Ya know, sometimes I feel like I have more in common with leftists than I'm willing to admit

 So, between watching the debates on the left about Harris and the democrats play out, and also researching some anti work stuff, I kinda realize my politics are a bit more radical than I think they are. 

In all honesty, I don't like a lot of liberals, especially American liberals who call themselves "democrats". A lot of their politics sucks. As I said, their politics is pretty much known to me as the uncanny valley of suck. They try so hard to pander to moderate conservatives that they create this brand of politics, that was offputting to me both as a former conservative, and a modern progressive. 

Take Hillary Clinton. I mean I couldve theoretically voted for her in 2008, but did i WANT HRC? No, I just wanted a conservative who wasn't a neocon and who was better on the national debt. If the republican running that election didn't suck by republican standards, I never would've considered a democratic vote. I actually only considered the democrat because they were more aligned with me on more salient issues than the republicans were. Which is why that entire neocon brand of modern conservatism died out. NO ONE liked that stuff by 2008. Conservatives were demoralized with their own party. Quite frankly, because it wasn't extreme enough or true to its actual principles and ideology. 

But then during the Obama years, the brand of conservatism that replaced the neocon RINOs ended up being horrifying, and ended up turning me off from conservative ideals in general. So I shifted left, and I ended up quickly shifting left of the democrats. because their entire brand of politics sucks. It's like the same energy as the McCain RINO crap I hated on the GOP side. Like let's never stand for principles or anything, lets run to the center and compromise with the other party. And I HATED it. Most conservatives dont want that crap. And on the left, I didn't want that crap either, hence the uncanny valley of suck. 

Moderation is a trap. It's something everyone says they want but when they get it, it's like drinking hot floater water in your car on a hot day. Like BLEH! Your body wants to reject it. It's GROSS. It's slimey. Oh god is that a chunk of that pizza I had two weeks ago floating in there? BLEH! 

But liberals are gonna lib, and as the reality of Kamala Harris is setting in and we're realizing she's running to the center on everything, there is this resurgence of left wing rhetoric lately and it's refreshing. Like about how the two parties are part of the same corporate duopoly, and both are hell bent on stopping us from having good things.

I've hinted at this before, but I've been trying to write something, rather unsuccessfully, about my views against work and human centered capitalism. And I actually have a lot of critiques of capitalism that aren't unlike what leftists have. Heck they seem to come to a lot of the same conclusions that work is slavery and our system is designed to keep us basically being slaves. I can't really dispute them.

Hell, the big thing that makes me NOT a leftist is despite this, my own exegesis of the situation is a bit different than theirs. I reject revolution. I reject the desire to throw out the entire system and replace it with socialism or anarchism or communism. I don't necessarily see the core problem with capitalism as capitalism. I see it as coercion to work. I don't necessarily see the solution as a revolution to overthrow the system. I see it as reforming the system as I see fit, most notably with UBI, universal healthcare, and the other measures I'm constantly for. 

I mean, in some ways, I'm like leftist in my ethos, only to end up being more liberal and reasonable in my actual solutions, recognizing pursuing leftism is a trap and a fool's errand. But then i go back, look at the democrats and with the exception of Bernie Sanders I see all these "working class" people who supposedly "get it" like Kamala Harris and even fricking AOC circlejerking about how great work is...and I really...just dont feel part of the tribe. I don't feel like a liberal sometimes. Because being a liberal feels wrong. It seems to be about giving up my own analysis of capitalism, gaslighting myself, running to the center into that uncanny valley of suck that my body and soul just want to reject like really gross floater water, and UGH. I just reject it like infant me rejected my baptism into christianity (yeah true story but i had a flu that day as a baby and puked on the altar apparently). 

But again, I ain't really big on leftists either. I trash them a lot and for good reason. Their priorities are bad. For as much as they claim to care about how oppressive capitalism is, most of them get way too obsessed with the intersectionality nonsense, or with fricking gaza, and uh...i just dont have that insane anti west perspective they do. my issue with capitalism is more that it doesn't actually live up to what I see as the highest embodiment of western principles, life (and harm reduction), liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Hell capitalism doesnt even live up to its own principles of voluntary exchange. And that's literally the entire fricking problem with it. If people werent forced to navigate rigged and exploitative markets and participate in the system involuntarily, I'd have virtually no problems with capitalism. It's a great idea in theory, and I still side with capitalism over the likes of socialism or communism. My problem with capitalism is it doesnt give people ENOUGH freedom. Do socialists and other anticapitalists want to fix it properly? No? Just take the r/antiwork idiots who for all of their talking a big game about how much capitalism sucks, then crap on UBI and then push for a fricking socialist job guarantee or some crap. And then ban people like me for being ideological capitalists who arent fully in lockstep with their batcrap insane views on things.Ya know?

I guess it really is as I always say it is. I'm too leftist for the liberals, I'm too liberal for the leftists. I'm both radical and moderate at the same time. Some views I have are really off the wall anti capitalist levels of extreme, but then when you ask me about solutions, my views end up being far more moderate.

And I guess that's why I always have had the political trajectory that I did, where in 2016 I thought that the leftist rhetoric of bernie was great, but I also kind of knew how to rein it in and dial it down to stay on the liberal side of solutions like, bernie's ideas or mine with a UBI. I knew that LITERAL COMMUNISM was never gonna work, and then suddenly bernie's die hard base decided "hey, let's advocate for literal communism", and i ended up waking up and realizing these people were insane. So I moderated. But I still have that more extreme streak that comes out at times, and now, given how dissatisfied I am with harris, that side of me IS coming out, and I am really starting to feel the culture shock of trying to fit in with democrats, only to realize that we're not on the same page, and I STILL hate these frickers as much as I did in 2016.

I mean, really, I REALLY don't even wanna vote for Harris. Quite frankly, her pitch on the "opportunity" economy and wanting to nominate republicans in her administration is turning me off HARD. Like, really. She's ALIENATING ME so hard trying to run to the center to win over the exact kinds of voters I don't want anything to do with. And listening to liberals contort themselves into a pretzel tonight about why this is a good thing, it just makes me realize how much I despise these people. I really fricking cant stand moderate libs. They're insufferable. Their political instincts are trash. And for all the talk of how this crap helps get democrats elected, they cant do anything because they've watered themselves down so much it's like drinking OG diet coke with tons of ice melted in it. You know, another "BLEH DO I REALLY HAVE TO DRINK THIS" drink. UGH. 

I know. I keep making drink metaphors but that's how I see it. It's like, democrats are the most bland and unappealing thing ever. Like, they're not outright disgusting, although they border on it. The GOP obviously is like drinking straight poison by comparison and dying in horrible agony. But it's like...ugh, is this the best we can do? 

Honestly, if Trump wasn't literally that poison, I would be considering a third party. What's the point in voting for democrats if they're just gonna act like moderate republicans anyway? That's how I see it. The only reason a Harris vote is really on the table at this point is because the alternative is Trump, and Trump is literally American Hitler as far as I'm concerned. So...my hand is forced. But you know what? This is my blog, and I'm gonna whine about it all I want all the way to election day and beyond, so buckle up. Just because I'm voting for Harris doesn't mean I like her. It's purely a strategic move to stop a fascist. I'm still gonna be just as critical of centrist libs as I've always been. Because I just can't stay at peace with them, even in times like this. Because they'll sell you out and stab you in the back at the first opportunity. And they are. So yeah. That's how I view things.

Allen Lichtman still talking crap about Nate Silver....

 So...Allen Lichtman had a livestream recently where he was talking some major crap about Nate Silver. They've actually had quite a beef this election cycle, representing opposite extremes as far as predicting elections. We discussed Lichtman and his keys and suffice to say, I'm less than impressed by his model. I mean, I'm on Nate's side. I dont always agree with Nate Silver on things, I think both him and Lichtman are people who get way too much attention and are too full of themselves, but I can at least somewhat respect silver here, while Lichtman's model borders on pseudoscience to me.

Lichtman's model is all fundamentals. He has these 13 things he measures, and if the incumbent party is favored on 8+ things, he expects them to win the election. His keys are overly broad, very subjective, and not necessarily in line with how voters think. They have a decent amount of correlative success, if only because presidents' popularity is correlated with the things he attempts to measure, but I think the trick of his keys is that they are often kind of subjective, and could be interpreted in retrospect in ways that are subjective. Like, IS RFK a substantive third party threat? Does Biden handing the torch to Harris represent a shift in incumbency. What IS a charismatic leader? If the economy is good do people feel it? And honestly, anyone could just retroactively apply this model to say just about anything.

With Biden in the race, I think that Lichtman's model was heading toward being discredited. He was all gung ho on Biden. He thought Biden could win, and that he would win, and if Harris replaced him it would be all over, but then Harris shifted, the polls went the opposite way, and then Lichtman suddenly didn't change his prediction. 

Honestly, from a polling perspective, Biden vs Harris is night vs day. Biden NEVER was ahead. not even close. Harris has represented a MASSIVE trend, and honestly, I think it goes to show that keys don't mean much. What matters is VOTING, and POLLING attempts to measure HOW PEOPLE WILL VOTE. 

I admit, polling isnt perfect, it has error involved, due to the problem with sampling and sample sizes. And it can change, but that's the thing. I'm not trying to predict an event months from now based on existing data, I'm saying "this is the state of the race now, it can change, but if the election were held today, this is what we can expect to happen", and we will come awfully close to the actual outcome. 

Now, to be fair, Silver and others with their models DO try to predict ahead, and that's kind of where Silver gets dragged by Lichtman. He was ripping silver's 52% prediction and how it doesnt tell you anything, and idk, I kind of agree. Silver has a more convoluted model than I do, and more complexity isn't always a good thing. For example, despite polling improving for Harris in the past few days, Silver's prediction got worse. This is because of a post convention bounce being anticipated for Harris after the DNC last week, where any improvements in polling are assumed to be a result of the convention, and if the numbers dont move as much as anticipated, his model will actually have Trump do better. 

