Discussing Obama's speech

 So, Kyle Kulinski covered Obama's rally today for the democrats, and I think he hit on some really key points that I think really need to be brought to focus here, since this is important, and it's why the democrats are losing this election, and why the democrats have been in the crapper since 2016. Because, regardless of Obama's actual presidency, which was mediocre, Obama was a populist who knew how to campaign and reach people. Obama is a significant influence in me shifting to the left, after all, and with him gone as the democratic party's main frontrunner, I feel like the party has suffered immensely.

Obama was, in 2008, to many people, what we later saw in Bernie Sanders and even Andrew Yang. He was the guy who was going to come in and fix everything, and he actually had a mandate to do it. I remember looking at the left in 2008 the way i view in right in 2022. Basically, we're screwed. They're going to win, and there's nothing we can do about it. Our side is crapping the bed hard. And they are so in their own little world, they couldn't reach and appeal to people. I remember McCain being a cringe candidate no one really wanted, but everyone accepted because what else can we do? And then, as the right radicalized in the Obama era, I found myself abandoning them outright and shifting hard left in the process. Obama won me over. He told it like it was, and how he was helping unemployed people keep their homes and while the right was just giving tax cuts to the rich.And you know what? He PERMANENTLY shifted me to the left in the 2012 election cycle. A huge reason I am not on the left was Obama's 2012 election appeals. And it's something the democrats have struggled to replicate since, and right now they really look like hot garbage.

I'm not saying obama was perfect. In 2014, I looked at things the way I look at them now. I saw a left that had run out of steam, that was demoralized, and that just missed all the right notes. And it was because Obama seemed to stop fighting for the right things. As I said, Obama should've been out there screaming "GIVE ME A CONGRESS" instead he just sat there like "well democracy is hard work", refusing to call out the right. And as a result, he lost. 

Obama also, as Kyle said in his video, had the mandate to be the next FDR, but instead was the next Bill CLinton. And that centrism helped no one.Maybe it won me over temporarily, in 2011 and 2012 as the GOP proved to be insane and unreasonable, but i quickly shifted left during obama's second term, coming to the social libertarianism I still support now by 2014. 

And by 2016, the democrats hit ALL the wrong notes. As HRC was poised to win with her "it's her turn" attitude and generally being centrist, the magic was GONE. Obama won me over in 2012, and it was working class populism that did it. It wasn't identity politics. Identity politics was present in 2008, it alienated me. It was present in 2016 and later, and well, just look at the dems now. And centrism doesnt do much. In 2012, Obama was doing things. Even if he was moderate, he could claim he got the ACA passed, as imperfect as it was. And he got massive expansions for unemployment too, which ultimately led to my UBI obsession in the first place. 

The fact is, in 2016, I feel like people wanted MORE of obama's populism. And someone who actually would have expanded on it. Someone like, say, Bernie Sanders. The Obama to Sanders pipeline is actually obvious, as I listen to Kyle talk about Obama's rhetoric. He was the OG populist and he was party realignment material. Nixon had the southern strategy, but it was Reagan who capitalized on it turned it into an enduring coalition. Likewise, Obama was like our Nixon, and Sanders could have been our Reagan. But because the democrats fought their own base so hard on sanders and pushed clinton on us, they completely screwed up the moment. 

People will go back and forth, and i expect this in coming years, wonder if anything would've gone differently if Clinton won in 2016. I'd argue no. Because she had zero enthusiasm behind her. The party would've imploded like it's doing now under Biden. And given COVID in 2020, I think that the dems would be DONE right now and trump or similar candidate would've won in a literal landslide. Maybe they'd be rebounding in 2022, but at the same time, it's possible that the right somehow pulled a reagan out of their hat. They are much better at politicking than centrist democrats are.

And that's the big problem. As I notice how the right seems to have this "teflon don" aspect to them while the left gets flak for ANYTHING, i've noticed a huge double standard in American politics where people are largely forgiving to the right, but tend to be highly critical of the left, and it's messaging. The right is spinning everything as the problem of the democrats. But when the right is in trouble, their attacks are nowhere near as effective. Obama was literally the only serious threat to the modern right in the modern era and it took them doing everything they could to actively derail him to stop left wing ascendency in the country. And because the democrats that came after decided to go more centrist without the populism, and bringing back identity politics, they just started losing elections again. This is the weak centrist left of the 90s again. And it's replacing the results of the 90s, where we once again have a strong right wing, and a weak left wing. The democrats have pushed to go abck to that, than to actually have a left that hit back.

Honestly? This is why i keep saying it, but the left needs a bit of a populist flair. it doesnt have to be crazy left. Thats another issue that the left has. Obama's populism was still liberalism. It was social liberalism, but it was liberalism. And Bernie, despite the socialist appeals, actually was just talking social democracy in practice in 2016. I feel like the modern progressive left misses this. Since 2016, because the left lost, the left that has remained left has gotten extremely radical. And I could only follow them so far. The modern left left is almost like the comic book left I opposed as a conservative. The stereotype of the "feminazi" and the pink haired social justice activist. All the flagrant race baiting which ends up just turning off white males. The mentality of "hating America" like the "anti war" left has recently. And now you got people advocating for literal marxism too. It's a joke. This stuff is never gonna fly with the bulk of the american people. It's TOO far left, and it's too out of touch.

Ultimately, Americans care about their pocketbooks. And so did Obama, and that's why he could appeal to people. if you push for ideas that help the average american voter, you will get votes. My whole ideology is based on this. Let's have a UBI, universal healthcare, and free college. And I feel like my ideology tries to avoid the pitfalls that many American voters hate. I avoid, and at this point, openly condemn the social justice stuff. I try NOT to race bait, instead, mention my ideas in a colorblind sense of winning everyone over. Because you know what? The last thing you wanna do is come off as the dude who wants to help all the racial minorities at the expense of white middle class people. Keep in mind much of america's opposition to social programs circa 1980-2016 came down to dog whistle politics that amounted to that kind of mentality toward them. But that's exactly what the social justice left sounds like sometimes. And that might win democratic primaries, which skew heavily toward POC and centrists, but it tends to alienate literally everyone else. And no, people aren't racist, they voted for the black guy who gave them unemployment, they just won't vote for the people who want to help SOME americans at the expense of themselves. On foreign policy, i dont think americans have a set ideology. If anything they lean kind of isolationist. Because again, they ultimately care about their pocketbooks. They want intervention when it benefits them but otherwise they wanna be left alone. Maybe an attack on the homeland like 9/11 will send them into a blood frenzy for a few years, but generally speaking, they wanna be kept out of stuff. If it's across the ocean, it doesnt affect us, is their mentality. So we should be noninterventionist, but we should still back up say, Ukraine and defend Europe's territorial integrity since its pretty obvious the last time we played isolationst over there it didnt go well for us. And on social issues, I honestly think most americans dont really care. They want to be left alone to do their thing, and they hate authoritarians. Any side that comes off as wanting to police americans is the side that loses. The right ultimately lost the cultural battles during the late 2000s and 2010s because people realized that their politics dont help them. So what if gay people get married. So what if women get abortions, doesnt affect me. But they do care when the left screams at them that theyre racist and sexist and privileged if they dont buy into the social justice stuff. Still, the cause isnt completely lost with the left. I do recall, at least for a couple months the country was up in arms over abortion rights being taken away, before the creeping concerns about crime and inflation came back. And why are they seen as top issues? Because they're perceived as important. Inflation is eroding peoples' spending power and making it harder to afford essentials, and crime is making people feel unsafe. And if anything drives people to authoritarianism, its fear of others harming them. Again, it's why we went nuts after 9/11, and it's why people are freaking out over crime. As more robbings and shootings happen, people become concerned about crime.

But again, most people just tend to vote for whomever gives them the best quality of life. They want to prosper, they want to be left alone, and they hate being asked to do things for the greater good or whatever. My ideology and platform does attempt to provide a left wing answer to that, and while i will, occasionally, take swipes at the public for being overly selfish or missing the forest for the trees, like over covid, or forcing people to work for cheap middle class luxuries, all in all, I do understand that an important part of winning elections is keeping the population happy. 

But the democrats in recent years have done a crap job at this. They've tried to force hillary on us despite no one wanting her. They did the same thing with biden, and then biden couldnt do much, and now we're screwed as inflation and crime destroy the left's credibility and the left seems overly obsessed with wokeness and ideological purity with no clear benefit for the people. It's frustrating. And I honestly think this is why the democrats are losing. They only won because trump was unpopular, and now that they are in control and cant govern worth a crap, the left is losing big time and the right is gaining ideological ground to the point it almost looks like we're about to repeat the reagan revolution. Which is the worst outcome possible for us. Seriously, I aint posting my final predictions until closer to this weekend, but I looked at the senate recently, and yeah, we're gonna lose that too. And it aint even fetterman that's the cause, he's still a scant 0.3% ahead of Oz last I looked. It's Warnock looking to lose to walker that's the problem. This is just a bad year for democrats all around.

Sadly, I did predict this. I kind of knew, if biden won in 2020, he'd govern so ineffectively that we'd be looking at an apocalpytic red wave in 2022, and despite him trying to do some last minute concessions to stoke voters (which worked for me but isnt working for everyone else), it seems like this is the final result. I did have hopes, in June and all, that the dems could reverse this. but whatever bump they got from the repeal of roe is gone, and we're back to this looking to be a terrible year for the left. To some extent it was inevitable, they just came to office at the wrong time, but to some extent, yeah they do deserve blame.

And that's where I think Obama's way of politicking is so important here. When I heard him speak here, I was back in 2012, like, yeah the GOP want to take away social security and medicare. Yeah, the GOP want to take away abortion rights. The GOP is nuts. And their agenda shouldnt be popular. And i honestly dont know, if they got into office and actually did this stuff, if they'd keep power, I suspect they would not. But, I do know that it's possible given the economic conditions, that if the GOP does win in 2022 and 2024, they'll have carte blanche the next few years, and if nothing goes seriously wrong with them, they might just get away with it where people keep referring back to the upcoming republican era of governance as the "good old days", like Reagan again. 

We are so screwed.

