2020 Coverage, analyzing 2020 election night coverage

 So, just like 2016, I decided to analyze 2020's election night coverage. I know the race wasn't called that night, but I do remember it and I kind of remember my reactions at the time and the overall trajectory of the night. It uh....wasn't a good night for me. As those who read my 2020 coverage may recall, I vastly overestimated democrats' chances due to being led to believe that right wing pollsters were poll bombing averages and as such, went into 2020 very overconfident that the democrats were gonna win. Here was my prediction at the time. 

Yeah, I literally was looking at it like, remember 2016? Trump overperformed by 2-3 and Biden's ahead by 5, look at how much Trump would have to overperform to win! I feel very stupid in retrospect. In reality, this should have been my REAL prediction:

I know in the final results, I was wrong on the same amount of states, but this one felt more...right. I wouldnt vastly overestimate democrats' odds, and my expectations would be a bit more tempered. This is important to understand my own state of mind as the night went on. With that said, let's begin.

Hour 1

The vibe of 2020 was a lot different than 2016. In 2016, everything was ho hum, normal election night. In 2020, it was like, the country is on fire. If you had to watch it in 2020, you probably were wondering wtf is going on. Like, what's COVID? Why is everyone wearing masks? Why are you giving disclaimers that the election isn't rigged? Yeah. You could already see early signs of election denialism and what turned into the January 6th big lie here. I know in retrospect there were a lot of memes being shared with trump supporters being rather aggressive toward Biden campaign buses and the like. I mean, it was getting scary then. 2020 Trump feels closer to the Trump I know than the Trump of 2016. 

The signs of a Biden underperformance where there. Despite the numbers I was looking at (see the "O" prediction above, O means original, C means corrected), Trump approval was still relatively high, around 46%. Trump still had robust support well into 2020. 

The COVID pandemic feels like a different world. I mean, it really slaps you in the face. Everyone's wearing masks, there's talk of COVID and how it affected the election and voting. Everything feels wild. ANd of course, the high mail in voting boosted turnout, and the boosted turnout fed Trump's big lie election denialism. Bleh. I dont like this channel any more, can I watch something else? No, you cant watch something else, this is for science I guess. 

Hour 2

One major shift I notice from 2016 is in 2020, everything is very idpol-ey. Ya know, "woke 1..." Well that and democratic consultant brains. Everything is what about latinos, what about suburban women, what about the black vote, and it makes me roll my eyes. I hate how identity based voting is, and the need to appeal to every single constituency and their super special idpol needs. I like to run based on IDEAS. Sure we can discuss what appeals to who, but idk, it kinda slapped me in the face this time around. 

One demographic that did stand out to me is the "mom" demographic. Normally moms are relatively apolitical, and as discussed recently, a lot of them trend conservative due to fear of danger to their kids driving them to authoritarianism. But ironically, this cycle, COVID seemed to drive them to Biden. Just something worth discussing. Could be a reason he won. Trump was so dangerous and reckless it actually pushed some normally conservative demographics to Biden. We know now that his coalition was much broader than that, it was young people, it was disaffect voters, it was everyone, but yeah, just an interesting thing to point out. 

ANother interesting thing was the heavy use of nate silver's model with the cringey graphics. I almost forgot about that, but not gonna lie, I did find it cringey. His model was different than mine. More fundamentals and "expert opinion" based, rather than just based on polls (mine is the equivalent of his "lite" model), but he similarly overestimated Biden due to the same "trafalgar effect" I was trying to control for, causing it to be a lot more off. Given silver was pretty off in 2016, it feels 2 for 2 here. No wonder some say polling doesnt mean anything given these models. It's not that it doesn't, but yeah, it goes to show that more complexity doesnt mean better. While I cant say I was more accurate than him given my own original prediction at the time, I wasnt worse either. We quite frankly made the same errors, to the point that I felt the need to retroactively issue a second "prediction" using my normal methodology showing what it SHOULD have been at the time. 

Anyway, in the first 2 hours, there wasnt a ton to report. A bunch of red states went red, a bunch of blue states went blue. For the first 2 hours, it was hard to know where the energy was going. Although the florida call was the first red flag of my prediction being wrong. While this wouldnt have been AS huge of a deal in my corrected prediction, the OG prediction had Biden up by 3 there, so seeing it quickly get counted and it going Trump +3 was a bad sign. That means I was off by as much as 6 or so. Which...could mean we're seeing 2016 unfold again. No, not again. Not fricking again...

Hour 3

In 2020, this is where I started to panic. It was easy to understand why. Florida went Trump quickly. There was a HUGE red mirage in Georgia. North Carolina subsequently got called for Trump too. It wasnt looking good in Arizona. Those early states set the vibe for the night, and it's clear, relative to my prediction, where the energy was going, and that was Trump. Trump was overperforming again. And if he overperforms that much, he could do 2016 again, so by this point, in the real world, I was kinda panicking. I know I didnt vote for Biden. I once again had a grudge against the democrats over the primary and the centrist crap. But eh....I felt pretty confident in Biden winning going in, and by this point, that confidence was evaporating. 

Hour 4

Yeah, it seems like I'm off by about 4 points on average. My model only gave room for up to 5. So yikes. Basically, Georgia has a red mirage going on where i really doubt that it could actually even up. We lost florida and were off by 6 (4 in my revised prediction). We're losing North Carolina and Ohio. It all comes down to the rust belt it seems, and Trump is overperforming there too. At this point, its very possible Trump could repeat 2016. Biden CAN still win, but I was getting 2016 flashback vibes by this time of night. We were losing. The guy overperformed again, and my model was even more off. Again, this was in large part because of my attempts to weight the polling averages myself and yeah, it excluded a lot of pro trump polls. My revised prediction was closer on margins, but I would not be any more confident if I sat here with that on election night. I only had a 62% chance of a Biden victory in my revised prediction, and that gives even less room for a Biden victory if Trump overperforms. Even if I was off by, say, 2, that still puts us in a similar situation. So yeah, very nervous night at this point. Not the layup I expected. 

