talking a real crash. Like 1983 style. Like "oh crap, no one is buying our $1000 console with $80 games" type crash. 

Election Update 7/31/26

 So, let's get to it.

Senate

So, the democrats are still narrowly favored in the Senate. Troy jackson has recovered Maine's numbers a bit. Texas is now in the democratic column despite it being contentious. On the other hand, Michigan has flipped red today. For a while, both El Sayed and Stevens were D+0.5, but newer polling shows stevens up by 0.7% vs Mike Rogers, and El Sayed is down 0.7%. Given El Sayed is overwhelmingly winning the primary there now, and is currently expected to win by around 10, well, yeah. El Sayed data, not stevens. 

Does this mean El Sayed is not electable? Not necessarily, they've been trading blows for a while and El Sayed has closed the gap pretty significantly as of late.  Honestly, both are close enough where the polling error will probably matter more than the individuals running. BUT...yeah,. Haley Stevens is slightly more electable. I am in the El Sayed camp, but Stevens has been doing a good job attacking the crap out of him as of late, causing El Sayed to lose ground here. 

As far as the senate as a whole though, it really does depend which side overperforms. As demonstrated last time, the polling makes it such a tossup that a slight breeze will make or break the night for one party. If dems overperform, they sweep. if republicans overperform, they sweep. And we won't know what happens until it happens. 

But yeah, most likely result is 51-49 or 52-48 depending where Iowa goes, with the dems having a 56% chance of control, and the republicans having a 44% chance (including ties). 

 House

 

The house results have rebounded.  Not that it matters because my model is rather inelastic anyway and the only race thats flipping back and forth at this rate is MT-01. The question isn't if the democrats take the house, it's the margin, and once again, that's likely to be decided by polling error. 

Governors

 

Updated governors data moved a few margins, but didn't really greatly change the overall picture. The only race I wanna talk about is Wisconsin, since the primary is going on there. Francesca Hong is looking to be a clear winner there. And her numbers are horrible. While Mandela Barnes was about D+3-4, Hong is down around 3 vs the republicans. This isn't a 1-2 point difference, we're talking 6-7. And that's pretty bad. Even though I like Hong personally, I really don't think she can win. This is a case where the 'electability" argument works in favor of a slightly more moderate candidate. Anyway, Barnes dropped out and now there's a straight up centrist in the race named David Crowley...and he aint expected to win either. Idk to be happy the left wing candidate is winning or upset that she's doing so good the progressive with a shot at winning withdrew from the race. 

Conclusion

Anyway, that's where things stand right now. Hasn't been a very active month overall, but we have seen some movement. My forecast still has the democrats winning the house overwhelming, the senate is still in question. Governors are governors. I think the dems are doing pretty well overall outside of new hampshire and wisconsin there. New hampshire just seems to have a really popular moderate republican, whereas wisconsin....well....again, Hong....

Right now the primaries in wisconsin and michigan are the big thing going on. With the senate, Abdul El Sayed is looking to be wiping the floor with Haley Stevens, although he tends to underperform in terms of electability vs stevens slightly. Neither candidate is in great shape for the general, but I'd rather be at a 57% chance vs a 43% one, just saying. But at the same time, stevens is kind of a crappy candidate and I like El Sayed, so...it is what it is.

On the Wisconsin primary, *sigh*, that's a painful one. Don't get me wrong. I like Hong, but I feel like she's too extreme for Michigan, I kinda wish Barnes was still in the race since he seemed like at least 80-90% as good and could win as comfortably as Hong is slated to lose. And crowley....*ugh*, I really dont like hardcore centrists. Even if he can win, dude leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So I guess we're stuck with Hong...

And yeah, that's where we're at. I'll update again in a couple weeks.