Basically, Silver is trying to compensate the probability increase from polling my predicting a polling increase and when the polls didnt increase as much as he thought, Harris started going down instead of up. In reality, the post convention bounce didnt seem to happen for either candidate, and the latest round of polls just seemed to follow the overall trend we've been seeing since late July where democratic odds are gradually improving as the polls keep shifting toward Harris. And this is the problem with a lot of others who follow polls. Again, polls are a snapshot, but what Silver and others do with their models is try to predict the future. if you want that, get a crystal ball. I'm not here trying to say what things will look like a few months from now, and in fairness to Lichtman, the problem with a lot of the model and stats nerds is they keep trying to make these overly complex models that dont tell us anything. I mean, 50% coming from me means something much different than 50% from Silver, or 538 (two different entities now), or some other model. Because with these "predictive" models, they're gonna be bogged down by so many unknowns and variables they probably wont strongly go one way or the other until near election day, at which point they end up converging with me anyway. A model that is regularly at 50% on the basis of unknowns based on the future is a model that is literally useless. Will it rain tomorrow or won't it? I don't know, flip a coin.

At least with me, 50% means "hey the polls are so close it literally could flip either way." I mean, we see my charts. We went from around 50% as the PA (tipping point state polls) hovered around 0% in the aggregates and now that we're up to almost 1% in Harris's favor, Harris's odds went up. Simple, right? But what if I had no data at all? Then we get 50% because it's a matter of "we don't know". It's not that the data is conflicting, it's that we don't have any data to really make a decent judgment call. 

So, that's my view on silver, 538, and their "models." If anything, my issue with them is they're STILL leaning too hard into fundamentals. I say screw the fundamentals, go by them if we dont have reliable polling data, but if we do....go with the polling data. 

As I see it, most people get overconfident and arrogant mostly on the basis of these models. They think they know oh so much better than what the data tells them. We saw it with Biden in the race. I admit I was for Biden staying because at the time the polling indicated he was the best candidate, but still, a lot of people end up using these fundamentals as ways to just arrogantly dismiss voter concerns ("the economy is good you idiot, blah blah blah") or to hype up their own probabilities of winning ("yes yes the polls show us down, but these keys tell us biden should win."). It's just copium.

Honestly, Allen Lichtman is being really petty this election cycle. he acts like a big shot, like he's never wrong and look at how many credentials and awards he has, and honestly, I just see him as an arrogant grifter trying to push his model to sell his new book. And his attacks on numbers guys is obnoxious. Again, not a huge fan of silver, or his work, but polling is probably better at predicting elections than his model. And unlike him, numbers guys will own up to being wrong, either due to probability (see 2016), or a methodological flaw (see my 2020 prediction, which i have since admitted was screwed up because i discounted polls from certain right wing pollsters). Lichtman? "Well it was the electoral college" or something. Whatever dude, you were still wrong. Always moving the goalposts. And that's what i consider the real secret behind lichtman's successes. Get the election wrong? Move the goalposts! 2000, he predicted the popular vote not the electoral college. 2016, he predicted the electoral college, not the popular vote. Blah blah blah spin spin spin. 

The fact that anyone takes this guy seriously is laughable to me.

Dear "leftists" screw off with the gatekeeping!

 So...I just wanted to blog about an irritating behavior "leftists" engage in sometimes, and it generally involved gatekeeping over the term "left."

If you say you're politically "left" on the internet, this subset of "leftists" will be like hmm "but are you REALLY left?" and basically try to figure out if you're a communist or not. And when you're not they'll go "well you're not REALLY left, idk why you'd call yourself that, ackshully the term means communism."

NO ONE CARES!

Look, I am from America. We have two parties, republicans and democrats. Republicans are the right, and democrats are the "political left." 

And I understand that most establishment dems are functionally centrists akin to say, Macron's party in France, or some "liberal" party in Europe that's basically dead center, but in the US, we call that left. And I'm left of them. I'm actually so far left by American standards I'm off the spectrum and have sparse, if any, representation. Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang are the only ones who even remotely touch my brand of politics, at least on economics. Socially and on foreign policy I'm actually relatively comfortable within the democratic party. 

So when I say I'm pretty far left, I obviously mean "for a capitalist" or "for a liberal." I mean, I literally am on the left edge of the spectrum and possibly beyond it, as far as American politics go. I'm actually the stereotype of what Americans THINK socialism is (everyone gets free stuff), even if I'm not what it actually is (workers own the means of production, possibly a state controlled economy). 

Even worse, in the exchange that precipitated this discussion, I made it clear I wasn't a "leftist", because any time I use the term leftist weirdo internet communists come out of the woodwork and are like "but are you REALLY left?" and to them, the answer is obviously no. I clearly distance myself from the "far left" as I call it, and am clearly operating within the realm of my own ideology (social libertarianism, a term i started using to differentiate myself from "left libertarians" because they won't shut up about the same gatekeepy bullcrap I keep mentioning). I STILL had someone do it. And it's annoying.

Dear leftists, when you talk like this, let me make something clear, NO ONE LIKES YOU, AND YES, YOU WIN THE "IM MORE LEFT THAN YOU" CONTEST, BUT NO ONE CARES, BECAUSE WE'RE NOT TRYING TO OUTLEFT YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE! Seriously. If I'm a SOCIAL LIBERTARIAN, and I identify as such, and say I'm pretty far to the left FOR A SOCIAL LIBERTARIAN, then that means that I'm just a left wing social libertarian. It doesn't mean that I'm a "leftist", and heck, I even ceded the term to you guys because you won't shut the heck up about how YOU'RE the only true "leftists" and blah blah blah.

So, yeah, it's like you don't want anyone else to ever use the term in any context but you. And it's annoying. No one cares. I'm not trying to outleft you, I dont care if you're more left than me, and quite frankly, screw your entire brand of politics. It's just a bunch of obnoxious gatekeeping and larping as revolutionaries. I'm not trying to seek ideological purity by your standards, because quite frankly, screw your standards, and screw communism too. Get a new ideology that isn't stuck in the fricking 19th century. K, thx, bi.

Harris promises to appoint republican to her cabinet

 UGH....okay, so I know this is a narrow election, and I know we need every vote, but can we stop making concessions to win over moderate republicans? What does a republican bring to the Harris administration? NOTHING, it brings it down, it ensures its a worthless administration that does nothing to address the issues. 

Honestly, Im not very enthusiastic about a Harris administration at this point, it's shaping up to be exactly what I feared from the democrats, a milquetoast unity fest with centrist republicans. I don't want THIS! Hell, i probably wouldnt even be voting for this crap at this point if we weren't running against a fascist, and I wasn't in a swing state. 

Ugh. I hate this.

Now, to be fair, in some cases, maybe this wont be too bad. A moderate republican for secretary of defense I could live with, but overall, I dont want olive branches and unity tickets with the GOP. They can vote for us this time to stop trump, but I don't wanna be in the same coalition as these people, and long term, it's them or me. Again, I can't tolerate this crap. it drives me nuts. It feels slimy and dirty. The only thing making me vote for Harris is donald trump at this point. F this election cycle.

Comparing my simulator to actual electoral results and the linear probabilities

 So, I did an exercise where I went through the 5 previous election cycles' polling data and used my simulator to predict 100 outcomes. So I want to compare its predictive power to the results that we got, and the more linear probability model. 

2004

Outcome: Bush won

Linear probability: 56%

Simulator probability: 70%

I mean, both got the right outcome. And some simulations probably came close to the actual result, although many were kind of strange and off the wall due to the "weighted coin flip" nature of my simulator. 

2008

Outcome: Obama won

Linear probability: 95%

Simulator probability: 100%

This one is the easiest election to predict. And I also spammed the button to make the simulator keep spitting out tons of predictions every second, I didn't see it flip to McCain for even a single flash. As for the simulator, I did recall seeing a simulation where Obama won Indiana too and resembled the real outcome.

2012

Outcome: Obama won

Linear probability: 76%

Simulator probability: 85%

I mean, the linear one probably did a better job, as the result was basically what was expected + flipping Florida, although the simulator probably spat one out like that. 

2016

Outcome: Trump won

Linear probability: 44%

Simulator probability: 19%

So, this is where things really broke down with politics in general. Linearly, Trump winning wasnt that improbable. Anything within the 40-60% range is a de facto tossup, and Trump did prove that the linear model is the correct one to apply. However, the simulator had advantages. I mean, Trump's actual win was weird. Clinton did win New Hampshire and Nevada, but lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It's hard to predict an exact outcome like that. It really did have randomness to it, even if Trump systemically overperformed. I would say some of Trump's wins did resemble the actual outcome, but yeah, it's hard to get that outcome with just randomness too. I'd say that the linear/trend model is probably more accurate and true to form, but the simulator is good at coming up with some of the more off the wall outcomes hypothetically, and yes, my simulator can spit out outcomes like we get. But given the sheer number of combinations of states going every which way, it will also spit out a lot of random outcomes that aren't close too. So it gets it right in a "brute force" way of considering random probabilities, while it seems to overly favor the winner. Given 2016 was the year the polls "got it wrong", the linear model did seem closer than the simulator in terms of guessing the right prediction and its probabilities.

2020 (original prediction)

Outcome: Biden won

Linear probability: 89%

Simulator probability: 100%

So, this is one of those times where my prediction was laughably wrong. yes, it did predict the correct outcome, but it was way too bullish on democrats in general and was comically off by the margins. The fact was, I thought we had it in the bag almost Obama 2008 style and the end result was an extremely narrow win for Biden. 

Linearly, I had it at a bullish 89% probability. The simulator also didn't predict any Trump outcomes, although it did predict outcomes similar to and worse than what we actually got (like down to 280-300 electoral votes for Biden). It also did simulate outcomes similar to what we got, so it was within the realm of its predictive power. 

One thing I will say is just like 2008, I spammed the button to see if I could generate ANY Trump outcomes, and I did see like ONE. So that's better than 2008, but we're still talking a probability of generating a Trump outcome at less than 1%. 

I guess the simulator was technically right since Biden won and we did get similar and even worse outcomes from it, but yeah, nothing that gave Trump any sort of win really. 

