Was the sun belt strategy necessary for democrats in 2016? is it necessary now?

 So....it's no secret at this point, that Clinton and Trump changed the electoral map. We just analyzed the 2012 electoral map, and Obama basically had a rust belt firewall that, as long as it remained impenetrable, republicans were functionally locked out of the electoral college. I mean let's bring up the 2016 election prediction again. 

 We had Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all firmly in the D column similar to virginia and minnesota in more recent cycles. Obama was a bit less, similar to say, new hampshire. We had iowa. And at this point, VA and CO, which are now democratic mainstays, were just starting to flip blue. Obama's coalition was mixed. It relied primarily on a rust belt strategy, but also started to appeal to a second suburban strategy instead, relying on the suburbanization of previously red and purple states.

This led to the 2016 electoral map:
 

 Here, the rust bely was still important, but Clinton clearly downplayed it. And that's actually why she lost. She literally lost Obama's main firewall that made him invincible. She neglected it. She was so busy on winning the sun belt, trying to win North Carolina, and Georgia, and Arizona, and quite frankly, this was a stupid and suicidal strategy. 

Quite frankly, it's obvious to me why she did this. She was a centrist, she wanted the party to remain centrist, and democrats made a deal with the devil to trade working class rust belt workers for suburbanites, so they could push fiscal moderation instead of economic populism, this proved to be disastrous, and led to the rise of the trump era, and his realignments. In 2024, the map looked like this:

 Now, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are chief swing states needed to win elections, with Ohio being lost, Iowa being lost, Florida being lost. VA and CO on the other hand are reliable parts of the democratic coalition. And the electoral map is a lot more hostile to democrats than it was.

Now, centrists will argue this was necessary, they'll argue that due to demographic shifts, that the rust belt will be a less reliable path to the presidency, and we need to expand to the sun belt. The real question is...is it?

Well....yes and no.

It's no mistake in 2020, the rust belt took a beating as reapportionment took away some population, and democrats stand to take another beating in 2030.  Between blue and rust belt states losing population, we stand to lose a whole 11 electoral college votes, most of which go to republican states.

If we rely on the current WI/MI/PA strategy to win exactly 270, this strategy will fail, because in 2032, those states will be worth less and only net 261 electoral votes, leading to another state to win.

 Map is from 270towin btw. Anyway, The problem with this theory though is it assumes the CURRENT electoral map. The map of 2024. Had we stuck with the 2012 rust belt map, we'd be able to win Ohio and Iowa. Here's what it looks like with Ohio.

See, we didn't need to abandon the rust belt, we just needed to be able to keep winning fricking Ohio. We could lose Florida. Say that still turned into Desantis land due to retirees and Cubans hating "socialism." We'd still be able to maintain the Obama coalition into the 2030s....as long as we could keep Ohio on our side. And this isn't even counting Iowa and Nevada. 

So the idea that this change was "necessary" was complete BS. 

However, at the same time, is it necessary now? Not because it was a looming necessity, but because the centrists butchered our winning coalition and now the map is different to the point that we're not getting Ohio back? Perhaps. 

Right now, Ohio is in the same category as states like Texas, Alaska, Florida, and Iowa. All pretty soft red states, maybe likely R in a neutral cycle. Sure, many of them are in play in 2026 and maybe even 2028, but that's only due to an apocalyptic blue wave on the horizon. In normal election cycles, these would be republican. 
 

So what's the alternative? Basically, we do gotta do the sun belt. Nevada is too small on its own to count and that's been in play for a while, but now the big states to swing are going to be Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona. And here's the catch. My politics HATE the sun belt strategy. While economic populism can work well in the rust belt given the lack of good jobs, the sun belt is more suburban people who are more fiscally moderate. 

Say we get MI/WI/PA/NV, we still need ONE more state. Assuming we can't get IA or OH, we're gonna need AZ, GA, or NC. 

 One might wonder why I threw Alaska in there. Well, it too has been going in a strange democratic direction lately, and even more so, it basically has that oil dividend which is basically pro UBI, so if I wanted to run on UBI and needed THREE more electoral votes, well, that's 270!

 

otherwise, what would I bet on of the three I posted? Georgia. Here's why. I don't believe in going to the rust belt, I believe in the rust belt coming to us. Georgia is pulling a Virgini right now. It's rapidly urbanizing around atlanta, and it's like the one state that still had movement to the left in 2024. I remember a map showing that in a sea of red, atlanta was still moving in a blue direction. NC and AZ have been resisting those trends more, so I see them as harder sells, but I think GA is gonna do what CO and VA did. So assuming we can win that, we can make up for the loss of Ohio. Still, it fumes me we even lost Ohio. The Obama map was perfect for my own electoral strategy. Having to deal with suburbanites with conflicting ideas down south really throws a wrench in the leftward momentum of the party toward economic populism. 

 So, do dems have paths to the white house? Yeah. But without a trumpesque map change to reclaim the rust belt, we're now stuck relying on sun belt states to win. Which compromises an economically populist platform. While during the Obama era, we could win without the south, we didn't need the south, and why oh why do we wanna bother appealing to those conservative guys? Now we kinda do. It's not that this was inevitable though. Had we maintained the Obama map, even with demographic shifts, we could've maintained an electoral advantage that would have shut out the republicans. WI/MI/PA/OH, boom. Done. CO and VA become part of the coalition anyway, maybe eventually we get GA NC or AZ, but let's not push it. 