Discussing libs freaking out over Elon Musk's takeover of twitter

 So, Elon Musk's takeover of twitter is complete, and with it, standards are potentially being more relaxed. And to some extent, despite not liking Elon much myself (I think he's an arrogant rich jerk), I have to support the move, at least in principle. The fact is, I would like to see social media be less restricted. As someone who grew up more in the wild west days of the internet, I miss that world somewhat, and I hate how the left are some of the biggest moral policers now. But sadly, they're complaining because they're losing their ability to morally police. I've seen them complaining over an increase of hate speech on the platform, and also spreading conspiracy theories.Now, it should be noted I generally don't agree with either hate speech or conspiracy theories, but I tend to have that first amendment absolutism in my views where I think people should be able to say such things. I've never been on board with policing peoples' behavior online, and I really detest the elements of the left that do it. As far as I'm concerned, we lose far more with overactive moderation than we do with people being allowed to say what they want. If people are offended by slurs, that's on them, but I generally ain't opposed to taking away peoples' ability to use them. Yes yes, I've seen people snarkily refer to my free speech ethics as that of a mid-late 2000s xbox live lobby, but that's precisely the kind of environment that I am nostalgic about. I dont care if people say no no words. Are they immature at times? Yes, but people are people, and I dont care if people use bad language. In my eyes, no one is truly harmed by bad language, and people today are getting too snowflakey on that stuff. And if you dont like bad language well, you're free to block whomever you want or even turn off chat. If anything in video games I find turning off voice chat normally good because 99% of the time people are using it in game, it comes off as grating and annoying. But you know what? Give ME the tools to filter stuff as I want while preserving their freedom. Don't police the entire environment to control what people say. I see that as very big brotherish and authoritarian. 

As far as conspiracy theories, I tend to be a little more sympathetic here, but once again, I see censorship as authoritarian. The real question is, who decides what the truth is here? Often times, I see those who want to censor others as wanting to promote their own ideology over others. For example, the people I saw crying crocodile tears over this today were...CNN. You know, the network that ruthlessly suppressed all coverage of Bernie and has a clear centrist democratic party agenda? The people who propped up Andrew Cuomo and even made his brother a host? That CNN? Complaining that Twitter is allowing "misinformation"? Ya know, maybe CNN isn't the best arbiter of what the truth should be. And I'd blame CNN being such biased hacks on contributing to the problem of misinformation in the first place. When "authoritative" sources are clearly pushing certain ideological viewpoints to the exclusion of others, maybe that's why people seek our alternative sources of information in the first place?

Anyway, once again, I grew up in the wild west days of the internet. And I was actually brainwashed with misinformation offline at the time and the internet actually helped me understand the world better. While college does have a huge role in influencing my political views, the religion arguably has equally as large of a role. It has given me access to information I never would have had otherwise, causing me to go in different directions I never would have if I had been raised a boomer. Pre 2016, I considered the internet the modern printing press, acting to enlighten people, not make them stupid. Meanwhile what's CNN? An old guard of the last generation's means of consuming media. We are fighting a culture war here, and sadly the left has gone full authoritarian, not willing to trust people to make their own decisions, but deciding they need to teach people "the truth" (ie, their version of it, and only their version)..

I'm not saying that we dont have a problem with misinformation. But ya know what? I powered through it. I was literally a fundamentalist christian who believed in literal creationism in my high school years. And discussing this stuff online, I came across my fair share of BS, some of which I believed when I was young. I remember reading stuff about how Russians dug into the center of the earth and they discovered hell and believing that stuff. I also remember reading Chick tracks. But on spirituality, I also ended up finding near death experience accounts that better reflect my current spirituality than my spirituality back then. I remember coming across stuff like the flat earth society, and i actually thought it was a joke at the time, something that some people engaged in to hone their debating skills by defending a clearly indefensible position. I didn't think people actually believed that stuff. 

And of course, I came across ideas that mattered a lot more to me later on. The internet is what allowed me to become an atheist during my "change". It also was what helped me acquire access to information I needed once I realized perhaps there was more to this world than the natural. The internet has also exposed me to concepts that have forever changed my political ideology like UBI. Seriously, I never heard of the concept before discovering it online. 

Pre 2016, the internet was a grand place. And while yes, sometimes we had to sift through a bunch of BS to get to the good stuff, the point is, sometimes you got to trust peoples' judgment. Younger people are a much more liberal, and in touch generation than older people, because of the internet. The left was ironically winning the culture war because of the internet. It allowed us to break free of all of that programming the boomers and older generations foisted onto us. But since the left has gone full moral policer, they've been suddenly losing. Gee, I wonder why. Now the right comes off as more libertarian on speech (they're not, really...), and they tend to be outmaneuvering the left on the culture war as a result. 

Really, I feel like the left's stance on speech post 2016 is a mistake, it's all of this postmodernism and social justice ideology in which they've suddenly turned into another version of the religious right with all of their moral panics and authoritarianism. I don't care if you're left or right, any ideology that insists we need to be limited access to information for our own good is bad. 

So yeah. For this time, and perhaps this time only, I actually will side with Musk, at least tentatively until he screws it up somehow. After all, I am a proponent of free speech, and do believe social media platforms should be significantly less regulated than they are. I miss the wild west days of the internet, and feel like, after all the internet and its freedom has helped me, that it would be hypocritical to slam the door in the first to future generations. Let people discuss and trade ideas as they want. let them trash talk as they want. Let them do just about anything they want other than threatening another person in a credible way, or distributing CP or something like that. Ideas should be allowed on the internet, even bad ones. Authorities should not socially police people in certain ways. If you want to worry about misinformation, then educate people properly. Heck, why do you think im so hardcore on free college. it isn't all about jobs and economic mobility. It's so that people can understand how to properly find out what's true or not. That comes with education, and that should be fixed via educating people to reach their own conclusions, not limiting what information people are exposed to.

Steelmanning Fetterman's fracking answer

 So...literally one of the worst parts of the debate the other night was the fracking question. Fetterman expressed opposition to fracking as late as 2018, but in 2022 came out for it. He was asked to reconcile his two positions. And then..his brain BSODed. Literally. He said something along the lines of "I support fracking, I dont support fracking, I support fracking." *sigh...* Anyway, as someone who has kind of had similar conflicts over the fracking question, let me explain why I can see where he's coming from and explain it. It should be noted this opinion is my own, NOT fetterman's, but I do believe my answer can likely give insight into Fetterman's mindset.

Fracking is one of those questions on the left that's....divisive. And with those who kind of thread the line between "liberal" and "leftist" in various ways, I myself have felt conflicted with it over the years. Let's start with the anti position. Ever see the documentary gasland? What about split estate? Fracking SUCKS. You're injecting chemicals into the ground to fracture it to get natural gas out. And it has widespread environmental consequences. It literally poisons the ground water and causes MASSIVE health issues to people exposed to it. And it can also cause earthquakes. Fun!

Really, out fossil fuel obsession is KILLING US. LITERALLY. THis stuff is poison when it comes in contact with people, and it's also throwing CO2 into the atmosphere slowly killing us all. We NEED to get off of this crap. NOW. We needed to 40 years ago. But after Carter a certain republican president came in and set the narrative that fossil fuels good, green energy bad, causing us to kick the can down the road for 40 years. Really. We should be striving as much as possible go get away from fossil fuels. It's not just an environmental issue, it's a national security issue too. Reliance on fossil fuels for all we do is biting us in the butt, and allowing us to enable the worst impulses of countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, who we rely on for the stuff. Energy independence is in our national security interests, and the best way to guarantee that is with renewables. Solar, wind, nuclear. The big three. We shouldn't frack...if we can help it. We shouldnt be looking more into oil exploration and natural gas. That stuff is the past. Renewables are the future.

HOWEVER, and this is where I go into the more pro fracking stance. Yes, energy independence is important, and a national security issue. And this year has been a clusterfudge in this sense. Russia invading Ukraine was a double whammy to the global economy in this sense. Not only did it knock out Ukraine's ability to power much of the world with its oil and natural gas, but sanctioning Russia also cut off supplies. Much of the world, especially much of Europe, depended on Russia and Ukraine for natural gas and oil. And honestly, it can and has been argued that the reason why Putin invaded was over...oil and natural gas. That's why they took Crimea and that's why they want to whittle Ukraine's access to the coasts. And this war has MESSED UP the global economy. Instead of putting Biden on a sticker saying "I did that", they should be adding putin. Because the shift away from Russia/Ukraine has thrown Europe into a state of jeopardy. Now Germany is freaking out trying to scramble a plan to get through the winter without relying on Russia, which it was HEAVILY dependent on. Germany is an interesting case in general. They tried really hard to go green and it's biting them in the butt right now. They even wanted to shut down their nuclear plants this year, but that got put off because HEY GUESS WHAT WE NEED THOSE TO POWER THINGS. Modern society requires ENERGY. Homes require energy, businesses require energy. Without energy society grinds to a halt and people will quite literally die. Things will get stone age pretty quick without energy resources. 

And let's be honest, the democrats aren't in much of a position to stand on principle right now. Much of that 9% inflation is driven by energy prices. Gasoline is up 51%. Natural gas 28%. And more expensive energy means more expensive everything because our global logistics network requires so much energy to function. How can you get food to the stores without using gasoline? Good luck with that. And if you haven't noticed, democrats are getting DESTROYED on this issue. Inflation is peoples' #1 motivator in voting, and that's going to encourage conservative outcomes. If fetterman wants to win, he can't afford to be against fracking. Americans think about their pocketbooks first. As Andrew Yang said, you need to get the economic boot off of peoples' throats if you want to get them to care about other stuff. People NEED ANSWERS to what the democrats' strategy with inflation is. And the republicans are KILLING US on this issue, because they're going on about our lack of energy independence and kissing up to Saudi Arabia, who is using the opportunity to stab us in the back, like they did in the 1970s with Carter. Also, people worry about jobs, and without a game plan that doesn't involve jobs, like a UBI (even then, a $15k UBI won't replace a $70k fracking job), and Fetterman can't afford to be against anything that would destroy peoples livelihoods. That's the problem with having an economy so reliant on WORK. We end up with all kinds of perverse incentives to keep around dirty and outdated work that otherwise shouldnt be done because we worry about how it affects jobs. Jobs jobs jobs. That's all Americans care about. It's the economy stupid, as Bill Clinton would say. 