2020 (Corrected/Revised prediction)

Outcome: Biden won

Linear probability: 62%

Simulator probability: 95%

So, this one is interesting. Linearly, I only would give Biden a 62% probability in my updated prediction after the fact. And it was more accurate and true to the final outcome in my opinion. The simulator still spat out mostly Biden outcomes though. I guess by random probability it was a hard map for Biden to win. once again a point in favor of the linear trend/wave model of elections, as opposed to the randomness model. Of course, the randomness model CAN predict similar outcomes again, but also while spitting out a bunch of nonsense outcomes that werent close.

Once again, both models have advantages. The linear model is probably more correct ON THE WHOLE. It generally gives you a better idea, in my opinion, of whether we're gonna get a close, competitive election, or a blowout.

The simulator has unique advantages though. It does generate random outcomes that can simulate things that the linear model misses, like a D+2 state going red but a R+1 state going blue or something. But still, it tends to generate the right outcome by brute forcing a lot of wrong outcomes. So you'll never know before hand which outcome is actually correct. Finding the right one is like finding a needle in a haystack. It's in there, but unless you have the power of hind sight, you'll never know which one is actually right. 

In a sense, the linear model is probably more like the oracle from the Matrix, knowing what the actual outcome is, roughly, but lacking in specificity. The simulator model is like the architect in that it will brute force tons of possibilities and one will be correct, but you'll never know which one it is before hand.

With that said, let's discuss some of the 2024 predictions based on this simulator:

Biden 2024 (as of July 21, 2024)

Predicted outcome: Trump wins

Linear probability- 87% chance

Simulator probability- 96% chance

So yeah, it's no mistake that Biden was heading to almost certain defeat prior to his dropping out of the 2024 race. Trump had a commanding lead in the polls, to the point Biden had almost no chance of coming back...yet a small minority of simulator outcomes still had a Biden win, strangely enough. What did these predictions look like? Well, they were off the wall, and most of them involved flipping Florida or Texas in some way. So...not very likely to actually happen. But not impossible. I'm just gonna call it and say Biden was heading to certain defeat here.

Harris 2024 (as of last week)

Predicted outcome: Split

Linear probability- 52% Trump

Simulator probability- 58% Harris

Here, we had the closest possible prediction. Razor thin margins, Trump slightly favored, but then the simulator just favored Harris for whatever reason. Once again, I think it's stuff like the possibility of flipping Texas or Florida that's doing it for her here. Not very likely in the linear model but in the simulator? It's a random possibility. 

Harris 2024 (as of today)

Predicted outcome: Harris wins

Linear probability- 58%

Simulator probability- 73%

Once again, we're seeing the favored candidate in the linear overperforming in the simulator. That seems to be a weakness of the simulator. Still, the simulator likely has the real outcome in there somewhere. We just don't know which one it actually is. And just because Harris is favored, don't mean she'll win. Look back at 2016. 56% chance Clinton won, 80% in the simulator, and she lost. Still, one of those 19 simulator outcomes for Trump came close to or accurately predicted the actual outcome. So, yeah. It can happen. 

So that said, what do I expect out of 2024? Well, my actual linear probability is the ACTUAL probability, but the simulator can help identify interesting outcomes of note that should be considered. I don't think it's good as a predictive tool for the winner. But it's good at predicting how things can go wrong (or right) for either party. Most outcomes it spits out will be wrong in some way, sometimes massively so, but it also will be able to identity outlying outcomes that CAN happen that my linear brain can't necessarily predict. 

Conclusion

And yeah. Again, the linear model is more accurate on the whole, as the simulator is often too bullish on the winner, but if we get strange outcomes that seem to confuse and confound, similar to 2016, the simulator probably predicted it at some point if i run enough simulations. As such, i won't use it as my primary predictive tool, but it is potentially useful at identifying outlying outcomes.

Election Update 8/29/24: WE ARE NOW WINNING!

 So, I understand that it's a day early and there might be more polls, but I just wanted to enshrine this moment for the ages. For the entire election cycle, things have been bleak. Trump was winning, often by large margins, although Harris closed the gap considerably. I had been starting to wonder if harris was running out of steam right around the 50-50 mark. She hit 50-50 a few weeks ago, and then she declined to like 48-52. Well, today, that has changed, and she is officially winning. 

So, I'm gonna do this a day early. I am going to give a heads up, I may be taking a bit of a break from this blog soon, but I expect to maybe do another prediction early next week if things change more in the next couple of days. But yeah, after that (or this), don't expect a ton of content for a few weeks. 

Anyway, let's get into it.

Presidential

 So yeah. We are now at a 58% chance of winning, with Trump having a 42% chance. The new electoral map now has Harris at 271 electoral votes and Trump at 251, with Georgia being a true tossup right now.

It's beautiful....

Yeah. Let's also post a chart for posterity here.

Let it be known that on August 29th, Harris finally turned things around. This came just 39 days after Biden dropped out on July 21st, with a 13% chance of winning. Harris rapidly ascended, and we finally have that break through moment now, just over a month later. 

The five way data is even better, but I won't bother posting it as I still don't know how reliable it is. but at this rate, Harris has a 67% chance and Trump has a 33% chance.

Senate

Sadly the senate has been continuing its trend of being overly rigid in the 49-51R direction. Not much has changed on this front.

So yeah. 89% chance the republicans win the senate. 8% chance democrats win it, and a 3% chance of a tie. Yikes, that's dark.

Same map as last week, with the exception of Maryland being lean dem instead of safe dem.

Simulations

I'm not gonna bother with the senate or 5 way data, but I did 100 simulations of the presidential 2 way data. 

 Results:

Dem: 73%

Rep: 25%

Tie: 2%

To be fair, I feel like these results overestimate the more dominant candidate. Heck. I know they do. And I'll cover that in another posts based on prior election cycles. 

Conclusion

We are winning. At least on the presidential level. We are finally beating Trump outright. Still kind of in toss up territory, but it's been edging our way the past few days and just broke hard tonight.

Discussing JD Vance and the doughnut shop incident...

 So...I'm gonna do something I very rarely do, and that is defend JD Vance for once. Why would I defend him? Because in this particular instance, for better or for worse, I see myself.

So, JD Vance tried to do some sort of photo op in a doughnut shop. It went very badly, he was extremely socially awkward, and he's been relentlessly made fun of ever since. And I get it, it's easy to dunk on Vance. And most of the time he deserves it. Even when he doesn't deserve it (see: couch memes), he still deserves it for being such a weird POS. But this particular instance? Eh...it hits close to home.

So..basically, what went so wrong here? Well, he was trying to make small talk with the doughnut shop workers and it went about as badly as humanly possible. This guy is so bad at small talk, he makes me wonder if he has autism. I ask this as someone who is socially awkward I highly suspect having it myself.

And that's the problem. These people are ripping on this guy for how weird he is, and I jsut see myself. Now, if I were to go into a doughnut shop, I wouldnt make small talk, I'd just order doughnuts, say as little as possible, and then leave. But this is Vance trying to be a politician and trying to be relatable, and failing badly. After all the talk of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and how "normal" they are, Vance is considered "weird." And now, sure, a lot of his weirdness is bad. Like, hating on childless cat ladies for no apparent reason. But, honestly? Again, Harris's "normal" schtick doesn't work on me at all. I get it, people like the politicians they want to have a beer with, and Harris is far more relatable than Trump or Vance. But idk, this almost feels like neurotypical bullying to me and kind of ableist. I mean, so what if the guy can't small talk for crap. I get it, he's running for office. The standards are higher than some autistic terminally online guy. but idk, I could almost see into the dude's head in that instance and be like "yeah if I were in this scenario, I'd react the same way." 

In an ideal world, none of this would matter. While elections are in fact popularity contests, in an ideal world, policy would reign supreme. If I agreed with Vance's politics, it wouldnt matter how awkward he is. i would still like the guy. Likewise, as someone who hates the guy's guts politically, i would never vote for him anyway. I mean, my big problem with Vance is that he's a republican. And republicans suck. And their policies are bad. Their ideology is bad. Their entire worldview is insane. And Vance has some crazy views that rub me the wrong way. So yeah. 

Honestly, if you wanna crap on Vance for being a weirdo, I'd prefer to keep it to things related to his politics and his worldview. Not how he cant make small talk with some workers on a doughnut shop. if I were to do small talk, I'd do the same thing. I mean, if I were gonna actually go into a doughnut shop, I'd try to talk UBI and worker's rights with them, which might not be appropriate either. In reality, I'd just avoid doing anything like this. Maybe I'd go to a Wawa instead to shore up the Wawa voters after Harris and Walz did one of their "look at how normal we are" photo ops in a Sheetz. 

Actually, it's kind of sad, the fact that I came up with that on a fly kind of shows how bad Vance really is at this. So idk. It was a bad choice on his part, but I kinda can't help but feel bad for the dude, ya know? And that's where I stand on this.

Dear basic income posters: I don't care about your weird alternative to UBI

 So, something that comes up in UBI related spaces a lot are these weirdos coming in with crazy idea that aren't UBI, and their entire purpose of being there is to tell us UBI is bad and won't work for some reason, and that we should try their hare brained idea instead.

Normally, these ideas involve something that is kinda similarish to UBI, but very different in some ways. The most recent one that inspired me to write this was some variation of "social credit", which basically amounts to lets make a currency that's not money, but runs parallel to money, and we use it to exchange with each other for goods and services. But often it has some different quality to it. Either its limited in how it can be used, or it expires, or something like that. Why not just use money? Then they just use the boogeyman of inflation to say UBI can't work or something, even though we've had these arguments many many times in the past. 

Or, we end up with some sort of work fare program where they think UBI will make people lazy and let's make a similar idea except we force them to work. Or let's give people universal basic services because either people are too irresponsible with cash or evil capitalists will exploit it. Or what about baby bonds, or some one time grant we give to people when they turn 18 (which in our predatory system would just lead to being eaten up by our higher education system). Or something something crypto and blockchain. 

