Our problem is that the Clintons transformed the Democrats from a labor party to a finance/tech party in the 1990s. This would supposedly work in perpetuity because one could appeal to upscale professionals and keep women and minorities on board with anti-white and anti-man stuff, effectively trading rural areas for suburbia. Republicans would be demographically doomed. In the meantime, many Reagan-Bush policies were adopted, like open borders and moving jobs overseas so finance could see short-term gains.
The recipe works when we get 40% of the white working class, not 20%. Another snag is that our corporate-friendly policies create massive income and education polarization, which the Republicans exploit with rhetorical class warfare. (This used to be our playbook.) Our leadership has yet to understand that the awfulness of Trump masks the severity of the predicament, but they'll eventually figure it out.
The key difficulties particular to this election -- 1) Unrestricted immigration is driving up everyone's housing costs, which disproportionately impacts young people and minorities -- our people. 2) We can't use the cheesy and unserious narrative of saving Democracy from fascism to mask our economic negligence while moving heaven and earth to help a hard-right Likud government commit genocide on the other side of the planet. It rings false. As America, especially the left, becomes more atheist and less white, Israelis are no longer the magical Bible people living in the magical Holy Land as they once were in the Christian imagination, but look more like a very large organized crime family engaged in a genocidal settler-colonial project.
I suspect it is a big slice of the pie, especially since the housing supply is relatively inelastic in the short term. Another factor driving up prices has to be private equity, which pushes individual buyers out of the housing market by paying all cash before anyone can make a bid. This is rentier capitalism, and I'd like laws against it.
I think we're in uncharted territory here and prediction markets will be less predictive than they have been in the past. I agree that there are more electable Democrats than Kamala, but I think she's underrated in markets at the moment. She has similar numbers to Biden and his administration, which makes sense given that she's the VP, but she now has a chance to define herself separately from that admin. She's also coherent and (relatively) young, whereas Trump only looked lucid compared to Biden.
1) She gets tanked by association with the admin when there was an opportunity to get someone like Beshear who will represent a fresh start.
2) She was intimately involved in what can easily (arguably correctly) be framed as a "conspiracy against the American ppl" in covering up Biden's deficits
3) Racism/sexism will probably play a role against her. Not massively tbc but 1-5% swing seems plausible to me, especially if Republicans successfully play up the "DEI" angle.
4) We know that down-ballot Dems are either tied with or ahead of Reps in otherwise contested elections, so we know that Harris's problems are not *just* due to being a Democrat.
5) Harris has net-negative approval rating, which is a bad sign for a presidential candidate. (And again, this is not due to general distaste voters have for Dems or generic voter fatigue since down-ballot Dems are net +).
6) In head-to-head polls between X Dem candidate vs Trump, other candidates perform similarly to her in terms of margin between Dem and Trump, but with a higher percentage of "unknowns", when you're behind variance is your friend.
"The results show that voters do not assess racial/ethnic minority candidates differently than their majority (white) counterparts. This does not hold for Asian candidates in the US: voters assess them slightly more positively than majority candidates, although this effect is small (0.76 percentage points)"
I thought Kamala would get trounced, too, but it looks like she's leading in the polls now. I think it's because I overestimated the amount of potential Democrat voters who just want Trump to lose (they would stick with the Democrat incumbent no matter what) and underestimated the amount who wanted an end to gerentocracy (Kamala looks way younger than Biden and Trump). I think Kamala's progressive record in Congress might count against her, but identity politics might favor her despite the DEI attacks. Debates vs Trump might be a tossup. She doesn't have a super hard time up ahead given her opposition, but Trump isn't nearly unpopular enough as he should be. Idk what to expect yet for the election.
I think that the Democrats' choice to support Kamala uniformly is partly due to game theory. If you argue against a nominee and they step down, you can improve the situation, but if you argue against them and the don't you've only hurt your candidate. So as the probability of them being the nominee is higher, supporting someone else becomes more costly. I think this kind of calculation also affected people's decisions to support or oppose Biden's candidacy. People also prefer to back winners, reinforcing the effect.
