We officially retained the senate!

 So, Mark Kelly won Arizona, and Catherine Cortez Masto won Nevada. That means we officially have 50 seats in the senate, regardless of what happens in Georgia or not. I was pretty sure, given the other results, that Kelly would win Arizona, but I wasn't sure about Nevada. Looked like it would come down to the wire, given the polling had going red by roughly the same margin as Wisconsin in my predictions. And it did. While Kelly won by a healthy 5.7 point margin, implying like many other states, that the polling was off (6 points in this case), Cortez Masto only won by 0.5%. Democrats overperform again!

Anyway, this pretty much shows that the republican attempt to take over the senate is a total rout at this point. Even if they win Georgia, it doesn't matter. With that, I'm not sure what will happen. If I HAD to guess based on the results of the first round, I think a lot of the libertarians will go for Walker, but who knows? Democrats are doing good and if Walker does win, democrats will have gained ground in the senate, effectively defending all of their states and flipping Pennsylvania. House control is still up for grabs, but I honestly don't see democrats' chances good there. Still, given 538 had like a 28% chance and RCP basically gave them effectively 0%, I considered the house a foregone conclusion. If the republicans DO win it, I don't expect it to be by much. We're talking a 222-213 margin or something like that (that's my best attempt to guess right now). And people question if the republicans can even effectively leverage their control with those margins. I was watching stuff saying that previous speakers struggled to do it with 230-240. But with a margin like this, any defection or anyone not being present for a vote could change the balance of power on some votes.

So democrats are still likely losing the house. But, again, all things considered, this was just about the best possible REALISTIC outcome for them.

The demographic time bomb that may end the republican party has we know it

 So, another common theme that has come out of this election is that young people broke HARD for the democrats, to the point that the republicans are shaken to their core. Many are calling for raising the voting age and making it harder for the GOP to vote. The more sane ones seem to have the same despair in their analysis of the 2022 election that I noticed before Trump came around in 2016. 

One thing I have noticed over the past decade, is that the GOP has a young person problem. While gen Xers and Boomers and Silents all like the GOP and moderate democratic politics, millennials and zoomers...don't. Many have pointed out this young person problem, with some fearing that the party might be screwed demographically into the future as the GOP does nothing for young people and their problems.

And as a relatively young person, I have to generally agree. It seems clear those above and below 45 think differently. They are in two very different generations. The older people grew up in a world in which the cold war was raging on, there was the rise of conservatism from the 1960s into the 1980s, and liberals ended up getting beaten down and became more moderate in response. There was a very anti liberal and anti communist slant, which drove the country to the right, and made conservative politics make sense. But....for those of us under 45...the world is very different. We grew up largely after the cold war, with the Berlin wall falling and the Soviet Union dissolving when we were children, babies, or not even born yet. We grew up in the internet age, where we had access to more information than older people could ever dream of, and went to college to become the most educated generation ever. And yet....because we didn't succeed in "life", we ended up becoming the most liberal generation ever. Many Millennials who I know who started out conservative, aren't that conservative any more. Many are more moderate at best. The first conservative president we really had that we remember well is George W. Bush, who essentially ruined conservatism on us, between his bad foreign interventions and the great recession. And the great recession, hoo boy. I just covered that one earlier. Try graduating into an economy with no jobs and youre forced to work minimum wage to survive. The adage that people get conservative as they get older implies they have money, and value stability, but they don't have money, or stability. They can't build their lives, they've delayed things well into their 30s, some never even got anywhere. What does the GOP offer us? NOTHING. Their politics make little sense to us, because the American dream is like a huge party the previous generations had, and now it's over, but we somehow ended up on cleanup duty. 

Admittedly, I feel like my generation is getting more conservative as they age, but more in a "moderate" sense. Many people just end up getting beaten down, and stop thinking about systemic change, and just think about their own lives and livelihoods. They end up just developing screw you i got mine mentalities not because they got theirs, but because the system is so screwed that they fight for everything they got. And honestly, I think 2016 broke our brains. Hillary's neoliberalism turned off a good part of our generation, and many of them became Trumpers as a response. And many of us on the left ended up passively accepting neoliberalism as an alternative to trump. Some became extremists, only to end up going crazy post 2020. Still, I think most millennials do lean further left than previous generations. They are just losing their will to fight. I guess that's what it means for us to get more conservative as we get older. Still, we're far more liberal than Xers and beyond on average.

Zoomers though, zoomers are a lot younger, and seem less willing to put up with peoples' crap. If the GOP has failed millennials, zoomers are the angry generation I wish my fellow millennials were. They are the Greta Thunbergs of the world telling the world that yall are destroying our futures and ruining our lives. They are the ones who are pro gun control because they spent most of their childhoods doing active shooter drills because of mass shooting. They are the ones who watched in horror as we millennials couldnt get jobs after college due to the recession. And they too lack any decent conservative role model in their lives worth a crap. Most seem smart enough to see through Trump's crap. Trump and Hillary and Biden were really the candidates of dinosaurs. They represented the older, affluent classes' interests, not the interests of the young. Young people like people like Bernie and Yang and have politics more in line with mine. heck a lot of millennials are more extreme. They are often the ones who embrace wokeism. They are also the ones who start acting like literal socialism is a good thing. Sometimes zoomers are too liberal. Still, I like the outrage, and I like the drive. Many of the people in my generation seemed to have mellowed out in age and have a "well I like bernie but..." mentality. And some have just abandoned the left entirely, especially white working class males without a college education. The thing about those guys, is they get the same "I work so hard" mentality my parents did, where they embrace a form of stubborn bitterness that life sucks and everyone else deserves to be as miserable as them. I don't see them as happy. But they generally have a screw you I got mine mentality and seem to foolishly reject any attempt to help people. I think these guys could've gone bernie in 2016, but now that the moment is gone, they went with trump, and the conservative indoctrination kicked in, we lost some of them. Younger zoomers in this category also tend to have a "well i saw you idiots make bad decisions and i didnt so sucks to be you i guess" while flaunting that they got a job out of college or went to trade school in our face. Those guys are clueless idiots. i guess people who never had anything go wrong for them are like that. "The system works for me, screw you I guess". It's messed up.

Okay, so assuming that zoomers remain as liberal as they are, and millennials are given the choice to express their preferences without being bullied into submission, what will happen? What will happen to us in the coming years as the silents and boomers start dropping dead and the Xers become the new boomers? 

Well...party realignment.

The republican party still has a huge demographic problem on their hands. This was apparent before 2016, when it seemed like liberalism was ascendant. Before Trump, it looked like the GOP was done. That they would fall apart, and that the left would suddenly become the dominant party again. But, Trump energized the base, and that old generation stuck in their old ways ended up alienating the left. Since Obama, it seems like the left has the future on their side. Tons of people voted for hope and change, and then stayed home when disappointed. They came out again in 2012 but in smaller numbers due to the recession, but then in 2014 they didn't as Obama seemed to do nothing but be a lame duck. In 2016, people wanted something different, but Hillary decided it was her turn, and Trump took the populist energy away from the democrats. And since then we've been kind of wondering if we had it wrong. If we are really about to lose our democracy to a fascist takeover, as humanity becomes ugly in the face of no positive solutions to our crises. If the left was done. I think as long as the left sticks to their old ways, they ARE done. Centrism doesnt motivate ANYONE. Old affluent people might like that, but young people want action. 