I mean, there's no end to these stupid proposals. Maybe some of them aren't bad in and of themselves, but if I'm in a basic income space talking about basic income, I want to talk about UBI. Most of these other proposals are inferior in some way or have drawbacks, and most of us want UBI for a reason. But these people won't take the hint. They think they came up with the greatest idea ever and it's like, not only is this not new, we've seen variations of this many times over. Or it's some weird idea so complex you need a PHD in mathematics just to understand it. Either way, not interesting.

UBI's strength is in its simplicity. It's universal, it has no real requirements to get it other than citizenship. It's money it can be spent on what people want. It meets peoples' needs while also giving them freedom. And Im not saying we should JUST have a UBI and have no other ideas at all. Im for universal healthcare, free college, and some sort of fix for housing after all. I'm for keeping elements of social security retirement and disability. UBI is the centerpiece but it's not the whole meal. It's like turkey at thanksgiving dinner. Not the only thing you'll eat, but it's the big thing everyone goes on about. 

Either way, I'm sick of people coming into pro UBI spaces, bashing UBI, and then proposing some solution literally no one else cares about. We're not interested, we've seen people pushing these weird ideas for years, we just want a UBI. 

Kamala Harris's "opportunity economy" is cringey

 So, earlier I laid out how my views came out of a rejection of trickle down politics, and how our economy is just, rich people paying poor people to work so they may live. That's all our economy is, if you wanna be extremely reductive about it. Rich people want to make more money, so they have people do work, and then poor people who are effectively coerced to work basically get money they need to live. And that's capitalism.

And it doesn't matter if you are a full on trickle down believer or a centrist lib, both believe in variations of the same overall thing. The difference is libs tend to believe that workers should at least be treated better. But they don't oppose the process of work that is capitalism, they lean into it. Biden believed work has dignity, and now Harris is pushing this "opportunity economy" BS.

Ya know. If dems just kept their mouth shut and didnt virtue signal about this nonsense, I wouldn't be as turned off from them. Because imagine taking pride in your enslavement. That's what "working class heroes" like "Scranton Joe" and Kamala Harris are doing. I mean, can we NOT lean into the whole "work gud" thing? Even if one accepts work is necessary, shouldn't it be viewed as a necessary EVIL? I just can't get into the mindset of someone who thinks work is GOOD. And who actually celebrates this crap. 

Like, even before I was as virulently anti work as I am now, work was, to me, just a necessary evil. yes yes, work sucks, but we all have to do it or we all starve to death, blah blah blah. Someone has to make the sausage, someone has to make society run. And of course, i did view people on welfare as a "drain on society" and that if we had too many people on it, society wouldnt work. 

It wasn't until I kinda realized just how rich we are, and how we could've shifted away from work DECADES AGO and been well on our way to abolishing the evils of mandatory labor that I developed the views I did. The fact that NONE OF THIS IS EVEN FRICKING NECESSARY FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL is what really grinds my gears with this. We are literally sisyphus working our lives away just so number on chart goes up. What the actual hell is wrong with us?

AND WE CELEBRATE IT! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!

This is why I can't trust Kamala Harris. Hell, I've even soured on AOC going on about how she'd happily go back to bar tending because "there's nothing wrong with working for a living." Yeah, yeah there fricking is. And the people who looked down on you know it. Because they are the real owners of society, and even if they are evil in a sense, at least they know their place in the pecking order.

You have to be a FOOL to CELEBRATE working for a living. I'm sorry, you do. People don't like to hear that, but I kinda do have the trumpesque "losers and suckers" mindset with it. Maybe not as bad, and before I get dogpiled or get this crap taken out of context in the future, let me explain it more.

If work is necessary, work is necessary. But never forget, our society is rich people making poor people do labor in exchange for the resources necessary for their survival. If you take pride in your servitude, you ARE a loser, and you ARE a sucker. A truly class conscious person should recognize that they ARE a slave. And they should recognize that this is a bad thing, and they should seek to liberate themselves from slavery. And that's what I mean. I dont mean anyone who works for a living is a loser and a sucker, our system makes sure most of us have no choice, but someone who works for a living and believes the "dignity of work" BS hook line and sinker is. And that's where I stand on that. Don't take pride in your servitude. Work doesn't have dignity. Humans have dignity. Work strips people of their dignity, reducing them to an input for some sort of output. You have to be a fool to celebrate that process. Sorry, not sorry.

Again, at least the rich people see society for what it is, even if they are the privileged class who benefits from it. I wish everyone would be so blunt and honest about what work is. Maybe if they were, we would recognize the problem, and we would seek to get rid of it. 

And that's what incenses me the most about people like Kamala Harris. They dont even recognize there's a problem. And if your worldview is so far off that not only is the problem not a problem, but it's a positive thing, then how can i ever expect you to fix it?

Make no mistake, when I vote for Harris this november, it's primarily to stop trump. Her actual brand of politics makes my stomach turn and my soul wants to leave my body at the thought of casting a vote for this person at this point. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and it is what it is. And to be fair, it's not like anyone truly represents my view point anyway on this subject well enough to get a vote anyway. Stein kinda does, but then she's horrible on literally everything else. So meh. Harris it is.

The great realignment in foreign policy

 So, thinking through the previous discussion on foreign policy, I've come to realize something about foreign policy in recent years. We are having a realignment there. The last time we had a realignment with foreign policy, it was in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. We shifted from having a bipolar world, to a unipolar one, meaning we shifted from having 2 great powers to only 1. The US won the cold war, its ideology reigned supreme, and Russia became capitalistic. And in the years after, the US suddenly had to ask what should they do as the sole world power, what was the role of the United States in this environment?

In the 1990s, we had a lot of discussions. The liberals imagined us as a world police where we were interventionist and did nation building, and Clinton did get us involved in a lot of conflicts like Somalia, and Rwanda, and Yugoslavia. And these interventions were less than popular. Somalia actually ended up being a disaster for us due to the "black hawk down" incident, where US service members died in a conflict that was none of our business, and the conservatives ended up being very anti multilateralism. They ended up having a foreign policy that is reminiscient of Trump today, where we're isolationist, but we're strong and if anyone messes with us, we F them up. 

In 2001, someone came after us. Bin laden, himself driven by an anti US interventionist ideology, attacked the US due to its involvement in Saudi Arabia. He had previously fought the soviets in Afghanistan, and in the 90s declared war on the US. He did some terrorist attacks then, but 9/11 is what REALLY got us going. So 9/11 happened, the towers fell, and we were MAD. And suddenly, the argument became, we gotta go after the bad guys who attacked us. We were ignorant and naive. We claimed they hated our freedoms, they were wanna be tyrants, and we had to defend ourselves. I'm not saying going after Bin Laden was a bad thing, but we did kind of exaggerate his motives a bit. 

Anyway, at that point, the neocons took over the republican party and THEY wanted to nation build, whereas the liberals wanted to also nation build, but to it more multilaterally. Conservatives in the post cold war environment were really much the whole epitome of "America F yeah" and they basically wanted to do what they wanted while giving the finger to our allies.

As the war on terror proved to be a massive, costly mistake, I kind of shifted my ideology to be more isolationist myself, but I also ended up taking on the more liberal attitudes of multilateralism. I felt at home with the Obama administration foreign policy wise. He wasn't "weak", but he wasn't the rabid pitbull that was the GOP on foreign policy. He wanted to work with allies, defend the US, but also scale down interventions. he got out of Iraq, and ISIS took over, a sign that deposing of Saddam Hussein was, in fact, ill advised. 

Quite frankly, the war on terror drove much of the left to an anti war standpoint, and it seemed like we couldnt do anything right. Any time we intervened, we screwed things up worse. And I was pretty much in the whole yeah "we should do less overseas" camp. Foreign policy has always been a bit of a "ugh do we have to?" thing with me. 

Going into the Trump administration, Trump actually attracted a lot of the "anti war" crowd on the left and is why weirdos like Jimmy Dore and Tulsi Gabbard ended up shifting back to the right. Because they actually seem to align more with Trump and his brand of isolationism on foreign policy.

Meanwhile my views were more like Obama, where I wanted a responsible moderate foreign policy that didn't screw things up. I would say I was critical of free trade. That's one thing I am discounting. Liberals were pro free trade agreements, and so were conservatives, but Trump in 2016, and Bernie kind of put an end to that era, with us rejecting neoliberalism and international markets that couldnt be regulated and are actually quite bad for workers. 

Which brings us to the Biden administration. And honestly, I think the Biden administration is actually the really pivotal foreign policy realignment that I dont think most have realized happened yet, but I think it's worth mentioning.

First and foremost, Biden brought an end to the 20 year war in Afghanistan. We went in in 2001, and Biden pulled out in 2021. And the fact that we were ceding control back to...the Taliban really says it all as far as what a disaster that was. The anti interventionist side was right, and suddenly, because democrats pulled out, the right cried a lot of crocodile tears about it and Trump is using the pull out being a mess as an attack against him before he dropped out.

But yeah, 2021 was the end of an era. I say this not just because of Afghanistan, but also because of Russia invading Ukraine. Because people have wondered in recent years, do we really NEED NATO, what is its role in the 21st century, blah blah blah? And the invasion of Ukraine has kind of really rekindled in me a desire to defend democracy, similar to the cold war. And if anything, with the War on Terror era finally closed, it seems like suddenly the big foreign policy issues of the day are things like Russia in Ukraine, and what if China attacks Taiwan, and stuff like that. Israel is having its own war on terror moment, and we're passively supporting them economically, much to the chagrin of leftists in the US. 

The left seems stuck in its own world. They still seem stuck in this era of "interventionism is bad, remember the war on terror when we couldnt do anything right?" and I agree, as far as nation building goes, yeah, we're terrible at that. Intervening abroad, deposing of dictators, trying to build up these third world countries with no real love of western democratic values is a failure. let them figure stuff out for themselves, and while injustice happens, well, not our problem. 

