Discussing the idea that real innovation is a $300 console

 So, some ex Playstation guy is finally making sense saying what the PS6 eventually needs isn't more teraflops and ray tracing, but to do what we're already doing cheaper. 

And uh, this is kind of a no brainer for me. As I said, we've reached peak gaming. We're not seeing a lot of progress from more raw specs. We're just getting more unoptimized games that look slightly better than the previous generation, on hardware that costs way too much money, with the games costing way too much money, and the situation feeling unaffordable. As I look toward the future, I'm literally thinking, if hardware doesn't come down in price, I'm checking out next gen. I mean, Im not very satisfied with the state of modern gaming in general and find myself drawn more and more to the previous generations where games are cheaper and still fun to play. Obviously not all past games are winner, but the same is true today. The best still hold up though. And if the cost of entry is gonna be high for next gen, it's just...well...forget that, i'm going to just double down on that retro direction. 

As I see it, progress is exactly what this guy said. What made progress happen technologically is moore's law. Because we could roughly double processing power every 18 months, after about 4-5 years, we'd have 8x the power for generally the same amount of money. And because gaming was in its infancy in the 90s and even early 2000s still, generational leaps in compute power could cause generational leaps in gaming in general. However, eventually, we get to the point where enough is enough. I'd say gaming was "mature" by generation 7, although generation 8's processing power allowed for more open worlds, higher resolutions, and better frame rates. But that's where things started to stagnate. Now gen 9 just feels like gen 8 game play wise, just with slightly better graphics, but also jankier games, and it feels like with moore's law beginning to break down, the whole industry is beginning to cannibalize itself. And something has to give. For me, the answer is obvious. Rather than focus on making things better, we SHOULD focus on doing the same thing more cheaply. Like, at this point, we got smartphones as powerful as PS4s. If you have at least a snapdragon 8 gen 2 and 8 GB ram, congrats, you got a potential PS4 in raw processing power in your pocket. And that could play games like fallout 4, the witcher 3, and battlefield 4, 1, and 5. Why do we NEED more? And that's where "next gen" has fallen flat. For as great as cyberpunk is, what does it offer other than higher fidelity graphics that GTA V didn't? And remember, the original version of that could run on a PS3, and some people with more powerful phones are emulating the PC version on their phones. Starfield, was it better than fallout 4 or skyrim? I doubt anyone would say it was. Borderlands 4 is a joke while borderlands 2 runs on a potato these days. There's no reason the overwhelming majority of PS5 titles can't be scaled down graphically to run on phones, and with that PC emulation I mentioned, i wouldnt be surprised if Valve eventually did make a full blown arm/android solution for steam that's official. 

And for me, that's the future I want. To be able to play my games on ANY device. I mean Im not a console guy, I dont wanna be tethered to an ecosystem designed to extract maximum revenue from me. I want my games to run on ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. I want to be able to play doom on my toaster or smart fridge, in theory, assuming it had an operating system that allowed installing programs. 

I dont want more power. I want more versatility. I want to see my games run on cheaper and cheaper devices. And I want new games to run on existing hardware. Keep in mind, if Im gonna be paying for a new system, a new GPU, a new CPU, Im gonna want better games that look noticably better and do something different from games in the past. Ray tracing isnt it. And given games look "good enough" and have looked "good enough" for about 10 years by this point, Im not really interested in higher fidelity graphics at a price I cant afford.

But if I can run GTA5 (or even 6 when it comes out) on say, my phone, or some $300 mini PC or something, yeah, that's a big fricking deal. And i aint saying every game has to be scaled down to run on mobile. BUT...it shouldnt be scaled up to run on hardware no one can reasonably afford either. It's a balance.  

Reminder: elections are won by enthusiasm

 So....as the data on how people voted in 2026 comes out, the message is clear, the public wants change and what drove democrats to victory was enthusiasm. A huge wave of voters who didnt vote in 2024 came out to support democrats, while republicans were relatively demotivated and stayed home. 

This isnt super surprising given my analysis of previous elections. Wave elections tend to involve that. The base in power stays home, and the base out of power comes out in large numbers against the opposition. And we had a lot of people who stayed out in 2024 who came out this year. And they're PISSED. 

Why do I mention this? Because I've seen this happen before. People came out in massive numbers in 2008 for Barack Obama, but then they stayed home in subsequent elections, with democrats ignoring them and going in the direction of appealing to high propensity moderates who they believed to be more reliable. Of course, this strategy was a failure and just demotivated the lower propensity voters. But now with Trump screwing up THIS BADLY people came out in DROVES. 

And I just wanna say this. My thesis here is the same as it was during the Obama era. If democrats want to remain top dog, they have to do what the people want. Their governance has to be popular. They cant just sit on their hands and do nothing and then scold people for not turning out. You want these people out every election? You gotta do what they want. That means getting cost of living down, fixing the economy (including healthcare!), and holding the Trump administration accountable for crimes. Rolling back disastrous immigration enforcement, without being for "open borders." You need to keep these people invested so they come out again and again. Thats what Obama didnt do. When 2008 happened, he forgave the bankers who caused it, implemented mild reforms that only kinda sorta solved the problems. And then that massive wave Obama had evaporated and republicans came out and voted AGAINST Obama. 

We can say "well those people need to come out and vote every time", but think of it from the perspective of people seeing coming out as an inconvenience. It takes time and energy to come out and vote. People arent going to do it if they dont feel invested or they feel like both sides suck and nothing is gonna change because it's all corrupt. What's driving this wave is that Trump is just SO FRICKING AWFUL that people who dont normally come out and coming out to stop him and to fix the economy at least somewhat. But if democrats wanna KEEP those voters, they gotta actually do what they want them to do. And they gotta make it EASIER to vote, not harder. Republicans wanna make it harder because they WANT to demotivate people, the lower turnout, the better they do. Democrats need to expand voting to make it easy and convenient, and they gotta give people a reason to support them. That's how things work. This is human nature. You can scold people all you want, but you gotta motivate people and democrats suck at it. Democracy belongs to the voters, not to the party and the politicians. They're our SERVANTS. We are their BOSSES. We just fired a bunch of republicans and hired a bunch of democrats. But democrats gotta perform or the people will fire them again. It's that simple. 

So I hope democrats actually do things with their power. Dont just sit on their hands and let bygones be bygones. REIN. TRUMP. IN. FIX. HIS. CRAP. And fix the other stuff we've BEEN complaining about while were at it. It's that simple. 

Defending Schumer on not funding Angie Nixon

 So...as we know, I'm very critical of Chuck Schumer. However, he also is kind of the mastermind of the victory we just had. He controlled the democrats' purse strings and decided who got funded and who didn't. And he didn't fund Angie Nixon in Florida, and a lot of progressive are blasting him over it, claiming it was ideological. Maybe it was. The centrists want the party to remain centrist and I know Schumer did pick some stinkers for the primaries like Janet Mills for example. He was also for Haley Stevens in Michigan. BUT....he did come around to support Troy Jackson, and Abdul El Sayed, and he has been willing to at times support progressives when the populace arm wrestled him into doing it.

On Angie Nixon....I'll explain why he didn't put money into it. It was FLORIDA. For most of the cycle, Florida has been an R+6-8 state. By my own statistics, Nixon had around a five percent chance of winning, and while we were lucky, we werent THAT lucky. Progressives argue if only we put a few million into that race, we could have flipped it a few more points. The problem is, let's go back to before the election. We got my election map, and we want a majority. What do we do?

Well, the answer is simple. We put the money where it does the most good. We dont know what direction the polling error is going in. If anything, I spent most of the cycle saying this map is TOO good as it is, and that we should play defensively to make sure we can get a simple majority. I get it, in hindsight, we overperformed this map. But we very well could've underperformed. if instead of getting D+3, we got R+3, then we'd be struggling just to get a simple majority. We'd be struggling to get Maine and Kansas and Ohio and Texas. We can say goodbye to Alaska in such a situation, and Iowa, and getting South Carolina and Mississippi? Dont make me laugh. 

I went into 2026 with this thesis. Flipping the senate was darned near impossible. Not only would we need to hold Michigan and flip North Carolina and Maine, we'd need to break into Trump+13 states like Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Alaska. I thought, okay, maybe we can get Ohio if Brown runs, but how can we get the other four? But then the map came to us. And we started seeing most of those, minus florida, flip in the polls. And we even got Kansas to flip. And that's the thing. Those states were COMPETITIVE. We COULD win. We were straight up favored, and even if the polls flipped the other way, we could put up a fight. And then you gotta keep in mind other things going on. South Carolina came within a point or two, with Annie Andrews' internals showing a dead heat. So Schumer was like, a few million for South Carolina. And both campaigns seemed to get a whiff of something happening in Mississippi. A bit of a long shot, but hey, even spending a little money there could force the GOP to divert funds away from more important battlegrounds. I wouldnt expect to win there, but I could see an argument for funding it. 