Toward the end of the hour, we start seeing more talk of the mail in vote, and how that's expected to lean democratic and that's what the election is gonna come down to. So at this point, it's clear we're not gonna know that night, and we gotta lock in for the next few days. So...yeah. Even if things look bad now, they could get better, it's really a question of whether it's gonna be enough. I wasn't feeling super confident. 

Hour 5

If anything, it feels like a Biden second wind. While Trump is ahead, we are reassured that all is not lost, because the mail in vote has yet to be counted and is heavily democratic. So while Trump did start out ahead, his averages were shrinking and it was unclear who the winner was going to be. We wouldn't know that night, and it might take several days to know who wins.

We also get a clearer vision of what the swing states actually are. In 2020, the map had a lot of swing states, but it seemed clear a lot of states like Ohio and Florida, which in the 2000s were major bellweathers, were now read leaning. The states left by this point were Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. ya know, the 7 swing states as we know them today. 

 Considering I just did the 2016 coverage previously, and given how that map represented the Obama era of maps....it does seem pretty clear that 2016 was a realignment. States like Virginia and Colorado became more reliable blue states. Florida and Ohio went red. Georgia and Arizona were reliable red states and are becoming more purple. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan were more reliable blue states and are also now purple. The Trump era represents a realignment for better or worse. It's not necessarily the realignment I hoped for, which was Bernie Sanders heralding the end to Reaganism and a second New Deal era,but yeah. Rust belt and florida are becoming more red, sun belt is becoming more blue, and states are meeting in the middle. 

These changes are still ongoing. While 2024 represented a shift back to the right, in 2026, we're seeing what happens when republicans drop the ball bad enough where a lot of normally lean R to soft safe R states are now tossups. We clearly seem to be in a post 2016 era, and 2020 seemed to represent a big of a map shift leading to the map we now follow today, while the pre 2016 map is mostly DOA. 

Now, again, I know I've been ambivalent on the realignment stuff, sometimes wondering if 2016 was THE realignment, or whether the REAL realignment is still yet to happen, with 2016 marking the beginning of an awkward transition. I think that's still yet to be seen. Given the increased popularity of DSA and the loss of conservative momentum in the second trump administration, the state of the realignment is unclear. We could be seeing MAGA implode, and the rise of the blue tea party in these mid terms. We could be seeing a 2010 style tea party taking off here, which could impact 2028. While right now, 2028 looks like a boring Harris rematch, a lot can change between now and then. It depends who runs and what the mood of the country is.  

Anyway, another thing that stood out to me about hour 5 was the discussion of Trump's "stand back and stand by" comments. I mean....YIKES. We all know what THAT meant now. And uh...yeah. This is what makes me so nervous about 2026 and 2028, I think this dude will try to delegitimize the results, especially since they probably won't go his way. Like really, I try NOT to godwins law here, but I keep comparing the dude to hitler for a reason. I think there's a legit historical parallel here. And I think he's gonna try to try something. 

Hour 6

The final hour got really cringey. We got a discussion about how Americans are oh so divided, and how this election has been so contentious and how people are tearing up each others' yard signs....and....I'll be blunt. I'm so sick of this rhetoric. We keep doing this "both sides" bullcrap about how "oh we're so divided, why can't we just come together?" First of all, because we disagree, and second of all, because we have (and had) a lunatic as a president. All night, we had the dark undercurrents of Trump's comments and the media's repeated need to point out that the election wasn't being stolen and the president was full of crap. Let's stop acting like both sides are at fault here. There's a reason I attack Trump even harder than Romney. I just ripped romney to shreds in a post I made just before this, and I finished it up by saying "hey, at least the guy isnt a fascist and hes a patriotic american." It's a low bar, but it's something he has over Trump. Trump was literally stoking the flames all election cycle, setting up the pretext for his "big lie", and we're gonna act like it's a both sides thing? Bull, freaking, crap.

And then Trump came on, and started going on about how he won and he was up so much and they're stealing it from him and blah blah blah. Like...bro, you know how badly this crap has aged even now? Were not even out of the trump era here since Biden won, and then Trump won reelection in 2024 (and unlike him, I'll admit that he won fairly in 2024). And looking back, this is why i turned so hard on this guy, going from treating him as an imbecile to an actual threat against liberal democracy. Because he lied, he stoked up his supporters, he MADE them violent, and then we wanna go on about division? Screw that. This guy was screaming fire in a crowded movie theater more or less and his words had consequences. And he was investigated thoroughly, and yes, he did commit crimes against the constitution. It's baffling we let this guy run again, that we let him win again, and that he's president again, after that happened. And that's why I fear for the 2026 and 2028 elections. Because he's gonna get DESTROYED and he won't accept the results, and he's gonna try this crap again, and possibly succeed, because now he has his administration staffed with loyalists and yes people who wont serve to check his power. It's scary. The future of democracy here is literally scary. 

Conclusion

So what can we conclude? First of all, the big takeaways I came away with on election night were 1) Trump winning in 2016 was NOT a fluke, and that Trumpism is here to stay and 2) trying to control for the trafalgar effect in polling clearly backfired. 

There was also another conclusion I reached at the time. That if Biden barely won in this environment, that the democrats would likely lose in 2024. This sadly proved accurate. 

Even worse, looking at this night now, I get a dark sense of forboding of what was coming. In 2016 the energy was different, Trump was an unknown element, he was elected seemingly because people were pissed off at the economy and democrats for failing to bring about the kinds of changes that they wanted. But in 2020, a big story of the night was him being a sore loser and spreading election conspiracies. And we didnt even realize where that was going. Especially me. But then January 6th happened, Trump turned more fascist, and now he's basically hitler lite. And again, I hate making a comparison to that guy since hyperbole is so overdone, but I'm serious on this. This guy is basically our hitler. He's eroding our democracy. He eroded peoples' faith in it through 2020, he incited an insurrection in 2021, and now he's staffed his second term with loyalists and is probably laying the groundwork as we speak for a coup this year. THIS. IS. SCARY. Like, i'm not joking. This isn't the same ho hum "Bush is a fascist" crap that people tried to pull in the 2000s, or "Obama is a communist", no, this is real. Again, look at how i treated romney, and how i treat trump. I'd at least be charitable enough to romney to admit that the guy is a patriot. I might not like him, but I dont have to like anyone in a free country. And thats the point. The reason I elevate trump to an even higher level of rhetoric here is because he doesnt want us to be a free country. And that should scare the bejesus out of everyone. 

