I haven't read all his bog posts but he is showing signs of understand when it comes to engaging the community.
I can only imagine all these posts were written by taking feedback from lengthy consultations and he planned the release to capture all the fragmented interests in the Bitcoin community one buy one. Leaving specific interests to fight fires as he moves into virgin territory to start a new blaze.
I take my hat off to him he is creative and that's his biggest assets.
i put this video up last month where Gavin clearly telegraphs what is happening now. he said he might have to throw his weight around which is what he is now doing. and he has the credibility to do so. but you have to back up around 2y to understand why he's doing this. my conspiratorial mind says this is when gmax first hatched the idea of Blockstream and started working on gathering up most of the other core devs into the scheme. since that time, nothing substantial has gotten done around the core protocol as solex pointed out above. i say it's b/c Blockstream stands to make billions if tx's are forced off MC to SC's. it's also the time when gmax started hitting Reddit and the forum about the SC idea. while Gavin has always been respectful and even slightly positive about SC's, i don't think he's fully on board with the idea and i've pointed out subtle examples of such. and for good reasons as i, and you, have tried to articulate in many settings. but my point is, this is the setting around which his blog posts are occurring; it's now time to open up Bitcoin to the masses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIafZXRDH7w
i fail to see what is preventing "the masses" to adopt bitcoin now.
How hard forking bitcoin would change this
my sense is that major financial institutions and payment processors understand that Bitcoin is not scalable at 1MB. therefore, they don't feel particularly threatened; yet. this leads to investors large and small similarly being skeptical. by lifting the limit, or by taking a baby step to 20MB, suddenly Bitcoin can be shown to scale. once that realization kicks in, i suspect you will see a flood of investor capital into the coin itself, driving the price up, and subsequently encouraging an entirely new round of investment in merchant providers and mining companies.