On the likelihood of Kamala winning, I'd consider taking non-money prediction platforms into consideration as well. In 2020 I believe Metaculus outperformed betting markets, and gives her a higher probability.
Simply put, no Democrat is likely to win the Presidency this cycle. The issues which tanked Biden's poll numbers are as unfavorable to Harris, if not worse. But she's the only one who can leverage the Biden-Harris war chest, so anyone else would have to waste time fundraising just to keep up.
I tend to agree for what it's worth, my prediction track record is quite good I was in the top 20 on metaculus for a couple years before I became more skeptical/aware of the flaws of prediction markets and stopped following it as much.
"I got stuff wrong, and when people get stuff wrong you should generally take them less seriously."
It might make me more sceptical of specific opinions maybe, but this is one of the most serious Substacks I know and being wrong about political predictions will not change that.
Wait for a while. Your continuous posts these days seem to lead to a drop in quality. I understand the pressure because you are earning money on substack and you don't want to disappoint people but you should still be patient, my friend. Wait for things to happen (like wait for a week or two) before immediately making such posts.
We are on the same page. I even lost bets at Manifold on account of believing Biden stay. Tbf I maintain the Democrats have the upper hand (for now). It will take a few more crazy weeks like the past ones to break that imo.
So no concern that 'the guy with mashed potato brains' isn't resigning as POTUS? It's just fine that our lead diplomat and Commander In Chief is cognitively impaired, lets just not think about that and focus on handicapping the election? And of course you got Biden wrong, you don't understand the Dem/Left. Biden was never going to run for a second term no matter what. That was the deal from the start, but he broke it. So they forced his hand. Fyi, I called Joe not running two years ago because I realize that for the Dem/Left it's all about power and winning, nothing else matters. They will break any rule or law, and do anything required to acquire or keep power. So if you use that as your guide, your forecasting might improve...
This is also why I think Kamala will not be the candidate. While all the activist idiots and hacks in the media are lying about Kamala's electability, this is not what the serious people in the Dem party think. This is why, of all people, Obama hasn't endorsed Kamala yet. This is HUGE yet you don't mention it. And keep in mind, Kamala is on the ballot cuz Obama forced her on Biden. His reluctance is based on the subject of your article - Kamala can't win.
But hey, you supported Biden, lol. Like I can't think of a more ridiculous creature in our politics than someone who supported Biden. No wonder you can't forecast...
2. it sounds like you're trying to claim the honor of making accurate predictions without, afaict, actually making such predictions in a verifiable manner.
So being correct doesn't matter? Oh, cool story bro. I notice you don't bother to comment on the substance of my comment. Is being snide and posing enough for you? Seems so, you do you...
If only there was substance to comment on. It's nothing but overly confident assertions that border on conspiracy theory propped up on a generalized presumption that "the other side" is pure evil.
If anyone was to talk about Trump the way you talk about the Democrats, it would derided as TDS.
Not at all true. I merely described the deal Joe made to run for one term - he's publicly admitted that was his intention many times. It's also true that Obama hasn't endorsed Kamala - was the author even aware of this? I don't think so, he breezes by the endorsement, not mentioning the lack of the most important endorsement of all.
My view on understanding Dem/Left politics works - it's about power and predicted exactly what would happen to Joe. Sorry that bothers you. There was plenty of substance in my comment, you just don't like what I said cuz I'm not fluffing for Dem/Leftists.
I predicted Joe Biden not running for a second term two years ago. Being correct doesn't matter? Lol. And what am I mistaken about with respect to your views? I merely claimed you were bothered emotionally cuz I'm not fluffing for the Dems? Am I wrong, were you not bothered that I'm critical and scoffing at their ridiculousness? What is it you actually think?
>I called Joe not running two years ago because I realize that for the Dem/Left it's all about power and winning, nothing else matters. They will break any rule or law, and do anything required to acquire or keep power.
This is projection. What do you think about Trump falsifying electoral votes in order to try to claim the 2020 election in his favor? What rule or law have Biden or Pelosi broken that is remotely like anything Trump has done to stay in power? Is there some constitutional amendment that prohibits Democrats from exerting internal pressure on a Presidential candidate to step down?