And with the rise of "Dark Brandon", well...I think some of us are coming around. I've heard someone ask if Kyle Kulinski was becoming a centrist for supporting Biden lately. As someone who thinks like Kyle in a lot of ways, hence why I listen to him a lot and reference his content a lot on here, uh...no. It's not that people like him, or me, are more centrist. It's that Biden is doing things, and we feel a need to reward that. it's not that we like biden. I think he's a mediocre president all things considered. And his centrism has been a turn off. But, he did try to forgive student loans, he did get us out of afghanistan, he did try to pardon drug offenders, he did push for green new deal lite, I personally understand that if he fails after doing all that, the democrats will go back to centrism. My grievances with the party were always about them having this attitude of "screw you i wont do anything for you but you better vote for me or else". And I basically took the "or else" because I dont tolerate that stuff. But if Biden does nice things, i'm going to reward that. Biden IS fighting for some nice things. And it seems apparent congress is the problem. And unlike obama who just sputtered about democracy being hard work, Biden actually appealed to people to give him a congress, which is all I can ask from a president who has an agenda being blocked by congress. Biden proved he is willing to continue to fight for his agenda. it doesnt mean his agenda is the best or I agree with him completely. I've been quite critical, but....he's who we got, and he's trying at least. I gotta reward that. if young people didnt come our and reward that he would do what clinton and obama did, and run to the center and compromise with the GOP. But, I think the democrats know, due to their loss in 2016, they they can't do that. We bernie or buster types really did put the screws in and they had to relent under pressure. Even if they did it in a way to save face, and even if they did it in a watered down way, we have to protect what progress is being made. All the GOP winning would do at this point was enable them. Instead, the red trickle has shown that the energy the GOP has is not that much, and the democrats are being rewarded for their behavior. And now we can go on the offensive more in 2024 I think. 

Also, it's not like third parties are doing a better job. I had a lot of hopes for Forward, but since the merger it's become a bigger centrist circlejerk than the democrats, and takes my criticisms with them to almost parody level degrees. Sorry Yang, you screwed up here. Should've stuck to UBI advocacy. Third party stuff on top of that is fine, but you shouldnt have abandoned your principles. And the greens...well...we analysed their policies. Hawkins is one of their best and it's more smoke and mirrors than anything. An insane green new deal that's way too expensive and socialistic and life changing. A healthcare plan whose numbers don't work. A UBI whose numbers dont work and isn't really much of a UBI but an NIT at best. I mean, these guys are good for a protest vote, but they're not REALLY worth a vote if we can get progress from democrats.

The fact is, post 2020, the other factions have imploded so much that the democrats are the only ones standing. The bernie or busters are either insane like Jimmy Dore, or they're literal communists. The yang gang is a parody at this point with the forward stuff, and the democrats are at least doing SOME things.

That isnt' to say they're perfect, but eh...I'd be willing to support them over the other factions. Much like kyle, I am a social libertarian (he's considered one on polcompball wiki too), and while my philosophy differs slightly from his (he's more like a traditional left wing populist whereas I'm more in the whole UBI branch of it), I think it's the fact that the democrats are the only ones who aren't batcrap insane at this point and are getting things done. And it's not like the GOP isnt an existential threat trying to turn back all progress.

In 2024, I don't know what I'll do. If Biden runs again, I might just support that, although I'm potentially open to a third party run if the candidate/platform is right. It really depends. I know that if Biden DOESNT run, the democrats are in trouble. The democrats have their own problem. They have the future demographics, but their bench sucks. They've spent so much time cultivating their own bench of future candidates who no one likes because they're the same old centrists like Harris and Buttigieg, while Bernie is just too old and there is no adequate replacement to him. It's possible in the future we will see more progressive candidates as millennials and zoomers become more dominant voting blocs, but we'll have to see. The fact is there just aren't many candidates worth supporting. The dems kind of screwed themselves with Biden and now it's like we're stuck with him until 2028.

That's the weakness of the democrats. The GOP might have a demographic weakness, but the democrats have a politician weakness. They old all the cards, but they really don't know how to play their hand. And they've been playing it poorly, not realizng that the game is changing.

That's why I've been so bold by the way. I could see the blood in the water going into 2016, but then the GOP happened to get lucky with Trump and he saved the party. But now as he proves to be a liability to the party again, the existential dread is setting in for them again. 

On the democratic side, they hold the keys to the future, it's just a matter of forging the coalition to realize it. We need good candidates that can do that. But....our candidates suck and they're a gerontocracy of their own with their aging politicians stuck in the past. The GOP have young politicians but an old voting base. The democrats have an young voting base with old politicians. 

That said, it's unclear if the democrats will truly realize their advantage. But it's possible with these 2022 midterms turning out relatively well for democrats, they are starting to feel emboldened, and realize that perhaps they are just an election or two from driving the current GOP into the dust. And then maybe we can actually make more SERIOUS progress.

That's why I voted democrat this time by the way. between candidates like fetterman, and the possibility of losing the narrative for decades again due to inflation, I just realized that the GOP couldn't win here. If they won, the democratic party would potentially be toast and we could be looking at the GOP dominating things for the next generation. But, the actual turnout showed that maybe it's the GOP who is done, and maybe all that needs to happen is we need to outlast them. Maybe post Trump, the party will implode and will once again be directionless, and young people push the overton window further left. It's possible. I would expect that given we started realigning in 2016, perhaps by 2028, we might see the big realigning year.

Trump 2024 and the GOP moving on

 So a common theme I've gotten from the election results is that the country is done with Trump. Trump is poison on the republican party and his January 6th antics have really alienated much of his base and fired up democrats in a way not normally seen in a mid term like this. I don't think Trump is the only reason that the right lost so much, I think abortion was another major blow for them as the country just aint tolerating that crap. But, Trump seems to be one flash point that motivated the democrats. Democrats came out fearing that GOP control meant the end of democracy, and it was hard to argue against that after what we've seen from Trump and the GOP. And of course, many republicans, being the institutionalists that they are, seemed unwilling to take the plunge into authoritarianism, so it seems clear that Trump is toxic to the brand. 

As such, I've seen a lot of republicans since the results were underwhelming claim that the party needed to distance themselves from Trump. And now there seems to be a battle looming for the 2024 primary with Trump vs DeSantis. Now, DeSantis is a nutcase in and of himself in my opinion. He seems to be quite heavy handed in his governance of Florida, engaging heavily in voter suppression, and his anti woke and anti LGBT agenda seems way too authoritarian. But, he doesn't seem as egregious as Trump. Trump...he seems to be positioning himself for a 2024 run, implying he will be announcing soon, and already preemptively taking shots at DeSantis, who he sees as a threat.

I'm not sure that Trump's bullying efforts will work. This reminds me of some Hillary 2016 crap, where the party just acted like the nomination was locked up, that Hillary was inevitable, and that we all had to vote blue no matter who. It was "her turn" after all. She did the graceful thing and bowed out in 2008, and now she felt entitled to it. That's what Trump is trying to do here, except that this is way more flagrant and there isn't even the pretense of fairness here. Trump is just puffing out his chest like the wannabe alpha male he is and hurling threats at a potential rival. And I'm not sure republicans will take that crap. 

I mean, I guess the republican party does have a "follow the alpha male" mentality, with them backing Trump and being relatively united behind him until now, but if he proves to be a liability, i could see them not taking that lying down. 2022 has shown that he may not be the alpha male that he is, and that enrages him, so he doubles down on his animalistic authoritarian like instincts in a desperate attempt to keep power. 

