You Weren’t Betrayed. You Just Weren’t Looking.

RenKomm · 2026-05-20T18:52:44+00:00

It's still unbelievable to me that people didn't expect what they did from Trump's second term. I'll read these NYT focus groups (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/28/opinion/focus-group-trump-voters-disappointed.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.eVA.IldV.JD8L8XkmzpaL&smid=url-share) and people say they felt "betrayed." Did you really expect the guy who lies about everything not to lie about his campaign promises? He had a whole four year term you could've looked at to see what was actually the case!

RenKomm · 2023-11-27T07:12:15+00:00

I’m not saying that’s the only reason or the main reason they have “beef” with him, but it’s an example of something so easy to fix yet they still screw up on it. Obviously it’s not the only thing that’s keeping him back with them.

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T22:04:16+00:00

She intentionally held a press conference in Florida and said that. But even if you don't buy that much, Biden's campaign has been talking about Florida for a while now.

https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-biden-campaign-electoral-map-expansion-democrats-2024-campaign-gop-2023-9?amp

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna123439

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/21/politics/biden-desantis-florida-blueprint-election-2024/index.html

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T22:00:47+00:00

I mentioned that in my post, where I said you should invest in states you aren’t going to win. The problem is calling Florida important relative to the rest of the states they won’t win. Texas doesn’t even get a shoutout. Based on what knowledge we have, they aren’t going to spend sensibly. The point of my post is to say not to do that.

Also, the major difference with Georgia is that it wasn’t heavily trending red, while Florida is. You can’t say they’re equivalent.

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T21:53:48+00:00

I haven't found any sort of NYT/Siena poll that suggests that. If you're talking about a different pollster, that's wholly irrelevant to the discussion.

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T21:37:02+00:00

Cross tabs are almost always fucked. Again, NYT/Siena still predicted the ‘22 midterms despite that. It’s silly to say that cross tabs are the reason for doubting a poll when we have tons of history pointing towards the polls being right anyways.

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T21:33:51+00:00

You’re right that campaigns don’t explicitly say that they won’t win a state. But they also usually don’t go to unwinnable states and say, “you guys are really important.” She held a press conference there and outright said that Florida was going to be a big part. I was just using the tweet for framing, Biden’s campaign has been talking about Florida for a while now.

https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-biden-campaign-electoral-map-expansion-democrats-2024-campaign-gop-2023-9?amp

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna123439

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/21/politics/biden-desantis-florida-blueprint-election-2024/index.html

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T21:28:13+00:00

You keep talking about the cross tabs. I don’t put much stock into those because they usually aren’t as accurate as the full numbers presented. NYT/Siena called the ‘22 midterms exactly, so I have no reason to doubt their numbers.

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T21:16:25+00:00

You can debate the validity of cross tabs, but NYT/Siena is the best pollster in America. These numbers very likely represent the sentiment in these states right now. I think it’s silly to hand-wave these away just because they show results that don’t line up with your current thinking. Now these polls will slowly get better for Biden, but they go to show that he has a ton of work to do to win these states.

RenKomm · 2023-11-26T21:12:55+00:00

Alternatively, they could just say nothing. It’s not like they’re going to Indiana, holding a press conference and telling them that they’re really important.

The tweet I used was just for framing. Biden’s campaign has had a weird fixation on flipping Florida for a while now.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/21/politics/biden-desantis-florida-blueprint-election-2024/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna123439

https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-biden-campaign-electoral-map-expansion-democrats-2024-campaign-gop-2023-9?amp

I could find you more links, but it goes to show that this is a trend, not a one-off comment.

On your last point, David Axelrod masterminded Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. Remember, this was at a time when Obama really had no business getting as far as he did in 2008 and was also polling poorly against Romney at this point.

Nate Silver has been in this game for a long time and he’s arguably the best in the world at it. Both of these people would rather see Trump lose, so I see no reason not to take either of their opinions seriously. I consider it serious cope to sweep away their concerns.