Lol. They are called ‘alternate electors’ and it’s the same thing the Kennedy campaign did in 1960, there is nothing illegal about it. That’s made up nonsense for dummies the Democrats manipulate with lies. Like you, apparently.
If they were simply alternate electors like the ones in Hawaii in 1960, why were the participants in Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan charged with perjury? Why did they admit to the charges? Why were they convicted?
Alternate slates of electors are meant to be sent in when there is ambiguity in who won the state's electoral votes - in 1960 they were sent due to time constraints while a recount was happening in Hawaii that flipped the winner of the election by ~200 votes, and the final slate of electoral votes were sent once that recount was finished. Nothing remotely analogous happened in 2020, where Trump's team had over 60 court cases dismissed due to lack of evidence. There were multiple recounts in each contested state and audits in each of them. None of them showed voter fraud. This is why e.g. Guiliani said it was his first amendment right to lie about election fraud during his court case that he lost, or why Eastman wrote in his memo that Pence would certify the Republican slates regardless of the facts.
If you still believe there was election fraud I don't know what to tell you. You are simply wrong about so many on the ground facts that it's unbelievable. Everybody from Republican state governors to Sydney Powell to Fox News have admitted that there was no veracity to Trump's claims of election fraud, and Trump's behavior where he kept repeating claims that were debunked like e.g. the edited video of the Georgia ballot case being "suspiciously rolled out" or "suspiciously dumped" when the full video shows no malpractice should show you that not even Trump believed his own claims. He was completely bullshitting in order to stay in power no matter how much the video evidence or recounts or audits contradicted him.
Also, the ‘convictions’ were for show. Look at the plea deals and what the charges were and how they were adjudicated. In many cases the charges disappear altogether if they don’t repeat again in the next year. It’s a very typical abusive prosecution tactic.
Because of prosecutorial and judicial abuse. And there was ambiguity, giggling. I guess it’s only ambiguous if Democrats think it’s so? There is nothing illegal, ever, about picking a set of alternate electors. They are there to be ready to replace, they are not a replacement in any official way. Stop pretending you understand this or that your POV is valid, it’s nonsense.
I wish the same. Though I am very curious about this "evidence" you came across, I have never seen any such evidence myself though I've certainly heard theorizing that shifting to identity politics was done as a distracting method to please oligarch donors. Can you share?
"The political left should be primarily concerned with fairer economics for the working class, the environment, basic socially beneficial rights, universal access to healthcare, maybe bring back being anti-war, etc.".
That would be precisely the sort of platform that I, a registered Independent swing voter, could get behind.
However, I find the current Democratic Party's obsession with identity politics repellent. Not to mention the whole inability to figure out what a woman, and why women might object to penis-havers showering in women's locker rooms and winning women's sporting events.
Trump is so extremely distasteful that a non-Woke, non-insane, non-senile, non-moronic candidate with a sensible, moderate platform would easily win over all but the most rabid MAGA types. But apparently we can't have nice things that.
You should probably use the figure for P(Kamala POTUS | Kamala nominee) rather than P(Kamala POTUS), where she’s closer to 40% than 1/3rd.
Our problem is that the Clintons transformed the Democrats from a labor party to a finance/tech party in the 1990s. This would supposedly work in perpetuity because one could appeal to upscale professionals and keep women and minorities on board with anti-white and anti-man stuff, effectively trading rural areas for suburbia. Republicans would be demographically doomed. In the meantime, many Reagan-Bush policies were adopted, like open borders and moving jobs overseas so finance could see short-term gains.
The recipe works when we get 40% of the white working class, not 20%. Another snag is that our corporate-friendly policies create massive income and education polarization, which the Republicans exploit with rhetorical class warfare. (This used to be our playbook.) Our leadership has yet to understand that the awfulness of Trump masks the severity of the predicament, but they'll eventually figure it out.