You can tell there is a huge part of me that wants to just say F fracking, get rid of it, get off of fossil fuels once and for all. And stop pushing for dirty and dangerous jobs that destroy the environment. But my idealism is tempered with a relatively conservative sense of pragmatism at times. And this is a case in which the democrats must yield. For the next decade at least, we need to rely on fossil fuels whether we like it or not. And Americans are accustomed to a cheap and plentiful supply of energy and will quickly revolt when hiccups happen. Again, the last time this crap happened, Carter was in charge, and guess what, the democrats got DESTROYED in 1980 SO HARD that it basically completed a party realignment and ensured conservative ideological supremacy for 30+ years. We're STILL arguably living in the shadow of that. And if the left isn't careful, it will happen again. This is one issue the left MUST yield on, if only temporarily. We can talk about our future energy security, reliance on clean energy, nuclear, electric cars, etc. down the line. We need to take active steps toward that stuff. But, we're likely not gonna be in a position, even if we do all of the right things now, to be able to stop fracking and oil exploration until some time in the 2030s. So....the proper left wing strategy would be to drill and frack and do whatever we need to do now as a lesser evil, and in the next decade hopefully get to a position where we don't have to any more. But democrats NEED to stand for energy security in the short to medium term, even if that involves dirty fuels. We can't afford to be purists on this issue if it's gonna cause us to lose elections and implode and make the public lose confidence in our ideology. We already saw what happened last time the left was in this position. If it happens again, well, if we don't come back around to addressing this stuff until the 2060s, we're REALLY gonna be screwed. 

And that's my stance on stuff. My theory of progress is that we need to take active steps toward the world we want, but in the mean time, we do need to make compromises. It's basically the same stance I take on the issue of work. Sure I'd love for us to all quit our jobs and not have to work and live on UBI, but we do need SOME work done, and some jobs. We can question jobism and the protestant work ethic and being for reducing the amount of work we do, but ultimately, it's a balancing act, and if we go too far and too fast, well, our ideas are gonna backfire and the opposite side is going to gain ideological ground. It's the same thing here. We need to take care of our needs first. Idealism comes later. If we can't secure our ideals while sustainably maintaining our living standards, the system is going to go into a death spiral and the public will turn against us. That's my approach to jobs and work, and that's my approach to energy and the environment too. And I assume that's something along the lines of what Fetterman was going for.

Discussing the attack on Pelosi's husband

 So...some MAGA whackjob broke into Nancy Pelosi's house screaming "WHERE'S NANCY?!" and assaulted her husband with a hammer. Nancy herself was in Washington DC, 3000 miles away. 

I'm going to be honest, this political violence situation in this country is getting out of hand, and while I won't say the left is blameless (I've criticized violent leftists on this blog before), let's face it, the vast majority of the problems are coming from the right. The right has festered over the past half century into an extremist cult. The problem has become increasingly acute in the post Reagan years between Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and Newt Gingrich's "contract with America." I mean, I noped out of the right when they started getting REALLY extreme after the neocons were ousted and the tea party took over. This has been an ongoing problem. And for a while now, the right has not existed within the realm of reality. I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but they haven't. 10 years ago this was almost comedic, with Jon Stewart going on his "BS mountain" skit in his debate with Bill O Reilly, and Rachel Maddow just owning the right after they lost the 2012 election. But since the rise of Donald Trump, the problem has gotten far worse. Right wing extremism is not a new thing. I remember learning in college in the late 2000s that the biggest source of terrorism in the US isn't from Islamic terrorists, but home grown right wing terrorists. People like the KKK and neo nazis and Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma city bombing). The problem is now, while back in the 90s and 2000s, these groups were obviously considered fringe for a reason, these days these extreme voices are getting mainstream support in the republican party. Conservatives are so out of touch due to misinformation that it's radicalizing them to do crazy things like attack pizza restaurants, or try to commit an insurrection to overturn an election, or in this case, go to the home of the speaker of the house and try to attack them with a hammer. This is getting nuts, and this radical GOP is becoming a problem of existential proportions to the future of the country. I don't think all of the people in the GOP are that bad, especially most of the elected representatives. I might think Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, and Ted Cruz are piece of crap, but I don't think they're terrorists or enabling this crap too much. While they are eroding some electoral norms (like Mitch stealing a SCOTUS seat for Trump via obstruction), they're not calling people to VIOLENCE. But at the same time, some people are. Donald Trump explicitly called on people to attack the capitol, and the January 6th hearings have built up a comprehensive case against him. Even people like Marjorie Taylor Greene have done things like blow up cars with high powered sniper rifles in campaign commercials, not to mention practically stalking AOC. So this is a problem. I would love to say that the solution to this is more education, and ultimately it is the solution, but some of these people are so far gone at this point they're not living in reality and don't even trust educational institutions to deliver the truth to them.When people are that far gone, can they really be saved at this point? Either way, we can't stop trying. 

The second issue I would like to bring up with this is the issue of home security. I've heard people say, "where was the secret service, doesn't she have body guards"? And the common answer I get back is that SHE does, but the rest of the family can decline protection and presumably did for privacy reasons. Of course, here that backfired. But let's put this aside. There is a solution that any law abiding family can try, at least if you don't live in an extreme blue area, which pelosi does. It's called "getting a gun". I know that the left tends to hate guns these days, and goes way too gung ho on gun control, but as someone who lives in a crime ridden area where there are regular shootings and burglaries, yall need to embrace guns more. What are you going to do when someone breaks into your house? Why, you shoot them. Because if you call 911 and wait for help, you're dead or seriously injured by the time they get to you. And in states like Pennsylvania where I live, there's this thing called a castle law. It's kinda like stand your ground, but it only applies to your home. Your home is your castle, it's your refuge, it's your last resort, and while in public you have a duty to retreat, well, if they come into your home, feuer frei (that means "open fire, for those of you who are not Rammstein obsessed metal heads). And you're protected by the law. It's basically self defense. If someone breaks in, you are well within your rights to shoot them. I know some leftists will be like "but but, you shouldnt execute someone who invades your property". Why? So they can hurt me and take my stuff? No, if you break into someone's house, and they shoot you, that's totally on you. I'm not gonna have sympathy here. 

I'm not sure this is an option in a city like Frisco, I know that deep blue states and cities have draconian gun laws and border on outright banning the darned things, but I think if democrats want to get serious about crime, they need to talk about ways for people to protect themselves from it. Right now, the democrats are losing the culture war on this issue. Crime is the #2 issue as we discussed recently, and the democrats look bad on it. The right wing narratives are that liberal cities are creating crime, and all of this wokeness and defund the police stuff is getting in the way of police doing their jobs. I know that this isn't really what's going on. Crime is a complex sociological issue, and I can tell you as the dude with a bachelor's degree in the subject (dual major in political science and criminology/sociology), I can't even tell you why crime is up right now. I have theories, but this crap is complex. But...the public gets very skittish over it. They get very defensive very fast, and want to feel safe in their neighorhoods. And I know that democrats will bring out studies showing that the more guns the population has, the more gun violence (yes, that's true), unless you ban ALL guns, which is never gonna happen in this country, and even if you did I would question the effectiveness of such policies give the prevalence of illegal weapons, well, maybe lefties should get a little more gun comfortable and think about getting them for their own protection. Because if you can't get them, the result is...stuff like what happened to Nancy Pelosi's husband can happen to you. It might not be some deranged attacker looking for you specifically as a famous person, but it could be a stalker, an abusive ex, or burglars. I do support the right to bear arms here. Guns are the great equalizer, especially for those who are physically weak and unable to defend themselves like an 82 year old man trying to fend off a psycho with a hammer. That said, I would say that perhaps the solution here is maybe these liberal areas should relax gun control a little and allow law abiding citizens who pass the right background checks and competency tests to own a firearm, if only to defend themselves.

Discussing Fetterman's actual ability to serve

 So...I came across a video of Fetterman at a rally today, and he seemed...fine. Mostly cogent, maybe a couple flubs, but far more capable than he came off at the debate. It just goes to show how badly stroke victims handle debates under pressure. But when the guy is allowed to go at his own pace, it seems obvious he's all there.

I just wanted to bring this up in case anyone doubt's Fetterman's ability to actually serve. Yes, he bombed the debate. And yes, that's bad optically. But it just goes to show that his problems are largely limited to that debate. Don't think the dude is inept to serve just because he speaks badly in a debate. Dude isn't being weekend at bernie'sed" guys. He's fine. Really.

Discussing democrats sugarcoating the debate debacle

 So...it's weird behavior. When things REALLY go south for the left, there seems to be this moment in which people realize "oh crap we're screwed", but then once people find a narrative, they cling to it and resolve the cognitive dissonance in their view that way. I personally find this to be harmful, since reality is going to slap you in the face sooner or later. Worldviews can only bend so much before breaking, and breaks can be more traumatic than just shifting your expectations as they go. When new evidence is presented to us, and there isn't a good reason to ignore it or contextualize it, it's good to accept it. 

But, the left has a habit of just burying their head in the sand when being approached with bad information. Sure, the right does this behavior too. If anything the right doubles down and creates entire alternative realities to the point they aren't even living in the same universe as the rest of us. But, the left, who I've historically held to higher standards, seems to do this behavior too. And it's frustrating when I see it.

I saw it in 2020. Biden was supposed to win by a landslide. Even I thought it wouldn't even be close. But then as more and more states started going red, many of us had an "oh crap" moment in which we realized we might actually lose to Trump again. I even saw people on this one forum of people who hate my guts asking "gee, was outofplatoscave right all along? After all, he's been warning us for months that this could happen", it was kind of hilarious to see. But then, as the race solidified around Biden, with the rust belt and PA going more blue as mail in votings came in, and states like Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada were in play, the narratives changed. "Biden has the most votes of any democratic candidate ever", and "centrism wins, look at all of those suburbanites", and blah blah blah. The fact is, once these guys found some footing within which they could rally around their same old ideology, they started doing so. It was frustrating to watch these guys start crapping their pants and being so close to getting it, only to go back to their same old positions and learn nothing.