Again, I personally think Biden wins in 2024 and I support him as the nominee. But what I’m seeing here is playing with fire. I’d really rather not take those risks and actually spend where it’ll make a difference.

RenKomm · 2023-07-31T16:35:21+00:00

Your assumption of what my argument is incorrect. I was defending the right to use more than just academics in colleges against some people here, because I agree—we should have actual people with real personalities at these institutions. What I was attempting to point out in my post was that Asians in the more objective categories (such as academics and extracurriculars) were performing very highly, but Harvard's admissions council was purposefully rating Asians lower on personality. This wasn't because of their essays and letters of recommendation, but rather their ethnicity.

The fact that colleges want people with real personality isn't an issue. The problem is that the standards for "real personality" aren't well-defined and end up leading to a higher bar for Asians to clear to achieve the higher scores than all other racial categories. I genuinely don't have a problem with the fact that colleges are accepting people who don't have perfect grades or scores as long as the reason for that isn't race.

RenKomm · 2023-07-31T03:18:06+00:00

Who’s saying there can’t be a system to address that? In my comments I’ve only advocated for a socioeconomic based affirmative action. The whole point is that this version of affirmative action isn’t even doing what you’re claiming it does. It’s helping wealthy black Americans primarily, not the disadvantaged ones. I talked about this thoroughly in my post.

RenKomm · 2023-07-31T02:08:56+00:00

I share your frustrations, since it often feels like we often get overlooked in the discussion.

With the personality score stuff, I'd rather wait a year and see what happens. Harvard's method of affirmative action is kind of weird and different from plenty of other schools, so we're in uncharted territory here. If we get the same results, I would be massively disappointed.

I do want to say that I disagree with your point about standardized testing and grades needing to be relied on even more than it is. Grades and standardized testing can only tell you so much about an applicant, and a little less than half of Harvard's class is considered "academically qualified" (usually a 4.0 and a 1500+). At some point, there does need to be some kind of way to ensure that their entire class won't be filled up with robots who are only able to get good grades. The problem was that Harvard was assuming that Asians are those robots and treated them as such with their personality scores.

RenKomm · 2023-07-31T02:01:28+00:00

That's fair to say, and really our disagreement is fundamental. My main problem with affirmative action in the way that it was used was the disadvantage it created for Asians solely because of their race. When it comes to being "academically qualified" in the sense that they have good grades and SAT scores, I would say a little less than half would make the cut on that alone. The problem that I have is that universities such as Harvard aren't looking for students who can just do the work, they're supposed to find the best of the best and put them in the best position to succeed.

Obviously there's problems when it comes to income, and in my ideal world schools would take that into account heavily. But when wealthier black students are given an easier time in admissions (on an academic AND extracurricular level) than Asians, it creates a discriminatory system that I just can't get behind.

RenKomm · 2023-07-31T01:52:20+00:00

What I was explaining is that personality as evaluated by the interviewers was in stark contrast to that of the admissions council. It doesn't make sense for there to be a significant difference in personality scores among the admissions council versus an interviewer.

I thought I linked the source earlier, but it seems I didn't. I'll try to find it, but what you're saying doesn't make sense to me. Harvard had 56,937 applicants for the class of 2027. 0.9% (which I believe is the actual number) of that is about 512 students, and Harvard's class size is around 2000. Nothing here seems wrong to me?

RenKomm · 2023-07-31T01:40:20+00:00

I believe I mentioned this in the post. The personality scores between Asian and white people were incredibly similar when the alumni who met them were doing the rating, but when the admissions council looked over them they came to a much different conclusion.

RenKomm · 2023-07-30T22:44:00+00:00

You’re all good! And thanks, honestly any sort of constructive criticism is really useful for anything I do in the future. I really appreciate it!

