Goodguy
3mo ago
Yeah, I feel like Trump should just focus on: 1) crime / lawlessness in Democratic-controlled areas, 2) immigration, 3) inflation, 4) the Biden/Harris administration's real or imagined foreign policy failures, and 5) the fact that he has already been President and things were pretty good until COVID (which he can blame on China) and BLM (which he can blame on the left).
Those are Trump's strengths. Election fraud and niche culture war topics like trans bathrooms might have a lot of people who want to yell about them online, but I am not sure they will really drive independents to the voting booth to vote for Trump.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Shucking and jiving outside your campaign bus or calling Repubs weird gets you somewhere with the faithful but it won't win over anyone who isn't.
Maybe not, but being 59 instead of 78 will, and being a relative unknown instead of someone a decent fraction of the electorate is probably simply bored of by now also will.
Goodguy
3mo ago
The thing is, I feel that in the context of a Presidential election in which military service of the candidates is an issue, it does not matter much whether the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were right or not because at the end of the day, if you are someone who values service in the US military, the worst that one can say about Kerry's service is that he saw combat but then lied about some things. On the other hand, though, George W. Bush never saw combat at all and spent the war in the United States.
This is why the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth thing has never made any sense to me. No matter what Kerry lied about, he still demonstrably put himself on the line in service of the US military much more than George W. Bush did. And I am pretty sure that, with his connections, George W. Bush could have made his way to Vietnam if he had really wanted to fight there.
Goodguy
3mo ago
I am not saying that Harris' campaign is necessarily expertly run, but I am surprised by their adroitness. Even though they have much of the media's help, they still have been doing a great job of avoiding making any mistakes. So far the Harris campaign has been a slick, fine-tuned machine that has managed to hide all of her weaknesses and accentuate some of the Republicans' weaknesses.
The media leans Democratic, but that did not stop Trump from getting elected in 2016 and then only narrowly losing in 2020 (and that only after the pandemic). We clearly see that it is possible for a Republican president to get elected even despite the hostile media environment. So I think that Trump campaign strategists who are getting paid millions of dollars should not get to use the Democrats' media domination as an excuse for not doing a better job of marketing Trump's campaign.
In elections, achievements do not matter in and of themselves. Only optics matter. Achievements only matter insofar as they help the optics. Trump had pretty much zero political achievements when he ran in 2016, but he ended up completely clobbering the rest of the Republicans and then beating Clinton.
Harris might not have Trump's high levels of charisma, and she might have no achievements to speak of, but that won't matter if the Harris campaign succeeds in framing the election as a fight between "fresh young hip Kamala and her cool cats" vs. "old stale criminal Trump and his gang of weirdoes". The facts don't matter, the reality doesn't matter. Only the optics matter.
Getting the media to put its ass on the scale to help you is part of what it means to have an expertly-run campaign. Of course, the media in general leans Democratic, but that shouldn't necessarily be an excuse if you're a political strategist who is getting paid millions of dollars to help the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign strategists have done nothing to grab the narrative away from the Harris campaign ever since she replaced Biden as the Democrats' chosen candidate. It's been several weeks of nothing from them, meanwhile the Harris campaign is full steam ahead. What are the Trump campaign people even doing? What is their strategy?
I think that Trump has a problem in that compared to Harris he just seems old and he has been in people's political attention for nine years straight except for a brief interruption in Biden's first couple of years in office. Trump is still entertaining, but he's no longer the novel maverick, and probably a lot of people are just tired of hearing about him. Harris, on the other hand, is shiny, new, and relatively young for a recent Presidential candidate. There is an element in the voting population that loves shiny and new optics. Bill Clinton playing the sax, Obama flashing his pearly-white grin and talking about hope and change, etc. The Trump campaign hasn't managed to do anything to seize the national narrative away from Harris. I feel like they need to come up with something if they want to win.