But Florida? It was too long of a long shot. Republicans outspent the democrats. Democrats had scarce resources relatively speaking and had to allocate them well. In a state where we had a 15% or 30% chance of winning, spreading a couple million there could cause the GOP to divert more of its massive war chest playing defense. But when you start getting R+6, or R+8, it's like, forget it. Sure theres a 5% shot but thats like betting on a 20-1 horse at the races. Okay, a 5-1 like Mississippi, okay, cant hurt to put a $2 bet down. 2-1 like South Carolina, yeah, play that crap. but 18-1 or 20-1 or whatever? Youre throwing money away. Just approaching it from a gambling perspective. 

And imagine this. The winnings of betting on a 20-1 horse pays the same as a 2-1 one. It isnt like a casino, one win is one senator. So yeah, your allocation is best spent on the races where we're already favored, or where when not favored, it's still within a reasonable realm of possibility. 

All in all, think about it in terms of the denotations of races we have. "Safe" races, you just dont invest in. No return on investment. You could blow your whole bank account there, and not get any returns. Likely races can flip, but they're long shots. Maybe you'll get 1 or 2 a cycle, but normally they dont flip. Leans, tilts, and tossups are where the money is. And Schumer did play it beautifully from that perspective, he put the money into the races he knew he could flip, he put a little investment into races that were lean R, but didnt go overboard with them, and he focused on what he could win.

On election night, the odds just went in our favor. We overperformed the benchmarks and now people are saying, gee if only we invested in florida, maybe we could've flipped it. Unlikely. it was a likely R state. And if anything, something I've been critical of democrats doing is doing weird gambling ventures into lean/likely R states at the expense of losing their home turf. I was critical of the dems and schumer in particular when we lost rust belt states we should've had locked down because the democrats were too busy trying to flip Georgia and Texas TEN YEARS AGO. Ya know? Like, I never thought we should've invested in the south back then. Well, I felt the same way about Florida here. The others, the math speaks for itself. We were favored to win in Ohio and Texas and Alaska and EVEN KANSAS FOR SOME REASON?! WTF! But hey, from a numerical perspective, if that's where Kansas was at as a state, DO IT! And you know, depending on what internals were saying, yeah, put some money down on South Carolina and Mississippi. Aint saying it'll pay off, but as long as it doesnt come at the expense of more important states, even if we dont win, it can force the republicans to spend money there to defend stuff. I just dont think Florida had that going for it this time. It was almost always gonna lose, and the fact that we overperformed like we did was something we couldnt predict with any certainty before hand. Sure, it was on the table. But I think playing the board like the polling error would go in the republicans' direction on election day was a safer assumption. Again, the goal was securing at least 51, and probably ending up with 53-54. Anything beyond that was a bonus. 

And yeah. I just wanted to give a rational defense of Schumer's strategy. I dont trust the guy as far as I can throw him to GOVERN properly, but as far as mastermining the national campaign strategy and allocating the money to maximize his returns, he played the board brilliantly. I literally couldnt have done better myself, and if I got that to say about the guy, I'll give him credit on this one. He was cooking here and it paid off. So let's give him SOME credit here, even if we dont want him as speaker because his boring govrnance style is gonna drive those voters away again.  

Thinking about the future of the republican party

 So, I've kind of discussed this before, but it's very salient now that the Blue Rumbling just happened. What is the future of the republican party? It's unknown and TLDR, it ultimately depends on how democrats govern over the next few years. No matter what path they take, their best path back to relevance is to let democrats implode from their own incompetence. 

As far as 2028 and forward though, they have two directions. Up until the midterms, it seemed obvious Vance and Rubio were the two strongest candidates going into 2028. However, this crushing defeat is causing people to rethink that. People seem to be distancing themselves from the Trump administration like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Vance is seen as DOA. There's talk of Rubio resigning as secretary of state, possibly to position himself as the anti MAGA candidate who had the inside scoop. And yeah, it looks like there's a potential civil war brewing within the party. 

As I see it, there's two directions that the GOP can go, and neither are great for them long term. The rational move, after seeing everything that's happened, would be to moderate. Some are calling for the GOP to get back to its roots in constitutionalism and the republican party of pre Trump. This is arguably the better future for the country, as moderating away from the far right fascist crap is probably for the best. However, I don't see this as a tenable move for them. Here's the reality for the GOP: the GOP is radical because the base as radical. As I said before when discussing republicans vs democrats, the republican politicians fear the voters, the voters fear the democratic politicians. by this I mean that on the left there's a slavish culture of voting blue no matter who, with democrats pushing for candidates that quite frankly make their stomachs turn in the name of "electability", while republicans let their freak flags fly and push for the most extreme and radical candidates who align with their values, regardless of electability. If the republicans push moderates on the party, it is unlikely that the party's voters will accept them. They might even buck the party and go full Nick Fuentes, who basically pushed his supporters to vote democrat because the republicans weren't extreme enough. The republicans have a long history of tarring and feathering RINOs, and the last time the GOP faced a loss this big in 2006 and 2008, the result was the tea party. The republicans are functionally allergic to moderation and won't turn for moderate candidates. Their base is driven by their extreme values, and if a candidate doesn't represent them, a significant number of them won't turn out. It also seems that with Trump throwing out Susie Wiles and replacing her with Stephen Miller, that Trump himself has learned nothing. If anything, the weak link in his administration is him, but instead of doing introspection he's firing people like a dictator punishing his generals for losing a war, and doubling down. 

However, if the republicans double down, they're going to probably repeat this week. The public is totally soured on the republicans in their current state, and only about 1/3 of the country actually likes these guys. So this offers a conundrum. If the republicans moderate, they lose their base. If they go extreme, they lose everyone else. That's the nature of the republican coalition. The democrats have similar issues in their own right, where they cant thread the needle between what parts of their base want and the public wants as well, but not as bad as the GOP right now. The GOP agenda is fundamentally unpopular, but if they moderate, they enter that uncanny valley of suck and kinda lose everyone as well. With that said, if anything, I suspect that the GOP is going to learn nothing from their loss and become even MORE extreme.  

This brings us to what I said earlier, the fate of the GOP is ultimately decided by democrats. When democrats take over, they have to govern. And if they cant govern well, the public is gonna turn ON THEM. And who will they run to? The republicans. And it doesnt matter if they moderate or go extreme, ultimately we will reach a tipping point where people will prefer the devil we dont know over the one we know. Just as the other night was a kneejerk reaction to trump, and not an endorsement of democrats and their agenda, the elections of 2030, 2032, and onward are going to be a reaction to how democrats govern. And if democrats cant stick the landing and all we get over the next four or so years is more hakeem jeffries and chuck schumer doing nothing, well....the republican will be able to come in and be the opposition. It doesnt matter if they're moderate OR extreme. Maybe the memory of Trump will be so scarred into the collective memories of the populace like Hoover and Carter that we WILL see a realignment where people will jsut flock to democrats no matter how poorly they govern, but normally a realignment like that requires not just a bad leader who F-s everything up, but also a good one, or at least a decent one, to set the tone for the next generation of politics. But if we dont get a good leader, we'll just get a turnover like a football team that ran out of downs. 2027, first down, 2028, second down, 2029, third down, 2030, fourth down, either make gains or get a turnover. Tick tock the clock is running as of the democrats getting sworn in, and especially after they retake the presidency in 2028.  This is why I say that the fate of the republicans ultimately depends on what WE do, and we better do it right, or we're gonna lose our newfound power to the other side who will only continue to become more extreme with every loss. And this is why I'm go critical of Schumer and Jeffries for not meeting the moment so far. The populace wants bold action, not wishy washy centrism that accomplishes nothing. We dont need to deliver full on democratic socialism, we don't need to deliver full on UBI centric human centerd capitalism. But we need to deliver SOMETHING. At least do McMorrow/Talarico wing style policy here. If we dont, then we're gonna be dealing with Groypers taking over in 2030 and 2032. And that possibility should scare ALL of us.

So the left seems united on this: we need actual leadership

 So...after writing that massive spiel about how we need bold leadership and democrats willing to fight for something, it seems like most people are on the same page. The 2026 midterms represents a possible once in a generation realignment toward the democrats. However, at this point, the democrats' greatest enemy is themselves. If we get weak leaders like chuck schumer or hakeem jeffries who dont do anything with this newfound power we just unlocked, we will lose it and the republicans will come back. On the flip side, the republican party looks like it's cooked. Once again, if the democrats take advantage of this, they can remain cooked, and given how awful they are, they SHOULD remain cooked, but their biggest ticket back is weak democrats not doing anything with their power, causing the public to lose faith in them and elect republicans again.