Anyway, the final takeaway that I want to discuss again here is the fact that Trump was a realignment. And that the map has fundamentally changed. We can see a trend from 2016 to 2020 and 2020 to 2024 and beyond. Some states have urbanized, and went from being red to purple to blue. Others have turned from purple to red, or blue to purple. Trump, and Trumpism is realigning this country. And it isnt a good realignment. Even if I do bash the democrats for failing to motivate people to vote for them and being low energy, this realignment is not a positive realignment for democrats so far. Republicans have largely outflanked us, making the electoral map more competitive again. However, the real question is....how do the parties adjust to a post Trump world? The big realigner has that magic, that charisma, but what about after him? Is Trump even the big realigner? Or is he a small realigner who ultimately implodes his own coalition? What awaits us in 2028 and beyond, provided our democracy perseveres that long? Is Trumpism over? His numbers arent looking that good as his second term behavior is increasingly unstable, erratic, and ill advised. He's tanking the economy, he got us into a war no one asked for, his approval rating is like -19 last I checked (like 39% approve, 58% disapprove). And that's the thing. One thing I noticed on here is that Trump still had a robust approval rating, and that the gap was more 46-52 or something. He lost at 46-52. What happens to him and his coalition at 39-58? That's a net 13 point shift. No wonder texas might go blue this year. 

We also gotta wonder if the DSA wave happening this year is just some localized fluff that will burn out quickly, or if the democrats are having a tea party moment. That's the thing. Was Trump 2016 THE realignment? Or was it just an awkward 12 year transition period before we get to the real one in 2028? Again, if you dont think it cant happen, look at 1968. New deal coalition imploded, we saw coalitional shifts in 1972 and 1976, and by 1980 we got the real deal. 

It's hard to say. But yeah. At the very least, the main leg of the 6th party system died in 2016. Trump did realign us for better or for worse, the real question is if it will stick, or if trumpism will go down in infamy. Quite frankly, it DESERVES to go down in infamy. This guy is so bad that he makes the likes of Buchanan, Hoover, and Carter look good. His january 6th stuff and fascist tendencies are themselves disqualifying, and his second term reminds me of portal 2 when wheatley is in charge and everything is falling apart. We'll see I guess. Anyway, that's 2020. Idk if I should do 2024 next or maybe go back to 2012. I kinda did give my live reaction to 2024 and it does feel kinda...fresh to me. Im not sure it's worth doing 2024 or if I should go back and do past elections. 

Why Mitt Romney was a crap candidate, and why I wish moderates would STFU about him

 Okay, so...Mitt Romney...I always see centrist types, even moderate democrats glaze the guy. A lot of people think he was a better candidate than Obama and dont understand why he lost. A lot of these people are young, and were kids when Romney ran in 2012. So let me break it down for you.

To put it simply, Mitt Romney was a rich #### who basically ran on trickle down economics in the middle of the great recession. Some will say "but but, the great recession wasnt still happening in 2012." Yes it was, at least by the indicators that mattered, like unemployment. Sure, the wealthy recovered, but WE weren't doing well. Unemployment was still 7.7% on election day.  This is important, because we wanna understand what Mitt Romney was running on.

He basically ran on trickle down economics. He wanted to cut people off of their unemployment benefits that were keeping them afloat, in order to give the money to rich people in tax cuts. The logic was that the rich people were the glorious "job creators" and that they would create jobs with all of the money they got. Meanwhile in 2011-2012, corporations were reporting record profits. Heck, my dad was laid off in 2011 from his job after being called into the office, thanked for helping make the company record profits, and then being told that to preserve those profits, they had to lay him off. The layoff was supposed to be temporary, but it ended up NOT being so, and three months later they told him he was gone for good. Gee, thanks. You know, when you're on UC, you normally have 6 months to get a new job. If we had normal UC during this time period, my dad would've only had 3. So Obama's extensions were the only thing keeping us afloat. And then it took A LITERAL YEAR for him to find a new one. Because the job creators werent job creating and no one wanted to hire him. 

That's the sick thing about capitalism, we expect everyone to work and look for jobs, but then employers dont wanna hire you. Even when the rich have more money than ever, they DON'T wanna create jobs. They wanna keep their money and throw you away like a disposible cog. And I couldnt find a job either during this time frame. I graduated grad school around this time and the economy was HORRIBLE. Seriously, if you wonder what radicalized me into my current views on work and jobs, it was the 2012 election cycle, the recession, and Mitt Fricking Romney. 

And that dude had the gall to go on about the "46%" of Americans who didn't pay federal income taxes. And how he "liked to fire people." like, screw you mitt. This dude was a stereotypical rich guy who was the villain that ruined many peoples' lives around this time. And the only thing keeping us afloat were the expanded government services, and this guy wanted to take that away and give more to rich ghouls like him. Really? You're surprised THAT GUY didn't win the 2012 election? Like, bruh, I know the mid 2010s seems a distant memory at this point, but I really wanna emphasize that yeah, there's a logical reason we went from him in 2012 to Trump and Sanders in 2016. And then the democrats decided to go all in with clinton, who tried to APPEAL TO HIS VOTERS, and basically alienated the same working class voters who supported Obama. Like, you realize I was previously a lifelong republican and became democrat during the 2012 election cycle, right? You realize that my dad was a republican since the 1980s and this crap broke him and made him lean democrat too, right? We were on the verge of greatness on the left. We were one election away from a monumental realignment that would've reshaped politics in a far more positive away had we run sanders in 2016, and the democrats...threw it away. 