What IS our problem is when people mess with our allies and threaten democracy. Russia and China represent an ideological and military threat to the west and the US in the long term. Russia, maybe not so much, but they are big and powerful enough to cause issues with Europe, and I think stopping them in Ukraine is an important proxy war we need to have to contain them and stop them from just rolling into Europe. We need to stop China from messing with Taiwan, and North Korea from messing with South Korea and Japan. And I hate to say it as I know I get a lot of crap from this from the left, but it makes more sense to defend Israel than Palestine. Hamas, who is the political entity that controls the Gaza strip, is a radical islamic terrorist group that wishes genocide upon the Israeli people. They dont believe in coexistence. And to be fair, I know Israel doesnt really believe in coexistence with Hamas either, hence their heavy handed war, but we gotta think about this rationally. I fully admit what Israel is doing is wrong. They're not just defending themselves, they're going too far. But at the end of the day, who do we really want controlling the region? I say israel. It makes no sense, as an American and as a westerner to put a radical islamic group in charge over a semi western country that is a flawed, apartheid democracy. Foreign policy is complex, full of trolley problems, and this is one of those situations were someone is gonna be run over and it's better its the faction that doesnt share our western values. 

Obviously, I do support the US reining in Israel and putting a stop to hostilities. But at the same time, push comes to shove, i dont want to make this more business than it has to be. Why should we play the world police? Im not for the US being the world police. Im for the US defending itself and its allies. And Israel is higher on that totem pole than palestine is any day. So...it is what it is.

But yeah. This represents a break from the previous world order that existed before Biden was in office. We're moving out of an era where anti interventionism makes sense and into one where we kinda gotta return to cold war footing...because we ARE, de facto, in a new cold war. Unlike the cold war of the past, this isn't primarily based on economic ideologies, even though China is communist. It's about liberal democracy vs authoritarianism. That is the divide between east and west these days. The west has values in liberal democracy, rule of law, human rights, the east is basically a bunch of authoritarian strong men who basically are just like "how dare the US tell us what to do." And I get it, we should mind our own business, but no, China and Russia want to spread their own influence throughout the globe. THey want to gain power and one day be the big dog like us. And we don't really want that, because it makes us weaker, and thus, threatens our way of life long term.

The reason I am an interventionist, like Biden, like Harris, like the democrats, is because we need to counter these threats. We cant just sit on our laurels and do nothing. Russia wants to roll through europe, china wants to expand into the south china sea, the rest asia, and ultimately, beyond. And the islamic countries, they wanna eradicate israel. So, yeah. It is what it is. I dont think anti interventionism makes sense in this new modern world. It makes sense in the post cold war world, but not in this cold war 2.0 world. We closed that era in 2021, and yes, we very much need interventionism now. Break over, get back to work, because we dont want to be toppled as top dog of the world because that would threaten our way of life long term.

How human centered capitalism is the foil to trickle down ideology

 So, as someone who has certain ideas of what the 7th party system should look like, it should not come as a surprise that my own ideals are actually an economic counter to the ideals that dominated the 6th party system, like trickle down economics. And the trickle down economics of Reagan is a counter to the 5th party system that was the New Deal.

Currently, the left is kind of trying to come back, but their brand of politics as embodied in people like Harris comes off as milquetoast, and ideologically just...weird and all over the place. it isn't the answer to our ills. And I do want to explain why my ideals are the perfect foil to Reaganism

Explaining Reaganism and trickle down economics

So, as I would see it, the big defining aspects of Reaganism are a rejection of the state, and an all encompassing embrace of the market. 

For Reagan conservatives, government isn't the solution to problems, government is the problem. We should get any and all government out of the system and allow everything to be left to markets, private entities, and so called voluntary exchange. Welfare is bad. Taxes are bad. Regulations are bad. Greed is good, rich people are good, job creation is good.

Reagan conservatives want government out of everything and hate government interventionism in any and every form, at least economically. 

They believe in supply side economics, aka, trickle down economics. The philosophy is if rich people do good, the wealth will trickle down. Businesses are job creators. They create "opportunities" for people, and workers should just accept whatever "opportunities" that businesses create. They should have good work ethic and be willing to do whatever work is required of them, for whatever pay is required for them. And they should be grateful for the oppootyunity, since without them, they would be poor.

What a system! Just spend your days working for some rich "job creator" and maybe, just maybe, one day, you will be rich too. It's basically slavery with extra steps.

My answer: jobs are not the answer

We are a society that is obsessed with work for its own sake. We think jobs are the answer to all social ills. When we talk about creating jobs, we're doing it so we can justify giving a paycheck to people, because that's how how we do it for some reason. After all redistribution is bad, property is a natural right, taxation is theft, and everyone must work for their bread. It makes sense in an era of scarcity where if people arent working, evryone starves, but in a world like today, it just seems irrational. Like we're just enslaving people.

Both sides, republicans and democrats, are obsessed with jobs. And yes, that includes democrats, democrats are obsessed with jobs. During the great recession, Obama pushed shovel ready jobs in the form of infrastructure and most jobs created were low wage jobs in service industries. Romney talked about how we need to create jobs by giving more money to rich people. In the more modern era, Trump promised to bring back the jobs, while now Biden and Harris talk about how democrats have a stronger record of creating jobs. our political system is obsessed with this issue. It's insane. We gotta realize at some point jobs arent the answer. We cant give everyone a job anyone since if everyone had a job, we would have massive inflation. Capitalism literally requires unemployed people existing to function. What we are doing here, having a system where everyone needs a job, not everyone can find them, and both sides just obsess over who creates more jobs. IT DOESN'T MATTER. BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS A GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS, IT DOESN'T WORK IF EVERYONE HAS A CHAIR! 

Not that we should aspire to work anyway. Work sucks. Work isnt some noble endeavor, especially if forced on people. Most work doesnt exist for human fulfillment and self actualization. Work exists to make things. It's soul crushing. It's cruel. If we could automate the jobs tomorrow and no one would have to work any more, we would be better off for it. But that would mean we need to make a new system to provide for people. Which I am all for doing. But I see work as slavery. I reject this idea that life should just be the masses seeking to do labor for rich people in exchange for barely enough money to meet their needs. Our system is cruel, it's messed up. We should evolve past it.

Government is the answer!

Republicans are the party of small government, and democrats, since bill clinton, have ceded the issue to them. And for all the talk of how Biden and Harris are some massive progressive ideological shift, I dont see it. For Biden, work has dignity, and all the dude has done is bloviate about how many jobs he created and how we have the best economy ever. And now Harris is kind of doing the same thing, basically doing this "promise of america" nonsense and virtue signalling about "hard work" all convention, and it's BS. Like, democratic solutions to the economy are band aid fixes that just amount to "treat your slaves better". They dont argue against wage slavery, they just argue in favor of not beating your slaves as bad. 

I honestly believe we need to move away from work and jobs as the end all be all of provide for people. Work is fine if it does useful things, but we shouldnt force people if not necessary. i dont want more work and more jobs. I do believe we should have a system where government provides for people. I believe in universal basic income and medicare for all. I believe that we should tax rich people, and redistribute the wealth to everyone else, so they don't have to work. I believe that in the long term, we should just abolish work.

And before people think im a communist, no, not even close. Those guys want to sieze the means of production and give everyone a government job and force everyone to conform to their will. I have no issues with markets and am an ideological capitalist to some degree. Im just not indoctrinated into this "spirit of capitalism" that is the work ethic. I beleive in humanist, human centered capitalism where the economy works for people, not people for the economy. I believe we should give everyone their basic needs in order to LIBERATE from from work and allow them to pursue their own interests. However, I do understand some work is necessary, and some people genuinely do WANT to work, so I do believe in keeping capitalism going. I just dont believe in forcing people into it. Yes, taxes will be higher if you participate, to pay for the people who don't. Some might have an issue with that. But most shouldnt. Because here's the mathematical reality of capitalism and income inequality. Even if you work, odds are, you'll still benefit from UBI and Medicare for all. You will be financially better off even if you do work. You literally would need to be in the top 25% or so of income earners to even start paying into my ideas in net.

With my ideas income inequality still exists. It would just be a more reasonable level of inequality closer to what people think the economy is, and not what the economy is. Rich people will still be hundreds or even thousands of times better off than the rest of us. They would just have to pay more taxes to ensure the rest of us can live without being enslaves to them. 

It's not even communism. It's just, as Scott Santens would say, capitalism that doesn't start a 0. 

You know? I say we take back this narrative that government is bad from the right. It's not. Government is the servant of the people. It exists to serve us, and we should use its powers to do so. What my brand of social libertarianism accomplishes is it expands the size of government, while also making it less tyrannical than ever. Because like it or not, despite all of this talk of big government, who do you think enforces the rich's property rights? Who do you think puts down strikers? Who do you think forces us to work in the first place? It's the government. The small government narrative is really just socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the rest of us when it suits them. It's time to see through the facade, America, and make government and the economy work for us.

Conclusion

And yeah, I just wanted to write this. My ideals actually exist as a counter to reaganism and trickle down economics. Some in the basic income movement have even called these politics to be "trickle up" economics, or demand side economics. My ideas for how the economy work are a counter to the right, but they also reject much of the existing left.

The liberal left has, since 1992, ceded the narrative to the right. WHile some argue Harris and Biden have pushed the party left, in a lot of ways, they still kind of operate in the paradigm of "well we cant be for big social programs because it will alienate our stakeholders". Which is why Biden and Harris still have such a work fetish. They explicitly reject the idea of raising taxes and giving people things like a UBI or healthcare. They're still pretty much "new democrats" in a way. Just this more mildly progressive form that abandons the full on centrism of the clinton years. but when I really look at them through my own ideological lens, Biden and Harris are still "new democrats" through and through on my core issues. 

If anything, the left seems to have a desire to go back to the new deal paradigm that never actually worked super well. Because keep in mind, those guys were pro work too, they just believe in work that payed. And I guess thats the direction biden and harris stepped into. Going back a step to the new deal era and stuff like unions, but avoiding discussions of taxes or welfare or so called "socialism" (defined as "government doing things). It's weak, and they still advocate for a system where most people are slaves of rich people. They just support the slaves getting treated better.

It's only until we realize that work doesnt work, and work is the problem, that we will finally evolve as a species. Until then we're just debating this nonsense of which side creates more jobs and which side ensures that the slave class gets treated and paid better. And yes, democrats are better than republicans, but democrats still suck and still cede way too much ground ideologically to the republicans. 

