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Right now there is a freak out among some Democrats about Biden being old. It is odd in some ways because it is not exactly news that Biden is old. And part of it is that right now the race appears to be tight in polls. But the thing that people frequently overlook is that polls this far out rarely tell the story of the election. In August of 1983 more people disapproved of Reagan’s performance as President than approved ( https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/ronald-reagan-public-approval ). He was down by 44-46, and went on to win to win every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota in 1984. Then there is Clinton. He had lost the House in 1994, faced Newt Gingrich as his political enemy that year, and around this point in 1995 was dead even at 44%approve, 44% disapprove ( https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/william-j-clinton-public-approval ). But in 1996 he won 379 Electoral College votes and was easily re-elected. Or how about Obama? At around this point in 2011, he was down 40-52 ( https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/barack-obama-public-approval ). But bounced back to win 332 Electoral College votes and re-election. So polls at this point don’t tell the story of the upcoming election.

But polls are not the best evidence in any case when we have elections to look at. Prior to the Dobbs decision, the Republicans were doing well in elections. But since then it has been bad news.

• August 2, 2022 – Kansas voters rejected a Constitutional Amendment that would have removed the right to an abortion ( https://ballotpedia.org/2022_abortion-related_ballot_measures )
• November 8, 2022 – Kentucky voters rejected a Constitutional Amendment that would have removed the right to an abortion ( https://ballotpedia.org/2022_abortion-related_ballot_measures )
• November 8, 2022 – Montana voters rejected an anti-abortion Constitutional Amendment ( https://ballotpedia.org/2022_abortion-related_ballot_measures
• November 8, 2022 – In Arizona, the home state of Barry Goldwater, Democrats flipped the Governor’s Office, flipped the Attorney General’s office, held the Secretary of State’s Office, and elected a Democrat as US Senator ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Arizona_elections ).
• November 8, 2022 – In Michigan, both the House and the Senate flip to Democratic control for the first time in decades. With the re-election of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democrats have complete control for the first time in over 40 years.
• Other state legislative wins include Minnesota Senate and Pennsylvania House. This is the first midterm election since 1934 in which the party of the incumbent president did not lose any state legislative chambers to the opposition. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_state_legislative_elections )
• April 4, 2023 – Janet Protasiewicz is elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court by a 55-45 vote, flipping the court to Democratic control in a state where statewide elections typically are 51-49 ( https://www.politico.com/2023-election/results/wisconsin/supreme-court/ )
• May 16, 2023 – Jacksonville Mayor’s office flips to Democrats in a major upset ( https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrat-donna-deegan-flips-jacksonville-mayors-office-major-upset-rcna84791 )
• May 16, 2023 – Republicans lose Mayor’s office in Colorado Springs, a conservative bastion. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Colorado_Springs_mayoral_election )
• August 8, 2023 – Ohio voters reject a change to the Amendment procedure that was aimed at making it harder to preserve abortion rights ( https://apnews.com/article/ohio-abortion-rights-constitutional-amendment-special-election-227cde039f8d51723612878525164f1a )

In short, the Democrats have been doing very well, and the Republicans have not been doing well at all. And the trials haven’t even really hit yet.

Finally, a little history lesson. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected in a 3-way race where he got just under 50% of the vote. Scarely a strong mandate. Then in 1994, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans captured the US House, making Gingrich the Speaker. Gingrich then led the House into a government shutdown, Clinton’s numbers recovered, and he won re-election in 1996. Then they tried the impeachment route, eventually finding that Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton not only survived that, the Democrats held on in Congress ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_United_States_Senate_elections ). “…this marked the first time since 1934 that the party not in control of the White House failed to gain congressional seats in a mid-term election and the first time since 1822 that this party failed to gain seats in the mid-term election of a President’s second term. “

So what are the geniuses of the Republican clown car in the House up to now? They want to both shut down the government and pursue a bogus impeachment, all in the same year. It is priceless, really. As Napoleon said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake, so I am happy to leave the Republicans to their “own goal”. But for heaven’s sake, stop kvetching about Biden. He is the most effective President since FDR, and he has the wind at his back.

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Steam is a platform for gaming that I have found to be very handy. The games are installed on your local hard drive, but if you change computers or want to put your games on more than one computer, all you have to do is install Steam on the computer, and then have Steam install the individual games. And you can choose which games to install. Some can run on Linux so you can install them on a Linux computer, but most require Windows unfortunately. Still you could decide only to install a few games on a laptop with a smaller hard drive, or all of them on a desktop with terabytes of disk space. So while it is not the only platform I use (I also have a lot of games on GOG Galaxy, for instance), I find it quite useful. And both platforms let you update your games easily. Steam in particular makes it very easy to add DLC (Downloadable Content) to your games. for instance, Civilization VI has added lots of DLC to keep the game fresh, such as the Leader Pass, which adds new leaders to the game every few months. You purchase the Leader Pass once in the beginning, and then the new leaders automatically get added to your game. You just open up Steam, and download all available new content for any of your games.

One of the nice things about both Steam and GOG are the sales they run. GOG seems to run sales monthly, while Steam does it four times a year, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. You aren’t going to find bargains on the latest games in these sales; these are about catching up on games you may not have played when they first came out but might want to try when it doesn’t cost much. And you can get some real bargains if you look.

One of the YouTube channels I follow is a fellow from New Zealand who uses the handle JumboPixel, and he will do reviews of the games on sale on Steam whenever there is a sale, and I find his reviews valuable because he likes the same kinds of games I like. I first ran across him as someone who did videos on Civ V and Civ VI, and then he covered Humankind, which I bought but haven’t played a lot of yet. I always watch his review videos to see if there is anything I want, and in Summer 2023 I saw that Steam had something awesome on sale. Steam, if you didn’t know, is a platform put together by the game publisher Valve, but which has games from any publishers. But the Valve connection may be why they offered the Valve Complete Pack. This bundle of games included:

• Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
• Day of Defeat: Source
• Team Fortress Classic
• Day of Defeat
• Deathmatch Classic
• Opposing force
• Ricochet
• Half-Life
• Half-Life: Blue Shift
• Half-Life 2
• Counter-Strike: Source
• Half-Life 1: Source
• Half-Life 2: Episode One
• Portal
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• Left 4 Dead
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Portal 2
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
• The Lab

First, note that Source in a number of game titles refers to the Source 3-D game engine, so these are all 3-D games. Second, you might not want to play all of these games but there are some real classics in that list. And the bundle cost me, with tax included, $6.94 for all them. For that price, if you only played one of these games for a couple of afternoons you got your money’s worth.

Over at GOG I can see the combo of Master of Orion 1&2 for all of $2.39, Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 for $4.99 apiece, and Myst for $2.99. These are all classic games. In fact, GOG has 50 pages of games for under $5. And once you establish an account at GOG you will get regular emails from them with the latest games on sale. I also want to mention Humble Bundle. They package up a group of games, generally with a theme of some kind, and let you decide how much you want to pay. The more you pay, the more games you get. A portion of the proceeds goes to charity, and the games can easily be added to your Steam account. Right now as I write this I see they have a bundle of up to 16 Train Simulator games. That is a niche audience to be sure, but I fondly remember many hours playing Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon, so I get the attraction. And I have purchased bundles of indie games that run on Linux from them, and run them on Steam, which is also available for Linux, but can only run games that are written for Linux specifically. So, there is no excuse for the game lover not to be playing a ton of great games for not very much money, just by knowing how to shop the sales.

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