With that said, if Jeffries and Schumer are our next leaders, they need to fricking read the room and understand that we actually want leaders who can deliver. We need an economically progressive agenda to bring costs down, and we need to hold the trump administration accountable for its abuses. PERIOD. Not delivering on this is non negotiable. if you dont, you will lose in the future, and we will get MAGA coming back in an even worse form.

So yeah. Either we need to replace these guys as leaders of the house and senate, and I know some are already suggesting replacing schumer in the senate, or these guys need to grow a spine and some balls REALLY REALLY fast. We cant afford to have weak leadership centered around doing nothing and sending strongly worded letters. you got majorities in both houses, USE THEM. Pass bills, do investigations. I dont expect the bills to make it past trump's desk. I dont expect the investigations to reach the impossibly high bars to actually remove people from office. But show you're trying, show you're working. Do what you can. And when you can't, at least show the people you tried and leave the blame at the feet of the republicans and Trump. That way people will get pissed off and vote for even BLUER waves in the next election, until the obstruction is overcome. That's how you win. but you gotta try, and you gotta fight. If you do nothing, the public will be like wtf did we vote for and then get pissed, stay home, and the republicans will win again. And we really REALLY dont want that. not in this era of fascism. 

So yeah. We got off our ###es and voted, the politicians elected gotta get off of theirs and deliver.  

So what should democrats actually focus on?

 So....democrats...are their own worst enemies in my view. We're 2 days in and I'm already reminded why i REALLY REALLY HATE THESE GUYS! Seriously, now Jeffries is basically saying we're not gonna go after Trump for his crimes, what the actual ####? It's literally one of the only things we'll be able to do, since Trump is just gonna veto anything we do anyway. As the guy criticizing Jeffries in the article, this isnt just blind revenge. Trump has committed serious crimes against the Constitution. He literally tried to turn us fascist. We should hold him accountable.

I ain't saying that we shouldnt do cost of living stuff too. But what can we do with Trump in office? My expectations are this. We're literally not gonna pass anything but a couple budgets after contentious government shutdowns in which trump vetos crap just to hold stuff up. You know he is. Like, it don't matter if we get like, 260 house seats, which isn't even that unrealistic at this point. We need 290 to break a veto. It doesnt matter if we get 56 senate seats, we need 67 to break a veto and 60 to break a filibuster. Even with as insane as our wins are, we literally dont have the numbers to pass productive legislation in this environment. As I see it, the most productive use of the democrats' time is to run impeachment trials against him and other key officials. We wont have the senate convict, because we need 67 for that, but we can put it on record. 

To be fair, it can be controversial. We did this in 2021 and 2022 with the january 6th stuff, and a lot of people just tuned out and voted for the moron again anyway. And maybe some americans might find it distasteful to focus on that instead of "productive" stuff. But what else do you do when our government is gonna be dysfunctional? Again, i didnt go into this with an expectation of congress being productive. i went into it with the idea that this election is about restoring checks and balances and that we're gonna have divided government where little gets done. Holding inquiries into trump's crimes is probably the most useful use of our time, in lieu of being able to pass sweeping legislation to make peoples' lives better. 

With that said, let's turn to polls and see wtf Americans want US to focus on as a whole. Why did they vote democrat? We know a lot of it is inflation, the cost of living, etc, but again....what else can we do but check trump here? It's trump's tariffs and the iran war that are driving inflation. Not to mention data centers and downstream effects of income inequality, as fordism dies and the US economy just caters to the uber wealthy while the rest of us are screwed. Sure, if we had a president to pass legislation, we could do stuff, and maybe in 2028, we will finally get our ducks in a row to address stuff substantively. But again, right now? What power will democrats have? We can pass bills, but trump will veto them. Maybe we should for political theater's sake, i do believe it's better for democrats to try and fail than to not try at all, but still, again, what can we really do here?

 BBC poll

 If we go by this BBS poll from election day, the top issue is said to be the economy, with the state of democracy being a close #2. If we want to address cost of living, we should focus on its causes. Trump's tariffs have directly made stuff more expensive, and they should be repealed. The Iran war also needs to be dealt with, although with iran basically refusing to even entertain negotiations until he's out of office, well, we're in for a painful next few years. We could try to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, ya know, like Biden tried doing with build back better, but how can we reinstate BBB with Trump in office? Even worse, build back better is a long term project, not something that we can do to address the issue quickly. As such, we're screwed. 

I know healthcare comes up in a few other polls I looked at, and yes, if we implemented medicare for all or a public option, we could bring healthcare costs down. But Trump is, again, gonna veto that, and a lot of centrist dems aren't even willing to implement anything. They might do some tweaks to reverse Trump's medicaid cuts and do some weird BS with the ACA and tax credits or some crap like that, I don't think democrats as a whole are interested in solving that issue. Although, yes, it seems like the time for medicare for all has come, and we should be talking about healthcare reform more broadly if we want to bring down costs for people.

We should go after AI datacenters. We should rein in AI where they're NOT buying up the world's supply of computer parts, or using up so much electricity that it's driving up costs for everyone else. All this AI crap IS contributing to our cost of living crisis too, as billionaires and their massive purchasing power is just putting certain stuff out of reach of Americans'. 

And this kind of means we gotta address another elephant in the room. As I said, a huge reason why we got inflation is because of the long term consequences of income inequality. The businesses appeal to those with the money. The new deal economy was built on the back of fordism, the idea that henry ford could sell more cars if his employees could afford them. The middle class existing made good  business sense a hundred years ago. These days, as wealth and income are concentrated among the top 10-20% of income earners, the rest of us are just being left behind. We cant buy computers because billionaires like sam altman are buying up all the RAM, and then complaining when we peasants have 32 GB in our computers. We can't buy gaming devices or games because the costs are going up, and gaming is becoming a luxury of relatively wealthy households again, with normal people locked out. We cant do vacations any more like we used to because businesses are once again appealing to an upper class that has most of the wealth. The middle is being squeezed out. And it's everything else as well. Groceries are going up, power bills are going up, healthcare and housing have been beyond unaffordable. And we just give in an era of unchecked greed. We need a progressive agenda that helps reverse those changes. Sadly, I dont think democrats even have it in them to even begin seriously addressing the income inequality that's developed over the past 50 years. Sure, some people like Bernie Sanders and Abdul El Sayed want to do that stuff, but your median democrat in congress is actually pretty moderate and pretty useless. And a lot of the public, for all their bellyaching about the economy, seems woefully ignorant on actually fixing the issues. We're literally brainwashed to believe that addressing the core issues behind the economy are "socialism", and we're stuck moderating and pushing a watered down agenda that wont do anything.

If Jeffries approach this issue with the fire it deserved, MAYBE, just MAYBE, focusing on cost of living will work, but what's gonna happen is that he's gonna push some extremely milquetoast reform, not do much, and then the public is gonna turn on the democrats again as people remember just how useless we are, which is why the public voted for Trump in the first place. Once again, the democrats don't have the balls to do what's needed to KEEP the public on their side, the more I think about it.

To go onto issue #2, democracy. Trump threatened it. The democrats got in to put checks and balances in place. This means putting a stop to Trump's worst policies, and holding him and administration officials accountable for crimes. And we're not talking minor crap either. We're talking potential crimes against humanity with the ICE stuff. We're talking ignoring court orders. We're talking trying to concentrate power in the executive branch, fill the government with loyalists, and purge those who dont disagree. We need a full on detrumpification of our government. And we need to hold trump accountable for all of his unsanctioned renovation projects like his ball room and crap. And for the love of god, PROSECUTE THE EPSTEIN FILES CHILD FRICKERS!  Seriously. Again, if we cant actually do anything PRODUCTIVE with the economy, we should at least be looking into this stuff. 

 Gallup

So let's look at a second source. High cost of living, 17%, economy in general, 15%, fuel/oil prices, 7%. Yeah, people want prices down. But again, that means pursuing a progressive agenda. Seriously, that's all we can do. Get rid of tariffs, which could help, stop the war with iran, which we cant do with him in office, rein in datacenters and all this AI crap, and beyond that, we gotta address healthcare, and housing, and income inequality. Again, it requires a new new deal. It requires actually looking at how capitalism functions, and systemic analysis is something we americans seem allergic to because it seems to turn people leftist for some reason (gee, i wonder why...), and because we'd rather be moderate, we're also kinda useless, we focus on ineffective tweaks that wont do anything, and struggle to pass even those. Which is how biden's presidency became the failure it was. Even though he addressed the pre trump inflation, he never actually improved americans' lives. because he didnt have the balls, congress was useless and also didnt have the balls, and yeah, we just didnt do enough. 