Anyway, another thing about Romney. For as much as he's called a "moderate" he sure didnt run as one in 2012. He ran as a tea party conservative and fronted their BS. The same religious radicals we deal with in the 2020s were part of the coalition. And if he won in 2012, he would've replaced Scalia, and Roe v Wade probably would've been overturned anyway. And he would've enabled the religious crazies just like Trump did. 

Let's face it, the guy only SEEMS moderate and principled now because Trump is a psychotic fascist and has a habit of doing that. Most pre Trump republicans either became Trump republicans, or they got out of politics. Romney exists as a thorn in his side, but let's face it, just because the dude occasionally checks Trump doesnt make him a good person, or a model for what politics should be. He wasn't moderate. I hate that brand of "moderate" that seems to exist between the neoliberals in the democratic party and the old school establishment reagan conservatives in the republican party. It's just attempting to make the democrats right wing, while the republicans are even more right wing. It's insane. There's a reason I sometimes sound like a radical leftist despite obviously condemning literal socialists. It's because relative to these guys, I might as well be a socialist because that's how right wing the spectrum is becoming. We're getting to the point of welcoming bush republicans into the democratic coalition. Sure, we can make a temporary alliance with them to get trump out, but long term, either they go, or I go. I refuse to be in a coalition with the romney types. The only thing they deserve credit for is being patriotic americans who arent fascists, but that doesnt mean their political views are great or a model to be aspired to. My own politics were literally designed as a counter to this guy's 2012 campaign.  

2016 throwback: analyzing 2016 election night coverage

 Eh, so I was bored in terms of not having anything i wanted to watch while i gamed, so i decided to throw on 2016 election night coverage just to see what the vibe was. And man, it just feels like a whole different world. It's 10 years ago, we were so naive back then, and yeah, the establish was blindsided by it. 

As we know, with my own posting in 2016, the media grossly overestimated Clinton's odds. This is basically what I went into 2016 election night with:

Yeah, it was pretty close. I mean, the people who acted like this was a stomp for Clinton were just wrong. I could tell that something was off here, and while I still believed Clinton would win, as I didnt believe the blue wall would fall, I understood that it actually was pretty easy for Trump to actually win. Even without the blue wall, if he just won all of the tossups, he would win 270-268. I really did think that it came down more to New Hampshire, than PA/WI/MI.

Anyway, this is the video I watched. 

Hours 1-2

The video takes place over 7 hours, from 7 PM to 2 AM, but for me, its 5 hours due to no commercials. The first 2 hours of the video, so roughly...7 PM-9:45ish, were pretty normal. The discussion was rather academic. They talked about all the factors that went into the race, all the narratives, and it came off as rather objective. I know I tended to castigate the media for being biased, but here it really did feel like they did a good job. Like, someone watching this in a history in the future would get a good run down of what was going on here. One thing I'd like to point out is people didn't seem to like either candidate. They were mostly voting against what they didn't want, not what they wanted. It was a lesser evils election. 

And yeah, it seemed like pretty early, Clinton was doing well. There was a bit of a blue mirage here. Ya know, the kind of thing that now causes the Trumpers to think elections are rigging, one candidate is winning and then they're not. And as we know, thats BS, sometimes early votes dont tell you the full story. 

Hour 3

Hour 3 (say, between 9:45ish to 11:15ish) in the video is where the narrative started shifting. Trump started overperforming, and the race became more competitive. There were discussions of why Trump was overperforming, and I think that, again, it was pretty objective. We had the whole narrative of people left behind, believing the economy wasnt working for them, and Clinton not connecting. We had the idea that people thought that Trump offered them hope when CLinton didnt. There were discussions earlier in the night that I feel were relevant here. There was this idea of the coalition of the ascendant, and how the republican coalition was aging and becoming less white, and honestly, I dont think they really understood the racial and cultural anxiety in republicans' minds. I guess one commentator said something like after progress (first black president), you always get a reaction, but yeah, I dont think that we really understood the magnitude of the issue here. 

Now, I dont think the reactionary elements REALLY put him over the top. It motivated the republican base, but again, I think what it really came down to were economically disenfranchised voters. People were pissed off, didnt think we really recovered from the great recession, and voted for trump. 

Hour 4

Hour 4 is where the energy really shifted for Trump. For most of the race, it was clinton's to win. Trump had to run the table to win and systemically overperform. But as he did start systemically overperform, Clinton's path closed, and Trump's opened. And it really started getting to the point where Trump was favored. And again, these people were blindsided. I dont think they expected this. And they clearly didnt understand the pandora's box that opened. They discussed the implications and no one knew what they were getting with trump. I mean, they didnt know if he could accomplish his goals, what it means, there were comparisons to Brexit. And yeah. 

Hour 5

The final hour didn't have the race called, but it seemed clear by this point Trump was probably gonna win. Clinton's headquarters were quiet. There were discussions about how she rented a venue under a glass ceiling (because OF COURSE she would! Remember, she was the one who mainstreamed "woke 1"). There was a lot of discussion how they could get it so wrong, what it meant, and yeah. Kinda like hour 4, but more blunt. 

FInal analysis

Revisiting this was surreal. i know at the time, I had my opinions, theyre well documented here, and the surprising result is why my post election breakdowns are called "wtf just happened?!" Because....that's the reaction we have. 

That night, I wasn't really sad Clinton lost. I mean, I had schadenfreude. I was angry too. And btw, they did discuss young men voting for Trump. I didnt, I voted Stein, but I get it. There WAS anger at the democratic establishment, and this WAS a brick through the window. And I was kinda more happy clinton lost than upset trump won. I was kinda disaffected either way. I felt not represented, and screwed, and it seemed like clinton's campaign was more about forcing herself down our throats than her being a good candidate. 

There were lessons for democrats to learn here. I dont think they ever really did learn them. They seem like they're paid not to and to keep trying the same thing again, and as we know, the "definition of insanity is trying the same thing again and expecting different results, that. is. crazy." And sadly, they've had to learn this over and over again.