But....Clinton pushed it, we lost Ohio, and while sun belt states are eventually drifting our way anyway....they should be a bonus, not necessary. I really hate how 2016 shifted our politics, it is a realignment from hell, and we on the left might be screwed. Even if we win primaries, we not be able to win a general election without suburbanites approving of them, and given how these ideas would raise their taxes...well....yay, we got republicans in our coalition now and we cant get rid of them!

*sigh*

I really can't express how much I hate the centrist wing of the democrats for this. I'm only voting for them at this point because, well, Trump's a fascist, and short term, he needs to go. But post trump? Assuming the GOP DOESNT go full groyper? Yeah I might go back to being a purity testy ###hole and voting for third party candidates out of spite. It depends. We'll have to see how the next couple election cycles go.  

Reviewing 2012 election coverage

 So, now I'm going backward. I did 2016, 2020, and 2024, ya know, the modern era elections. But what about the last sane election before the crap hit the fan? Let's look at 2012.

Hour 1

First of all, yikes, 360p, cant tell if it's the uploader, or maybe they just still did only standard def up to this point. Not a huge deal, but eh, looks horrible on my TV. 

Second of all, ok, the impression I get is that America is divided here. They're not happy with either candidate. They seem to prefer Obama, but there is talk of whether Romney had a shot. Honestly? I never felt he did. My election prediction at the time had a decisive Obama win, not by 2008 margins, but still confident enough to project the winner. I know in hour 1, they discussed the map Romney and Obama would have to navigate to win, but rather discuss their stuff, I'm gonna do my own mini analysis real quick, as I made a map up in sheets in the past to discuss it. 

 First of all, this is not the ACTUAL prediction I made in 2012, but it's close. At the time, I used a combination of RCP polling AND looking at past trends, and all in all, I remember getting Virginia wrong, I think I got everything else right, so that means that I predicted Florida would go Obama, but Virginia to Romney. The logic was that Florida was more a bellweather that seems to vote to the left of Virginia, and I knew prior to 2008, VA was quite conservative, voting pretty consistently republican from the 1960s up to the 2000s. Of course VA was shifting left, and is now a soft blue state. It CAN go red in a very red year, I mean, Biden mightve lost it had he stayed in in 2024, but yeah, it was a tossup here.

Anyway, the video discussed the path to victory for both parties, so let's discuss it. First, Obama has the advantage. We see a quite blue rust belt here, as well as a lot of other states that were swingy at the time. THis map projects a 303-235 victory with Obama, with a 76% shot at him winning. Again, I felt quite confident in an Obama win at the time. it was closer than I remembered at the time, but yeah, we can see it's quite an advantage, this was 2008 part 2. 

So let's discuss it from Romney's perspective, how does Obama win? Well, 134 electoral votes are safe safe, and then there's Missouri, Georgia, Indiana, Arizona, and South Carolina which are pretty solidly in his column. Indiana did go for Obama in 2008, but that was surprising. And of course, AZ and GA were never going to go blue. This is why in 2016 I was like wtf is clinton thinking ignoring the rust belt to win those states? but again, that's centrism on the brain. Gotta expand into the sun belt, even though it's not electorally viable yet. And yeah we got the rust belt anyway so F those guys, I wanna win over Romney voters. You mean, the voters we didn't fricking need this election? But I digress.

So, North Carolina is next, Obama won it in 2007, but it's a fundamentally red leaning state at this time. Obama had an apocalyptic blue wave in 2008 so yeah, normally? It's red. Florida, one of the big bellweathers. Romney needs this to win. He's expected to win it. It only went as red as it did under trump. It was still swingy here. Virginia, another swing state at the time, before Obama, it was pretty conservative, after Obama, it's become quite reliably blue due to suburbanization around DC. Colorado, similar story, used to be swing before Obama, but suburbanization around Denver has made it reliably blue in the years since. This is btw why the democrats are so interested in NC/GA/AZ/TX, they sense similar trends going on there, although those werent expected to go reliably blue until like the 2030s or something. Clinton was early with it, and demographic shifts would eventually bring those voters to us, we wouldnt need to go to them, as long as we keep THIS MAP or a variation of it, we dont need those kinds of states much. VA and CO are welcome, but again, the sun belt was pretty reliably red until 2020 and I still kinda consider it tilt/lean R. 

New Hampshire, always a weird swingy state that leans blue. it's like new england, but also kinda rural, with a libertarian streak. Even now in 2026 it's D+3 or so, so technically in play, but no one is paying close attention there. 