 Beyond that, the government/poor leadership is a cause. Well yeah, we're getting rid of the republicans in congress, but we still got trumper dumper in office. What more can we do? Again, check and balance him, impeach him for all the crap he did do, and yeah. Again, beyond cost of living, all we can do is try to keep trump in check and maybe impeach him. Not saying vance is any better even if we did succeed. Republicans are gonna obstruct us even if we do try. But again, i think this moment requires a strong stand against the republican party and the trump administration. Not the meek leadership of bipartisanship and compromise Jeffries seems to be trying to do.

beyond that, immigration seems to be an issue, but that's mostly a conservative thing and a fake issue. if theres anything I learned about republicans is they seem perpetually concerned about issues that dont exist and are horribly ignorant on how things actually work. We shouldnt be like open border or anything, but i think the people who voted against the administration want ICE brought into check. And yeah, again, that involves....more criminal investigations into wrongdoing. Again, if you cant actually achieve worthwhile legislation to bring the cost of living down, we should focus on trump and his administration's abuses to bring checks and balances and accountability back to government. 

Ethics/morals/religious/family decline...oh please. This is just so conservative coded.

Healthcare, yeah, we should do healthcare but will democrats do so? Who knows?

The guardian

 Cost of living, again, government corruption...again (distant second). Then immigration (cringe), then healthcare, then taxes. 

Again, economic issues, and then corruption. 

And on both, we need an aggressive congress willing to fight and leverage its power as much as it can to get things done, even if it means not playing nice with trump. If the democrats are useless again, they're not really gonna be able to succeed much and they'll throw democrats out or just not vote at all. Theres a reason so many people are disaffected. 

Going down a bit, seems like they blame republicans for corruption which means...HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE. Jesus Christ, Jeffries, read the fricking room. 

And then going down more, what do people want us to do to address high prices.

Limit the influence of companies and lobbyists on government decisions. Yeah. Which means not servinf those interests.

Remove tariffs, check.

Limit how much companies can raise prices. Eh, price controls are actually really bad, from an econ perspective i just cant agree with this one. I get the appeal.

laws against unfair price increases. Again, price controls are bad.

Stop companies from adding hidden fees or cancellation policies. Sounds logical. 

Pass laws forcing companies to lower prices. jesus christ, the economic illiteracy of these people. Again, I get it, but this is how you get shortages and bigger issues down the road. 

Cut taxes on businesses, that wont work, they already got all the money. Trickle down doesnt work.

break up too powerful companies to increase competition. Yeah....fair. 

Rude government spending....huh? Wtf does that mean?

Also mentions california passing a billionaires tax. Which is based. Should be combined with a UBI maybe down the road, or some other policy like medicare for all. 

Again, some of this stuff makes sense, but here's the cold hard reality. The government cant just force businesses to lower prices or not raise them, doing so could cause shortages in the long term. Also, if I recall nixon era price controlled kept the economy stable for a few years but contributed to stagflation later on. So that isnt a long term solution. I already discussed my opinions, and heck, lets go further. A lot of what these guys are wanting sounds kinda soviet, like the government controls the economy and how much businesses can charge and stuff. We want markets that work. But we could do a different kind of socialism. Like zohran mamdani wants to do grocery stores that are government owned and remove a lot of those "middle man" type costs that for profit businesses have. That could work. medicare for all could lower healthcare costs. A decent housing policy could produce more affordable homes. Clean energy could reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Long term we might even have super cheap or free energy. 

Again, this goes back to the leftist agenda. If you want to bring costs down, do what the leftists want. Im even willing to hold off on UBI here since im not sure that's the right tool in the toolbox here. But a lot of leftists really do have a lot of policy tools that could help here, and they could work. 

 PBS

 Inflation again. Healthcare costs again. The idea that we're in decline. let's discuss this one. Yes, we are in decline. We're in decline because of president donald trump. We had it all with biden. A global world order and a network of alliances that worked. Relatively decent free trade policies. We were more respected in the world. We were trying to keep russia and china in check. Then trump threw it away with his horrid foreign policy, which alienated our allies, disrupted the work we were doing in containing russia in ukraine, raised the costs of everything, and got us into a pointless war with iran. 

We cant fully remove trump probably until 2028. BUT, yeah, the problem is trump, the problem is the republicans. Flipping congress is the right first step, but we need the presidency as well to actually be able to begin fixing the damage trump did in his first 2 years of his second term here. Again, for now, it comes back to checking him as much as possible and undoing what we can from the congressional side.

 Yougov

 Inflation/prices, jobs and the economy, and then healthcare. Same stuff. Already discussed all that. 

 Pew

So this is more comprehensive. Money in politics, yeah, no crap. Again, we need progressives willing to fight to end citizens' united. Affordability of healthcare. No crap. Medicare for all/public option now. Inflation, already discussed. Budget deficit. I mean, it is an issue, i dont think it's as bad as some say, but republicans tend to contribute most to it with irresponsible fiscal policies like tax cuts on the rich. 

Ability of the 2 parties to work together....how can we? We're never gonna fix this by being bipartisan. because the republicans are uncompromising and the party of bad things. Democrats try to compromise, come off as weak, and dont pass things that help on other priorities. It's why im such a firebrand. If you wanna actually fix crap, you gotta FIGHT THE GOP. They're evil inc. Seriously. And the democrats' problem is trying too much to be like them. 

Drug addiction. Not sure what you want us to do. War on drugs was a failure. We can address it via immigration but we're fighting a losing battle. People get weird about morality when we build addiction centers that help addicts shoot up relatively safely, and they seem to think that people who die to drug overdoses deserve them. So idk what the people want here. Gun violence, more partisan, more dem leaning, and the GOP clearly doesnt wanna help contribute to solutions there. And even im kinda leery on their solutions. Violent crime, everyone seems to live in fear of this stuff. Like, what do you want the government to do here? Lock people up? We tried tough on crime it doesnt work. As I see it if you want to solve it, solve the sociology behind it, which...again, means of progressive agenda. Climate change, only libs care about this and this should be higher but i understand it is abstract. Illegal immigration, GOP seems to live in constant fear of brown people. Terrorism, we got foreign mostly covered. DOmestic, we gotta address our MAGA problem,. seriously. But jeffries doesnt wanna do that. Unemployment. I mean, its 4%, if you wanna do better, we gotta tackle the system of jobs and employment as a whole in ways i always mention like UBI. Until then, we won't be able to solve those issues. And given inflation is the core problem, i find UBI a risky proposition in the current environment. I believe in it, it's my actual #1 issue long term, BUT....i dont think its very palatable atm. 

Conclusion

So what can i conclude? That inflation and corruption are the #1 and #2 issues. And that if you wanna address either of them, we're gonna need to be bold and progressive, not weak, timid, and centrist. We need to hold trump to account, we gotta reverse his disastrous policies, and long term, this moment is calling for a more conventional liberal/leftist new deal. Not my UBI centric one necessarily (although UBI is essential to solve income inequality IMO), but the more bernie sanders leftist type. With that said, democrats need bold leadership that will fight for things. They dont want weak hakeem jeffries type leadership where we dont do anything and the tell the public we gotta vote for them or we get trump again. You see this massive coalition we got? Even if a lot of these guys are centrists, be like talarico. be progressive but code as moderate. Seriously. I know i aint even a huge talarico guy, but looking at him compared to the other red state moderates we elected, talarico IS unique. He does this thing where he takes left wing policy...and then he frames it in ways conservatives can understand. Like hes more successful at messaging to those people than a secular, northern firebrand like me. I might be smart with politics, but im also too honest, and have values that many americans cant relate to. I might be right, but i suck at selling my ideas in ways that conservatives can understand. Talarico seems able to bridge the gap better.

With that said, I hope the fudge the democrats understand that what we need is bold, new leadership. not the same third way bullcrap that got trump elected in the first place. Americans are pissed. Americans want change. And they want this new democratic party to DO something. 

And even if we cant pass anything, we should try, and when that fails, yeah, we should investigate trump. I dont think these guys realize how ANGRY your median voter is about the situation. They want the administration held accountable for abuses. They dont want us to just let them off the hook in the name of bipartisanship. Everyone says they want bipartisanship, but no one actually does. It's like one of those things a lot of people pretend to like, but no one likes. Especially when the left and right have very different and fundamentally incompatible visions for the country. 