But at the same time, looking back now, I feel more somber. Im not sure what the timeline would be if clinton won, but at the time I didnt think it would be good. I guessed clinton would go on to govern like joe biden eventually did, lose, and then the republicans would have a mandate and we'd be screwed until 2028. And here we are....anyway. Still dealing with trump, him being worse than the worst case scenario i could think of at the time, and me being genuinely scared for the future of the country. Right before coming here, I responded to a thread about how young people are becoming "Austrian painter enthusiasts" (read; neo-nazis) and it scares me. I said it from the get go. We need an FDR and a new New Deal. We didn't get one. Instead we got Hitler. THe thing I find most dismaying is that there actually are people who LIKE this guy. Who look at how he governs and are like "yeah this is what he wants." I didnt think that wouldve happened in 2016. I knew this country had its share of conservatives who would dogmatically and reflexively back him up no matter what he did, but the way he's governed, if you had me guess what his approval rating would be, I would imagine it would be around 20%. I didnt think we'd still have around 40% of people LIKE the guy a decade later. I didnt think he'd be able to win again in 2024, or almost win in 2020. I thought that he would get in, serve 4 years, the country would turn on him, and boom, he'd be out and by then the democrats would learn from 2016 and we'd get bernie sanders or something. 

When I look at my biggest miscalculation about any of this, it's the idea that people would learn. I overestimated how intelligent the american populace is, and here we are with the centrist dems still being insufferable and the republicans actually LIKING this guy as he causes us to descend into fascism. 

At least demsocs are winning primaries now. That is heartening. But 2028 looks like its gonna be harris or newsom, and honestly, both are about as blah as clinton was in 2016. And I fear if they win, we're just setting ourselves up for MORE failures. 2016 WAS a realignment. Trump was a realigning figure. 2016 election night feels like the end of an era. And what we've gotten in its place hasnt been good. It feels like a combination of the second party system between the Jacksonian democrats and the whigs and 1933 era germany. Just...dreadful.

Anyway, that's my analysis. I might do other elections too if I feel like it. 

Discussing the 9050 and the low end GPU market again

 So, Hardware Unboxed got their hands on a 9050 and reviewed it, skewering it and labeling it as "ewaste." And idk, I feel like in light of my own discussions on the market, people are missing the point. 

In a normal market, this wouldnt be an acceptable product. It's basically an RX 6600 tier performer (so basically, 7x GT 1030) for $280. For reference, the 9060 XT launched at $300 and was often found for $270. And yeah, this thing kinda had RX 6500 XT vibes, as that was basically a $200 product released during COVID. With that said my biggest fear is that just like the RX 6500 XT marked the end of the sub $200 market in a way, I hope that this doesnt mark the end of the $300 market.

Either way, we discussed what options sub $300 buyers (and even up to $500 or so) buyers have, things aren't great. Quite frankly, given the RX 7600 being $260, this is DOA. It's slightly weaker, and it costs more. However, it's mostly being pushed in third world markets, and I know many of those markets struggle with AMD card availability. Would I recommend it as a product if you live in these regions? Maybe. I dont know enough about pricing in those regions on forums, but I know any time I recommend AMD cards they always say they're more expensive than Nvidia. But all in all, I'm glad SOME budget options still exist. 

I would agree that by rights, this should be a <$200 card. I mean, the 6600 was $200ish FOUR YEARS AGO. And we clearly havent moved since then. We briefly moved price/performance wise in 2025 with the introduction of the 5060 and 9060 XT 8 GB available at $300 or less, but that was....very short lived, and now 2022 is looking good compared to what exists now. 

But yeah, in recent analyses, a huge thing I've lamented is how few options exist for the sub $300 market and well, this is one of them now, at least in some regions of the world. It's not awful. Not great, but again, we're talking 7 GT 1030s for the price of 2.8 GT 1030s. Given the average gamer games on a card that is around 8 GT 1030s these days, give or take, and has 8 GB RAM, give or take, eh......it'll hit that level of performance.

If the RX 7600 were ever to disappear from the market, and we end up dealing with the entire sub $300 market being ewaste, we'd miss this tier of card at that money. Kinda like how I kinda wish RX 6500 XTs and GTX 1650s still existed for people who wanna buy a card for around $150. Again, I know the standards are super low here, but if the goal is to get affordable GPUs into the hands of more gamers in a fundamentally broken market, well, it is what it is. It'll play anything PS5 tier fine, probably at comparable to slightly worse quality settings. It passes my sniff test of the "minimum acceptable GPU" in 2026, at least if you use the 8 GB version. The 4 GB version? Avoid like the plague. If 4 GB cripples a 6500 XT, its gonna cripple this. Not even sure why that even exists. But yeah, the review here was the 8 GB, so I dont understand the hate. 

I mean, I do, but the assumptions behind said hate assume a market that clearly doesnt exist right now and not all of that is just greed by the GPU manufacturers. RAMpocalypse is destroying any positive movement in price/performance. At this point I'm shifting to maintaining the current market, and while a $280 7x GT 1030 GPU isn't great, it aint terrible given options on the market include stuff like a 4x GT 1030 card for $200, and a 5x one for $260 (referring to the RTX 3050 here...). Again, if you dont have access to the RX 7600 or 5050, it's a not awful deal. Maybe a bit overpriced. I'd probably try to keep this under $250 tbqh, but eh....market's gonna market. I guess that would be my biggest complaint. Should be a little cheaper given I'd still recommend a 7600 or 5050 over this, but it's not AWFUL. If the price were lowered to say, $220 or so, I'd say it's a decent value in the current economy. 

Discussing the rift among "democratic socialists"

 So....the reaction to Francesca Hong losing has made me realize that yeah, there's a serious rift among democratic socialists. And it actually makes a lot of sense, given my feelings about the term over the years, and how I've increasingly become a lot more critical of them. 