Republicans tend to handle their internal politics differently than democrats, with democrats handling the issue in a more subtle way. They rely a lot more on guilt tripping, peer pressure, and telling people to stfu and bury their grievances for the greater good, tending to dislike direct conflict and defuse it before it happens. And when you do engage in it, like I have a tendency to as an ex conservative, they act like WELL I NEVER and get all huffy and offended that I dare disturb the peace, and act like a "petulant child", after all, adults solve their grievances without fighting, and know when to shut up and not make a scene. But...again, as an ex conservative, i'm the kind of person to tell them to shove it. 

Conservatives, they tend to be more prone to conflict. There really is a more alpha male mentality in which disagreements are handled less civilly, and then people end up backing the strongest person. In a lot of ways republicans will subvert their will to their idea of the greater good, but only after they've proven themselves and the voters are willing to consent to be governed by them. Respect is not given, but earned. Trump in 2016 earned his nomination, pointing out his competition weak and making fun of them. But this time, Trump is coming off as the loser. And if he just tells people to show up and vote for him like the democrats do with their voter base, that isn't going to end well. Especially with Daddy DeSantis coming off as the new alpha male. So I expect there to be a conflict, and I expect Trump to lose. Which would be for the best of the country. Let this guy go down in infamy, a name to be shamed and demonized for the next generation. 

Honestly, if Trump tries to force himself on a GOP voter base that has moved on, I expect that voter base to very firmly show him the door. Even if it causes immense damage to the party in the short term. GOP voters don't tolerate that crap like democrats do. Keep in mind the reason they got so extreme to begin with was they literally RAN the centrists out of office. At this point, Trump is looking to be Scar at the end of the Lion King, with his followers being the hyenas getting ready to eat him. His days are numbered as a politician. For all of his tough guy persona, there's blood in the water, he's exuding weakness, and he won't be able to control his voter base any more. I honestly expect there to be a brutal primary, which will be a very dirty slugfest full of negative campaigning and insults, with DeSantis coming out on top.And then the country will be run of Trump. Forever.

How the term "job creator" helped turn me off from work in general

 So, we just discussed the "Job Creator Network" and how they basically tanked student loan forgiveness, but can we just talk about how dystopian this term actually is? "Job Creator". The term originated during the 2012 election cycle when I went full leftie to my knowledge, and it was swung around a lot by the GOP back then, often to poor effect.

You see, back then, the big debate we were having was over extended unemployment benefits. The democrats wanted to expand those benefits because even several years later, unemployment was STILL insanely high, while the republicans were claiming we needed to get people off of unemployment and into work, advocating for cutting unemployment benefits, and giving tax cuts to the rich, on the basis that the rich were "job creators." That was the term they used.

Essentially, this is where trickle down economics really started to fall apart for me. The republican idea since the 1980s had always been that if you gave the rich tax breaks, they'll turn around and create jobs, leading to more prosperity. And it seemed to make sense...at the time, if you didn't have a fundamental sense of how macroeconomics works (which most people don't). The argument was that these poor millionaires and billionaires and small business owners ("won't someone PLEASE think of the small businesses!" /s) can't create jobs because we're in the middle of a recession and we need to lower taxes on them so that they create more jobs, and that this would kickstart the economy.

Reality was a bit more....murky though. While this argument might have had a point in 2009 or so, when the country was still REELING from the initial effects of the recession, by 2011-2012, it was a different story. Corporations were making record profits. Yet, unemployment was still high. My dad got laid off in 2011. He never had been laid off in his life before 2008, but starting when the bottom fell out, unemployment started being a yearly occurrence. He was let go every year in the late winter/early spring when the business he was involved in slumped, and then brought back in late spring or so. So the news would come in around late January/early February, oh, hey, you're being let go, and then they were brought back in late April/early May when business picked up again. Except, in 2011, things went a little differently. Everyone was brought into the office, and the business started going on saying "oh hey, we made record profits this year? Thank you for contributing to the company! Unfortunately to keep our record profits, we gotta lay you off." And that was that. He was laid off. And then in April, half way through what would be a normal 6 month limit of unemployment, he was told he wasn't coming back. It took him a LITERAL YEAR to find a job, going well into Obama's unemployment expansions, and ended up taking a job in another field for lower pay just to get SOMETHING. 

Let's dissect this. These businesses, they hire you, and then you do work for them. And they squeeze as much as they can from you, and then when they're done, they dump you. You're expected to go above and beyond for them, but then they just...get rid of you when they're done. And the people in 2012, well, they weren't having it about "job creators" and record profits. The illusion of trickle down economics was exposed for the farce it was. If we gave rich people tax cuts at the expense of unemployment, what would have happened was the rich would've gotten even richer, and the poor poorer. People on unemployment would've been kicked off of unemployment, and the rich's profits would've gone up even more.

The recession really scarred me politically. I graduated grad school around the time all of this was going on, and my experiences with this job market weren't any better. You see, in the recession, they fired and laid off as many people as they could, and then they overworked the people left. We were told we were lucky to have a job. And we couldn't get our foot in the door anywhere. As the adage many college grads will tell you about, you need a job to get experience, but you need experience to get a job. It's a catch 22. Even low level service jobs making minimum wage were insanely choosey. You had horror stories of people applying to hundreds of jobs for months on end, and each job getting hundreds of applicants. And of course, people who worked were told they were lucky to have a job at all, and those who didn't were desperately trying to work, with only unemployment to keep them from losing everything at all.

It seemed like there was a total failure of the social contract somewhere. We have this mentality that everyone works, and everyone gets a job and "contributes to society", and that this is just, but then we do this via capitalism. And capitalism actually functions under different principles than this kind of "reciprocity". It operates under the principles of "freedom." We're told that there is a market of employers and a market of workers, and that things are set according to supply and demand. Workers can apply to jobs as they want, and employers can hire people as they want. Employers are concerned about one thing: profit. They want to maximize their end. And workers, in theory, want to maximize theirs.

But, in practice, things are a lot more skewed. Workers are expected to work, and the system is set up where no one is "forced" to work on paper, but they kind of are. People need to work, or they starve and are denied the basics in life. So they will run to employers as quickly as they can to take a job, any job. And then because our system is set up to ensure that there is always a surplus of workers vs employers, and employers can be choosey and tell you that you're lucky to have a job, well, we can see why we were in that situation. Employers are used to a poor desperate population willing to work a job, any job, at any rate, and workers were used to being walked over. Even Marx observed this phenomenon, calling it the "reserve army of labor". Admittedly, capitalism functions best when a small proportion of people are unemployed as it keeps inflation down, but there's something fundamentally broken about a system that expects every single person to get a job, but can't seem to employ everyone. 

Liberals have traditionally advocated for improving these relationships. The New Deal, unions, regulations, etc., were aimed at making the working experience better, but all things considered, they kind of acted as baid aids at improving things. They did improve working conditions for people, but when employers could get away with stuff, they would. Employers do the bare minimum to comply with regulations. If you tell them that they need to pay you $7.25, don't expect much more than that, as they have no need to pay you more in many cases. If you tell them they can't work you beyond 40 hours without paying more they might bite the bullet and pay overtime, or pay salary to avoid all regulations. Require them to pay health insurance to people working full time? Welcome to why most part time jobs don't let you work more than 25 hours a week. And any time a new regulation is imposed, the right screams that it distorts the market and "kills jobs". The idea being, either you accept the scraps they offer, or don't work at all. If you increase the minimum wage, you reduce employment in traditional economic models. Isn't it better to have everyone working, but not able to live on their wages, than to have fewer people working, but they can all live? After all, what are those who don't work expected to do for money? Maybe something is wrong with this system.