I aint saying the left has to emulate me exactly. We know my views and im giving a lot of concessions and credit to other wings of the party and their policies. We probably should pursue a more conventional progressive agenda, NOT UBI. We should probably frame things for this new democratic majority where this stuff CODES more conservatively without it actually being conservative. Again, my own politics sometimes arent right for the moment, and I feel like we gotta be adaptable. If we wanna beat trump and conservatism for good though, we gotta be bold and aggressive. The timid leadership of the jeffries and schumer types is probably gonna doom us to being completely ineffective, losing the trust of the people, and then we repeat 2024 again. Do you really want to do that? I sure dont. 

Anyway, things to think about going into 2028. Im pretty open minded this time. I like Yang, again, not sure he's right for the moment. Like AOC policy wise, but her numbers are bad. Harris and Newsom have baggage. Buttigieg is gonna be weak. I really dont know who the nominee should be and who can tick all of the boxes and unite the party behind a bold agenda. But what I know is this, we gotta come out swinging. We act weak and bipartisan and compromising and we dont pass anything worth a crap, the public will get mad, and we're gonna lose and hand the government back over to the same nutcases we just got rid of. The people giveth, the people taketh away. Dont waste this opportunity.  

It's not up to liberals and progressives to comfort conservatives in this moment

 So, on one forum I'm on, I've seen several posts from conservatives asking us to comfort them and confirm that things aren't going to be as bad as they think it's gonna be. Now, to be fair, some of what these people genuinely believe about the left is unhinged. They think we're pro open borders, that we want to islamify society, and weird crap like that. At least as far as the weirdo great replacement theory stuff, no, most if not all of us DO NOT want to do that, you're buying into crazed conspiracy theories. 

At the same time, after being told "your body my choice" and crap by Nick Fuentes after the 2024 election, and seeing MAGA do THAT kind of victory lap, I'm not feeling very charitable here. I'm not quite going to go in the kyle Kulinski direction of telling you we're gonna do "gay sharia", but I will say this: we want people who govern like liberals, and you guys HATE liberals. You guys have morality that is so F-ed up in the head that you look at the idea of a better world and you're like 'this is intolerable" and you have been cheering for things that are just intolerable to the rest of us. And that's the thing, our mentality at this point is 'your boos mean nothing, we've seen what makes you cheer", with the cheering on being the current administration. And even now, the die hards among you are saying you didnt go far ENOUGH, and that if you went MORE extreme, this wouldnt have happened. maybe it wouldn't, but that would only be because going further would mean destroying democracy altogether.

which brings me to another complain. "Tell me you're not gonna turn us into a one party state and destroy the constitution." THAT'S WHAT YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN DOING WITH ALL OF YOUR UNITARY EXECUTIVE THEORY AND PROJECT 2025 CRAP. Ya know what? Im genuinely surprised Trump is accepting the election results. We on the left literally thought the dude was gonna do a coup to try to overturn the results. We're dead serious. This is the guy who had his followers storm the capitol and then pardoned them all when he got reelected. You realize that to us this guy comes off as a fascist, right? So dont give me the "omg the left wants a dictatorship" crap. At best, when I mean I want a one party state, I mean i want a realignment where we BTFO you guys by FDR numbers, and even then, such an arrangement isnt permanent. We're not ending democracy, you just can't win any more because you're so unpopular and have to shift to the center to win again. And hopefully, that's what's happening now. 

But with that said, for us, this may be our new "morning in America" moment. 2026 might be the new 1930 or 1978, with 2028 being the new 1932 or 1980. And you know what? We want THAT to happen. Again, not through rejecting democracy, but simply by rejecting MAGA and the vision for America that the republican party offers again and again. The jury is still out on whether democrats can sustain their wins over a few election cycles here, but some are treating these election results as possible realignment numbers. Quite frankly, Im skeptical about the democrats sticking the landing, but we will see. 

Either way, we owe you nothing. The public rejected your vision for America, and I hope that democrats have the balls to enact ours. So yeah, except "bigger government" as we pass more labor regulations like the minimum wage, hopefully tackle issues like healthcare, housing, and education. Hopefully we're even start looking into UBI, although I aint holding my breath on that one yet. But just as your Ronald Reagan said government is the problem and the free market is the solution, we say, no the free market is the problem and government is the solution! This doesn't mean we want "communism" either. Even the scary DSA are mostly just New Deal liberals or social democrats in practice with their policies, with only a tiny handful of people wanting actual communism. 

On social issues, we dont want the islamification or america or to get rid of all the white people. We just dont want the world to revolve around white christians any more. Not having cultural hegemony over the country doesn't mean that we want to persecute you or displace you. It means that we want a pluralistic society in which all can live as they want without harming others. It's just that your side is so authoritarian that if you cant just push your views on the rest of us, you act like we're persecuting you. We're not. We just want people who dont think like you to have the same freedoms as you do. And you're here screaming that this is intolerable for some reason.

And on foreign policy, we're not weak, we're not gonna give in to Russia and China, that's what YOURE doing with rejecting NATO and the post WWII international order. You guys have the mentality of cave men. you think if you show "strength" that the rest of the world will respect you. But think about this in your interpersonal life. Imagine punching someone in the face because you think they'll punch you in the face at some point in the distant future. That's what your stupid wars with Iran and Iraq are like. And then you're like "LOOK HES TRYING TO PUNCH US IN THE FACE" after you hit them first. Yeah, because you literally started a fight. We liberals aren't weak. We're just smarter than you. And that's what a lot of it really comes down to.

As I said, a lot of liberals, at least the most moderate of them, are just intelligent conservatives. They actually have a lot of the same values that you claim, and in the modern era, as you guys drift into authoritarianism, represent the values you claim to support better than you ever could. As I said, there are three forces in politics; progressives, conservatives, and regressives. The republican party isnt made up of actual conservatives, but regressives. Moderate liberals are just the real conservatives, and those of us on the left are progressives. And maybe you dont like us progressives and our visions, that's fine. I find your vision for this country to be hellish and so do even a lot of the actual conservatives, so...yeah, that's why you lost. I dont know where the democratic party will go next. There's been a fight within the democratic party between a progressive left and a centrist establishment, with the centrist establishment being dominant. The progressive left is gaining ground, but in order to govern effectively, we'll likely have the centrists moderating us. if anything should give you solace, it's that. Our system works, checks and balances work, and no one faction, not even your MAGA, despite how much it has tried in the past two years, seems able to fully break it. But at the same time, we aren't going to govern according to your principles. We are going to try to make peoples' lives better and implement ideas that you hate. And you know what, as far as you hating them goes? Tough crap. Again, we just went through two years of hell where you guys did your darndest to implement your agenda, and now you want assurances we're not gonna implement ours? Screw you. I hope we implement most of our ideas. I hope that they make everyones' lives better. And if you think that this new reality is going to be hellish and intolerable, well, tough luck. Again, your boos mean nothing, we've seen what makes you cheer. Try not sucking and actually winning an election next time. And if you can't, because your vision quite frankly sucks and the only thing propelling you into office is the fact that our side often sucks too, well, that's on you, do better. Find something to offer the people and win them over. And for the love of god, drop the fascism crap. The past two years have actually been the scariest in my lifetime politically. And Im elated to see that the public actually agrees. You lost for a reason, learn from that and do better. until then, we're gonna do what we liberals do, for better or for worse.

All I know is this, whatever we do, you'll likely survive and likely continue to live a life of relative comfort no matter what we do. You probably wont even notice many of the changes made, because quite frankly, most wont affect you. Youll complain and moan anyway, and we'll just look at you like oh noes, poor you while rolling our eyes. And then you'll vote against us the next election like you always do.  

Why there is no good conservatism

 So....I already see the rats scrambling to escape the sinking ship, and discussing the idea of where the GOP should go next. And while some MAGAts are basically saying that the problem was they weren't extreme enough, the most rational conservatives are saying that the answer is for the party to moderate and go back to its roots, focused on constitutionalism, limited government, etc. And....I'm here to explain why that won't work, and why there isn't good conservatism. My views are nothing new if you've been following me for a while, but I really wanna write this one out while the conservatives are still thinking about this stuff.

We've been here before...

 The current political environment reminds me of the republican party in 2006 and 2008. They were looking to jump ship from Bush's neoconservatism, and thought that some "going back to the roots" mindset was the path forward. However, rather than being a moderation, it was a radicalization, and led to the tea party. And the tea party....led to me abandoning conservatism for good. 

And once again, I'll say why. I realized it wasn't just the implementation of conservatism that was bad, it was the whole ideology. There isn't a good version of it. Quite frankly, the "good" version of conservatism is the centrist wing of the democratic party. But as far as the actual "conservative" movement goes, you cant renovate or rehabilitate it, it's just bad. And while, yes, going back to the tea party seems like an improvement after a decade of MAGA, remember, the failures of those previous brands of conservatism are what led to MAGA in the first place. With that said, I wanna discuss WHY conservatism is bad.