Beyond that, you get into the rust belt. Yes, we used to win Iowa. It's pretty deep red now, but Obama won it twice. Ohio used to be the bellweather of the country, and the news coverage I'm watching for this one really pushed Ohio as the bellweather deciding state. It's basically what Pennsylvania is now. Like....as goes Ohio, so goes the nation. It wasn't JD vance land. And yeah, Nevada, another swing state. My model has it where Nevada is the real deciding state, but to be fair if Romney could flip Ohio, and Obama keeps Iowa, he could win. Alternatively, Obama can keep Ohio but lose Nevada and Romney can win. So it's not quite the bellweather, but if we get a R+3ish overperformance for Romney, and the election actually IS close, well...yeah. That's what it would take for him to win. He'd need to take every state he needs to win, and then VA, CO, NH, IA, and either NV or OH. Again, it would take a 3 point overperformance to do it, possible, but yeah, Obama was clearly the favorite. 

Beyond that, you get the blue wall. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. States that Trump was able to flip minus MN, which ALMOST flipped to trump in 2016. Again, the map was different back then, if you controlled the rust belt, you won the election, and the democrats were able to control the rust belt back then. To go back to the narrative, it's not because people in the rust belt trust the democrats, but they sure AF didnt want republican. Why? because trickle down economics doesnt work. 2008 and 2012 were Great recession elections, with jobs at the forefront of peoples' minds. And republicans wanted to cut social services to give money to rich people to create jobs, while said rich people were making record profits. So we were expected to give the rich even MORE money, more money than they've ever had, to create the jobs we had before 2008. Make sense? yeah, it doesnt to me either. Actually how I got to where I am now politically. Not that everyone is on the same page as me. But we can see the beginnings of how 2016 started. The great recession crushed peoples' faith in Reaganism, and that led to a 36 year realignment in 2016. It was either gonna be Trumpism or Sanders' politics, and because the dems rejected sanders, we got Trump. 

Anyway, that's the map. I just wanted to lay that down since the 2012 map is quite foreign to us now, although we can kinda see how we got from 2012 to where we are now. Rust belt moved right to trump eroding the democrats' electoral advantage of this era, whereas states undergoing heavy suburbanization are turning blue. That's the summary of the past 14 years or so map wise. 

 As far as other hour 1 stuff....so many bad takes. Acting like Ohio was part of the democrats' firewall, which I guess it was at the time, but that didn't age well. Romney's campaign was out of touch, ignoring polls, trying to argue this was like 2004 again when no....it's not. The republicans were so out of touch and delusional in this campaign. It was astounding. Anyway, that's how things seemed to open. 

 Hour 2

 A lot of discussions about demographics, and how the republican coalition is aging out, while younger populations are more diverse, leading to a demographic collapse in the GOP. This was common logic at the time, but it's also why Trump took off. Like, it wasn't just economics. Trump also tapped into a lot of white anxiety from the conservative types who fear becoming a minority in their own nation, and yeah, that's why they've become so violent and...well...fascist. They fear demographic change and they're trying to fight to preserve their preferred demographics. As I said, a lot of these guys want a world where only they can vote, and they actually are like "yeah, we shouldn't have everyone voting". They literally wanna mass disenfranchise minorities, women, and left winger so they continue to win majorities. This is something we've had to deal with in the years since. And Trumpism is still a last gasp of that conservative minority. it's kinda like when a DBZ villain loses so they try to nuke the planet. But I digress.

Most attention seems to be given to Florida and Virginia at this point. It makes sense, that's where the front lines are. As you can tell by my map, those are the most swingy states. If Obama can carry them, it's over, Romney NEEDS them to win. If Romney carries them, well, then things are probably gonna shift to like Ohio and the like. And of course, right now it's too early.

There's talk about how the democrats seem to have two conflicting coalitions. Working class whites, and suburbanites. Yeah, this is a big flashpoint for future elections. Obama was able to carry both, but as we know, at the time, the working class whites and the rust belt was more essential. The suburbanites were a nice bonus but we didn't NEED colorado, or virginia, or the sun belt. We just needed the rust belt. Again, what the democrats did was monumentally stupid in 2016 and beyond. Abandoning their bread and butter for centrists? Yeah. Pure ideological brain rot. Maybe it makes a little more sense now. Again, rust belt is becoming less important as population decline reduces its margins and the sun belt grows and becomes more purple, but even now, the rust belt a la WI/MI/PA are still more important the GA/NC/AZ/TX. Again, if we can win them, they're nice bonuses, but yeah. It's not really quite ESSENTIAL ESSENTIAL to win those states until after 2030. And even then, if we were able to keep Ohio and Iowa, I still think that the democrats could've held on up there, given VA and CO seem to be shifting left anyway. Again, I dont think we need to go to the sun belt, I believe the sun belt will eventually come to us. And as I see it, GA is likely going to become the next VA. NC and AZ might eventually follow. TX might eventually follow. But as we saw in 2024, nothing is set in stone. Right now the dems seem to be pursuing both lanes...and losing both lanes. It's monumentally dumb. We were so much better off electorally pre Trump, it's ridiculous. The dems dropped the ball HARD. 

Speaking of the rust belt, PA and MI got called pretty early in 2012. Like, Obama had them locked down. And it was like "yeah, Romney's message of wanting to cut government services didn't resonate." Yeah, no crap. Again, look at my map. We had the rust belt LOCKED DOWN, and as long as we did, the republicans wouldnt win. They could take florida, they could take virginia and colorado, we'd still have 281 electoral votes at the time. The suburbs were a nice bonus. We didn't need them. The centrist fixation on them in 2016 was our undoing. It kinda felt like the prophets trading the elites for the brutes to make a halo reference. Like, why sell out some of your more loyal coalition for this new faction? Why treat them like royalty and us like crap? Well...again, that's what screwed the dems so bad. Losing the white working class breathed new life into that dying republican party. Stupid. So stupid. Again I know Im ranting, I keep coming back to this. But yeah. It's something that pisses me off royally, as a rust belt guy from PA who was displaced from the dem coalition to some degree myself. 