We see this difference manifest between Bernie and AOC refusing to endorse Fran Hong and leftists blaming them for their loss. I mean, from my viewpoint, the calculus was clear. Hong was a bit crazy, out of touch, and politically toxic. She couldnt win, and Bernie and AOC distanced themselves from her. I did the same thing. I didnt wanna write an article outright blasting her when she was still technically my preferred candidate on policy, so I punted the issue too. I mean, I understood the argument that Crowley was more electable because the data literally said that.

But...a lot of the more left leaning faction of "leftists" clearly dont feel the same way. They look at Hong's statements about thanksgiving and they're like "I dont see the problem." A lot of it is because a lot of them are leftists who themselves are into the "woke 1" stuff. They dont understand that this stuff is cringe and alienating to most normies. 

Speaking of which, let's separate this into "DSA 1" and "DSA 2" in honor of the "woke" distinction.

DSA 1 is Bernie 2016. It's not really socialism, it's social democracy. It was popular, appealed to political normies, probably would've won 2016 in a landslide. It wasn't woke, it wasnt even leftist. it was often criticized for being too white, full of racist sexist white males (not really not). Early supporters of the movement are in this camp. Bernie being the architect of the modern movement, and early people who made it into congress in the late 2010s like AOC being part of that movement too. This is when I felt personally invested in Bernie's movement.

But then you have DSA2, the literal socialists. These guys are more radical. They're not socdems or liberals at all, they're straight up leftists. They're the ones who adopt any far left cringe I complain about, from wokeness and idpol, to support for literal socialism, the "campism" on foreign policy where america is bad, the free palestine psychos are these guys (as in, the real psycho types I criticize on here), sympathy for authoritarian communist regimes, etc. They're the ones who show up at AOC rallies to scream she's a sell out for crossing some weird red line in their own politics like voting for iron dome that one time. Ya know, the nuts. 

DSA1 was pretty based. They were the first guys to actually say "yeah this system is messed up" and proposed changes to it. They're the ones pushing for REAL social democracy in america and while i dont always agree with their exact prescriptions, ya know, I would happily support them.

DSA 2 is one of the reasons I no longer associate with that movement, trying to make my ideological support for human centered capitalism or social libertarianism clear. Because Im not a LITERAL socialist. I think that stuff is crazy, and these people are unhinged. 

And I feel like when we talk about "democratic socialists" and "DSA" we need to separate these two waves of the movement from one another. When I talk about supporting demsocs for office sometimes, it's normally group 1. Because they're actually out there trying to fight for social democracy. And to some degree they succeed, they win elections. They write legislation, they rarely pass it because there arent enough for them, but they're trying to grow the movement and work within the system. They're not a threat to the system. They just wanna tax the rich to fund safety nets and the like. 

But DSA2, the ones associated with the national DSA movement, they're the ones who are being red scared about. Because they're NUTS. Ive dealt with them, they're the reason i got so many screeds about socialism and free palestine kiddies and blah blah blah. They dont compromise, they want radical change that can sometimes be dangerous, and yeah, at some point, the rest of the political spectrum, including DSA1 has to put their foot down with them and put them in their place. I aint saying we need to red scare the whole left because of them, but we do gotta tell them no, and keep things centered around democracy and some form of market economy. 

And yeah. I feel like, when we look at "democratic socialists", we gotta separate #1 from #2. #1 is part of "the tent" of the broader political left, while #2 should be ostracized by the rest of the left IMO for being too extreme, for their ideas being dangerous, and for them being unpopular and cringe outside of their social circles.

As I always say, America wants change I think. We realize our economy isnt working, and we need a second new deal. I dont always agree with DSA1 on what the solutions should be, they want a job guarantee, I want a UBI, but we can agree that that framework of a new new deal or economic bill of rights is a good one. But we dont want RADICAL change. We dont want an end to capitalism and the start of literal socialism or communism. We dont like wokeism. We dont think the free palestine psychos are always reasonable people. We have limits. We want a better liberalism or progressivism at the end of the day, not literal socialism. We clearly can agree that the third way types arent doing enough. Including the pakman types who CALL themselves socdems but then dont deliver on socdem priorities. DSA1 are the REAL socdems in this country. You look at the goals and how to get there, DSA1 are the ones writing legislation to make it happen. And thats the thing. The reason democratic socialism took off was because they were the only people actually DOING ANYTHING. The third way types are literally just weaponized incompetence. They took off because people wanted change. But since then it feels like the movement is being coopted by a more radical element that wants literal socialism and communism, and who are increasingly turning on DSA1 types for failing to meet their purity tests. Which is...again, what we're seeing here.

Hong was DSA2. She was cringe. She wasnt electable. Bernie and AOC understood that. So they didnt endorse. But now DSA2 is mad about that and see nothing wrong with her. They think AOC is a sell out and while they cant hate bernie too hard, they probably would say something if he werent the goldwater of the whole movement. 

El Sayed, he's DSA1, and calls himself a capitalist. But because he's often associated with DSA he's accused of being a communist.

But then you got people like DAC who won in NYC, that's DSA2. Which is why people got so many issues with her. 

And yeah, I just wanted to point that out. My own stance is clear, DSA1 is part of the larger progressive tent. DSA2 are a bunch of crazies I want little to nothing to do with. Literal socialism, are you insane? No. Hell no. Wokeness is cringe. Campism and free palestine is cringe. Praising communist dictators is cringe. It's all cringe, it's all bad. No one wants this but these whackos. 

And yeah. I just wanted to explain my ever evolving stance on this. 

Election Update 8/14/26

 It's that time of month again. Well there are multiple times a month I do this and you should just expect it to continue to ramp up as we get closer to election update, but time to look at where the elections are going! Lots to discuss this week. 

Senate

As you can tell I'm on mobile again. It's currently 87 degrees outside and it feels like that inside outside of the few rooms with air conditioning so I'm coming to you from tablet again. 

Anyway, to discuss a few removed races:

South Carolina- no one seriously expects this to be competitive, right?

Montana- Well, neither Bankhead nor Bodnar will drop to give the other a shot at winning, and the deadline to do so has passed and it's like R+16, so I'm gonna declare that safe R. It's not a Dan Osborn situation, unfortunately. 