That's how I feel like the left is treating the Fetterman Oz debate yesterday. As the dude malfunctioned on stage and struggled to get his points across, many of us on the left felt a heavy sinking feeling that we're screwed. I mean, that debate performance was inexcusable. It raised serious questions about Fetterman's mental fitness, and just from a debate standpoint, look, I don't care what your views are about the two candidates. Debates are ALWAYS about presentation and style, not substance. I've seen people regularly over the course of my life lose debates even if they've had the better position. Debates favor those who can present their points well, and can outmaneuver their opponents. A stage managed personality like Oz, who has been on TV before and knows how to come off looking good, is going to beat a literal stroke victim. Period, end of story. It doesn't mean that Fetterman isn't the better candidate. it doesn't mean that Oz isn't full of crap. Sometimes the people who "win" debates are often the biggest BSers. But they DO win the debates. This is why I said Trump won the first debate in 2020. He controlled the narrative and put Biden on defense. People thought he was a belligerent bully, and they're not wrong, but, that's a good debate tactic. Look, I've supported my fair share of major debate losers. Remember Yang's first debate? Disaster. What about that last one between Biden and Bernie in 2020? Awful. Biden wrecked Bernie. And likewise, Oz wrecked Fetterman. 

Again, this isn't to say Fetterman won't be a good senator. To be honest, I would vote for a vegetable before I vote for a republican. If I choose not to support a democrat, let it be known I choose either to vote third party or not at all. Fetterman is correct on more of the issues, and that's good enough for me. I'm a never republican guy. They'd literally need to offer UBI, and even then I'd be leery because I'd wonder if I'm getting some Charles Murray style deal with the devil. I voted Fetterman, if I had to make the same choice today, I'd still vote Fetterman, the only time I'd say I would regret voting Fetterman was in the primary given options like Malcolm Kenyatta and Alexandria Khalil, and even then, Im pretty sure I had my vote in by the time the stroke was announced, so I can't regret that either. But all Fetterman really needs to do is vote the right way and write decent legislation, and the latter he could have the help of dozens of aides if he wanted it. So I'm not concerned about his job performance. But, I would understand why others would be.

The thing is, though, a lot of these lefties are going far above and beyond saying "yeah I'd vote for Fetterman even if he was a disabled mess". They are pulling out the old SJW cards screaming "ableism" and going on about how this is a "rorschach test" "to see how comfortable voters are with someone with a disability." Uh...guys. STOP. Nothing is gonna piss off independents faster than you guys calling them ableist or assuming that they're uncomfortable with disabled people. if someone is disabled, then that means their ability to do the job rightly comes into question. Where people end up settling on that question is a matter of one's personal ethics, but let's not demonize people for actually questioning Fetterman's ability to do the job. I can tell you, as someone who has been a literal swing voter in past elections, that if you walked into this mess not leaning a certain way, coming away from that debate, I struggle to see why anyone would choose Fetterman. Those who choose him are people whose minds were made up before the debate, and who truly support him for his positions on issues. Nothing wrong with this, mind you, I AM one of those people, BUT, let's not act like independents will see things the same way. Fetterman was only 1.3% ahead when the debate happened. And dropping. And you know what? All we need is a 2 point shift to put this race in Oz territory. And given we're less than 2 weeks before election day....yeah, no, that isn't a lot of time for the effect of this debate to wear off. So yeah, we are screwed, we should be full on in panic mode, and we should expect that losing the senate is now a possibility. Fetterman and Walker are the 49th and 50th senate votes for the democrats. If we dont win both of those races, we need to pick up a candidate in Nevada, North Carolina, or Ohio, and those states...are leaning to the right. So this doesn't look good. Let's not bury our heads in the sand about it. It'll just be more painful later.

Reaction to the Fetterman vs Oz debate

 So, I watched the Fetterman vs Oz debate earlier tonight, and uh...we're screwed. Calling it now, we just lost the senate. As we know, PA and GA are the two most important races in the battle for the senate right now, with the democrats needing to win both of them to keep a 50-50 lead. And Fetterman just blew it. I know the dude is recovering from a stroke, but uh, the guy couldn't even put together a coherent sentence half the time. Especially early on. Some of his answers seemed scripted and completely unrelated to the questions at hand. He would be asked about one thing and then go off on some negative attack on Dr. Oz, which proved ineffective tonight. Meanwhile, Oz was able to competently hammer at Fetterman and spin things in his favor. Sure, most of his points were BS, but this is the TV guy who has made a living selling snake oil to the masses, so he's got this.We gotta understand, debates aren't always won just by being right. You actually have to competently present your side's ideas properly. And Fetterman failed to do that. HARD. People were already questioning his ability to serve, and this debate did not inspire confidence at all. If I were some relatively tuned out independent voter trying to figure out who to vote for and my answer wasn't predetermined, I'd be going Oz right now. And I imagine most such independents will swing Oz now. And given the polling margins are slimming down day by day (remember yesterday's 2.2% lead? It's 1.3 now), this does not inspire confidence. We absolutely NEED this seat to keep the senate, and Fetterman just messed up. For the record, I'm not blaming the guy, he had a stroke, it could happen to any of us, and it happened at the worst time possible. But the fact is, that stroke DID screw up his head, and if he can't communicate properly on stage, he can't win a debate. Oz destroyed him.

Again, calling it now, PA senate seat goes republican. Sure, Fetterman is still ahead on paper, but polls are a lagging indicator and I figure by the time I do my final senate predictions in early November, it will be red, and I will be estimating a 51-49 victory for the republicans. It's a shame, I considered Fetterman to be the model for how democrats SHOULD run senate campaigns up to now. The dude is progressive, he supports Bernie style politics and has a working class ethos and a "take no crap" attitude that should make him the perfect candidate for PA...if he were on top of his game. He isn't. The dude is incoherent, the republicans are relentlessly attacking him, and it's working. He's falling apart. I really wonder how much different this race would be if he didn't have that stroke. Some attacks on him would still be relevant, like him "letting murderers out of jail" and "living off of his parents until 49", but I'd imagine he'd be able to mount a decent defense of his views. I know I would have, if I were on top of my game. Here, he just couldn't. Don't get me wrong, I still think he would be a good senator, the important thing is how he votes, and what legislation he can craft, and he's correct on the positions most of the time, but on presentation, his campaign has fallen way short of what I hoped it would be. He started out so strong back in like June. He was hammering Oz relentlessly and making him look terrible. But now things are going the other way.The only saving grace is that PA has allowed early voting to take place, and those lean democratic. Still, given the votes that have yet to be cast, I'm pretty sure most of them are going republican for this specific race.

Abridged election update (10/24)

 So, I still plan to do my final analysis some time before November 8th, but it's still too early for that, but I do want to give an update because people are freaking out over us potentially losing the senate.

While it CAN happen, I do want to remind people I still expect a 50-50 split. Pennsylvania and Georgia are still in the blue column, although the lead has been waning significantly. Ultimately, it hinges on Georgia, which is expected to go Warnock by 1 point. While that's not a very significant lead, and the last time I looked at it, it was 2.4% (which is a bad sign, red shifts closer to election day could mean we're underestimating republican support, which is what happened in 2016), I still have to throw it in the blue column, although at that margin it's really 60-40 in favor of the dems. Pennsylvania at 2.2% lead for Fetterman gives him a 71% chance of winning by my methodology, which are still reasonably good odds. Also, don't forget Laxalt is less than a point ahead of Cortez Masto in Nevada, so that can flip the other way too. At 0.8% lead, I only give Laxalt (R) a 58% chance of beating Correz Masto (D). So we still have a few close races in play.

Honestly, the results can be anywhere from 53-47 GOP to 52-48 DEM realistically, depending on whether this proves to be more of a red or blue wave vs the results. I don't put the democratic enthusiasm very high based on the polls I've seen, so I'd trend toward the results favoring the GOP relative to the polls (similar to 2016, 2020), but if the polls were dead on, it's still 50-50, which given Harris as the tie breaker, I still expect her to win. 

I just wanted to bring this up, since people seem to be freaking out over the dems losing everything this year. I mean this is shaping up to be a bad year for them, but I still expect the dems to walk away with some wins here and there.

And yes, the house is screwed for dems as far as I know. I'm just going to mirror 538's forecast, but their "lite" model (most similar to my model) has the GOP having a 72% chance of taking it. 

As for governors I won't go into every race, but being from PA, I'll focus on Shapiro vs Mastriano. Shapiro is 9 points ahead, which with a 2.25 z score...yeah, Shapiro has a 98.7% chance of winning. So I can sleep soundly knowing abortion rights will be safe here for 4 more years, minus the GOP's attempt to put it to referendum, which will likely go badly for them if Kansas is anything to go by.

Again, I'll do one final major update with all my charts and graphs right before election day. I dont want to put in all that work multiple times as it is time consuming to make that stuff and compile it. But I did want to comment on the state of the race in a more abridged fashion, and focus on the key points.

TLDR: senate contested but I still give the dems a slight edge with a 60% chance of retaining it with a 50-50 split.

 House the GOP has a 72% chance as per 538's "lite" forecast (which does the numbers in a similar way to how I would do it).

Governors vary by state but PA's race where I live looks very positive for the democrats, with Shapiro being out of the margin of error at this point.

This is how you fight republicans on inflation

 So, we've been talking recently about how the GOP keeps repeating the "let's go brandon" lies regarding Biden and democrats being responsible for inflation. But Katie Porter just took republicans to town on this issue. And oh my gosh, it's freaking brilliant to see. Remember that chart I discussed a few months ago that showed how labor costs aren't responsible for most inflation and it was corporate profits? Yeah, she got up in front of congress and showed everyone that chart. And she basically demonstrated that yeah, over half of the inflation and price increases. And according to the person she was grilling, the numbers don't really budge. So let's kill this idea it's "nobody wants to work any more" and "free money". Labor costs are responsible for 8% of inflation. And the rest is basically "noninput labor costs", which is...supply chain issues. We STILL WOULD have elevated inflation if corporations weren't gauging people, but that inflation would be closer to 5% than of 9%. For the record, I would say we should keep inflation below say, 3-4% tops. The current fed target post 1982 is like 2%, which is insanely low, but yeah. 

This is why a lot of conservative ideas regarding inflation don't work right now. The fed is trying to "bring on the pain" by raising interest rates, but that's just gonna hurt people without solving the problem. IF the inflation were primarily labor cost driven, yeah, that would be the proper solution, but right now we're driving the country into a recession for no good reason, applying the wrong solution to the problem.

It should be noted the fed acts independently of the federal government and the biden administration and while they sometimes coordinate, like in the 1980s, here they're just getting trigger happy and going off on their own doing stuff. 