  Hour 3

So, like with my of the more recent races, in hour 3, the race narrows. Obama starts winning states Romney needs to win, and it seems clear that the campaign is playing out like the Obama camp predicted, not the Romney camp. While in 2016, 2020, and 2024 this might be somewhat of a surprise given the close races or even advantages that the democrats had in 2020 in particular, in 2012, it's like "yeah, no crap." Honestly, the Romney campaign came off as delusional. They were trying to play this like 2004 for some reason and the map changed. This would be like me trying to run a modern campaign on the 2012 map. Like, that crap aint viable any more given we've lost Ohio, Iowa, and Florida, and now we gotta campaign in Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona instead (I might make a separate article on this). The map changes over time. Every presidency has been a bit of a mini realignment. Reagan swept the country, Clinton reestablished the coasts and much of the south. Bush took back the south, shifting the focus to the midwest. Obama dominated the midwest, making the map look like a generational lockout for republicans. Trump broke into the midwest while the democrats started breaking into the urbanizing south. The next guy in 2028 might shift the map further. Romney was running a Bush era campaign, when the Bush era died when Obama win in 2008. Even then, the Bush maps werent exactly healthy for republicans. They BARELY won. 2000 was even more controversial than 2016, and 2004 had wider margins, but yeah, again, the recession and entrance of millennials into politics kind of killed that era of politics. Again, the Romney campaign was delusional. 

Still, the coalition of the ascendant rhetoric being pushed here hasnt aged well. The republicans didnt quite get choked out of the electoral college, mainly because Clinton herself choked in 2016. She took an easily winnable situation and due to sheer hubris threw away that Obama era map, because she wanted to win the sun belt 20 years early. It was monumentally stupid, and I'll discuss this in detail in the second article I'm thinking of writing. While much of the trump realignment was due to economic anxiety, a lot of it (among conservatives themselves) was due to demographic anxiety and them fighting like a cornered animal. Like, they knew they were in trouble, so they decided to do something about it, which is how we got this terrifying fascist turn. And it really goes to show, the republicans will fight to the last breath for their ideals, while the democrats dont seem to have any, at least none with mentioning. It's a really depressing fact of modern politics. I truly believe if we took a different path in 2016, the world would be so different now. But I digress.

Hour 4

Early on in hour 4, Obama won Ohio, and thus the election. I remember at the time on Fox News, Karl Rove had a melt down over that call, but yeah ABC made no mention of drama, focusing only on their coverage. And I'm not gonna lie, their coverage is very dry and relatively objective, but sometimes too much so. I appreciate trying to give both sides their air time, but the republican party was just so delusional this election, and this grand theory Romney and the republicans had ended up imploding. Because it literally ignored reality. And while it was easy to dunk on the republicans in 2012 for this kind of delusion, quite frankly, it reminds me of the Biden 2024 people who went all in with the theory of Allen Lichtman's keys even though the polling data was wrong. But the polling data was right. That's a lesson I've learned from observing multiple campaigns, dont ignore polling. Im not saying there can't be error involved, and I guess if youre on the losing side, you kinda gotta delude yourself a little to keep morale up and stay motivated, but holy crap the GOP was delusional here. Obama was gonna win, he was always gonna win, I'm actually surprised in retrospect it was as close as it was, as it seemed the republican coalition was still quite robust, he only lost by a few points, this wasn't like a 1936 or 1984 style loss, but let's face it, it was a romp, and the polling was darned near dead on. 

There was talk about the future of the republicans after this. The talking heads pointed out there's no leader of the republicans now and that this is gonna create a vacuum for 2016. And we all know what happened next. Funnily enough, they seemed to be touting Marco Rubio as the leader of the republicans in 2016, while he was a player, he lost. Still, we clearly havent heard the end of him and him and Vance are looking to be the successors of the Trump movement in 2028. In that one, I would have to cheer on Rubio as he's more establishment, sane, and not quite fascist. He's working for Trump, I dont think he's happy there, he's just tolerating it, hoping it will elevate his future political career, but yeah. In the future republican party civil war of who succeeds trump, I'd rather see Rubio than Vance. Of course, knowing the republicans, they'll either choose vance or go full young republicans group chat at this rate. I have no faith in them whatsoever. Whatever can get worse DOES get worse. 

There was also talk of the democrats and Obama, and how this might end up being bad for the democrats as they have nowhere to go. Often times, second terms go worse than the first, and while Obama's second term wasn't bad, he certainly didnt accomplish anything, given the stuff republican opposition he faced, and he was a lame duck. And this is what gave rise to Sanders style populism. People want democrats to DO THINGS, not to just sit there making excuses about why they cant and virtue signalling compromise and incrementalism. Clinton tried to run as an Obama third term no one wanted, and got trounced because of it.