Explaining conservatism

 The modern iteration conservatism goes back to Reagan, although you could arguably go back to Goldwater, or right libertarian thinkers like Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, etc. It's a mix of religious reverence for the constitution, or alternatively christian nationalism on social issues, small government on economics, and on foreign policy it bounces back between "america first" and being a psychotic neocon warmonger. 

On social issues, again, various strains. Some are super reverent of the constitution. And that's fine...in moderation. We liberals also have our own reverence toward it but we're a bit less...zealous about it. We like liberal democracy, separation of powers, but conservatives seem to respect the "originalist" version of 1789 and its interpretations and that's just...dated. Here's the problem with any legal code. if we stick to those codes for forever, no progress is ever made. And life never gets better. Biblical christians believe we should stick to a code from 2000+ years ago in the bible. The constitution was written 200 years ago. Laws are a snapshot at that point of time of where society is. As we become more distant from the events in which they were written, the more out of step with the problems of the modern era they become. And that's a problem. While we liberals support the spirit of the constitution, but are willing to be adaptable with it, conservatives take things more literally and care more about the letter of the law uncritically. Which just...doesnt allow us to address modern issues. They throw out and ignore all case law that doesnt supprot their "originalist" interpretation of these ideas. Like, on the left, we support the idea of the "living constitution", we want ideas to evolve over time. On their side of the aisle, it's 1789 forever, even if it makes zero sense. 

You also got a lot of religious conservatives. And these guys want to adapt the values of the bible and force them on the rest of us. These guys are the backbone of the modern conservative movement, and that movement will implode if not for them. But if you take their ideas literally, you get...the same christian nationalism and project 2025 crap is doing now. You get people trying to impose christianity on the rest of us. While we secular progressives are more live and let live in terms of religion, support separation of church and state, and support religious tolerance, these guys just wanna impose their views on the rest of us and are authoritarian. And quite frankly, that's how we got to trump anyway. These zealots took over the government and because they wanted to force the rest of us to live according to their values, they decided to impose that stuff on us legally. And trumpism...is just the logical outcome of that. You cant go back to some pre trump version like it's better, as I learned during the tea party era, it's all bad, it's all horrible governance. If anything, I kinda went in a liberal direction BECAUSE of my reverence for separation of church and state and not having the government regulate stuff it clearly sucks at. Again, it's really about the spirit of the law and the constitution rather than the letter. Liberals and progressives also support American constitutional values. We just tend to take the spirit of them and adapt them to the times rather being a stickler for the letter of the law and trying to impose weird outdated interpretations of things on people, or to allow for weird interpretations that allow religious authoritarians to push religion on people.

On economics. Here's the problem with small government cosnervatism. It doesnt work well for us. You do trickle down economics, as I've discussed, you get a world where the rich people have all the money, they're the "job creators", and the rest of us are just expected to work for them and basically be their slave. The liberal regulatory state literally developed to curb the problems with this system, and conservatives have been on the war path believing if only we deregulate everything, cut all the safety nets, cut all the taxes, and let the free market as they envision it work, that we'll create the best possible outcome for people. But what we really get is hell on earth for most people. The wealthy are incentivized to work people as hard as possible while paying them as little as possible. And that's why income inequality is so high and why poverty and economic scarcity continues to exist even though we keep growing infinitely. It doesnt work for the people. it cant work, and if the people are smart, they'd reject it like I did. There is no good version of conservatism here. The closest thing is the economic moderation of centrist liberals who like SOME basic regulation and safety nets, while also being largely pro market. Not everyone on the left is pro DSA. Hell even Im leery of the DSA at times and often have a more pro market ideology than them in my own way. Either way, there is no version of small government conservatism that works. Sure, you might not get dumb### Trump with his tariffs or the iran war making gas $5 a gallon, but you also won't get a recipe for shared prosperity. it just leads to gilded age economics.

On foreign policy, look, the American conservative movement has oscillated wildly between being isolationist and "America first" while also being imperialist since the 90s. They opposed the UN and Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the 90s, only to turn into neocons in the 2000s. Trumpism made them more isolationist to the point of withdrawing from alliances in the 2010s, but then in the 2020s, they suddenly invade Iran? make it make sense. The point is, these two ideologies are linked. It's nationalism and this idea that the best way to make america safe is peace through strength. We give a middle finger to our allies, do what we want, and then we decided to invade an enemy who we dont like because of some made of pretext involving them being a threat to us. And then we're in a quagmire. Then we say were america first, and wanna be left alone and spend our money at home, but then we go nuts and wanna attack another country again because we perceieve them as a threat. And it's just insanity. Neither one of these extremes works. What does work is creating an international order in our image like we did, actively working with allies as security partners against mutual threats, and keeping the world safe and running around our ideologies. Republicans have this mentality that if only we hit our enemies with a stick they'll learn to respect us or something, they dont. It just makes us look weak. That's the cave man's mentality. The smart modern person's mentality is to use institutions and relationships and to only leverage military force when absolutely necessary. Keep in mind, we liberals arent super anti war hippies. Like, those are leftists, an entirely different animal. Most liberals want similar things as conservatives, we just have the smarter way of doing it.

Conclusion

With that said, I come back to my original statement, there's no good conservatism. The "good conservatism" is just centrist liberalism. They want the same things as conservatives, they're just smarter and more nuanced about it. But as far as the conservatives rediscovering their ideology and going back to the roots, yeah, you guys did that before, it was called the tea party, it sucked. The fact is, the modern conservative movement is just played out. Moderating is desirable, but a proper moderation will just make you centrist liberals. Sticking to those values in any purist form is gonna suck, because there is no good iteration of those values. They suck. Abandon them. become a liberal like I did. Seriously. Just my take on the situation. 

What 2028 will look like if people vote like 2026

 So, I just came up with a thought experiment. What will happen if people vote in 2028 like they did in 2026? What will the electoral college map look like? I thought about it for a while, looked at the results, and came up with this monstrosity of a map. 

 This is what the current senatorial/gubernatorial results will look like if imposed on the 2028 presidential electoral map. I prioritized senate data here since that's federal, but if none was available, i went with the gubernatorial results, and if there werent any of either, i just went with the default designation. Yeah. Landslide. This is why these 2026 results are being treated like an electoral earthquake. This is what the map would look like. And this is 1/5/10 margins btw (using that since I plan to post these elsewhere). 

Only result that seems off is vermont, but they didnt have a senate race and they elected a republican governor, so...

Otherwise, yeah. That's what the current political environment looks like. That's how many people Trump pissed off. it's bonkers. But yeah. That's where we are. 

WTF just happened? (2026 edition)

 So...now that the results are in...mostly...kinda, time to actually discuss them. 

How election night went

 I'm not gonna do a full hour by hour breakdown like I did in 2024, this night was VERY straightforward. I used Florida to gauge the mood of the country like I always do. It's the earliest state that has results as they close early and count fast. The par was R+6, as per my model:

 Basically, if the republicans win by 6, the rest of the country performs on par with this model. If we got something like R+8-9, dems were in for a rough night. If we got something like R+2....we're in for one heck of a good night. Early on, we were seeing Angie Nixon tying Ashley Moody. That's INSANE. I'm just thinking, that can't be right, that's D+6. That means the rest of the map looks something like this:

 I mean, can we just appreciate how nuts that is?

Of course, I didnt wanna count chickens before they hatch, urban vote could come in before the rural vote, that sorta thing. I mean, we were also looking at like D+15 in Georgia at this point and I'm just thinking, no, this is too good, let's wait for it to even up a bit.

It didnt even up, but we were left with Moody beating Nixon by about...2. So basically, D+4. This was the benchmark for the rest of the night:

 And it largely seemed to follow it. South carolina closed earlyish and was called for Andrews pretty early. WHAT? THIS IS NUTS! And it just kept going on like that, all night. Admittedly, not all states quite lived up to this model. Louisana I had very little polling data and was using NYT for that, but the republican only won by 2 there. Ohio performed closer to par. El Sayed went on for quite a long time, and I was worried until I realized he was winning and detroit didnt even come in yet. We lost Nebraska. But everything else seemed to very quickly go blue as per this model. Talarico won by like double digits. Like, WHAT?!

As things stand, its 54-44 with 2 races too close to call. Those two races are Alaska where Peltola is performing closer to model expectations and it's a tossup right now, and Mississippi, which is a tossup in a D+4 scenario. And yeah, we got a D+4 scenario overall even if some states didn't exactly track perfectly onto it.

Governor races, once again, on par with or exceeding expectations mostly. House races, I got a lot wrong as per my model (I did the best I could with limited data), but yeah, the overall number seemed to track, again, with a D+4-6 scenario, with the democrats expected to get in the ballpark of 255 seats to the republicans' 180. 