Also, if you STILL think conservatives would be better on inflation, let me introduce you to the UK basically having Liz Truss resign after 6 weeks on the job because of cutting taxes on the rich, driving the budget deficit through the roof, and implementing price controls driving the British economy into a tailspin. 

Don't vote for conservatives people. They aren't your friend, and any inflation reduction to happen under their watch is going to be coincidental. They have no idea what they're doing. They're just running against what the democrats are doing because...that's what they do.

I honestly wish more dems would be as on point as Katie Porter. Seriously, this needs to be televised nonstop around the country through election day. GREAT segment. Really owning the cons here.

Discussing why democrats are failing at messaging

 So, I just wanted to spitball a bunch of theories for why the democrats are failing in recent years. I mean, as I said, the democrats look like they're getting destroyed right now. And while they aren't quite getting the apocalyptic red wave I would have expected last year, they do seem to be going underwater. For reference, not a ton has changed since my last election forecast for races I was looking at, but polls do show that support for democrats seems to be slipping nationwide. That said, I'm going to discuss various interpretations of this. 

1) Governing at the worst possible time

I am a firm believer, after studying a lot of political trends, that certain election cycles, it's better NOT to win. This is one of the reasons I've been so reluctant to support democrats in recent years. Unless we get the right candidate with the right messaging and the right time, it can actually be disastrous to lead. This is because some presidents and the like are remembered poorly just for being in office at the wrong time. Some presidents, like say, James Monroe or Bill Clinton, did do much with their presidencies, but because the economy was strong and there were relatively good conditions during their presidency, they're remembered fondly. But when things go wrong on your watch, it doesn't matter what the cause was, you're gonna be blamed. Take, say, Martin Van Buren, who had the economy crash after Jackson's policies inevitably damaged the economy. Jackson was never really blamed. He was remembered well, because he governed under good times. But Van Buren was, even though he just happened to deal with the fallout and given how...libertarian right the 1800s were economically, the government wasn't really set up to provide relief for people. Also consider presidents like Jimmy Carter who happened to be in charge when everything in the entire world was going wrong at once, or Obama who inherited the 2008 recession fallout from Bush. To be fair, inheriting problems isn't always a bad thing. The "best" presidents are the ones who basically inherited everyone else's crap and came along and fixed the problem. FDR inherited the great depression which happened under hoover, but due to his politicking regarding it, he was able to turn the situation for the better where the people LOVED him. Same with Reagan. He inherited Carter's problems but because they went away on his watch, in part due to policies implemented and in part due to screwery or even dumb luck, things fell into place where Reagan is remembered fondly. 

Biden basically inherited Trump's mess. 2020 was bad. 2017-2019 weren't bad comparatively speaking. The economy was suddenly "strong" after it was "weak" under Obama (never mind Trump just inherited the Obama recovery), but then COVID hit and Trump mismanaged it so bad that he actually lost to the democrats, despite the democrats themselves running on weak messaging. I'll get back to weak messaging later on, but first I want to focus on the times. Biden started out strong. He got in, passed some relief, and got some money in peoples' hands, and then the republicans attacked them for it. And the economy reopened, and inflation started roaring, and there was a jobs surplus (yeah, im not calling it a "worker shortage" but a "jobs surplus"), and suddenly all that aid Biden did was being demonized and blamed for everything going wrong, and people believed it. Then Ukraine happened, making gas shoot through the roof as global demand shifted away from Russia. And now we're dealing with OPEC being greedy in a similar way we did in the 1970s. And now the fed is trying to rein in job creation by hiking interest rates, which is now going to cause a recession. And while this happened under Reagan, the democrats are being blamed for it. And they can't really pass anything. Because despite controlling the house and the senate Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are basically just stalling everything the democrats do, not even allowing them to break out of the filabuster. So the dems are stonewalled. And then when Biden tries to act via executive action, he's being blamed for that because "ThAtS CoNgReSs' JoB!11!!" (note: while congress does control power of the purse, the presidency is in charge of executing the budget, and the Department of Education and the federal student loan program falls under his authority, meaning Biden's actions are legitimate, but to be fair, most people don't know this because our country is ignorant as fudge, but I'll get to that later). And it just seems like nothing Biden or other entities do, it's never going to be good enough.

I'll be discussing the actual faults with the democrats either. I'm not absolving them from responsibility here, but I am just going to say that unless the democrats can govern effectively and solve the problems, they're gonna be blamed, regardless of their fault. And in the case of inflation at least, I honestly think the factors are out of their control and there is no easy fix. The textbook solution to inflation is what the fed is doing in sparking a recession, and right now that's just freaking everyone out. And honestly, given the core sources of inflation aren't so much labor power but corporate greed and supply chain issues (as well as an extremely tight housing market that's being exploited to the greatest extent possible), there aren't good solutions here. This is something that's worldwide, not just affecting us, and there is no easy solution than to just ride it out. But, people have unreasonable and insane expectations, and aren't educated, so they're just going to be like OMFG DO SOMETHING (and despite criticizing the populace here, let me just say I understand the pain that people are under, this is a crap sandwich, but there isn't really an easy or good solution to this, the global economy is complex and the stuff Biden WANTED to do largely stalled in congress because of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema). Carter had the same issue by the way, although that WAS solved by...the fed crashing the economy in 1982 under Reagan. After which the expansion was considered the the longest in history up to that point, not crashing until the 90s. Given I'm not sure that the core causes of the current problem are the same, I'm not sure crashing the economy would help, but likely plunge people further in pain...

Anyway, Biden is just screwed. As you can tell, he's darned if he does, and darned if he doesn't. it doesnt matter what he does, he can't fix the problem. And while I do blame congress and the democrats somewhat, again, no easy solutions either. 

2) The centrist fixation...

Yeah, I'm going to say it, the centrist fixation is directly responsible for a lot of the failures of Biden's presidency. Biden wasn't someone who campaigned on much of an agenda. Bernie did, but he was soundly defeated due to the party organizing to remove other competition from the primary to ensure a 1 v 1 between Biden and Bernie would go about as well as it did vs Hillary in 2016. The result was the centrist faction won, and then ended up going into office with a milquetoast agenda. Still, what scraps Biden delivered were generally popular...when delivered. As Kyle Kulinski of secular talk always says, Biden's approval was at its highest when he was cutting $1400 checks. And it went down when he started hitting roadblocks.

Which, let me talk about that. Biden, despite running on the "electable" guy and "the guy who can get things done", while mocking "pie and the sky" ideas from his competition much in the same way Hillary did, when push came to shove to do anything, he couldn't. Because his own congress gutted his proposals and decided to be a pain in the neck. He couldn't pass build back better, which, by the way, did intend to alleviate the "worker shortage" (or jobs surplus) by giving people free daycare and getting schools back up and running, but, he couldn't pass it. Because Manchin and Sinema...obstructed him. And I just watched Pelosi talk about how we can't get 60 votes in the senate...the only reason we can't is because, once again, the democrats won't remove the filibuster. So...they're dead in the water. They pass very little, what they do pass is very watered down, and they're hampered from taking direct action. And then when Biden DOES act via executive order, you get all the crocodile tears from executive overreach like with student loans. Student loan reduction was popular for the most part, but it isn't helping because OMFG HE DID IT VIA EXECUTIVE ORDER! Uh...again, you realize he's responsible for executing student loan policy right? He can just choose not to enforce the law, change the rules for how student loans are collected, and even just forgive amounts. Of course I dont expect people to know this. But still. 

The point is, if you look at what is motivating voters this election, democratic enthusiasm is very low right now, and republican enthusiasm is very high. The democrats haven't whipped up their voter base outside of abortion, which isn't having a very large effect and as we saw was merely the 4th most motivating thing behind inflation, crime, and immigration. And Biden's executive orders are popular, but they aren't moving the needle in terms of voting.

The point is, a huge reason Biden tanked was because he just got stonewalled at so many turns in 2021 and I feel like the public just lost confidence in the dude, especially as inflation rages on and people freak out over crime for some reason. Biden already ran with a weak agenda, but failing to achieve even most of what he set out to do made him look ineffective. 

3) Republican politicking is effective

Republicans are masters at framing things, and while not immune to the same problems as the democrats when they take office, given they are, since January 2021 largely not responsible for the fate of the nation outside of obstruction which they are known for, they can easily blame the republicans for everything. And given the problems we have now, they're framing the days of pre 2020 as the "good old days" with Trump being responsible for a large expanding economy with low inflation and how democrats screwed everything up.

On inflation, the republicans have embraced the meme of "let's go Brandon" and blaming it all on Biden. It should be noted Biden didn't really do anything to cause this, but he's being blamed for it. His stimulus checks are being blamed, despite Trump cutting checks too last year. His unemployment expansion is being blamed, although that's admittedly on him somewhat (I mean, it's bad imagery, paying people so much money to explicitly NOT work regardless of the reality of the situation). He;s being blamed for gas prices for some reason. He's being blamed for everything wrong with the economy. The republicans have dusted off some of their Reagan era arguments they used against Carter and are blaming them on Biden. They make it look like Biden's stimulus of the economy and "people not wanting to work" are responsible for all of the problems, and of course corporate america and a lot of small business people who lean republican and seem entitled to other peoples' labor are screaming they can't get help and blah blah blah this is Biden's fault. Now, we discussed Biden's unemployment policy on here. The money is a lot, and I kind of find the idea cringe vs say a basic income, and I've heard ANECDOTES suggesting people were putting off getting jobs due to the money, but at the same time, I haven't found any social science evidence suggesting widespread refusal to work due to the money, and that money is long gone and inflation still remains high. Still, something you'll notice about republicans is it doesn't matter what the reality is, if they can link the problems to Biden's policies, regardless of the validity of these accusations, they can blame Biden for these problems. 

The same thing happens with crime. I tried looking up crime statistics, but it's really hard to get a picture on crime right now. A lot of stats lag a few years, and the most recent numbers I've seen are from...2020. Where murders went up but property crimes went down. I was under the impression that the shutdowns reduced a lot of street crime, and now that the economy has opened back up and crime is going up again, but I really don't have solid numbers. Regardless, numbers don't matter to the right. Feelings do. And they're taking advantage of the situation to hype up a huge crime wave so they can push their authoritarian law and order crap. We need a conservative president who will be tough on crime and blah blah blah. Age old republican trick on modern politics. 