Speaking of which, why did Obama win? There was talk of Bain capital (a financial firm Romney was in charge of at the time), the 47% comments, you saw union people not liking he was for right to work, you saw people who wanted universal healthcare. But it seemed like the media here was just ho hum on it. They even seemed to be encouraging clinton to run in 2016, saying she's not too old for the job. Really, I know I'm biased, but I kinda dislike the enlightened centrism of ABC sometimes. It makes them more dry and "objective" i guess, but sometimes that just leads to giving credibility to narratives that dont deserve it. 

Conclusion

 There was like another 1.5 hours including Romney and Obama's speeches, but I kinda saw what I want to see and I want to wrap it up. Basically, this was a romp. Obama came in like a wrecking ball and cleaned the republicans' clocks. And while the coverage was drier and more nonpartisan than I would be, yeah, republicans were delusional on this one. Romney was trying to run on a political map that no longer existed, and he just couldnt pull it off. While the news leaned into coalition of the ascendant more than the economics, and if anything giving romney credit for his economics (his economics were a joke tbqh), yeah....he had a terrible campaign strategy IMO. I really wish people would stop glazing this guy. Just because he's moderate in the current political environment doesnt mean he was a good candidate. Honestly, this is how us normies saw him at the time. 

Either way, yeah, one thing I want to visit separately, to avoid making the same mistake he did, is designing a political strategy for the modern era. It's clear the 2012 electoral map is done. And sadly, a lot of my political knowledge is based off of that thing. I'm a rust belt guy, I believe we should pander to the rust belt, and as you guys can tell I got REALLY strong views on that. But...the map is different, and the strategy might be different too. So I wanna look at whether a rust belt strategy will be viable in the 2030s. 

Reviewing 2024 election coverage

 I might as well do it. I mean, I did report my feelings of election night as they came generally speaking in part of the WTF happened series I did on 2024, but I did 2016 and 2020, I might as well do 2024.

So...2024 was a coin flip. This was my official projection:

 As we can tell, its 46-54 in Trump's favor, and yeah, anything could happen. Biden kept the odds down most election cycle, but Harris brought them up to around 50-50....then 60-40....before they crashed down to 40-60 in October, and to narrow and recover before election day. I felt pretty good on election day. I know my predictions are never DEAD on, error tends to favor one candidate or the other, and I believed it would favor Harris. That MSG rally seemed to piss off latinos in my area, and my area was one of the most pivotal for the election in the country. The Ann Selzer poll gave us some hope the rest of the industry was overrating Trump's odds. And yeah, it really did feel like Harris got a second wind and was going to be able to cross the finish line. 

With that said, let's do this.

Hour 1

I stuck with ABC for consistency's sake here. Going to watch 7 PM-2 AM, similar to the others. 

So, first hour seemed optimistic. There was once again talk that no, the election wasn't rigged, and a reference to not wanting what happened 4 years ago again, and if you knew nothing else about the era, you might be wondering "oh god, what happened?" The big issue of this cycle seems to be the future of democracy. That psychopath who in the previous one claimed it was rigged ran again, against Kamala Harris, and the whole thing had a dark, forboding aspect to it. Like something happened after the 2020 election, and now we're dealing with this AGAIN. We know what happened, and that's why even I became a blue no matter whoer. Regardless of what I think about democrats, we need to keep this guy out. I also believed (and still believe) that democracy is at stake as long as this guy's in power, and part of me fears what he might attempt later this year in 2026 and in 2028 to keep power. 

Anyway, the anchors talked about a lot of the factors that I did, how the last day of the campaign was spent in PA in my neck of the woods, and how the harris campaign was feeling good, believing latinos were pissed at Trump over his campaign's racism and that they felt confident in a win. 

As the hour went on though, Florida results started coming in, and it started being obvious Trump was overperforming. At first, this came off as possibly anomalous. maybe it's just florida, but it really was the first sign something was going wrong for Harris.

Hour 2

Going into hour 2, it became obvious that Trump was overperforming and Harris was underperforming. Trump was hitting benchmarks while harris was failing to hit hers. This is NOT the news you wanna hear if the race is 50-50, or slightly less than that. You need to match/overperform to win, not UNDERperform. Harris was UNDERperforming, Trump was overperforming. Not good.

Hour 3

By this point it started being obvious the sun belt was lost for Harris. While nothing was called yet, the gaps in performance were too large for her to reasonably have a shot. It all came down to the rust belt at this point. Which is where it always would. I knew that the sun belt was a hard sell for Harris. While it was never quite out of reach, given she OVERperformed, Trump ALWAYS had an edge there, and Harris's big path to 270 was Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, given 226 safe electoral votes. She gets all 3, she wins 270. Which wasnt going to be particularly hard for her, but who knows? if she was underperforming, how much of a shot did she really have?

It should be noted that "hour 3" translates more to hour 4 in the real world, ie, 10-11PM or so. Which...im gonna be honest. I started full on panicking by this point. Harris was just underperforming everywhere and it seemed clear this was a systemic country wide problem. States that were supposed to be R+9 went R+13, states that were tossups were overperforming for Trump, Virginia was struggling, VIRGINIA. It felt like we ended up with an R+4 type scenario of my 7 major scenarios. In reality, it was a bit less, but again, red mirage made it appear more severe than it was. Still, given what harris needed to pull off a win, even R+1 was devastating and wouldve pulled the rust belt out of reach. Not a good night. 