Goodguy
3mo ago
If the two main candidates were Shapiro and Walz, I am not surprised that Harris went with Walz. To maximize her chances of winning, Harris needs a "generic white guy" to balance out her being a black/Indian woman. So it's understandable if she and her team did end up deciding between two generic white guys. However, Shapiro's being Jewish and his history of being strongly pro-Israel and working for Israeli organizations does not make him a good Democratic VP pick in today's political environment. Trump voters aren't going to go vote for Harris just because she picked Shapiro. On the other hand, it is possible that a decent number of Democratic-leaning voters in swing states where the election will come down to a difference of a few tens of thousands of votes would just decide to not vote instead of voting for Harris/Shapiro.
our "Democracy" will never provide a ticket that is skeptical of the alliance
It might at some point in the future. The reason why it doesn't now is, roughly speaking, because more voters either support the alliance, or don't care much about it one way or another and are willing to just continue with the status quo, than oppose it.
This is true even on the Democratic side. Biden, who supports the alliance, won more primary votes than any anti-alliance contender in the primaries. Which does not necessarily mean that the Democratic voter base is for the alliance, it is more that even for most anti-alliance Democratic voters, it is not among the top issues that they care about so they are willing to throw their anti-alliance feelings to the curb and vote for the Democrats anyway.
Granted, a major part of why Biden won is that he seemed more electable than his primary opponents, and in our winner-takes-all electoral system that is a major concern for many people. However, if enough Americans were against the alliance, there would be enough electable anti-alliance politicians that this would not be an issue like it was with Biden.
The fraction of Americans for whom the alliance is truly a top political issue is simply not that big. So I would not necessarily agree with you putting "democracy" in quotes, because to me the US' attitude to the alliance seems to not necessarily be the outcome of undemocratic forces. Certainly undemocratic forces, like pro-Israel lobbying, contribute to it, but at the same time, if the majority of Americans truly wanted to leave the alliance, and it was one of their top political goals, I have a hunch that the US would leave the alliance.
This might actually happen at some point in the future, if anti-alliance sentiment in the US continues to grow.
Goodguy
3mo ago
I don't know about other places, but in the US low-skilled labor is very much alive. Obviously-recent immigrants form a large share of restaurant kitchen workers, landscaping workers, agricultural workers, and delivery drivers.
Goodguy
3mo ago
If the US is going to keep drugs illegal, then perhaps the US really should invade Mexico and destroy the cartels using overwhelming force. As you point out, is it a war or isn't it? The Mexican government would protest but I have a hunch that most actual people who live in cartel-run communities would be glad.
The current situation, where drugs are illegal yet easily available and are being used by extremely savage organizations like the cartels to grow themselves, seems extremely sub-optimal.
Goodguy
3mo ago
At the moment I don't want to describe the details because I do not wish to risk doxxing. However, I might change my mind about this later.
What are some good ideas, as an individual, for decreasing street crime in highly Democratic-leaning cities, other than just moving away? Recently I have been getting more and more fed up with the failure of my local government to provide basic safety - which is, after all, reasonably speaking the most important purpose of government. I want to apologize to @2rafa for having yelled at her about this kind of stuff a year or two back. Perhaps she was simply more aware of the problem than I was at the time. At this point I am reaching near Bukele levels of willingness to crack down hard on the problem.
I am a techie, I do software. I've recently thought that well, given my concerns, maybe I should go work in law enforcement. I think that at this point I am probably too old to become a cop, but I could probably provide useful services in other ways. What stops me is that I quite simply disagree with the laws against recreational drugs on a very fundamental level. I am sure that I am not the only one. I cannot in good conscience side with the cops who enforce such fundamentally illiberal laws. On the other hand, if one has to choose the lesser of two evils, then I do, despite all my disagreements with the justice system, see the cops as being a lesser evil than street criminals, even despite the fact that they enforce the anti-drug laws that I view as fundamentally wrong. This is not something that should be seen as me praising cops, it is just that street criminals are such scum that even cops are vastly better.