And you know what they're also using to blame the crime on? WOKEISM! They're claiming the reason crime rates are up is all of this defund the police crap and blah blah blah. And the far left is tough on crime. Here in PA, they're slamming John Fetterman on a lot of crime related stuff, claiming he's soft on crime because he wanted to pardon murderers or something. And its working. Fetterman is down to like +2 vs Oz. 

To go more into Fetterman, they're really putting out all the stops. While Fetterman was strong out of the gate and was de facto murdering Oz in the polls, flooding the airwaves with negative ads is working for Oz. Now Oz is being accused of pardoning murderers, being a far left free loader who wants to raise taxes, etc. And he's coming under fire due to having a stroke and struggling to hear people properly, with his fitness for office coming under question. And again, all of this is working. 

Going back to Biden, the same attacks are working there too. Biden is old, and a bit...weird sometimes due to his age. He's missing a few steps and it makes people question his mental fitness for the job, with many on the right accusing Biden of having dementia. Never mind the fact that Trump has a family history of dementia and a lot of his behavior in recent years sounds literally like early to mid stage dementia to me, but they think Biden is losing his marbles because he sometimes struggles without a teleprompter or goes into the wrong room or something. I admit the country is kind of "weekend at Bernies"ing Biden and the dude is probably too old to serve, but I don't think he's that bad off. More competent than Trump. 

But yeah. The republicans are just playing really good politics, attacking Biden on everything and blaming it on his policies. And it's convincing to people. 

4) The "wokeness" problem

I'm sorry, but the democrats have a huge problem with wokeness. It's one of the reasons the democrats seem weak on crime. All of this BLM stuff and defund the police and ACAB. The left has turned police into a cultural issue, with the left hating the police merely for existing, and the right supporting the police in a weird jingoistic fashion. I'm honestly a cultural centrist on these issues but here's the thing. When I was a kid or teenager or young adult growing up, my dad would always go on about leftists doing stuff like this. He was a vietnam vet, and when he came back he was often called a "baby killer" by people in Port Authority in NYC when getting back. And this actually caused him to hate leftists. To be fair, he's always had a chip over his shoulder on the vietnam stuff and I don't really agree with that, but I think that something that the left needs to learn to do is criticize the institutions without demonizing people within them. The left attacks police. They HATE police. And do to my sociology/criminology background, I KNOW people who are cops now. I went to school with them. And a lot of them are fairly conservative, despite having the same education that turned me as liberal as I am. Why? because the left demonizes them. "All cops are bastards". "Defund the police", "abolish the police." This stuff puts people on the defensive and makes them overcompensate by becoming more conservative. So by picking a culture war on this stuff, then people start being flag waving jingoists where criticizing the institution is akin to attacking the members, and in the police sense we got people pushing thin blue line and blah blah blah. Speaking of which, I won't give more details, but one of my friends from college was a state trooper who was killed in the line of duty this year. And the person who killed them is being treated fairly softly, and it seems to be related to a lot of BLM type stuff. The perpetrator got bail, they got charges dropped against them, blah blah blah. it's a joke. And meanwhile the family is frustrated and just wants justice. But, as the right would say, cops are afraid to do their jobs. And criminals are treated lightly. And this BREEDS right wing sentiment.

I'm not saying the right is...right on this question by the way, when I say I'm a centrist on these issues, I mean I'm actually a centrist. I sympathize with BLM and the like sometimes, but I also understand the police's side of things. And I think that the left is committing cultural genocide by allowing all of these radical left activists speak for them on these issues. It just literally provides fodder for the right to thrive on. They LIVE for controversy and outrage. Some pink haired weirdo does something that goes viral and millions of right wingers are like OMG LOOK AT THAT LOOK AT THAT and recruiting for their causes. 

And we know in 2021, the democrats flopped HARD on the wokeness stuff in places like relatively blue Virginia. Really, this stuff is LOSING people on the left, and driving people to the right. We got stuff like the 1619 project in schools and fearmongering over trans issues causing republicans to push crazy laws censoring certain topics (since the right sees fighting over the education system as worth their while, if they control the agenda taught in schools rather than the left, more people will grow up leaning right in the future). And yeah, I feel like the left is pushing this stuff too hard.

As we know, the left has trouble taking a "no" on this stuff too. if you criticize or point this stuff out, they'll scream you're racist, you're sexist, you're privileged, you're bigoted, blah blah blah. Insane tribalism from those guys. but you know what? They need to learn this. They are alienating people. ANd they are making the right stronger with their obnoxiousness and self righteousness.

Also, as I said, I feel like the dems DO have a white male problem. Look at the statistics on who votes for whom. You'll see that groups that benefit from critical theory do quite well with democrats. but they lose badly, especially with uneducated white males. I'm an educated white male, with my education giving me some level of nuance, hence my "centrism" on this issue, but a lot of people less educated than me have turned hard against this stuff to the point of being anti intellectual. And the left is just digging in and shooting the messenger when I try to point this out. Well, hey, your funeral guys. Maybe you win democratic primaries with that stuff, but then you alienate people in the general. We need a more broad ethos that actually appeals to everyone, quite frankly.

5) Mismatch in priorities

As I said, the issues that are influencing voters are issues that the right does better on right now. The economic messaging of the right is demonizing the left and driving people right. The left is looking bad on crime. Wokeness which is heavily emphasized on the left is turning people off. And the most uniting democratic issue right now, abortion, just isn't having a major impact. Biden did some cool things with student loans and the like, but given millions of Americans dont even have student loans, and the republicans are framing is as "the left are raising your taxes to pay for rich kids' college", a lot of the impact isn't really widespread through the economy and the issue is becoming divisive. Btw, I'm not saying forgiving student loans is bad. I'm just saying it's not really motivating people right now. I literally have pushed for student debt forgiveness since 2016 and I think it needs to go further. But I also understand that between centrist dems and the right poisoning the well on it, it's actually becoming divisive and not paying for dems as much as it should. It is a HUGE reason why im actually so gung ho on the dems this year, but it isn't playing well with the larger voting base, with some being for it, some being against and the net impact being neutral to slightly negative due to all the OMG EXECUTIVE OVERREACH! people. 

The fact is, immigration, crime, and inflation are the big drivers driving people to the polls, and all of those issues favor republicans. Abortion, forgiving drug offenders, and student loan forgiveness are motivating the left, but it isn't quite having as pronounced impact as it should. Republican enthusiasm is way up, democratic enthusiasm is way down.

6) The original sin of 2016

Virtually everything that happened is because of the way 2016 played out. The fact is, when we had this realignment, or the beginning of it at least, the GOP got the better end of the deal again. They were able to get all of the populist energy in their party and have cultivated a loyal and fanatical voter base that is seemingly ignorant of facts into their party. These guys love the GOP and will turn up regularly, screaming about how the democrats are destroying America while acting like Trump was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

With Hillary, the democrats got the crap end of the deal. Democrats lack enthusiasm. They seem to suck at messaging. They seem to be unwilling to do things to save their life, and then when they try people turn against it because the left is very divided between the centrist and leftist factions. And they can't seem to drive people to the polls without the boogeyman of the republicans. They can run AGAINST the right when the right is in power and pick up seats just being the alternative to the right, but they can't stand on their own two feet without falling apart. They inspire no one, their fixes are incremental, when they do things people then scream it goes too far, and the right just bullies them back to the center. It's frustrating to watch. 

And finally...one more thing I have to bring up

7) Lefties actually do seem like unreliable voters

One of the excuses I always hear about the left not doing anything is that when they do lefties dont turn out for them. Lefties are horridly unreliable voters. To some extent I do blame the dems for this. The dems alienate a lot of people from supporting them. LIKE ME. I didnt support them in 2016 and 2020 because they dont support left wing policy. But when they try to support left wing policy, it isn't helping. Biden's calls to codify roe v wade are falling on deaf ears. Student loan forgiveness and pardoning drug offenders isnt moving the needle. And a lot of people just dont vote. Especially in my age range. I have a friend who i talk politics with all the time. He aint voting. Granted, he lives in NY, but when I showed him his congressional seat is up for grabs he was just like "you mean I have to go to my voting place and take time out of my day to vote?" YES, PLEASE GO VOTE. He isn't going to. Mainly out of sheer laziness, but I think this is a problem with the under 40s. The reason why politics is dominated by boomers and gen X, who both lead very conservative, is because THEY VOTE. Millennials and Zoomers are like...gee, do I have to? Yeah if you want to actually change things, YES. This is especially why insurgeant compaigns like Sanders and Yang fail so hard. Because their constituents are not the ones who actually make the important decisions. many of them aren't registered, if they are they arent registered as democrats, and if they are they still dont show up. Many people seem completely unwilling to actually get out there and vote. And it's frustrating. You cant complain they dont' listen to you if you dont actually make your voice heard.

Take note my own voting strategy. I might not always vote for democrats, but I vote. I take the effort to make my voice heard. It might not always be for the dems. It might be green, I might even leave some races blank intentionally to spite the dems. But I do actually make my vote a carrot and a stick. You cant say you are using a carrot and a stick unless you actually follow through with the carrot. If the democrats actually do nice things for you, YOU HAVE TO REWARD THAT. If you don't, well, don't be surprised when they dont turn out for you. The reason the dems have embraced centrism and identity politics is because the centrists vote, and they got massive POC constituencies that vote. But you know who dont vote? The independents who like Bernie and Yang. Those guys dont vote. And thats why our politics arent being heard. We're like herding freaking cats, man. It's frustrating. If you dont turn out for the dems when they do cool stuff dont be surprised when they dont do cool stuff. 