 Hour 4 & 5

Much of hour 4 on the ABC stream ended up being local coverage, but when it was on the doomering continued and Harris's path continued to narrow. It ultimately came down to whether the vote in the cities in places like Philadelphia would be able to overcome the 2-3 point advantage that Trump had. And....it looked increasingly like they wouldn't be able to.  Trump was just overperforming, and remember my own map. Harris needed to functionally overperform in order to win. It didnt need to be a big underperformance. Even D+0.4% would do it. But...yeah, you cant lose ground in this race. 

Hour 6

By this point, the discussion shifted to what went wrong, and its the economy stupid. Biden inherited the COVID recovery, as we know, inflation happened due to supply chain issues, imbalances in supply and demand, and sheer corporate greed. No matter how good the numbers were on paper, people didnt FEEL it. And if you ask me, I dont think people want a "normal" economy. A normal economy, ie, a nominally healthy economy with good metrics driven primarily by "job creation" and a laissez faire approach to economic matters hasnt benefitted average Americans in DECADES. We're in a GILDED age. We dont seem to understand that, or more accurately, the people with the power to do anything about it don't care. They're in the pockets of the wealthy and they're there to opposed a progressive agenda that would fix this. So Biden governed like a moderate, he lost the people, Harris promised more of the same, and the people said no.

We live in an era of populism. Trump promised jobs in 2016. He promised to "make america great again." In 2024, people looked at the economy and when asked the question if they were better off than they were 4 years ago, they werent thinking 2020, but 2019. So they were like "Trump wasnt bad in the first term, I want more of that." Did they get it? HAHAHAHAHA! No. Between insane tariffs, horrible health policies, and the Iran war, he's just caused MORE inflation, and the country has turned on him massively.

Which brings us to the next point. The news was discussing around this point the idea that the map shifted so many points since 2020. You shift some states the whole map shifts. And that's what we were seeing, and that's why we were losing. I knew roughly where Harris had to be to win, and at the time it seemed like we were getting a roughly 4 point overperformance relative to my model, with my model being several points below 2020 benchmarks. Keep in mind, all of 2023 and 2024 I was like "hey, the public shifted 6 points to the right, we're screwed", and when Biden dropped out, harris reduced the gap more to like....idk, 2-3 points or so, with some variation on the state level that still made winning viable on paper, but then she underperformed those benchmarks. So it seemed increasingly obvious through the night she was gonna lose. And I was panicking in the real world from hour 3-4 on. 

Just for fun, what does this map shift idea mean now? Well, currently, based on the generic congressional vote, the public has shifted about 9.5% since 2024. Trump has alienated and lost darn near 10% of the electorate that voted for him. In 2026, we can see what that means. States that shouldnt go blue are looking awfully blue. Texas, Alaska, Nebraska, and Iowa are all in play. In reality, it should take a D+13 shift for that to happen, BUT....sometimes this stuff isnt uniform, we got micro shifts in various states. Some are going a bit more left, some are less elastic. But yeah, we're getting something in the ballpark of D+10 relative to 2024, and it's devastating for republicans and opening up paths that shouldn't exist. 

What could 2028 look like? Well, let's look:

 This isn't a perfect analogue, but we're kind of seeing the trends here. While the 7 swing states from 2020 and 2024 will be in play, states like Iowa, Texas, Alaska, Ohio, ME2, NE1, and maybe Florida are back on the menu. Heck, I know this map doesnt extend that far, but states like Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, South Carolina, and Montana will start coming into view in my model. I doubt THOSE states will flip, but yeah, we could be seeing crazy things happen in 2028. That's how much Trump is losing the country right now. But I digress, this is about 2024, which we lost. Ya know, THIS map:

 

 Anyway, after this point, they shift to Trump wanting to speak, and people waiting for him to speak. THey didnt show it in this video, but I remember this part of the night. I was like oh god are they gonna call PA? Like every call by this point was giving me anxiety. And yeah, eventually he won, and he spoke, and I was like oh god, I gotta listen to this guy for the next 4 years wtf did we just do?!

Conclusion

So watching 2016, 2020, and 2024 feel like three chapters of the same saga. In 2016 the race was close but the media was overconfident in a Clinton win, causing a rude awakening. The mood was uncertain and while liberals were freaking out, most people didnt know what we were getting into, and were like, well, let's give him a chance. By 2020, the picture got darker. The country was on fire, Biden was expected to romp, and then Trump overperformed again, with Biden winning 3 days later by the skin of his teeth. 2024, close race, but the mood even darker, with "democracy" on the line, and thr psychopath who denies elections he loses and starts riots somehow won again. 

It's hard to tell if Trump is a realigning candidate. In a way he does, but considering the three chapter saga here, and how I expect the saga to break in 2028 with a massive blue wave, it's unclear what his legacy will be. This could just be a self contained dark chapter in American history, with 2028 being a real realigning election. If anything, each presidency minus biden seems to be a self contained mini realignment. The map looked bad for republicans during the Obama era, it was close during the Bush era, and much bluer during the clinton era, after the Reagan-Bush 1 era being a blowout. Once in a generation, we get a blowout, but Trump may not be that. Still, we are not in the Obama map era any more, that's clearly gone. Trump and the democrats have changed it, and it's going to clearly continue to change as time goes on. 