The key difficulties particular to this election -- 1) Unrestricted immigration is driving up everyone's housing costs, which disproportionately impacts young people and minorities -- our people. 2) We can't use the cheesy and unserious narrative of saving Democracy from fascism to mask our economic negligence while moving heaven and earth to help a hard-right Likud government commit genocide on the other side of the planet. It rings false. As America, especially the left, becomes more atheist and less white, Israelis are no longer the magical Bible people living in the magical Holy Land as they once were in the Christian imagination, but look more like a very large organized crime family engaged in a genocidal settler-colonial project.
What percentage of the increase in housing costs would you attribute to immigration?
I suspect it is a big slice of the pie, especially since the housing supply is relatively inelastic in the short term. Another factor driving up prices has to be private equity, which pushes individual buyers out of the housing market by paying all cash before anyone can make a bid. This is rentier capitalism, and I'd like laws against it.
tl;dr bad policy hurts us, and shitting on the figurehead is a cope
I think we're in uncharted territory here and prediction markets will be less predictive than they have been in the past. I agree that there are more electable Democrats than Kamala, but I think she's underrated in markets at the moment. She has similar numbers to Biden and his administration, which makes sense given that she's the VP, but she now has a chance to define herself separately from that admin. She's also coherent and (relatively) young, whereas Trump only looked lucid compared to Biden.
1) She gets tanked by association with the admin when there was an opportunity to get someone like Beshear who will represent a fresh start.
2) She was intimately involved in what can easily (arguably correctly) be framed as a "conspiracy against the American ppl" in covering up Biden's deficits
3) Racism/sexism will probably play a role against her. Not massively tbc but 1-5% swing seems plausible to me, especially if Republicans successfully play up the "DEI" angle.
4) We know that down-ballot Dems are either tied with or ahead of Reps in otherwise contested elections, so we know that Harris's problems are not *just* due to being a Democrat.
5) Harris has net-negative approval rating, which is a bad sign for a presidential candidate. (And again, this is not due to general distaste voters have for Dems or generic voter fatigue since down-ballot Dems are net +).
6) In head-to-head polls between X Dem candidate vs Trump, other candidates perform similarly to her in terms of margin between Dem and Trump, but with a higher percentage of "unknowns", when you're behind variance is your friend.
Btw this study disagrees with me:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41269-022-00279-y
"The results show that voters do not assess racial/ethnic minority candidates differently than their majority (white) counterparts. This does not hold for Asian candidates in the US: voters assess them slightly more positively than majority candidates, although this effect is small (0.76 percentage points)"
I thought Kamala would get trounced, too, but it looks like she's leading in the polls now. I think it's because I overestimated the amount of potential Democrat voters who just want Trump to lose (they would stick with the Democrat incumbent no matter what) and underestimated the amount who wanted an end to gerentocracy (Kamala looks way younger than Biden and Trump). I think Kamala's progressive record in Congress might count against her, but identity politics might favor her despite the DEI attacks. Debates vs Trump might be a tossup. She doesn't have a super hard time up ahead given her opposition, but Trump isn't nearly unpopular enough as he should be. Idk what to expect yet for the election.
I think that the Democrats' choice to support Kamala uniformly is partly due to game theory. If you argue against a nominee and they step down, you can improve the situation, but if you argue against them and the don't you've only hurt your candidate. So as the probability of them being the nominee is higher, supporting someone else becomes more costly. I think this kind of calculation also affected people's decisions to support or oppose Biden's candidacy. People also prefer to back winners, reinforcing the effect.
On the likelihood of Kamala winning, I'd consider taking non-money prediction platforms into consideration as well. In 2020 I believe Metaculus outperformed betting markets, and gives her a higher probability.
Simply put, no Democrat is likely to win the Presidency this cycle. The issues which tanked Biden's poll numbers are as unfavorable to Harris, if not worse. But she's the only one who can leverage the Biden-Harris war chest, so anyone else would have to waste time fundraising just to keep up.
What reliable data do you have that someone else would do better than Kamala?