8) Lack of education among voters combined with poor messaging

The right doesnt have a voter problem, because the average voter isnt very smart, and the right panders to them in language they can understand. it doesnt matter if the right is factually wrong. What matters with elections is whether they connect to the emotions of people with a bare minimum knowledge in the subject. Given most voters are tired, and work hard all day, and pay taxes for social services they never see, many of them just dont vote democratic. Republicans push simplistic ideas. Personal responsibility. Work = success. The american dream. The left has a lot of sociology supporting their ideas, but do they really connect that stuff to voters? no. It's hard to explain to right wingers why inflation isnt caused by $1400 checks and unemployment. You need to write a literal freaking essay, and they just need to repeat the same sentence over and over again. The wokies. They have all of this stuff you literally need a 300 level college course to understand (source: learned about their theories in 300 level sociology and political theory courses), and most Americans don't have that. And even worse a lot of people on the right have literal dunning kruger syndrome and see all of these college educated people going left and think that the left is brainwashing them and that they know best. Republicans have convinced the salt of the earth, the average white male car mechanic making $30-40k a year, that he knows just as much as the experts. And he believes them. He thinks the world is simple. While left wing ideas are complicated.

The left is, quite frankly, at a disadvantage, because left wing ideas based on complex social theory are difficult for the average voter to grasp, and right wing ideas are BS that sounds good and attractive to undereducated people. We really do have an educational problem with this country. This is half the reason im for free college. We need educated citizens who are more able to understand and grapple with issues. Instead most voters are woefully ignorant of policy, and this favors the right, who peddle simple ideas that are wrong, but intuitively grasped by the voter base.

Even the dems have this issue. Keep in mind the criticisms leveled at Bernie bros. Oh, we have all of this college education and theory and most working class voters dont get it. Therefore vote for worthless centrists who pander identity politics. Yeah, Im calling out the dems for exploiting this too. Being educated in America, particularly deeply educated in the social sciences like I am, is extremely frustrating. It's like watching tons of ignorant people who dont understand anything have these opinions that are cringey as fudge, and these guys decide who gets into office. Imagine if this worked in other fields. Imagine if doctors were told by random people how to do surgery. or engineers were told how to build bridges by some dude who never studied physics in their life. That's political life in the US. Democracy might be the least bad system, and Im not advocating for technocracy here (as that just descends to oligarchy and corruption anyway), but democracy is only as good as the voters and the current environment favors ignorance and right wing policies that sound good intuitively to uneducated people but are disastrous in practice. 

Conclusion

I've been pretty upset over the state of the country realizing this stuff. But yeah, thinks are screwed right now. The right is winning the political battles right now, inundating the political dialogue with tons of bad and ignorant takes, and the left is just...falling apart. Part of it is due to them not embracing a more populist ethos themselves. Part of this is due to the fact that the right is just better at messaging. Part of it is due to them not doing anything and losing the confidence of the voters, and some of it is just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But right now, I feel like the left is losing the war on ideas. As a result, the right wing seems fired up right now, while the left seems demotivated and under assault. And even populist measures to try to rally the left don't seem to be working, which isnt good. If the dems can't figure this stuff out, they may be screwed. 

Anyway, I'll do a more thorough projection closer to election day, maybe in another 1-2 weeks or so. I want to wait until within a week before election day or so because I want my next prediction to be my final one. Although people are voting NOW and I voted already. But yeah, I want my final prediction to be reasonably accurate. So I won't jump the gun yet.

Why I'm actually going all "blue no matter who" this election

 After the last post where I kind of went blue no matter who there, I feel like I owe people reading this blog an explanation. 

For the most part, in recent years, my opposition to voting democrat was grounded on the basis of opposing centrism and the neoliberal third way ideology dominant among the democrats. It was based on the calculus that left wing policies were actually popular and would sway people to vote democrat, and that centrism is boring and alienates left wing voters. I believed that in a political environment where one party has gone the deep end, and the other party devolves to "you better vote for me or else" while ignoring their constituents, the moral thing to do is to...let that party lose. If they want to piss off and alienate their voters by not doing nice things for them, let them. And if they lose, they lose. I'd rather lose one election than lose an entire party alignment. In other words, I'd rather let the dems lose now, and then run someone else who is much better the next cycle and potentially win, than to enable crusty old centrists to stay in power without ever being challenged. Again. My goal is to shift the overton window of the country left. To make left wing ideas more popular and commonplace, and to have a powerful left wing consensus not seen in this country since the days of FDR. I've even been willing to compromise some parts of my ideology, such as UBI, temporarily to make these alliances happen.

But...the democrats screwed up. Hillary DID lose in 2016, and Trump won. And Trump realigned a lot of otherwise centrist voters to his camp. In 2020, the dems did win, but they barely won, and Trump showed his coalition is here to stay. 2016 wasn't a fluke, like 74 million people actually voted for Trump, and he almost won again. 

Now, 2022. 2022 looked bad regardless for the dems. It happens when one party takes over, but lacks the popularity or mandate to keep people on their side. And generally since the 1990s, when one party takes over the government, the other starts gaining support. And the same happened with Biden. We were looking at an apocalyptic red wave for a while, especially as Biden floundered and failed to do anything.

BUT...Biden has tried his best to at least do some things. Congress has been a joke with manchin and sinema sabotaging his entire agenda, but Biden finally did the left wing populist thing of doing things like forgiving some student loan debt and forgiving marijuana offenders. And he promises to codify abortion if he wins the senate. But despite this, these things aren't helping him gain support and are actually losing it.

In the last post, we looked at what is motivating voters right now. And it's not left wing policy. Left wing ideas are actually unpopular right now. The economy is being blamed on Biden, with the narrative being it's all of those stimulus checks and people not wanting to work (a bunch of nonsense but the GOP is memeing this until it works). The democrats are being blamed for a crime wave, because of wokeism, even though once again, the COVID recovery is the likely culprit (same as inflation). And all of Biden's initiatives to protect abortion and pardon drug offenders and forgive student debt are falling on deaf ears. This is BAD. Because if the GOP succeed here, the left isn't coming back. 

Biden isn't perfect. Far from it. I consider his presidency mediocre and don't really have strong opinions either way honestly. He's a typical centrist democrat, but he did do some cool things with the power he had. And I believe we should reward the democrats with this power. Even expand his power, by voting more democrats into congress so we can bypass manchin and sinema, who are basically moderate Rs with a D after their name at this point. 

Here's the thing. I believe in a carrot and a stick. If you ignore me, I use the stick and promise to never vote for you. But if you do things I like...well...you get a vote. Biden is making a compelling reason to vote D in 2022, with abortion rights on the chopping block, and cool things like marijuana offenders being pardoned and student debt forgiveness. And honestly, while it doesnt go far enough, Build Back Better is a decent climate change package and it's inspired by Bernie's Green New Deal plan. 

If you care about these things, vote blue. But that's the thing, if you want the democrats to keep doing nice things, you need to show them that doing nice things will make you vote for them. My strategy has always been one of incentives. I won't reward bad behavior on the part of democrats. but I WILL reward good behavior. I believe democrats need to earn my vote, and I believe they have earned it enough this time around. Again, are they perfect? No. Are they even close? No. But I will say this, if you DONT support them this time, and you let the right control the narrative, you can say goodbye to any chance of a UBI in our lifetimes. You can say goodbye to further student loan reduction. You can say goodbye to the right to choose.

This isn't a debate about rewarding bad democrats vs voting blue for the sake of voting for a party to keep the other party out of power. This is about the war for IDEAS. And if you do not vote blue, it shows the democrats that the key to win is to "play it safe", run to the right, and give more ideological concessions to the other side. Biden won't do cool things for the rest of his time in office, if he does not see gains. And if the public is against his agenda and in favor of the right's agenda, that's just going to lead to more triangulation in the long term.

The last time the democrats were facing the kinds of crises we're facing now, Jimmy Carter was in office. And Biden is looking a lot like Carter 2.0. But wanna know what happened after Carter? Reagan. And it destroyed the left since. It led to Bill CLinton who did sell the soul of the democratic party to the devil just to win. It led to Obama and Hillary Clinton who were stuck in the same mindset. If left wing ideas go in the toilet for approval ratings, it's over. The dems will change their strategy by running right, and they will then turn around and point to 2022 to show why. They will say they did X, they did Y, they did Z, it didn't help them, so those issues arent important to voters, and there's no incentive to do more cool things. 

If you care about nice things, vote for the people doing the nice things. But if you don't, don't complain when the democrats dont do nice things in the future. 

Again my strategy has always been about a carrot and a stick. It's time to get out the carrot. And my refusal to vote democrat has always been about them refusing to do nice things. I am loyal to my IDEAS, not the party. I want to make that clear. Always have been. When the democrats cross me, they get punished. When do things I like, they get rewarded. 

Again, use the carrot guys, put away the stick. This isn't a "stick" year. In previous elections left wing ideas were popular even if the candidates were not. Right now support for left wing ideas is in the toilet. That's bad for us and our argument to push the democrats left falls apart if they lose under these conditions. So vote like the future of the country depends on it. Because it does.
 

Discussing the Harris X Poll for the 2022 election

 So, a lot of liberals are freaking out about this new Harris X poll regarding the 2022 election. And I kind of am too. If you want a summary, here it is, if you want more details, you can read the whole report here. Long story short: dear God this is terrible. I mean, to sum things up, this looks REALLY BAD for democrats.

The top issue for the country is inflation. I ain't really surprised, inflation is terrible. But the problem is, they're blaming democrats, despite it being a world wide issue as a result of covid lockdowns and supply shortages and now Ukraine. But the conservatives memed their way to blaming it on Biden and the democrats, so Biden and the democrats are being blamed.

At the same time, they're also pissed at Biden and fear we'll be going into recession soon. We might, because the federal reserve thinks the way to solve the issue is with raising interest rates to destroy jobs and restore balance in the market to employers. Never mind that the problem with inflation isn't one of worker bargaining power mostly, but corporate greed and supply shortages. Also, Biden isn't giving the Fed marching orders, they're just out looking for the corporations so that's why this is happening. And you know people are still blaming Biden $1400 checks. *sigh*, ya know, even though i criticized Biden for not using this as an opportunity for a UBI trial, I'm kind of glad he WAS so moderate. Imagine the public backlash against UBI if it happened to be tried while this was going on. The issue would be DOA. Heck, it already is somewhat. Even yang is distancing himself from it and a lot of the broservatives who kinda liked it like Joe Rogan are also backing off from it. I still believe in the idea, and I recognize that this issue is complicated and the result of the complexity of restarting the worldwide economy after a global pandemic, but yeah. Can I blame the public too much? Not necessary, they're frustrated. But...they're also stupid, don't understand policy, and are blaming the wrong people to some extent.