So yeah, this was a CRUSHING victory for the democrats. But what exactly happened?

Trump happened

When one thinks about it rationally, why WOULDN'T we see a landslide like this? if the public were rational they'd send him such a strong message that the republicans would never be electable again until around 2040. Ya know, we're talking party realignment numbers. Sadly, and this is why my expectations were more conservative, I've found the intelligence level of the median voter to be...lacking. It's like there's a certain segment of the population where Trump could kick them in the teeth and they'd be like "thank you, can i have another?" with blood and teeth all over the sidewalk. But Trump REALLY screwed the pooch with this one.

While we can go on about his many constitutional and human rights abuses, ICE patrolling city streets and shooting people in the face, the christian nationalism, that whole epstein thing, and his his fixation on his ballroom, reflecting pool and stupid arch,, I think the big thing is a lot more straightforward: it's the economy stupid!

Trump was elected after a period of inflation under Biden. He was supposed to bring the cost of living down in an era of greedflation, and he campaigned primarily on bringing back the normalcy of the pre COVID era. Instead, he made things worse. His tariff policy was psychotic and ill advised, and in an era of "full employment" only made things more expensive and slowed down economic growth. And then he did the worst thing he could have done: he invaded Iran. And iran responded by closing the strait of hormuz, raising gas to $4.50 a gallon or even higher in some places! This "very stable genius" is causing a very unstable economy. And if there's anything people should learn from history, it's that you don't F with Americans' pocketbooks. The last time this happened, Jimmy Carter was in office, he told people to wear sweaters and turn the heat down, and the public rewarded him by voting for Reagan so hard it caused the final collapse of the New Deal coalition. That's why I make the analogue of republicans possibly being in the dog house until 2040. Because he made America the 1970s again in all the worst ways that you definitely don't want to do if you're running for office. And as such, the public punished Trump harshly for this, giving this blue tsunami to democrats.

Striking down parts of the voting rights act happened

I think a factor that really went under our radar until I saw the results and looked at where these blue votes are coming from is the fact that the republicans tried to gerrymander black voting power out of existence caused the black vote in places like South Carolina and Mississippi to skyrocket to near presidential election levels. They didn't take too kindly to that. And a lot of otherwise rural districts in states like that went hard blue. Don't F with the black vote, they will F you up electorally, and the republicans stirred the hornets nest with that one. 

A warning against "mandates"

While this is a political earthquake that can signal a potential political realignment into the seventh party system, I would be skeptical at this time to inject any ideological mandate into the results. Quite frankly, I think it's best to interpret them this way. The country voted AGAINST Trump and the republicans. I don't think many of them voted FOR democrats. I don't think that progressives have a mandate from heaven to pass UBI and universal healthcare. If anything, I kinda feel like progressive underperformed relative to the rest of the blue wave. The biggest victories were actually among moderate candidates in places like Texas, South Carolina, and Kansas. Northern states performed more on par with my model, with a lot of those states taking longer to call. To be fair, looking at the results now, a day later, results exceeded my model there too, but only by about D+2, rather than D+4. The point is, the democratic coalition right now IS a big tent, with a lot of these new members being a lot more moderate than we are here on this blog. I don't think we're gonna get medicare for all or UBI out of this. I think trying to push such things might actually backfire on us hard. I think what the public as a whole wants is a return to normalcy and sane governance. I do think that the public won't be happy with it for long, and I think that ultimately, they will want the democrats to do something to address the economic crises of the past 20 years, BUT, they don't have a solid idea of what that is, what the problems are, etc. And even if we have the answers here, the public isn't always on the same wavelength as I am. 

So I'd advise against interpreting this as a sign that we should definitely try to force through a relatively extreme agenda now. I do think left wing support is growing within the democratic party, but this cycle was ultimately more about getting Trump out, establishing checks and balances, and going back to some semblance of normal. We will have to see how the 2028 election cycle goes for us to get a better idea of the ultimate direction the public wants. 

Thankfully, we don't really need to do much right now. Trump is still president. He's the big bottleneck. And despite him (surprisingly) accepting the results and calling for working together with democrats, I expect divided government, constant shutdowns over budgets, and maybe an impeachment process that never goes anywhere because despite how great tonight is, we don't have the needed supermajority in the senate to the topic of the day. Ya know? The point is, we cant really inject our own ideas and ideology on this election, as i dont think even the public has any idea what they want. They just know it's not whatever the past two years have been. 

Discussing local politics

As expected, Josh shapiro dominated the governor race in Pennsylvania. We also got a legislative trifecta for the first time in thirty years, meaning perhaps conservative obstruction has finally come to an end and we can pass some decent legislation. I wont set my standards insanely high here, but a higher minimum wage (say, $15), codifying abortion protections, and some restrictions against datacenters would be a nice start. Again, I'm being open minded this time. I understand that this coalition isn't necessarily reflecting my exact politics, and can't or won't do everything I want it to do, but if we get some decent progress out of this, I'll be happy. 

Conclusion

 This was a very good night for democrats. It wasn't a blue wave, it was a blue tsunami. Heck, it might not even be fair to call it a tsunami, it's more a blue 'rumbling' to use an attack on titan term. Like, seriously, this was a republican rout of apocalyptic proportions, and could possibly signal the end of the current conservative dominated era of US politics. I'm not kidding. Ultimately, it depends on what the democrats do. With that said, I wanna give the democrats a warning. Just as the people giveth, the people taketh away. They need to do SOMETHING with this. Im not sure they can now. If anything I expect the anti republican attitudes to continue into 2028. But in 2028, if this mid term is any indication, we WILL win, and then we will have to govern. And most elections of the modern era are ultimately a referendum on the current party in power and their governance. If the democrats rise to the challenges of the times and succeed, the future will be theirs. If they fail, they will be booted out of office and the republicans will win again. If anything, given my dismal takes on the future of the republican party, i think the only thing that can save them at this point is the democrats failing to BUILD a mandate and KEEP the public on their side. If they dont do that, the mistakes of the trump era from 2016 through 2024 will repeat, and we'll be in the dog house again from 2030 onward. And the republican party might be even WORSE. There's a nonzero possibility the post trump republican party gets taken over by groypers or the dark enlightenment tech bro class and we'll have to deal with a threat even worse than MAGA. MAGA is fronting a lot of evil crap behind it, BUT that evil crap doesnt disappear just because we win a single election. It's gonna take a good 12 years of constant losses for them to get the message that they need to shape up for real. Otherwise, they'll come back and keep pulling the same crap, and the same crappy cycle will continue. Just a warning. Govern well, and you'll be rewarded. Ignore your voters, take them for granted, or go in some insular direction that makes them hate you and you'll be back out on your butts again. 

And yeah, that's my initial take at least. I'll probably discuss more stuff over the next month or so. It's still too early to process everything and really sift through it all. This is just my initial opinion.  

The Daily Show viewer's guide to elections

 Ok, so Jon Stewart gave a rather cringe inducing take on polls, which basically seemed to lampoon experts for not knowing anything because they can't be certain, and how we can't know what state it will come down to. So I figured I'd do a really dumbed down version of my senate forecast for these kinds of people. 

Why can't we know for sure what the results will be before hand?

 Pollsters operate on statistical probability, not dualistic certainty. I know most Americans are woefully ignorant of statistics (hence why I tend to have more conservative takes on, say, gambling than I otherwise would), and epistemology in general, so I'll dumb it down. Polls attempt to simulate the actual electorate that will vote. However, because it's impossible to get these simulations perfect, they're more approximations. Polls have a margin of error to them. Kinda like the weather forecast. If a forecast says 70% chance of rain and then it doesnt rain, you cant blame them because 1/3 times, it WONT rain. Good polls are typically 95% certain within 3-4 points. I assume 4 within my statistical model, where I take polling averages and convert these to probabilities. However, this 4 point margin applies to both candidates, meaning that the results can be off by as much as 8.

But if the polls can be off as much as 8, how can we know anything?

 That's the thing, we can't KNOW. Something the typical person needs to get over, if they really want to think on a high level, is the fact that almost nothing is CERTAIN. A lot of weak minded people seem to crave certainty. It's what drives religious thinking. "Science cant know everything 100% and it changes its mind so I'm gonna trust the Bible." Yeah, I've been there. I know that's what they say. So let's dispense with knowing anything with 100% certainty.

Still, we can know a lot. We can know that some states like Tennessee will have such high republican margins that they CANT flip to the democrats. Same with say, Massachusetts on the democratic side. But when races start getting within 8 points, the probabilities can change drastically. 

So sell it to me straight, what are the odds of a democratic senate win?

 76% as per my model.

What state will it all come down to?

