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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15909 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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I really don't like making grand pronouncements (I think it's a bit narcissistic) but since I seem to have a reputation on The Motte I think it's only fair to take my licks:

  • Midterms were worse than I thought. I would have guessed 49-53 Senate seats for Dems and 220-230 seats in the House.
  • The collapse is so bad that I think it necessitates some new theories about how American politics works. I.e. I don't think Trump's record right now is worse than Bush in 2006 or Obama in 2010 or Biden in 2022. Voters clearly disagree? Inflation reached 8% in 2022, gas right now is lower adjusted for inflation than it was under Obama.
  • Obviously, Iran is very unpopular. I still accept Trump's judgment that it was the right thing to do and I still believe that the war is (plainly) a military success. (Call me crazy!)
  • Trump is a fighter and is going to strike back. I think all calls for his impeachment or step down are bad politics and also bad reads of Donald Trump.
  • Texas with Blue governance would be worse value than California or Illinois, because you don't even have the nice beaches and beautiful cities. But predictions that Texas is about to precipitously decline are overblown. (Texas has a lot of hot smart and beautiful people.)
  • I think the AI buildout will probably not stop, although it will have to reassess. I maintain that AI is so powerful that it's bad for Democrats to hand it over to Republicans even if it polls extremely well in the short and medium-term. I expect that a lot of AI Pause rhetoric will merely grease the wheels for Dems and tech to come to a new arrangement.
  • A lot of my friends who were loyal Trump guys are crashing out now. I do think it's still too soon to call this the death of MAGA, and there is no going back to the old establishment Republican consensus.
  • We're probably closing the window, globally, on a 10-year exuberance of populism and replacing it with something else. To those inclined to gloat, I suspect that whatever comes next will actually be worse for everybody. (For example, imagine a MAGA-Groyper fusion.) (You're going to miss Trump when he's gone.)
  • I think the Groypers might be earning a place in the future.
  • There have been a lot of predictions about Dems undergoing a realignment 10 years after the Republican realignment. I don't think this will happen at all. DSA and center-lib-left Dems will coexist quite peaceably in the way that only political allies that hate each other can.
  • The results were worse than I expected and losing will carry a lot of political consequences. But I maintain that midterms still matter for very little. The powers that Democrats are unlocking for themselves (such as imperiling the future of a Republican SCOTUS) are weak compared to the powers of the president.
  • I do not believe that Democrats are on the cusp of a permanent one-party state or any other despair narratives I see on the right. I don't think this will be true even if they do win in 2028.

Blah blah blah, words words words, excuses excuses, feel free to get your licks in now.

Inflation reached 8% in 2022...

This is an area where number lawyering distorts what's rather straight forward observationally. Cost of living is bad, and constantly getting worse. That it was getting worse at a faster rate eariler, when it wasn't as bad on absolute terms, isn't really a headscratcher.

You're comparing rate of inflation, but sentiment is accounted for by looking at cumulative effect. Inflation is a rate of change number. Inflation was bad under Biden, it ate away a lot of slack in the system; now under Trump inflation is still too high even if it's eating cost of living at a lower rate of increase.

Now this is a different conversation than laying blame, but it helps udnerstand why comparing raw inflation rate is not as straightforward when translating it into felt effects.

Imagine you're speeding toward a cliff and accelerating. Now we swap drivers, and not only does that driver maintain the speed, but he continues accelerating! only not accelerating as quickly as driver 1.

Does it really make sense to be confused that the second driver is met with more panic than the first?

Inflation only goes one way. We're not getting deflation without a recession.

I hope there aren't too many people under the delusion that 2019 prices can come back

uhhh... yes. I was going to add an aside but deleted it because I guess I wrongly assumed it was understood in the frame. That was implicit in the 'cumulative effects' point.

I had a point about building a bridge over the cliff faster than the car was accelerating, but deleted it because it didn't add to the illustration.

Deflation is irrelevant to my point about why a blank 8% was more than 6% doesn't tell the story about cost of living pain.

We came of a decade of very low inflation and a rapidly expanding economy. Then in the first part of this decade, we felt that expansion slow down combined with extremely high inflation. This ate up a lot of the slack in the system. Now under Trump 2, inflation is still too high, and the increase in earnings isn't being felt by the people. So depsite it being less 'too hihg' than under Biden, it can still hurt more. None of this requires expectations of deflation to explain why comparing Biden's highest high to trumps high doesn't tell the story or produce a conundrum

Inflation is 3ish% in 2026 compared to around 2 for the last decade before. It's not great but it's a far cry from the earlier highs. It's not even close.

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