There has been a massive shift towards Harris, both polls and betting. Nate Silver's national polling average now predicts a Harris win: https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-president-election-polls-model
Prediction markets are also shifting more towards Harris with PredictIt now favoring her: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-the-2024-US-presidential-election
Harris is also relatively new so she'll still has more to gain. There's the DNC which will probably help her, and prediction markets think she'll win the debate with Trump if it comes to that: https://manifold.markets/shankypanky/if-kamala-harris-and-donald-trump-d
I tend to agree for what it's worth, my prediction track record is quite good I was in the top 20 on metaculus for a couple years before I became more skeptical/aware of the flaws of prediction markets and stopped following it as much.
"I got stuff wrong, and when people get stuff wrong you should generally take them less seriously."
It might make me more sceptical of specific opinions maybe, but this is one of the most serious Substacks I know and being wrong about political predictions will not change that.
Wait for a while. Your continuous posts these days seem to lead to a drop in quality. I understand the pressure because you are earning money on substack and you don't want to disappoint people but you should still be patient, my friend. Wait for things to happen (like wait for a week or two) before immediately making such posts.
We are on the same page. I even lost bets at Manifold on account of believing Biden stay. Tbf I maintain the Democrats have the upper hand (for now). It will take a few more crazy weeks like the past ones to break that imo.
If only Democrats could imagine the candidte that could be--unburdened by what has been
But Kamala winning just seems so plausible :)
So no concern that 'the guy with mashed potato brains' isn't resigning as POTUS? It's just fine that our lead diplomat and Commander In Chief is cognitively impaired, lets just not think about that and focus on handicapping the election? And of course you got Biden wrong, you don't understand the Dem/Left. Biden was never going to run for a second term no matter what. That was the deal from the start, but he broke it. So they forced his hand. Fyi, I called Joe not running two years ago because I realize that for the Dem/Left it's all about power and winning, nothing else matters. They will break any rule or law, and do anything required to acquire or keep power. So if you use that as your guide, your forecasting might improve...
This is also why I think Kamala will not be the candidate. While all the activist idiots and hacks in the media are lying about Kamala's electability, this is not what the serious people in the Dem party think. This is why, of all people, Obama hasn't endorsed Kamala yet. This is HUGE yet you don't mention it. And keep in mind, Kamala is on the ballot cuz Obama forced her on Biden. His reluctance is based on the subject of your article - Kamala can't win.
But hey, you supported Biden, lol. Like I can't think of a more ridiculous creature in our politics than someone who supported Biden. No wonder you can't forecast...
poast betting history.
Learn to spell. Didn't bet. Next?
1. "poast" is a common meme phrase lmao.
2. it sounds like you're trying to claim the honor of making accurate predictions without, afaict, actually making such predictions in a verifiable manner.
Comment in English, not memes, child.
it's not my fault you have poor reading comprehension, and it's certainly not my fault that you don't make verifiable "predictions"
A real modern day prophet...
So being correct doesn't matter? Oh, cool story bro. I notice you don't bother to comment on the substance of my comment. Is being snide and posing enough for you? Seems so, you do you...
If only there was substance to comment on. It's nothing but overly confident assertions that border on conspiracy theory propped up on a generalized presumption that "the other side" is pure evil.
If anyone was to talk about Trump the way you talk about the Democrats, it would derided as TDS.
Not at all true. I merely described the deal Joe made to run for one term - he's publicly admitted that was his intention many times. It's also true that Obama hasn't endorsed Kamala - was the author even aware of this? I don't think so, he breezes by the endorsement, not mentioning the lack of the most important endorsement of all.
My view on understanding Dem/Left politics works - it's about power and predicted exactly what would happen to Joe. Sorry that bothers you. There was plenty of substance in my comment, you just don't like what I said cuz I'm not fluffing for Dem/Leftists.
Again, you presume to know what I think, which you don't and are utterly mistaken about.
And again, you think yourself far more knowledgeable and prescient than you are.
I predicted Joe Biden not running for a second term two years ago. Being correct doesn't matter? Lol. And what am I mistaken about with respect to your views? I merely claimed you were bothered emotionally cuz I'm not fluffing for the Dems? Am I wrong, were you not bothered that I'm critical and scoffing at their ridiculousness? What is it you actually think?