My problem with the drug war is not just rooted in my libertarian-esque attitudes about the proper bounds of government. It is also rooted in me seeing that the war on drugs turns the banned drugs into a highly valuable and easily produced form of underground currency and thus directly leads to the growth of drug gangs and cartels that are, clearly, responsible for a good share of the street crime that I am seeking to curb.
Other than complaining on social media, which raises awareness but does not necessarily accomplish that much, what can one do in cities which are failing to provide basic safety? What are some actionable ideas, things that might actually help, whether it is some sort of viable plan for forming a vigilante militia or a plan for influencing local elections? I am open to suggestions. I know that statistics say that street crime is down a lot from the 1980s and early 90s, but that is small comfort for me because I have little memory of those years. What I know is that I subjectively feel that the level of street crime now is too high compared to what I would wish it to be, and I would like to do something about it. If moving away from the failed cities is the only reasonable course of action, fair enough. But is it, or can something actually be done to fight back against the problem?
By the way, given that this is The Motte, I know that people will likely read a racial angle into the issue. Which is fair, given the crime statistics that most of us are aware of. But anecdotally speaking, out of the five or so times that I have been attacked by street criminals of various sorts over the course of my life, four of the five times were a case of white men doing the attacking. So while I totally understand that statistically speaking, there is a racial discrepancy in this sort of thing, at the same time it is clear to me that we do not just have a problem with non-white people. We also have a pretty significant issue with street scum whites who act in these kinds of ways. There is a general problem with territorial idiots, drug dealer gangsters, violent insane homeless, etc...
Goodguy
3mo ago
My anecdotal experience is that, while the hard drugs part might be a decent heuristic, exceptions are common. I personally know several people who did meth regularly and later in life cleaned up and became successful professionals and raisers of families. Heroin use is common among successful musicians who are not antisocial in any serious way.
Now, of course, if I had to choose to be roommates with one of two people and I knew nothing about them other than one of them had used meth or heroin heavily at some point and the other one didn't, I would choose the non-user. Hard drug use is correlated with antisocial behavior, no doubt about it. I'm just saying that hard drug use, past or present, is not firm evidence that the person engages in seriously antisocial behavior.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Most political messaging is not designed for people like you. Based on your writing ability, you seem to be of above-average intelligence, and based on the effort you have put into your post, you seem to be very interested in politics.
Most political messaging is designed for people of average intelligence and average levels of interest in politics. There are millions of people who have not even been paying attention to the election campaign and are only about now starting to tune in because the election is coming up in a few months. There are millions of people who do not have the cognitive ability to notice the contradiction between past and present journalism articles about Kamala Harris, or any other topic, unless you make it ridiculously explicit for them.
Goodguy
3mo ago
The use of "literally" for emphasis annoys me. So does saying "everyone" when you mean "most people", or "literally no-one" when you mean "almost no-one". Oddly, I find that even here where most people have above-average verbal skills, I see this quite often.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Linguistics is inherently descriptive rather than prescriptive because it is a science, the attempt to study and understand the reality of language as it actually exists. However, that does not mean there is anything wrong with trying to advocate for language norms or trying to shape language so that people use it the way that you prefer it to be used. It's just that when you try to shape language, you are not doing linguistics, unless the reason you are trying to shape it fundamentally scientific - for example, as some kind of experiment to gather more data for linguistic analysis. You are doing some kind of social activity, but not the science of linguistics.
Both linguistics and trying to shape language norms to make language more effective are worthy activities, they're just two different things.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Maybe I'm just not awake yet but what did Reilly get wrong exactly? Trump is still married to Melania and she continues to serve as the woman by his side on public appearances.