Briefly explaining my worldview on foreign policy

 So, I had a mock debate with an anti interventionist in my head, and it basically led to me trying to discuss my views on foreign policy and interventionism in a nutshell. So, I'm going to explain my humanist view on this.

Hobbes and the State of Nature

So...I actually embrace the proposition from Christians that without a divine lawgiver that there is no "objective morality." I mean, I come to a form of quasi objective morality based on consequentialism and universal preferences later, but yeah. We actually do live in a world where it's theoretically permissible to just do horrible things. 

This is Hobbes' state of nature. Life in it is nasty, brutish, and short.

States: the arbiter of law and shared morality

So, what gives us the ability to actually live outside of Hobbes' state of nature is cooperation. We form states and social contracts. I admit, in practice, we might be more forced into them by the states themselves, but the modern nation state at least in theory gets its legitimacy, not from force, but the consent of the governed. 

States give us laws. They give us security. They improve well being. Without states, we just have Hobbes' state of nature.

Foreign policy: interactions between states

So, what foreign policy basically is, is interaction between states. And that IS, generally speaking, lawless. Warfare is common throughout history. Warfare often has been brutal, with cruel consequences to the losers including slavery, genocide, etc. It is the law of the jungle after all. 

Not all states see eye to eye. Western powers have enlightenment values leading to concepts like human rights and freedoms, but others dont. Other states often have different philosophies and values in governance. Most enemies of our own country, the US, do not share our high minded values. They are various flavors of authoritarian, and often reject the idea of human rights. Some are also still driven by religious philosophies, such as, for example, Islam. 

The fact is, countries with Western values tend to stick together with one another. We have formed the most dominant world order on this planet, mostly backed by the United States, which is the country with the biggest military, and is most able to enforce its will on the rest of the world. If we did not do this, one of our rivals would instead form the most dominant world order, which would come at our detriment and probably lead to worse outcomes for most in the world, and especially for ourselves. 

Discussing international law

International law arose our of our most high minded western values involving things like human rights. However, in practice, international law is enforced selectively, as enforcement requires force. As such, we might see it applied more consistently against two bit dictatorships that horribly mistreat their citizens, but we might turn a blind eye against countries such as, for example, Israel, who is arguably violating it with their war in Gaza. The fact is, there are international complications associated with holding a friendly country accountable for possible war crimes, which is why the US is reluctant to do it.

High minded people might have issues with this, but this is the reality of things. For as much as we value our ideals, sometimes the actual calls to intervene or enforce international law come down to politics. We might hold countries that we don't like more accountable, or even use their crimes as a pretext for invasion, but when our own does stuff, we tend to have a double standard.

Some question if rival powers, through up and coming organizations like BRICS, will eventually come to challenge the US led world order. I would like to remind anyone that BRICS is basically headed by countries like Russia and China that are functionally authoritarian and don't even have the pretense of caring about others. They just want to use these orders to challenge the US led world order so they can just do whatever they want without consequence.

Interpreting various conflicts through my own lens

World war II- A fight against a rival ideology of fascism, we largely stayed neutral, but it seemed clear that if the US didn't have a more interventionist approach to foreign policy, that the world would em embroiled in costly wars that would eventually come to affect us at home. 

After World War II, the victors established the United Nations, which unlike the previous League of Nations actually had US backing and teeth. The League of Nations largely failed without US support, but that led to the most destructive war in human history, so we basically established a new world order in order to keep the peace.

The cold war- An ideological conflict that never broke out into hot war because doing so would've been so destructive it would have ended humanity. It instead was an ideological geopolitical chess game between the US (capitalist/pro democracy) and the USSR (communist/authoritarian). Instead of fighting major battles, there were minor conflicts like Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan that became proxy wars for the major powers. The west eventually won when the USSR collapsed in the early 90s. 

War on Terror and other conflicts- Post cold war, there has been a lot of debate about what the role of the US should be. Some envisioned it as high minded in the 1990s, like us being this international police force intervening in countries where tyranny,, injustice, and genocide are taking place. These ventures ended up being short lived. They were unpopular and costly at home, and got US service people killed for no reason (see: Somalia and the movie "Black Hawk Down". 

We actually became increasingly less interventionist through the 1990s, only for us to become REALLY interventionist in the 2000s as 9/11 precipitated the war on terror. Initially it had support as we were attacked, but the complexities of interventionism proved to be very costly, and the geopolitics of reforming third world countries complicated. In general these wars proved to be a failure.

This has led to somewhat of a controversy about what exactly the US's role should be in the post cold war world. Should we intervene overseas? Should we be more isolationist? I would argue that the modern era has caused a lot of malaise with foreign policy that has led to the rise of anti interventionist sentiments. In the world police context, I agree. We should not be involved in conflicts to "nation build" or play "world police". HOWEVER....

Modern conflicts- HOWEVER...(to continue the previous thought), the US is still the sole superpower and needed in world affairs. yes yes, we shouldnt intervene in back water countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and try to spread democracy to them. It's been a massive failure. BUT...we still need to maintain our strategic alliances with other like minded countries, and we still need to combat the once again growing influence of Russia and China, authoritarian countries that do not share our values. As such:

Ukraine- Ukraine is a democracy under great threat from Russia. Alarmed by the expansion of NATO since the cold war (which was brought on by Russia's own aggressive actions toward neighbors), it has launched a desperate bid to take over Ukraine as a bit of a land buffer to push NATO as far west and away from Moscow as possible. We can't intervene directly in Ukraine as direct conflict with Russia can lead to nuclear war, but we are doing a cold war style proxy war there in arming and funding Ukrainians to defend their country from Russia. I do believe this is an important conflict, both for western ideals like democracy, but also to weaken one of our chief rivals, Russia.

Israel- Israel I'm more mixed on. Israel is effectively committing a de facto genocide in Gaza. And I do wish the US put more pressure on them to rein the conflict in. However, Israel IS a friendly nation to the US. They were attacked, they do have a right to defend themselves, and regardless of how flawed the Netanyahu regime is, if the region were ruled by Hamas or the Palestinians, the outcome would be even worse. Historically, Israel has always been the more reasonable and humanitarian power, and the power with more western values. This does not excuse the gravity of their actions in Gaza, but it does make stopping them kind of tricky in practice, especially given the amount of domestic support Israel has. 

Taiwan- Basically has the potential to be China's Ukraine. We need to promise to defend it as a counterbalance to Chinese expansionism. Taiwan is a democracy, like us, with values similar to us, and CHina taking Taiwan could mark the decline of western power in the Asian theater and tip the balance of power in China's favor. China is just as if not more dangerous than Russia long term given their massive population, and rapid economic development. 

Conclusion

And yeah, that's generally how I view foreign policy in a nutshell. While I get people who are very ideological and dedicated to humanitarian values who in the modern era might seek a more non interventionist role for the US post cold war, we cant afford to just sit on our laurels. We have to deal with the rising threats of both China and Russia, and I do mark the past few years during the Biden administration as somewhat of a shift away from the war on terror years back toward new a cold war 2.0 where our intervention is very much needed for the world right now. And we gotta reorient ourselves from the non interventionist mindset that came out of our failed ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan to being a champion of democracy and human rights that defends our like minded allies against the forces of authoritarianism and illiberalism in the modern era.

For me, the conflict is about values, it is ideological. it's about governing philosophy. Do we want the dominant world powers to be liberal democracies that care about human rights and well being or illiberal dictatorships that think life is cheap and just use raw power to achieve their ends? The choice is yours, but I support the west on this one. My values are western through and through, for better or for worse, and we gotta support our team, even if they aren't always in the right in individual situations (like Israel). So yeah, that's how I view things and that's why I'd differ from more humanitarian non interventionists. Their hearts are in the right place, but I think they miss the big picture. I hope I just explained the big picture clearly and concisely enough. 

Parsing out conflicting views on Harris

 So, I've watched a few videos over the past hour with different opinions on the whole left right situation, and I've been having a lot of thoughts. I really do feel mixed on Harris. She's okay, but I also feel both positive and negative toward her.

On the plus side, she's the best candidate we could've realistically gotten this election cycle. Sam Seder discussed this tonight and it's something that I've been aware of from the get go too. Biden did pioneer a new brand of liberalism that kind of split the difference between the centrist "new democrats", and the bernie win. It's still pretty mild and milquetoast IMO, but it did do some things right. And despite the centrists still effectively controlling the party, they didn't like that they didn't have someone even MORE centrist, and in pushing Biden out, they were hoping to have an open primary to push a more centrist candidate on us. Kamala Harris is, by my own admission, among the best of the candidates we could've gotten. She was Biden's VP, she actually has a history of being more progressive than how she's running this election. And let's face it, anyone the democrats would've let us have would've been worse. And then Tim Walz. Tim Walz was admittedly the best VP choice. Most of the people in the running were the people we would've gotten if not for Biden endorsing Harris. You know, bland centrists. Tim Walz kinda has that similar ideology as Harris where it's actually a bit of a non ideology. Is it progressive? is it centrist? it's actually this weird mystery meat and no one knows what they're gonna get. It's hard to attack because it's vague, but as we discussed, liberals want vague because specifics will alienate someone. 

Honestly, IN THEORY, I can tolerate a Harris-Walz ticket. They actually are open to embracing a lot of my lower priorities, and Harris has a history of embracing universal healthcare. However, this is also where we see the dark side of this mystery meat ideology Biden/Harris/Walz are cooking up.

In 2020, I actually was highly critical of Kamala Harris. I called her a "fauxgressive" and basically said I fear she'll run left to win over progressive voters and then abandon them in office. For as much as Biden has shifting the party left, he's also kind of done things half way, and on topics like healthcare, you know, a big priority of mine, he's kinda left them high and dry. And Harris has...not surprisingly, abandoned her own 2020 healthcare plan in her 2024, fearing it will alienate moderates and the medical industrial complex. So...Harris is kind of exactly what I feared she would become. Someone who starts left and then walks things back to the center. Is she further left than some? yes. If she as far left as she could be? no. Is she still the best we're gonna get in 2024? Ugh, I guess she is. Kinda like how I was begrudgingly backing Biden, now I feel like I have to do the same with Harris. We're not in a position where we can be picky. Trump is dangerous, we only have a ~50% chance of winning, we need to make do in the political reality we have, not the one we want. Harris will at least give us some good stuff. 