Even in the 1960s, this system was never perfect. The Presidential Commission on Poverty under Nixon in 1969 studied poverty, and found that the only realistic way to solve it was a universal basic income. For all the benefits of social liberalism of the 1930s and 1960s, it did not end the war on poverty. Because the system structurally cannot guarantee prosperity for all. We on the left look like the 1930s to 1960s were the good old days, in which everyone can get a job and you could feed a family on one income, but even then there was a dark underbelly to the system. Poverty was rife. It was why the war on poverty happened. Elderly people lacked healthcare, and others unemployed through no fault of their own often lived in abject poverty. Welfare was intended to get people out of poverty and into work, but it largely failed to do so. It did improve the lives of people on it, but it often didnt go far enough and was very intrusive and authoritarian into peoples' lives, and caused all kinds of perverse incentives that kept people in poverty. Back then, the right thought, if we had a negative income tax or a UBI type program, that would change the incentives. It should be noted the right largely didn't seem to support people choosing not to work, so there would always be some requirements on their programs, but their idea to give cash aid seemed superior to the welfare systems at the time. Unfortunately as stagflation took hold and anti welfarism became a rallying cry on the emerging Reagan coalition, we largely abandoned the idea for decades, as the idea of having a large scale universal social program became unthinkable both on the left and the right. Occasionally a random person would propose such an idea, but largely they were considered fringe and no one paid much attention. 

Coming across basic income and studying it helped me understand the problems with the economy more clearly, and significantly shifted my politics from bog standard social liberalism to the social libertarianism I have now. Don't get me wrong, traditional liberalism has done good things and is a major improvement over the conservative social darwinist mentality. But...UBI helped me put my finger on exactly what was wrong with the economy. It's the focus on jobs. The fact is, we can't employ every single person, and yet we expect them to run through this sordid game of musical chairs in their quest for work in order to be able to provide for themselves. THose who get jobs can get complacent, often times they think they earned their standing in life whereas those who don't are lazy or otherwise undeserving. Some might support the bog standard liberal line of some people are down on their luck and need help but we shouldn't just give money to everyone, but UBI...really kind of resonated with me when I came across it. I'm going to be honest, I was skeptical at first, and it came across as too good to be true, but as I researched it and studied the evidence I quickly realized it could work. 

And it would solve the problems with the economy. I don't go in the same direction of Marx or the communists, who insist work is a sacred obligation of society and just see the problem as some ownership class that is exploiting people. I mean, the ownership class is exploiting people, but for me, alienation runs much deeper than the just being alienated from my work due to the capitalist class and ownership. I'm alienated FROM WORK ITSELF. 

I mean, for most of my life, I lived in what Andrew Yang has latered considered to be a scarcity mindset. This idea that we all need to work for a living, and if we don't all work, there won't be enough to go around, and we all will starve, and while the system isn't pretty, it's necessary to motivate people to work to survive. But, as I experienced the recession, I realized that the problem is actually that we're too work obsessed, and that this obsession with work is why people are poor. In modern society we've reached levels of productivity that to previous generations sound like science fiction. We could provide every single person a solidly middle class income if we distributed all of our resources equally. Of course, that would be "communism" or so the right claims. And no one would work and the system would implode. Yes yes, commies reading this, I know that this isn't literal communism, but the point stands. It everyone earns the same amount of money whether they work or not, there is no economic incentive to work at all. But what if we distributed just a portion of that? Say, just enough to stay out of poverty? Why, we could ensure there's still plenty of incentive to work, and we could solve poverty. And it would theoretically eliminate so many problems I had with work in the first place. It would remove the involuntary nature of it, causing people to be able to say no to work (and yes, I read Widerquist's theory around this time as well and it resonated with me A LOT), while still ensuring that people will, generally, want to. Not saying every single person will, but eh, there will arguably be enough labor to do the necessary labor for society to function.

After all, isn't that why we work? Behind all of these pretenses regarding work, is the idea that we NEED work done for society to function. That's why we tend to obsess over it as a society, and why most people on both the left and the right tend to build their entire ideologies around the idea of work, rather than questioning the concept. But as I observe the societies of plenty in the west in the 21st century, I feel like work is the source of much misery in our societies. We insist everyone work, but then people struggle to get jobs. People are underpaid, they get treated like crap, and many begin to hate their lives, feeling trapped in a never ending cycle of working just to survive. 

Let's dispense with this pretense that work should be an actual social obligation. Because under capitalism, businesses never follow their social obligations to provide for their workers. For as much as we try to make the worker/employer relation better, it will never be just as long as people are forced to participate. People are wage slaves under capitalism, and trying to reform this institution while keeping the coercive elements to it that drive these imbalances in the first place. There is nothing wrong with one party voluntarily offering a wage for services, and another willing to accept those wages for their labor, but it should be voluntary. Forcing people is the root of everything else wrong with this social arrangement. When you really think about it, our economy is just forcing poor people to work for rich people in exchange for the mere basics to survive, and sometimes not even that. And as Rick and Morty would say, that sounds like slavery with extra steps. 

Work isn't a glorious institution, it isn't some noble social obligation. It's difficult, it's unpleasant, it's dirty. Most of us would rather be doing something else. I honestly never really came across the idea that people like work until I delved into this topic and started debating it only to encounter these BS moral arguments about how work is good for us and blah blah blah. Most people I know dream of hitting the lottery and never having to work again. That's what's normal for me. Of course, most wouldn't quit for $15000 or so a year, but it does give the option to some extent. 

To go into my humanist principles, as I thought about work as a post Christian atheist around 2013-2014, I ended up developing my own version of human centered capitalism. Do we exist to serve the economy, or does the economy exist to serve us? Without a god, and without masters mandating such an institution, all you have is moral nihilism. Which many stuck in the christian bubble see as scary, but I see as liberating. And while work might be a punishment from God due to original sin in their worldview, work is just...what we need to do to get things done. And if it's unpleasant, and dirty, rather than insist on making more of it, like jobists insist, shouldnt we try to minimize it as a concept? Obviously a lot of work is societally beneficial, but I cant get behind employing people full time and more and insisting on this never ending cycle of "job creation" when there's a better way to do things. We dont exist for this economy, but we act as if we do. The economy exists for us, and it's time its institutions serve us rather than the other way around. 

As such, I went into a largely social libertarian perspective, rather than one that takes me to a more traditional social democratic or socialist place. Social democrats are often ideological opponents of social libertarians, agreeing with them on a lot of stuff, but thinking that our ideas that we do away with the reciprocity principle is immoral. They literally moralize work, and that mentality always came off as bizarre to me. I literally came across these people debating thinkers like Phillippe Van Parijs and I just have to wonder what kind of copium these guys are on. Work SUCKS. And maybe people in high level professional jobs like politics or academia can act like their jobs are great and noble, but if you're like an actual working class worker, nah, work sucks. Working class people end up being pro work in a sense too, but more in a resentful "i have to suffer so so should you" mentality. Which I just can't agree with because that is crab mentality and keeps us all suffering. That's what we really need to break. These mindsets that jobs are the end all and be all of society and that we all need to spend all our time working. 

And socialists, those guys get crazy. The more I look at what leftism actually does, it actually is based on that kind of mentality that we all must work and suffer together. They resent the rich because they dont have to work like the rest of us, and want to take away their wealth...to force people to work like the rest of them. And a huge reason why communism was always so oppressive is it forced people to work at the point of a gun. People had no freedom over their lives. And that's why they often didn't have work incentives. They were basically legally required to have a job and anyone who didn't was sent to the gulag. We kind of discussed this with Rammstein's early days in the GDR and how they were legally required to work a day job while spending the rest of their time trying to work on their music careers. Capitalism ultimately gave them the freedom to succeed. I just understand that they still try to force people to work too, and I ultimately want to make work less coercive and central to our lives. 