The second issue that voters care about is crime. This one surprises me. Because I would've thought #2 would be abortion, but no, abortion is down to freaking #4. Which is bad, as all the top 3 issues are republican territory (#3 is immigration). People think crime is going up. And I guess it is. Crime went down with covid, and it went up with them removing lockdowns. Kind of stupid for them to blame democrats for the crime rate rising when the GOP were the ones so gung ho over lockdowns. You remove lockdowns, you get crime. Plain and simple. I know Yang got burned by this too in 2021 in NYC. He started strong when the race was about the economy but once it shifted to crime he was DOA. And while he tried to be tougher on crime than the progressives the progressives screamed at him while more normie centrist voters gravitated toward Adams. Now, I'm not going to say crime ISN'T an issue, but it's an issue that's exaggerated, and it kind of goes into this weird authoritarian "law and order" mindset a lot of conservatives have. It's the same mentality that got Nixon elected, and Reagan, and Trump. It's the same mindset Rammstein's "Angst" was about. "Everyone fears the boogeyman/black man". And I know listening to conservative circles sometimes they go nuts over this, screaming about the homelessness epidemic in blue cities and how bad the crime is and blah blah blah. I don't deny there is a crime problem. I mean, my family's freaking car got shot up earlier this year in some shoot out on my street. It happens. But am I blaming the democrats? No. Is the public? Yes. 

Heck, the public seems to be blaming the problem on wokeism. Which I find very frustrating. I totally get the whole concept of BLM and defund the police, but let's face it, it was a tactical failure for the left to embrace that stuff. I know the woke people screamed their way and shamed their way into the mainstream claiming if you weren't on board with this stuff that you're racist, but now the dems are losing on the issue of crime. Again, based on my lurking of conservative circles it seems to be due to this mentality that the police are afraid to do their job. And the idea of defunding the police, while well meaning ain't gonna play well when there's a crime wave. And even worse some wanted to abolish the police.

Honestly, this is why im so hard on wokeism sometimes. I could have told you some of this was coming. The left goes too far, gets too militant and obnoxious on social issues, and then they alienate the public. It literally turns moderates into right wingers. And even I have to admit that BLM and the like went too far. Did they have a point with George Floyd? Sure, absolutely. But then they start screaming over every police shooting ever no matter how justified and scream you're a racist if you dont sympathize with the dude shot. I generally speaking give cops the benefit of the doubt unless they screw up badly honestly. They're people too, they wanna get home safe, I can't blame them for getting trigger happy when some crazed person runs at them with a knife, or potentially has a gun and they shoot when he moves his hands the wrong way. Ya know? Let the police do their jobs. Do we need to teach cops more sociology and racial sensitivity training? Sure. Do we need to run around screaming "ACAB" and crap? Oh god no, not unless you wanna lose elections. Drop the woke leftist crap, seriously. 

Immigration, I'm not sure why it's #3. I guess conservatives gonna be conservative. Freaking screaming because Fox Noise hypes up another immigrant caravan or something causing all the MAGA people to foam at the mouth or something. 

Abortion is #4. NUMBER FOUR. WHY?! It was literally my own top issue given the inflation mess is largely out of Biden's control and I don't really believe crime and immigration are major issues to deal with right now. But is dem enthusiasm that low? Why is the GOP dominating the narrative here screaming about immigration and crime?! I hate this country sometimes. Really, it seems like the net impact is only SLIGHTLY in democratic favor here.

Biden's marijuana pardons seemed positive but aren't helping him electorally. Student loans are more controversial, with majorities supporting it but not liking he went around congress's back. Ugh. WHY?! Just take the win, country. Take the win. Why should Joe Manchin be the kingmaker here? Anyway, even though the measure is popular doing it without congress is costing Biden support. Again, I find this frustrating, as a leftie who believes that if congress can't cooperate, the dems should push executive orders. 

I get that the country has issues, but I really don't get where peoples' heads are at here. Inflation, I can bite the bullet on that one. It's a major issue, voters want solutions, there are no easy solutions and the fed is likely to induce a recession trying to force it under control. 

Crime and immigration just...why?

Abortion....given how unpopular the SCOTUS thing was when it dropped I don't know why the dems protecting abortion is more popular. 

And on student loan forgiveness, again, just take the W people. You like the policy, why be mad simply because Biden used his executive authority to bypass congress?

I swear I feel like Moses dealing with the Israelites right now. No wonder the dude hit the rock with the stick and slammed the commandments down. It's like, wtf is wrong with you people? I know this is a red year, and dems are demoralized in red years, but uh...Biden is actually doing things, then you get mad hes doing things, but you get mad if he doesnt do things. And then abortion isnt motivating you, but crime and immigration and inflation are motivating the right. And UGH.

Come on guys, even I voted dem this election cycle. And you guys know I'm no fan of the dems. I see at least some policy i like, I reward that. But here's the deal, guys. If the public doesn't reward that, they won't do this any more. I can see it now, the dems will move hard center if they lose to a red wave here and claim that going left didn't help them. They will never listen to us again. Oh you want more student debt forgiveness, too bad, look what happened last time. You want UBI? UBI will cause inflation, are you crazy? Dont you remember the early 2020s? Don't let the right set the narrative. This isn't 2016. We wont be able to claim that the dems alienated the voters this time. They at least offered some symbolic scraps, and right now the GOP is ACTUALLY WINNING the ideological battle. People are going to the right...because they LIKE the right. THEY ACTUALLY LIKE THE RIGHT. WE ARE LOSING. NOT JUST ELECTORALLY, BUT IDEOLOGICALLY. I AM TYPING IN CAPS BECAUSE I WANT THAT TO SINK IN FOR YOU PEOPLE. 

I'm willing to throw an election to protect my ideological brand. It's why I refused to support Hillary. It's why I refused to support Biden originally in 2020. I knew that even though the dems are more competent leaders than the GOP, if they can't deliver the goods and gain popularity in doing so, the left WILL LOSE TO THE RIGHT again. Not just electorally, but ideologically. The wrong guy getting elected in the wrong year can have devastating consequences for the entire of the country. If Carter never won in 1976, there would be no Reagan in 1980. And Hillary won in 2016, we'd be looking at 12 years of uninterrupted dem leadership that accomplished nothing. And now that Biden got in just in time to relive the carter years, we're looking at an apocalyptic red wave, as everything wrong with the country post COVID is blamed on him. It sucks, but that's what it is. If the party in power doesnt maintain their popularity, they lose to the other side. PERIOD. And if they screw up badly, it could lead to a party realignment. Right now, that party realignment looks like it's going REALLY BAD for the left. We might end up with another whole generation of extreme right wing politicians and centrist dems with their heads down being forced to bargain in their overton window. This is what I've been fearing all along. This is what I've been trying to avoid all along. But the dems are losing the arguments for the country right now. Their ineptitude in recent years has been astounding and even though Biden is slowly learning, if he isnt rewarded for this learning, the country will shift back the other way and the dems will just keep running back to the right. It sickens me it's come to this.

Speaking of 2024, there were numbers there too. Lots of people don't like Biden. He's too old and people question his mental fitness. Donald Trump is the presumed nominee for the republicans, but if he doesn't run, it's DeSantis. On the dem side, it's either Biden or Harris. With people choosing *barfs* Hillary Clinton before they give someone like Bernie or AOC mind. Again, the left is losing the culture war here. I dont blame them because the dems at this point are an obnoxiously centrist party that hates progressives, but even when they run to the center they get wrecked by the right anyway. I swear the right just knows how to do politics better than the dems do. It's a shame.All that triangulation seems to help but then the dems lose due to being unpopular and not doing anything. They're literally darned if they and darned if they don't.

And yes, I know I'm being kind of grim with my own ideology even, but again, I'm an honest person. Like, I am willing to recognize my ideas are unpopular right now and aren't helping the dems at all. I do believe that in 2016 things couldve gone differently. Even in 2020 they could've. But as of now, with inflation, and people being more obsessed with crime and immigration than ANYTHING that motivates the left at all, the dems are losing not just on the elections, but the issues. Before 2022, the left wing policies enjoyed LOTS of popularity, and it seemed like people just disliked the people representing them. Because let's face it, centrism inspires no one. But right now things are looking like the late 70s or 80s again, with the dems just losing on every issue and a blowout looking imminent. What is the damage in 2024 for the dems?

Well, for Trump vs Biden, Trump is +2 in this poll. Which is...bad. You need the dems to be +3 in the electoral college for a dem to have a 50-50 shot at the EC due to how the math works. So Biden is 5 points short of where he needs to be. If you replace Biden with Harris, Trump wins by 11. EGADS. Look, Im not a Harris stan either, but honestly? She's no worse than Biden. Idk why people hate her so much. Is it really because shes black and a woman? Is it because she asserts herself when speaking? I mean on policy she's far from the worst dem. She's actually significantly left of Biden in some ways, like healthcare. Anyway, If you replace Harris with DeSantis, you're back to Harris +2, which isn't bad, but still JUST short of what's needed to win. Of course there are a lot of undecideds, but those numbers do not inspire confidence at all.

The democrats are in trouble. A lot of this is through no fault of their own. They just happened to win in the worst year possible. But, support for republican ideas is surging, and all of the dems' good will gestures to left wing voters seem to be falling on deaf ears, only moving the needle a few points one way or another, with some costing support. That's bad. This is bad. Not only are the democrats failing here, THE LEFT is failing here. It's not just the candidates that lack popularity. It's what they're selling too. People literally are buying into the right's agenda right now. THEY ARE WINNING. NOT JUST ELECTORALLY, BUT ON THE ISSUES.

That said, get out and vote. And please vote blue this time. This isn't about the candidates and bailing out a corrupt party that isn't listening to us any more. This is about preserving the left's politics and policies going forward. If the left loses HERE, it will shift the country to the right. It will represent a shift in public opinion from left wing politics, giving the right a cultural victory and making the left just push more centrism in the future because "going left didn't work". You will literally strengthen the centrist factions of the democratic party going forward if you do not vote for them this year. I am perfectly willing to let the dems fail when that failure is of their own ineptitude and it could mean a future election with candidates that are more amenable to my policies. But that isn't the problem here. The polls are showing that the left is in the toilet not just on their candidates, but ideas and ideology. THATS BAD. So please vote democrat this time. It makes strategic sense. Even for me. This isn't the year to punish the dems for not doing enough.