Now, the other video I watched, Marianne Williamson talked about the left. And she kinda made sense too. She talked about how we needed to be laser focused on our goals and support people, even if we don't like them on a personal level. I think she was talking about herself and how she held a lot of broadly held progressive goals and values, but very few people united behind her because they thought she was a crystal lady. For the record. I did. I voted for her in the primary. As I said, i'll be darned if I don't vote my values at least once my election cycle, and I was part of that 2-3% of people who supported her. 

But then she talked in and out strategies, do we support dems, third party, what? And how we need to do both. And dont give up and keep pushing. I agree. I mean, here's the thing. I am kind of on the same wavelength as her here. We need to figure out priorities, push for them, and keep hammering away until we get them. And we should, in a normal election cycle, be willing to vote third party if we don't get them from the democrats.

Now, we can't do this this year because, well...Trump. You wanna roll the dice on that fascist getting elected and possibly breaking our democracy, have at it, but I don't want that, so I will vote for Harris just to keep trump out THIS TIME. But again, temporary alliance, if the dems go hard center, I won't do it again. If the dems push further left, I'm open to further voting and cooperation with them, but ultimately, I am loyal to my ideas. I just ain't willing to sacrifice democracy itself for them. 

As such, I guess I do gotta back harris. I don't like it. In some ways, voting green MIGHT be better at pushing my top priorities. but at the same time, given the overarching emphasis on palestine I feel like my message will get blown over by those weirdos with that bullhorn. Which once again brings me back to the left.

I'm NOT on the same page, priority wise, as much of the left. my priorities have always been stuff like UBI, M4A, free college, student debt forgiveness, climate change stuff, housing fixes, etc. And while I guess the left cares about some of those things, their actual POLICIES vary widely from mine. Even if Stein supports UBI in theory in the form of an NIT, her support of it is akin to harris's support of medicare for all. I mean maybe but given her actual priorities are green new deal...not really. And GND...not really a huge fan of that. I actually like the Biden-Harris approach to climate better as it would allow me to spend more money on UBI and/or M4A.

And foreign policy wise...i LIKE Biden and Harris. Literally the only blight on their record IS palestine, and while i do acknowledge netanyahu is going too far, I literally don't care enough about the issue to vote on it. Meanwhile, Stein basically wants to cut the defense budget like 90% and pull out of NATO. That's just...insane. I mean. Can lefties stop being at least decent on my economic vision only to be insane on something else in a completely cringe and deal breaking way, please? Like, can we NOT have a foreign policy that basically would destroy the western world order? Or split the vote in a way to allow a literal fascist who wants to be a dictator to win? Pretty please? I like democracy and western values very much. I mean, my ideas are kinda based on them, and we wont even have the luxury to advocate for my most left wing beliefs that drive me to third parties in the first place if we dont have a safe environment to have these political debates in, thank you very much.

So again, driven back to Harris. Not even touching Cornel West going full anti vax trying to appeal to RFK voters. Ugh, can we like...not have third parties be complete crackpots? Seriously, i feel like this is why no one takes them seriously. It's like most third party candidates arent exactly well adjusted people themselves but have weird, cringey, extremist views and ideologies. And even if they're based on some stuff, they're cringe on other stuff to such an extent i literally doesn't matter.

So yeah...after parsing this stuff out, everything comes back to "yeah, just vote for Harris." I mean, she's not everything I want, and she is a major let down on at least one of my big issues, but yeah. I just can't justify voting for someone else this year. So...Harris, you win. I hope you have a good presidency. I hope you actually get pressured to do something with healthcare. And even though we won't get anything better until at least 2032, we won't get anything worse either. And hopefully by then the centrist dems will kinda ride off into the sunset and realize the era of the "new democrat" is over. FINALLY. FRICKING FINALLY.

So apparently liberals think asking for policies is a "double standard" now

 Yeah, this is another "react to" post where I react to statements made by liberals on a certain subject matter.

The question:

Why is there so much focus on wanting to know Harris' policies when we know almost next to nothing about Trump or RFK Jr's policies?

The 2024 election will likely come down to vibes and how voters feel about the candidates instead of what they know about them and their policies. Of course, it would be beneficial for voters to have an idea of what her policies are (which Harris has provided during her speeches), but voters will ultimately let their feelings decide who they pick.

I do find it a double standard how Trump can dance around what his policies are whenever a camera is put in front of him, but news pundits keep demanding that Harris sit down for an interview and explain her policies in detail.

Now, first, my answers.

First of all, I KNOW RFK and Donald Trump were/are bad candidates. I've NEVER liked either of them. And part of it IS because they both little to no policies, and the policies they champion are generally terrible. I have detailed analyses of both of them on this blog as part of my metric, and I rip both of them. Donald Trump's policy platform reads like a 5 year old writing in crayon like he has a magic wand. END INFLATION in caps and crap like that. Okay, but how?

And then there's project 2025, which is their platform in reality, and that's full of some scary crap. The fact is, we KNOW what the GOP wants to do, in great detail, through THAT. And it's NOT good. It's TERRIFYING. 

And then RFK. I've ALWAYS ripped him for being light on policy. He's always been a joke candidate for me. And when he does discuss stuff he's always going on about autism and vaccines and covid lockdowns, and honestly? I think RFK was a crap candidate. 

Harris. Maybe there is a slightly higher standard here on paper, but mainly because I expect more from democrats, who generally are a bit more policy focused. And I've been somewhat lenient. Ive known it will take time for her to come up with policies. But...now we have a democratic platform and it kinda sucks. And that's what I'm going by. Perhaps it's not comprehensive, but it's something. And it's what I assume she wants to do. And I'm left underwhelmed, especially on my top priorities. She's a decent candidate, much better than Trump and RFK, but I care about policy because I have my own policy preferences. I MAKE my own policy. And I typically vote for the candidate that has the best policies.

I admit, this election, my hand is forced, given the egregiousness of Donald Trump's sins against democracy, to lower my standards. HOWEVER, make no mistake. I am still for policy, and I still judge democratic candidates regardless on the matter. I HATE the fact that this election is all vibes based. I want it to be POLICY based. I want good things. I expect good things, and after the convention I don't even like Harris much on VIBES. I don't like anyone on VIBES, and recent discussion should make it known that I actually resent the voter instincts of the masses and how easily entertained they are with vibes.

I guess we kinda dont need policy specifics unless you care about specific things like I do. Democrats have a brand that changes relatively little from election to election, for better or for worse.  Often for the worse, given how Harris is light on policy to the point that she just seems like an obvious Biden replacement with no significant personality of her own, policy wise. And I'm one of the progressive democrats who want change.

Either way, I did want to post and highlight what other liberals are saying on this matter, and kinda rip them for their depressingly low standards here.

It's a double standard. It's just people who are anti-Harris for whatever reason looking for an excuse to smear. The Democrats publish a platform, and since Harris is a form on incumbent, we can look at the current administration to get an idea of what Harris will do.

It's sad and tired and I'm tired of the constant bad faith bullshit.

 I mean, with Harris the bar is raised a bit because Harris has always been a better presidential candidate than Biden was. And we kind of want more than Biden did. Although I admit some criticisms come from the right and are in bad faith.

Also, the democratic platform is difficult to find this year, the 2020 was still up last I noticed, and honestly, the platform is weaksauce. Again, she's just running as 4 more years of Biden. We're back to "saltine crackers and floater water" here. Any positive vibes and good will have dissipated on my end.

You're right; it's a double standard. What we've got on the right is a cult of personality. That has always been a factor in American politics. A lot of people on both sides have always chosen their candidate based on how they felt about him as a person, not on his policies. Is he the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with?

(I use the masculine pronoun partly out of habit and partly because this attitude began when only men were ever candidates.)

Yet candidates used to always feel an obligation to talk about policies. Talking about policies is how they demonstrated their seriousness and competence. Trump seems to have given that up, and so have a lot of his supporters.

It's a double standard in a sense that we expect the D student to remain a D student while encouraging the B student capable of an A of being an A. When they just wanna skirt by with a C, when they have so much more potential, we rip on them.

The right is NEVER gonna have a policy platform I like or agree with. Intellectuals flock to the left because of this. There's a reason liberals snarkily say reality has a liberal bias and college educated voters drift toward democrats in large numbers. Trump has always been a vibes based candidate for low information voters. What some of us on the left resent is that the left is ALSO becoming a party of vibes and low information voters. I mean, I literally made this point yesterday, that most voters are just...kind of dumb. THey're not political experts, they're not even close, and if anything most have dunning kruger syndrome. 

I understand that vibes do matter. But policy helps with the vibes. Look at Bernie. he's super vibes based, where he's like, WERE GONNA TAKE ON THE MILLIONAIAHS AND THE BILLIONAIAHS!  But the dude is also policy based. WE'RE GONNA GUARANTEE HEALTHCARE, and stuff. And because in prior election cycles like 2016 and 2020, policy WAS important, and the left was asked HOW YA GONNA PAY FOR IT, we had answers. 

If anything, expecting less this time is really just a deevolution of politics, and I kind of resent that aspect of politics. Like dont worry about policy, just vote on vibes. I dont live on vibes alone. Sorry, I don't. 

Partly because democrats are expected to be adults and have policies and republicans are expected to run on fear and to obfuscate their actual agenda.

That’s largely based on differences in the activist groups for each coalition. Republican leaders, activists and donors - with the exception of the anti-abortion and gun lobby - don’t demand that republicans state the agenda. If I want somebody to put forth in agenda, that makes it easier to pollute, reduce worker protections and lowers taxes on the ultra wealthy, I don’t make my candidates say they want that. I just assume that when a Republicans is elected, they will do Republican things.