As long as the sausage gets made, I don't care if people work or not. I believe in freedom. I believe in markets, but for markets to work functionally, people need to be able to refuse to participate. I think both extreme collectivism and extreme individualism are toxic. In the US we have a "you owe people nothing" mentality, which, without state interference leads to us all struggling just to survive while a small proportion of people hoard the wealth. Meanwhile communist countries end up seeing work as a social obligation enforced at the point of a gun. The failures of both systems all come down to the fact that both try to force people to work, with no real option to say no. Communism through direct state violence and repression, and capitalism through more passive means of resource denial. I just want to ensure people have the resources to survive without being forced into anything, and then they can live as they want. If they work, they work, if they don't, they dont. As for the collective....well, as long as the end result is positive and people still work to do the necessary labor we need, I have no problems with that. And if we can't get the sausage made, well, then I support the highest SUSTAINABLE level of UBI, whatever that is, to give people the most freedom and stability in their lives as we can accomplish. And hope that over time as we can automate more work, we can raise the UBI to higher levels. The point is, we can do better than the system we have now, and all it really requires are a few simple, but admittedly expensive reforms. As long as we do things the way they are now, we shouldnt be surprised at the result. If we want to live in a better society, we need to change it.

Screw the GOP! (student loan forgiveness edition)

 So....the GOP essentially just got Biden's student debt forgiveness shot down. Apparently the "Job Creator's Network" sued and some conservative judge in Texas shot it down.

The lawsuit was interesting and was something the GOP has been doing to sabotage the plan, in my analysis. Essentially, loan forgiveness is traditionally taxed. It doesn't have to be taxed, and the federal government and most states decided to waive the tax, but some states decided to tax student loan forgiveness as if it were income. This seems stupid to me because it assumes that you were just given $20k in income and need to pay taxes on it, rather than the forgiveness just eliminating a balance on a spreadsheet. This is one of the reasons I didn't apply for forgiveness yet. I knew that the federal government wouldnt tax me, and my state wouldn't but what about localities? But I digress.

Initially, Biden's forgiveness was automatic, where anyone whose information was in the system such as through IBR type plans, would get forgiven, but because this would put some borrowers in hot water with local taxes, they sued to stop it. This caused studentaid.gov to have a form that you had to fill out instead. It was a fairly simple form intended to be as easy as humanly possible. But....the fact is, we shouldn't have had a form in the first place. It SHOULD have been automatic, and localities and states SHOULDN'T have taxed it. But they did, and much like obamacare, the states tried to sabotage what should have been an easy national policy by blocking it at the state level.

Anyway, this went to court, brought by conservative advocacy groups like the "Job Creator's Network" (a dystopian name, I could go on all day about how the "job creators" framing conservatives use actually helped make me anti work), and some conservative judge just went full on judicial activism and shot down the entire program screaming about ERMAHGERD EXECUTIVE OVERREACH and separation of powers circlejerking.

Honestly, conservatives, after January 6th, and after your side keeps repeating the big lie, you can all shut the heck up about separation powers and our constitution. it has been made clear that you guys just don't care and selectively push the issue when convenient for your own benefit. Really, concern trolling about the rules is just a way to obstruct people from having nice things, and that's what this is really about, the GOP doesn't want people to have nice things. 

Here's why Biden DID have power here. Biden is in charge of the EXECUTIVE branch. Congress makes the laws, but the executive branch has a lot of leeway in deciding how they are enforced. And the department of education falls under his power. If he wants to stop taking loan payments like he did during covid, why shouldn't he? If he decides to just forgive loans, why shouldn't he? It's HIS power to do so. Because he's in charge of the executive branch. Technically if the president just chooses not to enforce the laws here, he can do so within reason. And it seems awfully suspect to claim we need congress's approval. It's like, they're just trying to make this as painful and obstructionist as possible. Which si what they're doing.

Shame the GOP here. They don't want you to have nice things. They sabotaged us from having nice things. And that's what happened here. Even legal analysts in the article I mentioned said that the judge just came to the conclusion he wanted. It's a joke.

Anyway, this is why no one under 45 should vote for the GOP ever. They are literally against nice things. They want you to all be debt slaves in a gilded age capitalist hellscape while subjected to their crazy religious doctrines. I might have issues with the democrats, but let's be honest, the GOP are the villains here.

So wtf just happened? (2022 edition)

 So...the dreaded red wave turned out to be a red trickle. Not all results are in, but we do have a good idea of what is happening, and republicans are underperforming predictions. While they will likely make some gains, it's really unclear if they'll take the senate OR the house at this point. Everything is still up in the air. And people are wondering...wtf just happened?

Discussing the senate a bit more

As things stand, these are the results as of 6:30 PM EST on 11/9:

Colorado: Called, Bennet (D) wins by 12%, 85% reporting

Washington: Called, Murray (D) wins by 14%, 57% reporting

New Hampshire: Called, Hassan (D) wins by 8.8%, 96% reporting

Arizona: NOT called, Kelly (D) leads by 4.6%, 67% reporting

Pennsylvania: Called, Fetterman (D) wins by 3.6%, 95% reporting

Georgia: Goes to runoff, Warnock (D) leads by 0.9%, 98% reporting

Nevada: NOT called, Laxalt (R) leads by 2.7%, 77% reporting

Wisconsin: Called, Johnson (R) wins by 1%, 99% reporting

North Carolina: Called, Budd (R) wins by 3.6%, 98% reporting

Ohio: Called, Vance (R) wins by 6.6%, 97% reporting

Florida: Called, Rubio (R) wins by 15.6%, 99% reporting

Right now, the senate is at 48-49, with three races up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. Two of these three were some of the most controversial calls, and while I had them going R, well, AZ was a last minute call after it was blue, Georgia technically has Warnock winning but because he won by less than 50%, it's gonna go to a runoff election next month (which I would expect him to lose, what saved him was the 2% libertarian vote not backing the GOP, if those guys turn up next month and vote R, it's over), and Nevada is still in question, with Laxalt leading, but who knows what happens.

But yeah, other than Florida, where the GOP crushed by insane margins to the point of it no longer being remotely a swing state, they underperformed. Keep in mind, Bennet was at like +5.7% here, Washington was down to +3.0%, and New Hampshire was swing as fudge, at 1.4%. But the dems VASTLY overperformed and crushed the GOP here. Perhaps they never did stand a chance, as it was weird for Colorado and Washington to even be swing states. Arizona has Kelly up by 4.6%, and its been hovering around 5% for a while, but it's still up for grabs so who knows what happens, but that's what I would have predicted a month or two ago. PA, Fetterman overperformed by roughly 4% relative to my predictions. I knew it was gonna be close to the point of a coin flip, but it worked out fine in his favor. Georgia once again, has Warnock technically winning, just not enough to avoid a runoff. But given it was 1.4% in Walker's direction, yeah. Nevada is about dead on. Wisconsin Johnson won but underperformed about 2 points. North Carolina, same. Ohio, underperformed around 1.4. Florida is the only OVERperformance for the GOP, but given I almost didn't include it in this analysis, it's like STOP HE'S ALREADY DEAD. 

Generally speaking, mathematically, the results work out to a rough D+2 scenario, pulling AZ, PA, and GA back into the dem category, with Nevada leaning red, but who knows. The senate is still ANYONE's game. The GOP has 49, and the dems have 48. Whoever wins 2 of the remaining 3 races controls the senate. And it's ANYONE's game.