>I called Joe not running two years ago because I realize that for the Dem/Left it's all about power and winning, nothing else matters. They will break any rule or law, and do anything required to acquire or keep power.
This is projection. What do you think about Trump falsifying electoral votes in order to try to claim the 2020 election in his favor? What rule or law have Biden or Pelosi broken that is remotely like anything Trump has done to stay in power? Is there some constitutional amendment that prohibits Democrats from exerting internal pressure on a Presidential candidate to step down?
Lol. They are called ‘alternate electors’ and it’s the same thing the Kennedy campaign did in 1960, there is nothing illegal about it. That’s made up nonsense for dummies the Democrats manipulate with lies. Like you, apparently.
As for my reasons for doubting the veracity of the 2020 election results, I’ve laid out the case in this article. I use reason, evidence and analysis to come to my conclusions. What do you do? Read this and let me where you think I’m wrong or off. https://open.substack.com/pub/warforthewest/p/2020-election-integrity-there-were?r=1ri4xv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
If they were simply alternate electors like the ones in Hawaii in 1960, why were the participants in Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan charged with perjury? Why did they admit to the charges? Why were they convicted?
Alternate slates of electors are meant to be sent in when there is ambiguity in who won the state's electoral votes - in 1960 they were sent due to time constraints while a recount was happening in Hawaii that flipped the winner of the election by ~200 votes, and the final slate of electoral votes were sent once that recount was finished. Nothing remotely analogous happened in 2020, where Trump's team had over 60 court cases dismissed due to lack of evidence. There were multiple recounts in each contested state and audits in each of them. None of them showed voter fraud. This is why e.g. Guiliani said it was his first amendment right to lie about election fraud during his court case that he lost, or why Eastman wrote in his memo that Pence would certify the Republican slates regardless of the facts.
If you still believe there was election fraud I don't know what to tell you. You are simply wrong about so many on the ground facts that it's unbelievable. Everybody from Republican state governors to Sydney Powell to Fox News have admitted that there was no veracity to Trump's claims of election fraud, and Trump's behavior where he kept repeating claims that were debunked like e.g. the edited video of the Georgia ballot case being "suspiciously rolled out" or "suspiciously dumped" when the full video shows no malpractice should show you that not even Trump believed his own claims. He was completely bullshitting in order to stay in power no matter how much the video evidence or recounts or audits contradicted him.
I wrote an article laying my take on 2020 election fraud. Please do let me know where I've made any factual errors. You are the person living in a bubble of nonsense, not me. https://open.substack.com/pub/warforthewest/p/2020-election-integrity-there-were?r=1ri4xv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Fyi, the Georgia video was never debunked, that's a perfect example of how all this goes. Read my article, respond substantively if you are capable of doing so.
Also, the ‘convictions’ were for show. Look at the plea deals and what the charges were and how they were adjudicated. In many cases the charges disappear altogether if they don’t repeat again in the next year. It’s a very typical abusive prosecution tactic.
Because of prosecutorial and judicial abuse. And there was ambiguity, giggling. I guess it’s only ambiguous if Democrats think it’s so? There is nothing illegal, ever, about picking a set of alternate electors. They are there to be ready to replace, they are not a replacement in any official way. Stop pretending you understand this or that your POV is valid, it’s nonsense.
DEI and charisma rarely get along.
I wish the same. Though I am very curious about this "evidence" you came across, I have never seen any such evidence myself though I've certainly heard theorizing that shifting to identity politics was done as a distracting method to please oligarch donors. Can you share?
"The political left should be primarily concerned with fairer economics for the working class, the environment, basic socially beneficial rights, universal access to healthcare, maybe bring back being anti-war, etc.".
That would be precisely the sort of platform that I, a registered Independent swing voter, could get behind.
However, I find the current Democratic Party's obsession with identity politics repellent. Not to mention the whole inability to figure out what a woman, and why women might object to penis-havers showering in women's locker rooms and winning women's sporting events.
Trump is so extremely distasteful that a non-Woke, non-insane, non-senile, non-moronic candidate with a sensible, moderate platform would easily win over all but the most rabid MAGA types. But apparently we can't have nice things that.
How is identity politics not the left?