Still, what lessons can we learn from this? First of all, trust the data, and dont get overconfident. Overconfidence is a huge part of the problem. Democrats always seem super overconfident and then they underperformed all 3 times. With that said, next point. Democrats are fundamentally unpopular. All 3 elections told the same story. They prefer trump to democrats, and democrats gotta figure out why. I got my theories but yeah, they lost twice, and only won 2020 because the country was on fire. At the same time, trump is super popular, we gotta know why. Some of it is appealing to his base, but the real question is the swing vote what is driving people to vote for this guy over democrats? It's the economy stupid. In 2016, people didnt feel they recovered from the recession. In 2024, they didnt feel they recovered from the subsequent inflation after COVID. In 2020, the people trusted democrats, but the race was still very close. Trump has a very loyal fan base that is ride or die on the guy, and it took the democrats pulling out all the stops just to stop him. I think trump fever is finally breaking, but yeah. It terrifies me that people like this guy so much. 

Anyway, that's my analysis of 2016, 2020, and 2024. Next I might go back and do past elections like 2012, 2008, 2004, etc. Idk how many I'll do. I got maps and polling data back to 2004, but things get spotty before that. Also, before 2004, I really didnt pay much attention to elections so...yeah. 2000 might be interesting to cover though given how much of a nightmare it turned out. made 2020 look tame in terms of figuring out the results. But yeah. 

"Electability" bros need to chill

 Ok, so....centrists are so insufferable with the "electability" argument. They act like they have a monopoly on being able to be electable. And it's not even true most of the time. And apparently, some socialist won Florida's democratic primary for senate in an upset and now they're acting like they're DOOMED, DOOMED I say. Looking at the polling data...the republican is up 9.5% here. That makes it basically safe, with the democrat having a mere 1% chance of flipping it. That is doomed. 

Except....what did the more moderate candidate have? R+8.4%? A 2% chance of winning? My god, we totally blew our chances. We cut our chances in half from 2% to 1%, the horror.... 

Alternatively, the republicans went from a 98% chance to a 99% chance. Let's face it, the dems were never gonna win florida anyway. But the centrists are like WATCH WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU NOMINATE A SOCIALIST IN FLORIDA! As if they'd do SOOOO much better. Guess what? You're losing either way. It doesnt matter if you chose Nixon or Vindman, Florida is a soft safe seat. it barely makes it on my chart. I used to only keep seats under 8 points in play on my charts. Basically, with a 4% MOE, anything within 8 points is roughly within my 95% confidence interval. That means, in a one tailed environment, it's actually a roughly 97.5% confidence interval. Actually comes out to 97.7% because a Z score of 1.96 or so is the 95% mark, but meh, I just round to 2 like a normal person, so that amounts to a 95.5% confidence interval instead, or 97.7% in a one tailed environment. Anything beyond that is a long shot that's barely worth looking at. I havent even considered Florida a serious swing state, so idk why the "electability" people are making such a big deal. I honestly think they just hate DSA types. 

Anyway, let's have a realistic discussion about electability this election cycle. It's been all over the place, but generally favors the moderate slightly. In Maine, Janet Mills was at R+0.5, while Graham Platner was around D+7.4% in the same cycle. Platner was the socialist, while Mills was the establishment backed candidate. Mills was LOSING to Susan Collins, while Platner was BTFOing her until his scandals came out. Even Troy Jackson is at a modest D+2.3, beating Collins, but far more narrowly than Platner was at his peak. So that's a race the leftist is MORE electable in. 

In Michigan, Abdul El Sayed tends to trail Mike Rogers. At winning the nomination, El Sayed trailed Rogers by 0.3%. Stevens was up 1.7%, and that was a relatively large gap. For a while, El Sayed and Stevens were both at D+0.5% for a while. But let's say its 2 points, okay, Stevens is a little more electable, but that's why I said that if El Sayed loses by more than 2, it doesnt matter, because electability doesnt matter a ton unless the race is really close. 

The same can be said here. R+8.4 vs R+9.5% doesnt matter. Youre gonna lose anyway.

heck, the only race where I really felt electability mattered was the Wisconsin governorship where Mandela Barnes was up by 3-4, while Hong was down by 3. At a 6-7 point gap (5 with crowley, who is at D+2), yeah, that's significant enough IMO to say that Hong actually disadvantaged the democrats. You can argue a mild effect with el sayed and how that could matter, but yeah, again, for most races, it's only gonna matter if it comes down to a 1-2 point gap or something. For the most part, the fundamentals of the race and mood of the country matter A LOT LOT more than the actual candidate, given the candidate is competent. So...generally speaking, Im gonna encourage you to vote your conscience unless youre dealing with a Francesca Hong like situation. Dont freak out too much about electability. It honestly doesnt matter a ton. And sometimes a leftist actually is more electable than a centrist, in which case the centrist will likely intentionally ignore the data. Because I've seen them pull THAT before.  