I would honestly expect, given everything else I've seen over the past 24 hours, that AZ goes blue. AZ going red was always a questionable scenario. The polls had a healthy lead, and now that we know we have a roughly D+2 scenario, given PA and GA leaned much bluer than expected, I would expect Kelly to pull that off. Georgia...well it depends how the runoff goes. As I said, 2% of people voted libertarian and I'd expect most of them to vote R in a runoff. Maybe dems should get out another round of $1400 "inflation mitigation" checks. Worked last time. Nevada is a total crapshoot. It has Laxalt leading now...but again, that could narrow. I think I heard the votes left are a combination of rural votes (lean R) and mail in vote (lean D). And if we apply the D+2ish scenario to that race, well, things can narrow to within a point or so. If i HAD to call it, I'd say it goes Laxalt, but Cortez Masto isn't out of it. It hasn't been called for a reason. 

As for the big win of the night. JOHN FREAKING FETTERMAN is going to be the next senator from Pennsylvania. Dr Oz can pack up and go home to New Jersey and eat some crudite from "Wegners" while the rest of us stroke risk prone savages can enjoy our wawa and sheetz. Oh, and Fetterman is basically Bernie as a bald dude with tattoos. And he apparently outperformed Biden here. Yeah. Goes to show that maybe, just maybe, Bernie would've won PA after all. But yeah. I remember watching last night and it was like 88% reporting with him ahead and they said the last votes were in Philadelphia. I was just thinking, yep, it's over. If Fetterman is AHEAD, and the last votes to be counted are in Philly...yeah....just give the man his victory already. 

Anyway, REALLY happy over that one. 

Onto the house

Discussing the house a bit more

Right now...the house is at 183-207 in favor of the GOP. 

BUT...it's not 218 yet. And we're unclear if it will be. Currently I'm only seeing TEN outstanding races in which the GOP candidate is ahead. The rest look like they're going D. And while we could be wrong, and anything can happen, uh....207+10 only gets us to...217. Maybe AK will be #218. They seem to have ranked choice voting up there, and while the dem candidate is ahead, it's possible it pulls through for the republicans. Actually, that does make sense. So 207+11=218. GOP will control the house by ONE SEAT. Not 10 like I and Nate Silver seemed to predict. Not 20-30. ONE. 

It's possible some D leaning seats will go R (CA13 has the GOP candidate only 0.2% ahead at 42% reporting), but it's also possible some R leaning seats will go D. I still give the edge to the GOP, but right now it's RAZOR THIN. Ya know, like their chances at the senate. The fact that the GOP might not even take the house is embarrassing. 

Lauren Boebert might not even win her seat. Which is an embarrassment to the GOP.

We really don't know what's happening here, so we'll have to see. Again, I still give the edge to the GOP, but the fact that it's in question at all indicates this isn't the red wave that we thought it was. Again, the house was supposed to be a foregone conclusion. 

Discussing governor's races

Maine: Called, Mills (D) wins by 12%, 92% reporting

New York: Called, Hochul (D) wins by 5.6%, 94% reporting

Minnesota: Called, Walz (D) wins by 7.7%, 99% reporting

New Mexico: Called, Lujan Grisham (D) wins by 6.3%, 98% reporting

Kansas: Called, Kelly (D) wins by 1.5%, 99% reporting

Oregon: NOT called, Kotek (D) leads by 1.9%, 69% reporting

Michigan: Called, Whitmer (D) wins by 10.6%, 98% reporting

Wisconsin: Called, Evers (D) wins by 3.4%, 99% reporting

Nevada: NOT called, Lombardo (R) leads by 4.8%, 77% reporting

Arizona: NOT called, Hobbs (D) leads by 0.2%, 67% reporting

And to discuss a couple more:

Pennsylvania: Called, Shapiro (D) wins by 13.6%, 95% reporting

Florida: Called, Desantis (R) wins by 19.4%, 99% reporting

Okay, so another mildly blue night relative to expectations. Whitmer went WAY down at the last minute, but she was up by 10.6% in the results. Hochul seemed to slightly underperform in NY, there's been a lot of discussion on that and how Cuomo basically sabotaged the democratic party up there (he;'s always been a scumbag) giving the GOP an unfair advantage in house districts. Still, even on a state wide level, it never should've been too close. This is NEW YORK. Ya know, California 2. The big state we should never lose ever on the left. But...Cuomo left the state in such a bad shape the dems struggled to win there. In Florida on the other hand, DeSantis CRUSHED Crist. Idk who expected Crist to win, even the polls had him up by 12.2%, well outside of the margin of error. But DANG. Overperformed 7 points over that. Oregon is suprisingly still in play. Idk why that was even on the radar. Another state that should never appear ever in my predictions. Wisconsin went blue. That's surprising but it was almost 50-50 there and we did have a slightly more blue year. Pennsylvania, between Shapiro and Fetterman I'm really happy with my state. Not to mention Susan Wilds (PA7) and Matt Cartwright (PA8) winning their house seats. Very good night for democrats in PA.

Generally speaking, abortion rights are safe in my state, and that's what i care about more than anything else as far as governors' races go. That said, let's do a post mortem on what went wrong with the GOP.

The GOP was too extreme

A common trend last night was that if the republican candidate was a January 6ther or election denier, they lost. The democrats actually did frame the election as a referendum on democracy itself. And while it seemed hyperbolic on paper, as they always do this, this time it was actually kind of true. The GOP has been a festering problem for decades now, and they're literally to the point of wanting to violently overthrow the government to get their way. I watched some clips of Trump at a rally the night before the election, and JESUS, this guy was talking about death penalty for drug dealers. Like this guy is a crazy right wing authoritarian. And we all know what he thinks about the election. He's dangerous, and any candidate that had an association with Trump, whether through endorsements and January 6th stuff, they got soundly rejected in many races. 

And then there was abortion. While I thought that inflation and crime were the top concerns, with abortion being a relative blip....no...actually abortion ended up being as consequential as inflation. And it worked to counteract most of the damage that inflation was poised to do to the democrats. The fact is, by abolishing Roe, imposing state level restrictions on abortion, and threatening a nationwide abortion ban, that crap is actually really unpopular with voters, and they basically screwed themselves on that. I mean, KANSAS went blue. KANSAS, wtf. And a dems did very strong on most governorships in play. 

This is why I say when the dems play culture war, they should play defensively and from a libertarian perspective. Very few people, push comes to shove, want to go backwards. We just aint all on board with this "woke" crap and cringe slogans like "defund the police". But most people, no they don't want abortion overturned. They don't want gay marriage gone. Contraception. Dear god, Thomas was threatening to overturn contraception. The fact is, the right are these crazy authoritarians, and people are LITERALLY SCARED of them taking power again because they want to do things like undo all social progress over the past 50 years minimum, and probably beyond that, and undermine elections. 

And we're not even getting into economics. They were literally talking about undermining medicare and social security. Jesus Christ. WTF. Like really, the GOP is trying to achieve all of these crazy goals they've had their sights set on for decades and now that we're at this crisis point, people are saying no. They don't actually want these things. And they're pushing back. And that's good. These are all reasons I voted blue too. I don't want abortion to go. I dont want social security and medicare to go. I dont want to see the country descend into a one party state like Russia. Even freaking Ralph nader was telling people to vote blue. So this is an actual case in which people actually united behind the democrats in the face of a common existential enemy. I don't think democrats should get complacent here. Generally speaking the democrats were lucky to do as well as they did, and this very well could've ended badly. They shouldn't take these results for granted and use it as an excuse to sit back and screw up. 