Democratic activist groups on the other hand demand public statements about issues. They don’t care if that issue isn’t good electorally and when statements are made, they always manage to state how they are lacking.

—

In this particular case, it’s also being driven disingenuously by Republicans. They want Kamala Harris to state a position, hoping that she’ll take one that is demanded by some liberal or progressive activist group that is not broadly popular so they can elevate and misrepresent it.

 

 Yeah, let's face it, we already know what the republicans are for. And they're best off hiding it. But they do have it all down on paper in project 2025 and stuff. And we all know that's their real policy playbook. But of course they deny it because they cant say the quiet part out loud because if you read it, it's like holy crap they're insane.

The GOP themselves have run entirely on vibes while hiding their agenda. But lefties like me, wanna know what we're voting for. I do care to get into the weeds of say, healthcare policy. And for some of us, the policy decides our vote. I feel like trying to deflect away from policy is just a "blue no matter who" trick. Like, don't think, just vote based on vibes. 

Even when Harris first dropped, why was i excited for her? It was because she was more progressive than Biden. WAS. Not now. But WAS. And now we know what we're getting and I'm kinda underwhelmed.

I’ve really gotten to a point where I feel like activists shoot themselves in the face by making demands of a candidate prior to the election. Get the person most likely to be receptive to your demands in the halls of power, then hold their feet to the fire. Demanding perfection prior to the election just opens up weaknesses for others to exploit.

 People who think like this think policy is divisive. That if they state their positions, they're easier to attack. We should just vote and ask questions later. I hate it. I do care about policy. And a huge reason im deflated on Harris is because she lacks policy on issues i care about. 

Liberals seem to just be like "get someone across the finish line and worry later". Now, this specific cycle, we kinda HAVE to act like this to defeat trump, but do I like it? No. Why should i vote democrat if they're not gonna care about policy priorities. What drives me to campaigns is policy. I liked Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders based on policy, ideology, and vision. I cant get into substanceless vibes. I just cant. Under normal circumstances I'd be CONSIDERING a green vote. Not sure I'd do it, but I'd CONSIDER it. Heck I did that intellectual exercise yesterday in part to feel that out. I still came back to harris, but without being ride or die on the dems, the two candidates would be in virtual dead heat.

I saw an interesting perspective recently in line with this. In reality, one of these 2 people will be president, you have to pick the one that will be an easier framework for your activism. I probably butchered it but it was something along those lines.

 To be fair, given Harris WAS more progressive in the past, she is potentially open to being pressured on healthcare. Begging her to pass her own healthcare plan might just be an ego trip for her where it's like "yes, please pressure me to pass this thing i wanted all along but was forced to drop for political reasons."

 
So maybe she would be better in that regard.

Because all the attacks on her are not landing, so they need something else. They don’t care about policies at all 

I care about policy.

For the record, the Democratic Party does have a comprehensive, published platform.

https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/

 

 That's 2020. Trust me, I made that mistake once already. Remember that "she does support a public option after all" post I deleted? ....yeah....

Indeed.

We've had eight years to learn what Trump's policy is on healthcare. All we know at this point was his admission that he did not know healthcare was "so complicated".

 To be fair, I dont expect the republicans to fix healthcare because I know their entire ideological goal is to dismantle the government and to shrink it to the size we can "kill it in a bathtub" as grover norquist will say. When that's your ideology, the republicans don't HAVE a plan. They just want small government and ripping up things democrats do and replacing them with nothing is kind of their MO.

That's the whole nature of this dichotomy. When the right is the party of government bad and we need less of it, that's pretty straightforward. It's easy to run on. And we know what their goal is. To dismantle government.

The left, which actually believes in the use of government to solve problems, has to actually craft plans and policies to do it. 

The most charismatic candidate wins. Policies be damned.

 This is technically true, but I'd argue that charisma backed by policy will maintain the enthusiasm longer. If you're all "Hope and change and yes we can" and when you get in office you govern like a neoliberal, you're gonna lose all of your enthusiasm. And yes, I'm very obviously criticizing Obama on that one. 

Because that's the thing. By the end of obama's 8 years, there were some of us who wanted more than just platitudes and good speeches. We wanted POLICY. Which was why we liked Bernie Sanders over Clinton percieves herself as a policy wonk, but her policies were all the weird "and then you fill out a 37 page form and wait 3 weeks for us to get back to you, but only if you make below $17,895.29 a year and have been looking for work in the past 6 months and if you file on a Tuesday." NO ONE LIKES THAT STUFF. Btw, that's also why Harris lost in 2020. She ended up getting into the weeds of that and it didnt resonate. Because people want broad fixes. Not weirdly specific proposals that do very little. 

Trump policies:

1. Keep Trump out of jail.
2. Everybody around must be loyal to him
3. He won't be loyal to anybody.
4. Imprison, or better yet, eliminate, any dissenters.
5. Personal profit, no matter how much it costs America.

RFK Jr. policies. 1. demonize vaccination (so of course he's been earmarked as Sec of HHS should Trump win) 2. pander for profit 3. take off shirt whenever there is an excuse.

I think I covered both platforms as extensively as the amount of thought each of them put into them.

 That's fair, but to be fair, I already established I consider both to be trash candidates and I'd never vote for either of them.

The worst part of this is that it really doesn’t matter what Harris’s policies are if there is a Republican Senate. The details of her healthcare plan are inconsequential- it’s more about what types of bills she will sign that can make it through both houses.

 Policies are aspirational. As I keep saying with Biden: TRY. I always give Biden credit for TRYING. The platform is "this is what im for if i have my way." It's a motivational factor to give us something to vote FOR. I know that the political realities of things might cause us to temper expectations, but I'd rather a candidate outline stuff and try than to just tell us that "democracy is hard work", and to go vote, without telling us what to vote FOR (once again, ripping Obama). 

It’s because it’s currently incredibly difficult to attack the Harris Walz campaign because all they talked about for weeks has been joy/unity and a mix of a few extremely popular policies (like >70% approvals). The right flank needs policies to fear monger off of and the left flank needs policies to say she doesn’t go far enough. Honestly, she should keep a balance of only release as few policy specifics as possible(except in areas where it becomes an issue) and continue the vibes campaign.

 They're already making crap up like she's for a 25% tax on "unrealized capital gains" (which would implode the economy) and that she is for "giving everyone healthcare" (I wish).

 

I disagree that it's a double standard. We know what Trump's policy agenda is, and we don't know Harris'.

Trump will pursue tax cuts for the rich. He will probably try to remain in office. He will end all prosecution against him. He will enrich himself and his family.

Is Harris going to focus on climate? Education? Wealth inequality? We have a ton of problems and folks want to know if their pet issues are what she'll attack, and if she'll attack it the way they think she should.

It's probably best she keeps her platform vague. She can only lose steam by having less-than-perfect policy choices for voters, like the $25k down payment assistance for me.

 

 Yeah kinda like what happened with me. So we lower the standards and keep things vague so people vote without knowing what they're voting for. Do I have that right?

Really. These kinds of people make me wanna vote for them LESS. Because they just wanna obfuscate and mislead us to get out vote and then do screw all in office.

Trump policy is well described in Project 2025 which is a massive, 920-page document that outlines exactly what the next Trump presidency would look like.

 Yes it is. And it's scary.

The dems have an 81 page platform, but it's also kinda underwhelming.

I think we know a good amount about both candidates' policy agendas and goals. Obviously, since Trump was president for four years, we have a better window into what he will be like as president... and obviously because Harris jumped into the race VERY late, we don't have as much concrete information being put out by her.

It's important to note that Democrats have a platform and, in the absence of a specific Harris platform, we can assume the Vice President's vision mostly aligns with that.

---

The focus on her "lack of policies" is just a political attack, hoping to generate doubt among voters. The people who are complaining about it would not suddenly be happy if she posted a 900-page platform document. They would just shift to using that to attack her.

It's the same thing with the "she won't do an interview" attack line. They don't actually care if she does interviews. They just want to cast doubt on her and hopefully goad her into a situation where she says something they can attack.

They said the same basic stuff about Biden in 2020, that he was hiding from the press, refused to do events, etc.

---

Right now, all they can do is criticize her for not engaging the way they want her to. It's not the strongest line of attack and kind of makes conservatives look whiny and weak.

I'd personally rather see a platform and see interviews, etc. I think they're good - and I bet Harris thinks they're good.

But more than whatever I want... I want her to win. If her team thinks this is the strategy to win... I support it. I know enough about her and about Trump to cast my vote already.

 

 I mean if you really care like I do, we kind of do know, since we can just read the dems' platform and be disappointed.

Coming from the right it is a political attack. But some of us do care about policy.

And yes, they would attack her on policy, and you know what? The republicans attacking on policy actually just makes me wanna vote dem harder. Especially when they act like he's for universal healthcare. 

Beyond that, I still think that we should have a solid detailed platform with policies. I dont like this whole amorphous blob thing. And given what we do know, it leaves me underwhelmed with a bad taste in my mouth. 

That was my question the first time I heard someone complain that Kamala hasn’t talked about any policies:

When’s Trump gonna give up his campaign of bravado and bullying and talk about actual policies?

Then I realized he’s a one trick pony…he’s got nothing to talk about policy-wise because if he talked about his plans, which are largely contained in the same Project 2025 he’s trying to distance himself from, nobody would agree with him.

 

 Again, we know trump is an idiot, and we also know the republicans have project 2025. We know what they're for. And we know trump is a blowhard. Yes yes yes, trump bad, what about harris?

Anyway I could go on, but you get the idea.

I guess the most frustrating thing about this is a lot of liberals want to be intentionally vague because they know if specifics were posted, that people would be alienated. They want an amorphous candidate based on vibes. And I admit, that IS harder to attack, but among policy wonk types like me, it does depress me. 

These are the kinds of people who are for "party unity". They dont care a ton about policy themselves, it's just about getting across the finish line. Normally, this mentality is a huge turn off and I'd consider voting green over this. But yeah, given trump IS as dangerous as I've been saying...eh....I guess we gotta settle. it doesn't make me happy, but it is what it is.