Speaking of Dan Osborn, you might notice I shifted Nebraska to D+1. This isn't due to new data. I realize that the data I have is so old, that I went out seeking new data because I didnt wanna just throw in placeholder data that is lean R or something, so I found the NY times site, which had three polls on it, averaging D+1. I feel like this is more representative of the race than D+5, that was always kinda sketchy. Heck, the polls added arent much better, they're all sponsored by Osborn or affiliates themselves, but still, the alternative is to not have data and to just add R+3 or something as a placeholder. Given its not currently disrupting my forecast, I'll leave it at D+1 since I prefer to let the data speak for itself than to offer my "expert commentary" that ends up being entirely wrong anyway. 

On other races, democrats are doing quite well, but sometimes not as well as I'd expect. Texas, Alaska, and Ohio are all tilting/leaning D. Maine is up 2.3 for Jackson, but this is a bit underwhelming to me, I feel like he should be winning by more. I get the impression he's not as charismatic as pre scandal Platner was. Iowa's tilting R, that's to be expected. So is Michigan. 

I wanna discuss Michigan in more detail since my favorite candidate of the cycle, Abdul El Sayed is there. He IS on the losing side of this, according to polling. I'm not gonna mince words. But....it's still relatively close, and to be fair, Haley Stevens was only like 2 points more electable in the first place. When El Sayed won the nomination, he was at 47%, a new Fox News poll that was R+4 hurt his average there, but Stevens only polled around 1.7 at the time giving her a 66% shot. So she was better, but not like, amazingly better. 

Either way, I find this frustrating. El Sayed is an excellent candidate and I feel like people are just believing racist and Islamophobic lies about him. I hate to say it, I hate accusing people of that, but it's true here. It's like:

EL Sayed: "I'm a capitalist!"

Republicans: "HE'S A COMMUNIST!"

El Sayed: "I love Jewish people"

Republicans: "HE'S AN ANTISEMITE!"

El Sayed: "I love America"

Republicans: "ABDULRAHMAN MOHAMED EL SAYED HATES AMERICA AND WANTS TO IMPOSE SHARIA LAW ON EVERYONE!"

I mean, it's not even subtle. They're just flat out fricking lying about the guy! And it's clear it's working because he's a brown guy from a middle eastern background. It's crazy. Like really, the republicans have nothing on this guy so they're just making crap up about him. And sadly, he's struggling to get into the positives polling wise as a result. 

Anyway, we'll see where this goes, but yeah. Still, even with him struggling, we got about a 56% chance of taking the senate, and are probably gonna get 52 seats, 51 if we ignore Nebraska. Republicans will likely get 48-49 seats with a 44% chance of controlling the chamber (including ties). 

House

Like always, I expect democrats to win the house in a landslide with give or take 230 seats or so. It should be noted that this is a fundamentals based model, since so little polling data exists, especially at this point in the cycle, but the few polling points I see seem to paint an even rosier picture. For example, I've seen data suggesting OH-07 should flip, because Max Miller is running there and he's been accused of domestic abuse to put it lightly. We'll see come election day, and I suspect I might run 2 separate house models just to see what works better, but yeah, for now, this is what my model spits out at me. 

Governors

I have yet to prune the governors' data like I did with the senate. Namely because there are still races expected to be competitive that have zero data like Kansas. On the flip side, Maine has data and seems just slightly out of the 12 point range, but still close enough to it that I feel I should include him. 

I'd say the biggest story of the week is David Crowley winning the nomination for Wisconsin governor, and now I can confidently shift the race from lean R (Hong data) to lean D (Crowley data). Really, I know I'm a progressive, I know I tend to like DSA candidates, and I know a lot of leftists are acting like Bernie and AOC failed her by not endorsing, but if you notice, I didn't endorse Hong either. Because she couldn't win. For the most part I had her at a 23% shot at winning, and while a last minute poll bumped it up to like R+1.7 with a 34% shot at winning or so, uh...yeah....Crowley polled better. Barnes when he was in polled much better. I wish Barnes was the nominee as he was more progressive (but not crazy about it) and polled even better, but given my focus this cycle is on winning, and given a governorship in a state that isnt mine isn't likely to advance the progressive agenda I want in a meaningful way, well...I can live with Crowley. I mean, I just really wanna beat the republicans this time, ya know? Kinda important for the future of democracy.

Conclusion

With that said what can we conclude? That a lot has changed, but the overall picture hasn't. Democrats are still expected to take the house. The senate is in play when in a normal election year it shouldn't be, and in the senate a lot of races are more or less tossups, meaning that polling error and the size of the predicted blue wave is gonna matter a lot more than candidate quality for the most party. Democrats could win the senate Democrats could win the senate in a 54-46 sweep, while a republican overperformance could knock it down to 49-51 or even less for democrats. It really depends where the pieces end up lying.

But yeah, that's where stuff is right now. I'll do the next one of these toward the end of the month unless there's a massive shakeup I feel should be reported. 

Why I won't make a CPU buying guide (although this post kinda is one)

 So, I've spent a lot of time on discussing GPUs, what's good to buy, etc. I considered doing the same for CPUs, but won't. There's a big reason for this. When you buy a CPU, you aren't buying one in a vacuum. You need a motherboard to put it in, and RAM to go with it. While CPUs used to be relatively straight forward, varying and volatile platform costs make it hard to plan a build. On the low end, we can put together a Ryzen 5 5500 with 16 GB DDR4 RAM build for $250, on the other extreme, you got a 9800X3D with 32 GB DDR5 for almost $1000. 

Generally speaking, if you live near microcenter, consider their combos. They're generally the best bang for the buck, although significantly less good than they were than I bought (not their fault, it's RAMpocalypse). If anything, their 6 core X3D bundles probably are the best bang for your buck you can get for gaming. On the intel side, the Core Ultra 5 250k+ is solid, but less good for gaming, although you get more CPU power.