But yeah, in Florida, its not gonna matter. It's safe R either way.

No, appealing to the other side through their language is a terrible idea

 So, there's a common statement I've seen recently among some moderate types that basically goes something like this: progressives lose because they dont appeal to Americans using their language. Americans are religious and patriotic, and if left wingers cant coopt these aspects of language into platforms, then theyll turn off American voters and lose elections. 

I just....strongly dislike the statement. Probably because I dont buy into those values at all, and because if anything, when politicians try to appeal to them, it turns ME off. But then I get statements like "well if you don't, you get Kamala Harris", which is weird because she performed about the same as Hillary, who DID appeal to that kind of language and I found it offputting and alienating.

Here's the thing. There are two camps in politics, with two worldviews. The right is religious, patriotic, and the left is just...all over the place. My own stance is the right SHOULD be more secular and analytical, but I keep being told by moderates this is bad, and we gotta appeal to them instead. So what we get is this weird mixed bag of sentiments that make no sense and seem to have no coherent ideological backing. THe right doesnt trust them because it isnt as authentic as their version, and I DONT wanna try to out conservative a conservative. And liberals end up losing enthusiasm, because...what's the point of voting for someone who cares more about appealing to the other side? This is a problem with both Clinton, who went hard into the conservative framing of things in 2016, and Harris who was a bit more secular, but performed the same. It's the uncanny valley of suck. 

Even if you have a masterful religious progressive using that rhetoric, look at James Talarico. Sure, you can argue he can win texas....in an apocalyptically bad year for republicans. In a normal year he'd get wrecked. Texas was R+13 in 2024, it was R+6 in 2020. For it to even start to turn blue speaks to larger systemic effects going on. But anyway, we discussed him before in terms of his policy and framing, and oh god, I cant stand the guy in a way. I have zero interest in trying to appeal to someone on the basis of the protestant work ethic. Like, I just wanna full on reject the ethic. When we accept our opponents' moral framing of issues, yeah, you can argue the nuances of that and maybe win. But, you'll never make true, lasting moral progress. Because the progress you made is tied to this dysfunctional conservative ethic that we shouldnt even continue to accept in the first place.

I swear, centrists are so braindead sometimes. Well, not really. The thing is, they dont WANT a lot of moral progress. They're conservatives who are fine with tweaks around the edges, and think anyone who dares actually challenge the underlying moral justification of the existing way of things as too radical. 

But....for me, keep in mind, I'm both radical and moderate. Im not a marxist, but I am willing to challenge the conservative ethic head on and support an alternative to it. I have zero interest in watering down and compromising my message in that regard. And maybe that loses people, but so be it, that's what I'm here to do, and I refuse to let the other side define the terms of debate for me. 

When I think about the left failing to connect to people, it isnt because they dont explicitly appeal to conservative values. It's because they get so lost in their own sauce they can't appeal to people at all. Like....say the goal is economic populism. You want policies that make peoples' lives better. I try to appeal to people in the universal language of self interest: this will help you, you should be for this. But....the left often doesnt. They expect people to be selfless, arguing that "selfishness" itself is a conservative virtue, they expect people to be altruistic and care about everyone else's issues, and they get so wrapped up in bull#### divisive issues like Palestine on foreign policy and identity politics on domestic policy, that somewhere, the core appeal to the left is just lost. 

At the end of the day, people want what helps them. Maybe people get wrapped up in religion, but let's be honest, religion was a tool of domestication of humans to be obedient little wage slaves who DONT care about their self interests instead. It was literally a mechanism designed to control people. If people use religion to cause you to ignore your self interest, thats a BAD sign because it means someone is taking advantage of you in order to get you to sign away your self interest to their benefit. And this is another reason I wont appeal to religion. Again, why should I debate on the terms of my ideological opponents? If religion was created and/or is used to control people, by appealing to religious sentiments, I'm compromising my own moral stances and appealing to language that was intended to control us in the first place. My goal isn't simply to appeal to religious sentiments. It's to counter religion and liberate people from its way of thinking. Only then can we look at these issues CLEARLY and decide WITH REASON what we should do and where we should go.

Again, you can make incremental compromises within that system, but youre still drinking from a poisoned well. Id rather NOT do that and just advocate for what I want. Im not gonna out christian a christian, and Im not even gonna try. I'm too honest and autistic for that crap. if you want a politician who is honest and doesnt sound like a politician, then you should support people who speak honestly, not punish them for it and expect people to sound like a polished turd instead. 

And yeah. I feel like centrists like this stuff BECAUSE they're centrists, but honestly, anyone who isnt is just like...no, wtf is this? 

And again,, to the person who argued that Harris lost because she didnt appeal more to religion, I'd counter with Clinton who made religion very much a central part of her identity and language.....and....it alienated the fudge out of me. And she lost anyway. 

Again, it's not religion, it's not patriotism. You gotta connect to people on a level of making their lives better, and you gotta make a convincing case you can actually do so. 

2020 Coverage, analyzing 2020 election night coverage

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

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

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

Hour 1

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

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

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

Hour 2

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

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

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

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

Hour 3

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

Hour 4

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

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

Hour 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hour 6

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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