If I had to choose, I'd probably say Ohio. However, that is an oversimplification. While I'm not gonna say the odds are high that it will all come down to Michigan or South Carolina or something, the most impactful races that ultimately will decide the control of the senate are Kansas, Maine, Ohio, Texas, Alaska, and Iowa.

For each side, the "path to the white house" is the following:

Republicans: 40 safe seats -> Arkansas (41) -> Florida (42) -> Mississippi (43) -> Nebraska (44) -> South Carolina (45) -> Louisana (46) -> Iowa (47) -> Alaska (48) -> Texas (49) -> Ohio (50) -> Maine (51)

Democrats: 45 safe seats -> New Hampshire (46) -> Michigan (47) -> Minnesota (48) -> Kansas (49) -> Maine (50) -> Ohio (51)

 Do the states have go in that order?

 No, but the odds are they probably will. Generally speaking, if one side deviates from the polls, we will likely see nationwide trends showing other states doing the same thing. This is why I assume a "wave" model of elections where I tend to assume that the republicans/democrats over/underperform on the national environment. However, it is very possible for these states to not all follow these trends exactly. You might, for example, see the democrats get Texas but republicans get Ohio.

With that said, all in all, to fine tune the most consequential races, I'll say it's typically the light blue ones above, most notably Texas, Ohio, and Maine. I'd also throw Kansas into that category too given 4.1 isnt that much different than 3.6 and I kind of draw the line between lean D and likely D arbitrarily. Those are the ones that will likely decide control of the senate. 

Why does it have to be this complicated?

 Because life is complicated. Once again, we can't assume perfect certainty for much of anything. But yeah, if you want the really dumbed down version to give you more certainty, democrats have a 76% chance of winning the senate, republicans an 18% chance. The remainder is a 6% probability of a 50-50 tie, in which JD Vance, the vice president, will decide the tie breaker vote. 

If you want to know what races to focus on most, I'd say Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Texas are probably the most impactful. Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Alaska also are probably worth watching, although if it comes down to the democrats losing Minnesota and Michigan they're probably having a bad night, and if it comes down to Iowa and Alaska, they're having a good night. The model statistically favors the democrats to have a good night.

What about all those red states?

 If we account for the "wave" model of elections I mentioned above, if democrats start taking the pinker and redder states in my model, they're having a REALLY good night and it's a blowout for the democrats. It can happen. It actually is just as likely for the democrats to take south carolina as it is for the democrats' lock on the senate to actually be contested in a serious way. I'd ignore them. If they actually come into play, you can rest assured it's a democratic landslide. The hairy situation we gotta look out for is the republicans overperforming by a margin of, say, 2-3 points. As I discussed a few weeks ago, that's when election night turns into a chaotic mess where we don't know who wins. 

And if that happens, people will say the polls are "wrong" even though the statistics accounts for it. It has a 1 in 4 chance of happening. 

I still don't understand probability

I cant really help too much with that. I know a lot of Americans dont understand it very well, but imagine this. If I predicted 4 elections and had a 75% certainty level for each of them, I'd probably get 3 right and 1 wrong. Or think of it like gambling, horse racing, etc. A die has 6 sides. The odds of any one side coming up is 1 in 6, a 17% chance. The odds of picking any one card out of a deck is 1 in 52, around 2%. The odds of a roulette wheel hitting any individual number is 1 in 38, give the two 0s exist. It's best to think about it like that. The best I can do is tell you to learn statistics. Maybe take an online course on youtube talking about it. Heck, they probably got tutorials explaining polling better than this would.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a decent rebuttal to the daily show seemingly playing into peoples ignorance about how polls are wrong, how we cant trust them, and how we dont know what races to focus on. My own model attempts to map out the election in a relatively easy format showing the odds, the probabilities of individual states, and even mapping out each side's most likely path to victory (democrats from top down, republicans from bottom up). I'd just go by that. Focus on the bolded stuff if you really dont understand it. Maybe ignore the chart side and focus on the map. That should dumb it down further.

But yeah, to dumb it down as much as possible, democrats probably take the senate. Ohio is probably the deciding state although kansas, maine, and texas are also important to watch here. And yeah. That's the really dumbed down approach to it that ended up way longer than it should be.  

Election Update: 11/2-3/26 FINAL

 So....I think the dust has finally settled on the predictions, I'm not sure, if not, I'll keep amending this post, but at this point, i think the predictions are in where I feel semi safe in posting them. 

Senate

 The odds for the senate went really bonkers for democrats in the past 24-48 hours. It's mental how much things have shifted, but at this point, I have to conclude that YES, the energy is on the side of the democrats. Republicans seem completely demoralized, and democrats are extremely motivated to turn out. This is leading to a blue tsunami and a national environment I haven't seen since my 2006-2008 days as a former republican. They seem completely doomer pilled by this point, and for good reason. What's the reason for this? Well, if we go by the trend chart, I think the answer is clear, the fatal blunder of the republicans was Trump's war in iran and the gas prices. 

 Now, in all fairness, data was sparse before May, but i still had SOME polling data that was significantly more in favor of the republicans, like 4-5 points or so in swing states, but things started swinging for democrats HARD come late april/early may, and the environment remained D favored for the rest of the election cycle. 

As we enter the final day of the election season, with election day itself being tomorrow, the republicans' chances of holding the senate have plummetted to a mere 18%, with the democrats having a 76% chance of taking the chamber. Back in 2025, I outlined a map in which I showed the senate to be a long shot, but the republicans screwed up so hard that not only are the democrats favored to win the senate, but their path to victory is closing. They would need not just everything in their column, but they'd need to keep Alaska, which they very well might, but then they'd face an extremely steep uphill battle to keep Texas, Ohio, and Maine. The odds of them doing this is, again, 18%. It can happen, and I don't think we should be overconfident, but we're past the point where a R+1.5 overperformance, or even a R+2-2.5 one will do it. They'd need to overperform closer to 3 just to keep a tie, and they'd need to overperform closer to 4 to keep the senate outright. I don't think it's happening, even if the republicans overperform. Meanwhile if democrats overperform, they'll take Iowa, and then be digging into states that in a normal election year should NEVER be even close to going blue. We got Louisana, South Carolina, Nebraska, and Mississippi up for grabs, assuming a ceiling of a 4 point overperformance in the democrats' direction. It's nuts. 

Still, I'm going to go with the forecast to the letter here, assuming a 54-46D outcome, with a 76% chance the democrats take the chamber. (Yes Im assuming Iowa goes D). 

House

So...here's the FULL house forecast chart:

See why I tend to abridge it? Here's the TLDR version:

And here's the map to go along with it (note: some coloring might be off, congressional house maps are a nightmare to fill out and I had to make the margins 2/5/10 for a contest when I'd normally make them 1/4/8). 

 

Basically, if you thought the senate was bad for republicans, the GOP is especially screwed on the house. I predict a 98% chance the democrats will take control of the chamber, with the most likely outcome being a 240-195D map. This is apocalyptic for republicans in the current environment. 

If people wonder about the fundamentals only forecast, that one is at 237-198D with a 99.5% chance democrats win. Once again, it's more certain but it has a slightly lower margin of victory. It will be interesting to see which model actually performs better, but the official one is the polling one. 

 Governors

 

Even the governors races have shifted hard left with Georgia and Kansas now in the D column. Overall, it's predicted we'll have 29 governors being democrats and 21 being republicans. And yes, I'm assuming Oregon goes blue here, despite it being a 50-50 tossup on my model. 

Conclusion

All in all, the model predicts a blue wave. However, as we know, these are statistical models that translate polling averages from RCP into actual odds, and as we know, the results are never exact. We could see these models be WAY too bullish for democrats where republicans overperform relative to them. This could lead to a relatively messy election night like 2016, 2020, and 2024. However, given its a midterm, and the republicans are REALLY in the dog house, if anything, I think democrats might overperform even this. I don't know. The only race I feel relatively safe calling contrary to my model is maybe Iowa. At a 49% chance of going democrat, yeah, that could easily flip. It is a tossup. Even then, I'm gonna let the model speak for itself. Same with races like Kansas and Georgia in the governors. They WERE lean R until the last minute. I kinda think RCP changed the averages to reflect what THEY think will happen, as they were around R+1.5 until today. Still, who knows? Again, it's possible everything is so bullish on democrats that it ends up being right. Idk. I'll just let the model do the talking and recognize that these models are fallible and can change. 

But yeah, that's my predictions for 2026. These predictions are FINAL unless RCP changes their averages yet again, but I think they already did all that. I kinda went away for a few hours this evening and let them cook and yeah, this is the result. So I'll go by what they say, but yeah. 

BLUE WAVE, BABY! WOO!!!! 

EDIT: Had to update some charts because RCP made last minute changes to some of their averages.