That's another thing. CPU power scaling is weird, and the spectrum is a lot flatter than GPUs. As I indicated the difference between a $100 GPU and a top of the line one is a scale of around 37x performance, with an average gamer having a CPU around 8x as powerful as the weakest one.

The difference between a ryzen 5 5500 and a 9800X3D is only going to be on a scale of around 3x performance, going from the worst to the best (use the ryzen 5 3600 to estimate the 5500's performance). And most CPUs fall in the middle between them, with anything less than the 5600x being an outdated architecture, and anything more than the 7800X3D or 14900k being an outlier the other direction. Most games seem to differ only around 60% between say, the 5600x and the 7800X3D, with most modern mid range CPUs performing in between. Cheaper DDR4 compatible CPUs will perform a bit lower, whereas more expensive chips with DDR5 perform a bit higher, but yeah, most CPUs perform pretty close to each other.

This is largely because CPU tech has stagnated, with Ryzen 5000, 7000, 9000 and intel core 12-14th gen and modern core ultra processors all performing similarly to each other. Only AM5 X3Ds and really low end/dated processors stand out from the pack either way. Most just kinda perform similarly. Core counts don't matter as much currently. While higher core count processors MIGHT come in use in the future, odds are at this rate that current architectures will become dated before you see a difference. As it stands, factors like latency, cache, clock speed, and IPC matter a lot more than raw power. X3D proceessors are rather unimpressive on traditional computing tasks, but are phenomenal for gaming. Intel processors loaded up to the gills with cores might be impressive workstation systems but are kinda average at gaming. As such, it's hard to offer straightforward recommendations. 

 If I were to try, at the low end, I'd generally recommend AM4. You can get an Ryzen 5 5500, a motherboard, and 16 GB DDR4 for around $250-300. 

If you stick with the platform, a better CPU generally gets more expensive, with a 5600x, 5700x, or 5800x costing another $100-150, bringing the total up to around $400ish give or take. if you go up to 32 GB DDR4, you can spend $500, and if you get a 5800X3D, you can be spending up to around $600-700. 

Some would say a 5800X3D build in unattractive because you could just buy AM5 at that point. You can spend $200 less on a processor, but spend maybe $200 more on expensive DDR5 RAM instead, and have a viable long term upgrade path. And if you go all out, again, it's like $1k for a 9800X3D style build without sales. 

Where does intel fit into this? Well, sadly, it kinda doesn't. While LGA1700 used to be an attractive option, the CPUs have gotten expensive, it's only worth investing in with DDR4, at which point you can probably save money and go with an AM4 build instead, as they perform about the same. In order to get the most out of a higher end intel processor, you need a Z series board, which is expensive, and even then with DDR4 memory, you're gonna be held back by the RAM itself. I wouldnt recommend going LGA1700 on DDR5 at all at this point. Not cost effective.

For DDR5 intel, you want to go for a core ultra 250k+ or 270k+. But then you're spending $400 on RAM, and while you get a stronger processor in real terms than AMD's, it won't matter in gaming, which are limited to 6-8 core / 12-16 thread processors anyway.  Honestly, I'd only go this route if you really care about productivity more than gaming performance, or you otherwise have a legit bias against AMD (for example, I went intel 3 years ago because AM5 was a notoriously buggy and unstable platform at the time). 

With that said, if you want a budget experience, go for a cheap AM4 processsor with cheap DDR4 RAM. if you want a premium experience, go for an AM5 X3D processor with DDR5, and if you want a middle ground option, you can go either way. Given a choice between a 5800X3D or Ryzen 7600x/9600x/7700x/9700x build, I'd probably go for the latter at a similar price point, but this is where the individual parts you want matters more than the CPU itself. Down below I actually find the 5800X3D to be more affordable. 

And yeah, that's basically it. 

And again, the budget experience is gonna be...well...a budget experience, a premium experience will be 3x as good while costing 4x as much, and a midrange experience will be somewhere in between, while costing something in between the other two.  

If I were to provide a few sample builds, I'd provide the following:

Ryzen 5 5500- $253

Ryzen 5 5600x- $359

Intel Core i5 14400f (equivalent to 5700x/5800x)- $417 

Ryzen 7 5800x- $436

Ryzen 7 5800x 32 GB- $516

Ryzen 7 5800X3D 32 GB- $634

Ryzen 5 7600x- $687

Intel Core Ultra 5 250kf+ (no OC/XMP ability)- $748 

Ryzen 7 7700x- $755

 Ryzen 7 7800X3D- $907

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- $1058

Of course, do your own research, I just threw these together, you might find a better deal, or you might find parts go better with other motherboards, etc. I know AM5 X3D CPUs in particular have problems with certain motherboards (Asrock and Asus seem most affected) so keep that in mind too. 

I did throw a couple intel CPUs in where they made sense. The problem is, they often don't. Higher end ones require expensive Z series boards to get the most out of them. While they perform similarly to the 7000 series CPUs on DDR5, on DDR4, they're more comparable to the 5000 series. The 14400f makes sense here, but otherwise they largely don't.  

And yeah. It's a rough market, but this is the best I can do. And again, to do the whole how many X the lowest end one is:

 Ryzen 5 5600x- ~1.3x  R5 5500

 Ryzen 5 5800x- ~1.3x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 5800X3D- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 5 7600x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7700x- ~1.6x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 7800X3D- ~2x R5 5500

Ryzen 7 9800X3D- ~2.2x R5 5500

For that I tried to use techspot/hwunboxed's data to get averages. 

But yeah, as I said, it's a lot flatter than the GPUs are. While I would recommend going at least midrange (5600x-7700x tier performance) if you can afford it, there's no shame in getting the 5500 and it's a great budget CPU for the money. Beats the crap out of the GT 1030 on the GPU side of things that's for sure (seriously, that's like having core 2 quad tier performance still on the market in comparison, it's a joke).  

Anyway i guess this did turn into a CPU buying guide, but it's a brief one and like always, do your own research before buying components, I dont want any responsibility if what i recommend ends up kinda sucking, I'm just throwing builds together on PC part picker with minimal research.