This is speculation of course, but when I watched Trump and Melania at the RNC, to me they pretty clearly had the body language of two people who are not having sex with each other anymore. And knowing Trump's life-long appreciation of beautiful women, I doubt that he has simply stopped having sex altogether.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Repeating an idea in multiple comments is common because people will naturally want to say the same thing multiple times if they believe it, it does not imply some kind of deliberate effort to shift opinion.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Yep. Also, I am sure just from simple probability if for no other reason that most people here do not live in swing states, which adds to the difficulty that we have in figuring out how various kinds of optics might actually impact the election.
Goodguy
3mo ago
It really is amazing how much, in American political psychology, the last 9 years have been The Age of Trump. It's not that America's actual political policies have been dominated by Trump - I think for the most part, if you had no idea that Trump existed and just looked at what the American government does in terms of policy, you could easily believe that the last few Presidents have all been normal establishment types. But his presence in politics on an attention-dominating and psychological level has been massive. I don't know who the last American political figure was who had such a hold on the public mind both in terms of attracting love and hate. Bush was widely hated but was never loved in a Trump-like way except maybe briefly after 9/11. Obama was widely loved but most of the really emotional "hope and change" fervor that helped him win in 2008 went away when even his supporters saw that for the most part, he was a standard politician.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Hey, to be fair the reason why I assumed Trump wasn't very good at golf isn't because I have TDS. I don't. It's just that he's a pretty old, out-of-shape man who is busy with a lot of other things besides playing golf. But then, I don't know much about golf and how age affects skill.
It is an interesting video. On the one hand, it does humanize Trump a bit, shows you a side of him that isn't the showman-entertainer-populist Trump of his rallies.
On the other hand, you can really see his age in the video. I think part of it is the natural lighting and the lack of his usual bronzer or whatever it is that gives him the "orange" look. He does look more affable than usual in this video, but he also looks older than usual, full grandpa mode. Which might not be good for him given that he is now running against Harris.
The famous failed assassination photos and videos are, of course, probably his best look ever from a pure PR perspective.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Hanging out with a boss as an employee is often very different than hanging out with the boss as just some random person.
Goodguy
3mo ago
True, I should have said "the presidency", not "presidential administrations". In any case, I think that my point stands. If progressives really had an iron grip on US institutions, the country would be very different. There would be much more redistribution in the economy, with much stronger welfare programs. The justice system would look different, with more emphasis on rehabilitation. There would be much more state-funded healthcare. There might be even more public funding of education than now. And so on. In general, the US would be a lot more like Europe.
It's not impossible at all. Sure, a lot of the excitement is astroturfed, but not nearly all of it. Democrat-supporters are genuinely invigorated.
Trump and Biden have dominated the political discourse for 9 straight years. Many people were just sick of it. Kamala is a young, fresh face who is relatively unknown, so it is easy for Democratic-leaning people to project whatever good vibes they want on her. Most people do not pay as close attention to politics as the people here do. On the Democrat side, they don't know and don't care about Kamala's record, what matters to them is that she's young and fresh and she is running against the orange man. On the Republican side, they don't really know much or care much about Kamala's record either, they're just going to vote against her because she is not the orange man.
Democrats love young, hip politicians. JFK, Bill Clinton, Obama... etc. Kamala isn't hip but she is young-ish, and that counts for a lot when she is running against a 78-year-old.
Kamala's poor primary performance is kind of irrelevant now because back then she was running against Obama's Vice President and a bunch of other Democrats, whereas now she is running against orange man. Against other Democrats, she had to make a positive case for herself without just criticizing everybody else. Against Trump, she just needs to criticize him for his weaknesses, like his age, his scandals, January 6, etc... while doing the bare minimum to make it seem like she herself has some positive qualities.
It's not like Democrats are completely dominating the narrative, they're just doing a pretty good job of claiming a chunk of it. There are millions of people who are more tuned into the Republican narrative than the Democratic one. They're all over X, for example. They're on Fox News. It's easy to find them. It's not like we live in some kind of pro-Democratic narrative hegemony. The election is still going to be very close.
More options
Context Copy link