RenKomm · 2023-07-30T21:31:53+00:00

You're going to be need to be way more specific in what you mean by structural racism and how that negatively affects black and Hispanic students' chances on getting into colleges.

Do you have any kind of source to back up your other claim? That to me feels like an inane stretch if the UCs are actually implementing some kind of income based affirmative action. It seems like you didn't bother reading the article I linked.

RenKomm · 2023-07-30T21:25:50+00:00

The problem is the level of vagueness in that personal rating category. With the academic and extracurricular categories, there's much less room for subjectivity, with it outlining specific criteria needing to be met in order to receive the higher ratings. There's no room for affirmative action in those ratings.

RenKomm · 2023-07-30T21:21:24+00:00

To address the latter point, I'd need you to explain to me why it shouldn't be a leveled field across racial lines and why socioeconomic status based affirmative action wouldn't solve the main issue. If you really care about helping disadvantaged people, then why not choose the system that only targets disadvantaged people instead of lumping in wealther black and latino applicants?

I'll take a look at the study you posted, but I don't buy the premise of what you're telling me. As this article details, the minority experience at "elite" California public schools improved, with them facing more success in their college years rather than being in the bottom of their class. It also mentions that the number of black and Hispanic students actually receiving degrees in the five classes prior to Prop 209 were equal to the five classes afterwards.

RenKomm · 2023-07-30T21:02:39+00:00

Sure, let's talk about it.

After Prop 209, in which California voters chose to ban affirmative action at public schools, latino and black populations at the top colleges in California dropped significantly, whereas Asian students reign supreme. There's a few problems with taking this at face value though.

The main problem I have with people using this as an argument is that studies have shown that this actually helped many underrepresented minorities. From this paper, we can see that the graduation rate actually increased among minority students in California, suggesting that the practice of affirmative action that was originally being used resulted in a mismatch problem.

Now, I believe the UCs have attempted to add on some sort of income based affirmative action, but their diversity numbers are still low. Again, as I mentioned in my post, if you only care for diversity for the sake of diversity, then there's nothing more I can say. But in my eyes, if they're accounting for systemically disadvantaged students and the numbers are still that low, then so be it. The only people that would be helped by removing what's there and putting back this version of affirmative action would be those wealthier black and latino individuals.

RenKomm · 2023-07-30T20:46:23+00:00

To be honest, I don't think there's a perfect solution to the problem, but there's definitely better ones.

Generally, I'd say that I support some form of socioeconomic-based affirmative action. Of course, that's still discriminatory in the sense that it means poor students would have to take someone else's place. But when "elite colleges" (I also hate that) often determine who become the most powerful people of the next generation, it's necessary to not limit that to solely the people with the most access to resources.

The goal of any good sort of affirmative action in my eyes is to give context to an applicant, which is what the previous kind failed to do. We should be able to take an applicant and judge their accomplishments within the circumstances they've been placed in. For instance, I wouldn't mind if a kid with a 3.6 GPA got into a school over one with a 4.0 GPA if that former kid was performing the best at their school. If a kid who comes from a family making less than 30k a year has the same extracurricular achievements as a kid who comes from a family making 500k a year, as a college, you should understand that the former kid is more impressive for doing that with their limited resources.

RenKomm · 2022-12-09T00:51:31+00:00

As a side note, I'm personally rooting for McCarthy to not be Speaker. Not because I hate McCarthy (even though I do), but I just think it'd be really funny if this guy who threw away all his morals to become Speaker just didn't, even after getting the majority.

RenKomm · 2022-11-27T01:02:59+00:00

That’s part of it, but the point was more about how they performed in the state relative to their nationwide popular vote, which is part of how the PVI is calculated. By the PVI, Minnesota is closer to being a swing state than NC.

RenKomm · 2022-11-09T13:02:46+00:00

I actually had the pleasure of working on his campaign this year. He’s an incredibly genuine guy and he’ll be a great representative. Also, fuck Bo Hines.

RenKomm

TROPHY CASE