Polls and websites overstated GOP chances

The second big thing worth mentioning is the polls themselves. I know there's a lot of liberals acting haughty now that the results are in and asking people who predicted doom and gloom to explain themselves and be held accountable, and being someone who predicted this, I'll be HAPPY to explain this.

When I actually predict elections, I am just a numbers guy. I run the numbers and I report them. I get my data from RealClearPolitics, who gives polling averages. I know they've been under fire today, with Joy Ann Reid saying you can't trust them, but uh...okay, let's discuss this. 

RCP does have some flaws. They call races wrong sometimes. Some stuff in the "leans GOP' category were actually leaning democrat. Virtually all "toss up" seats in the house that had polls were leaning democrat. So that led to a red mirage in the house that actually ended up busting. I could kind of tell this might happen and looking into the data that the GOP lead was way weaker than it appeared to be. But ultimately, we just had very little polling data either way. Too many people leaned into these "fundamentals" that implied this would be a red year, and they made inferences based on insufficient data. This is why I largely refrained from doing a detailed house forecast. How? There just isn't enough data to judge many of these races. And the data that existed was sparse and could've been wrong. Looking at the results I think the polls that implied the outcome would be more blue than expected seem to be coming true, but yeah, that's the thing, RCP just compiles data. Poll averages are poll averages. Where they were wrong was in categorizing some races one way or another.

Kyle Kulinski had a video today from the owner of RCP discussing this too, and how many right leaning pollsters like Trafalgar skewed polling averages. They didn't screw up, pollsters did. And I mentioned poll bombing last night. I didn't correct for it because in 2020, those guys turned out to be right no matter how bad their methodology was, but this time, they were WAY off and pollsters WAY overcorrected for a right bias that just didn't come into play this time. 

And on top of that, one thing that's worth discussing is that I honestly dont think the polls were THAT far off. You guys might wonder my methodology for calculating races. It's pretty simple. I take polling averages, and then I assume a 4 point margin of error, and then I calculate the Z score based off of that. Generally speaking, any result within 2 standard deviations (in this case the margin of error) is going to fall within say a 95-96% confidence range. On one side of the bell curve, you'll have 2% of results fall outside on that end, and on the other, you'll have 2 percent. But 96% or so will fall within 2 standard deviations.

This is why I tend to focus on races within 8 points. Because given both candidates can move 4 points in either direction, you need a spread of 8 or more to fall outside of that 96% confidence range. And given the results only flip if it goes one way, I can be around 98% confident in a result that is 8 points in one direction or another. 

Honestly, most of the races that ended up not turning out as polls indicated were within 2 points. I mean you had Wisconsin where I predicted Michels (R) would win by 0.6%, Evers won by 3.4%. You had PA where Fetterman won by 3.6%, he was supposed to lose by 0.4%. And here's the thing. When races are within a point...you might as well flip a coin. A 1% lead is a 0.25 Z score, which indicates the result is gonna be roughly 60-40. A 2 point lead is going to be 69-31. A 3 point lead is going to be 77-23. A 4 point lead is going to be 84-16, etc. So....if a race is within a 1 point, and I'm "wrong"....yeah that's just statistics. I can't predict worth a crap. I don't have a crystal ball. I just tell you what the odds are.

 Even the real crazy blowouts don't exceed my 96% confidence range. I mean Hassan in NH won by 8.8 but I predicted 1.4. It's a 7 point difference, sure, but it's still within that 96% confidence range. DeSantis, up by 12, won by 19. Still within that 8 point range. Bennet, up by 5, won by 12. Need I go on? The only one I see outside of that range that I looked at was Murray, who won by 14 but was only expected to win by 3. The odds of a race being THAT far off is about...0.6%? 2.75 gives me a score of 0.0030 on single tail, or 0.3%, so 2 tail, 0.6%. It can happen. It just happens about 1 time in 167. 

And let's be honest, how is this any different than 2016 and 2020? WISCONSIN in 2016 was like 6.5% in favor of Hillary...it ended up going red. The same thing happened in the rust belt in 2020 where the dems had like a 9 point lead in Wisconsin and Michigan, and then won by like 1-2. 

All things considered, the only races that actually flipped were within 2 points. That's not bad at all. And 2 points is all that really existed between us and electoral oblivion. So I'm not sure if we should be celebrating or scared that like 2020, we almost lost again. Just because the republicans underperformed doesnt mean they did bad. They still won or are projected to win much of what they were supposed to. Most major blowouts were in races that already skewed heavily one way or the other. And if anything, the bias of the results in favor of the democrats is much less than the polling bias in favor of the GOP in 2020. We had a R+4 situation on our hands in many swing states, and here we instead get like D+2 in close races, with random blowouts in races that were already 5-8 points one way or another. 

Really, I want to make that clear. We were TWO POINTS from electoral oblivion. The only reason democrats can be so cocky today was that we overperformed by 2 points. It could have easily gone 2 points in the other direction, or even 3-4 like in 2016 and 2020. If that happened, we WOULD be looking at a 240ish seat republican majority in the house, and a total blowout of 54 GOP seats or more in the senate. Seriously, if it went the other way like some other recent elections did, it would be BAD NEWS. We're just happy that that DIDN'T happen.

And given how much bad polling orgs were skewing results, and how little information we actually had on the state of the house, eh....I mean, we did the best with what we had. We just didn't have all of the information and much of the information we did have was flawed. 

This victory might allow dems to walk away saving face given the result was supposed to be TOTAL WIPEOUT, but let's not get cocky here, this was, much like 2020, a very narrow victory, and if we hold onto the house or the senate, we BARELY did so. We mightve shut down a massive red wave, but let's face it in a sane world we wouldnt be coming down to the point where our abortion rights, electoral system, and safety nets are under direct assault from a batcrap insane republican party. The fact that we're here is still a failure of a democratic party that has failed to offer a better alternative for decades, specifically since 2008 or so. 

And and just for the record, we still might lose the house and/or the senate. We didn't WIN either yet. We just didn't lose yet either. 

Still, democratic messaging was popular...

Still, I must give the democrats credit here. Democrats fought hard for this, and I deemed it fit to reward them. There was a reason I voted democrat and encouraged others to do so, other than fear of the GOP. The democrats are doing stuff. They forgave some student loans. They tried to pass a climate plan. They pardoned some drug offenders. They told the American people "give me a congress and I'll try to codify abortion rights". These are popular ideas. And despite facing inflation, an oil crisis, and reliving the 1970s, we managed to stave off disaster. Because those ideas are popular. And I know if we didnt mitigate damage, the democrats would just say it was because they were too extreme and move to the center. But young people did come out and reward the democrats, and Biden gave a nice speech today suggesting he would keep doing good things and he wouldnt take crap off of the GOP if they did win one of the chambers of congress and tried to pull crap. He has a mandate, and Biden is running with it. And I applaud him for doing so. That's really been my issue with the democrats all along. I want them to do nice things. I dont want them to run to the center and say "We CaNt Do AnYtHiNg!!!11!". I admit the dems havent done everything i want them too. They're still too centrist, everything they do is still too watered down, and at the end of the day I still have significant ideological differences with the party, but they're doing better than expected. And given the state of the green party (offer the world but have no decent plans to get theret) and the forward party (be as much of a worthless centrist circlejerk as I normally stereotype the democrats as being), eh...the democrats are the best option right now. 

And in PA....we had fetterman on the ticket. Did I mention this dude has the same worldview and politics as Bernie more or less? So yeah, I'd be stupid NOT to support him. I'd be not rewarding the democrats for doing what I screamed at them for years to do. 

And you know what? I think this stuff resonates with people too. Even though things arent perfect and inflation is a problem, and the dems are kind of centrist, perhaps their ideas are more popular than they are given credit for. And maybe people really would prefer to see them in charge than the crazy GOP.

 The Attack of the Young People

 EDIT: this section is edited in later after hearing several segments discussing how young people really drove democratic turnout.

Young people are the democrats' greatest assets, while gen X, boomers, and silent lean conservative, younger people like Millennials and Zoomers are far more progressive. We are sitting on a demographic timebomb that very well could lead to a very swift party realignment left in the coming years. I've noticed this for a while, since the Obama years. The democrats just have a terrible time motivating these people to come out. But when they do, the right is screwed. They were what propelled Obama to office. They are why I think Bernie would've won in 2016. And they are what bailed out the democrats here. 

But here's a thing. Young people often need to be motivated to vote. Democrats finally did a good job in motivating them by doing things for them, while in recent years they just talked down and lectured them. And it's very well possible that in future elections, say, 2028 and later, we might see a very heavy left wing party realignment, as long as we can preserve democracy and not fall into fascism. 

Of course it's also possible that some will become more conservative as they age, and it's also possible the current divisions the republicans and democrats are creating in the electorate will lead to the left being forced to stay moderate structurally, which is my biggest fear outside of fascist takeover (and also why I spend so much time throwing shade at the democrats). But if democrats embrace young people and their politics and do things that motivate them, they could have an unstoppable coalition on their hands, similar to FDR and Reagan. It all depends on whether the powers that be embrace it, or intentionally derail it. We've been doing the latter, but if the democrats do the former, the GOP in its current form will never have a good election again (for a long time at least).

GOP messaging didn't do as well as expected

I'm gonna be honest. Seeing the massive ad campaign from the GOP here, especially in the fetterman/oz race, I thought we were screwed. The GOP talked about inflation. They talked about crime, they painted fetterman as a far left radical who wants to tax joe working man to pay for rich college students' student loans and put killers back on the street, and I thought that message was working. I just saw the polls go down and down and down, and I saw some suggest inflation and crime were really what voters were concerned about, and while there was a lot of GOP energy, it wasn't as much as expected. It's normally expected, after the president's party wins control of the government, that they lose it. And given Biden inherited COVID and has to deal with the recovery and all of the problems and how that's quickly spiraling into a repeat of the 1970s...uh...I thought they were toast. Not gonna lie. But....democrats held out fairly well. Abortion mattered a lot more than expected, and crime ended up doing so far less. Inflation was still at the top of peoples' concerns, but people weren't as stupid as I expected and just mindlessly supporting the opposition party, which is what historically happens. Historically, when the economy is bad, the people blame the president and his party no matter whether they're at fault and we see a major wave the other way. But, it didn't happen. The GOP might gain ground. Hell they might win control of congress. But it will be an extremely narrow win. 51 senators tops, and maybe like 220 house seats or something. I mean, right now I'm estimating 218 exactly. So literally the bare minimum for any victory at all. Which for a supposedly red year is kind of bad. 

For all the money and repetition put into scaring voters into voting republican, it just didn't work. People saw through them, they saw them as too extreme, and they largely rejected them.

Conclusion

So, the red wave has turned into a red trickle. The GOP still might win the house and/or the senate, but it's really down to the wire, and nothing like the blowout expected. Democrats defended well. We're currently at 48-49 for the senate with each party needing 2 of the remaining 3 races to win. The house looks like we're gonna see 218 republican seats exactly, meaning they JUST take control of it, and even then, it could easily go the other way. Democrats did well. They swept most controversial races in my state, and generally speaking, I think they sent a message that the GOP are too extreme on abortion rights and this anti democratic January 6th crap, while the democratic message remains reasonably popular. This wasn't a sweep year for the democrats either, but no one expected it to be. Conventional wisdom showed they had nowhere to go but down and they largely put up a successful defense that mitigated the damage done. So this is a win.

Still, democrats shouldn't get cocky because it was a narrow win, and we were only a few points away from the electoral oblivion projected. Polls were off, but they were still within the margin of error, and really, in context, democratic victories were quite narrow. It just happened to be that expectations were so low that they happened to avoid the worst case scenario. I guess that's the best democratic victory we can expect from this year, but eh, we still have a lot of work to do. The GOP coalition is still fairly strong, and we really were only a couple points from losing it all. Much like 2020. 

Democrats better start preparing for 2024, and they really have zero room for error here.

FINAL addendum to election predictions

 So, polls keep shifting. I locked in my predictions last night, but just like this, the AZ race is now in the R column, and the margins on the PA and GA races have gone more in the red direction. As it stands, AZ is 0.3% in favor of Masters, indicating a 53% of republican victory, PA is 0.4% in favor of Oz, indicating a 54% chance of republican victory, and GA is 1.4% in favor of walker, indicating a 64% chance of republican victory. Given dems need all 3 races to get 50 senators, this is not looking good for dems, and I would now say that we're talking a 53-47 republican senate, with a 64% chance of republican victory. 

How reliable is this? Well, it's still in coin flip territory, but I want to discuss two factors, one of which goes in favor of the GOP and one that might indicate polls OVERSTATE republican chances. First, the one in favor of the GOP. Polls are a lagging indicator of support, and polls might actually UNDERESTIMATE republican support here. This is because polls are a snapshot in time, and if we're seeing movement in one direction or another, we only see it at the time the poll was taken. This means polls can lag actual attitudes since by the time polls are published we see further movement in that direction. As such, we could potentially see any race within a point or two and going more republican over time actually lead to republican wins, even if the margin is still in the dem category. This happened in 2016. As last minute voters made up their mind, they swung trump, and while we saw some movement toward trump before hand, the results were a lot more pro trump than indicated.

To be fair, mail in voting could mitigate this and we've seen this since the election. I voted like back on like October 13 or something. I mean, I voted straight democrat, and my vote was locked in when the race was a lot more pro democratic. And while i wouldnt change my mind, some who voted early...might. To be fair, those who vote early tend to be more democratic in the first place (keep in mind republicans think mail in votes are "fake votes"), and since you need to request a ballot people might be more politically informed. What swings elections are casuals. The 10% of the population or so that makes up their mind last minute, and most indicators have that going republican. So how much will mail ins influence this? Not much probably.

The one factor that might work in the democrats' favor is the "Trafalgar Effect". It's a term I coined to show how blatantly biased right wing polls tend to skew polling averages. Some pollsters just end up adding points one way or another to account for biases they think are present, with many of them being republican. The term is named after the pollster Trafalgar, who always has these skewed off the wall numbers. Now, to be fair, in 2020, trafalgar actually ended up being the most accurate, although they did so with a bad and blatantly unscientific methodology. In 2020, I did try to correct for this effect, but given they ended up being correct, I decided this time, you know what, polling averages it is. Still, if we dont have the same red lean that we had in 2020, this could mean that polls underestimate republican chances and democrats will do better. We did see how many "swing" house districts are seemingly leaning blue, and even some races that lean red on RCP...ended up having blue results. SO maybe the results could be more blue.

I don't know. I just report the numbers and calculate probabilities based on them. If the numbers are wrong, my predictions are wrong. We'll see either way in the coming hours and days. As of writing this polls start closing in 3 hours, although for some races it might take days or even weeks for definitive results.