ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
1d ago
Perhaps it's too soon to say? Potentially, this is a precursor campaign to a wider conflict between democratic and revisionist states, and if you take those blocs as the relevant units of analysis, the ledger is less clear. The American public increasingly has less commitment to maintaining the existing order, and the Ukraine war has set a precedent and provided an example for other states to learn from. If those end up causing a wider conflict to resolve favorably to the revisionist powers, ideologues in Moscow will be patting themselves on the back for putting an end to the looming Atlanticist threat etc.
On the other hand, Russia becoming a poorer farming and resource extraction vassal for a foreign power isn't quite what I'd call a glorious victory for the Russian nation, but I guess everyone has their own goals and values.
ThenElection
3d ago
I don't think it's enough to say they were in economically dire straits, but in the Half-Blood Prince, Narcissa is portrayed trying to sell some trinkets.
I'd have liked an angle where the Malfoys turn to Voldemort out of economic desperation.
ThenElection
3d ago
False stereotype: beautiful people are dumb and evil, ugly people are smart and have hearts of gold.
ThenElection
4d ago
I don't know why the election has triggered a renewed gender war. The gender gap remained the same, or even decreased : https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turnout-election-demographics-trump-harris/3762138/
Even if you think there's new evidence that says it makes sense to use sex as a carrot to convince men to vote Democratic, isn't going full Lysistrata a bad idea? If Democratic women go on an absolute intimacy strike while Republican women are still happy to form relationships etc., for men who would be swayed by such things, it just creates an incentive to become Republican.
Lastly, it seems self limiting: as women drop out of the relationship market, the women who choose to remain in it move up in terms of the quality of the men they can get.
All of this is probably overthinking things, though, as it seems mostly like a temper tantrum of the overly online set.
ThenElection
9d ago
San Francisco seems surprisingly chill as well; I've only gotten a single unsolicited political text from a friend, and it was from an Asian, SF native tradesman, ecstatic about the results.
The group chat of my high school friends from $FLYOVER_STATE, on the other hand, is sounding pretty similar to 2016.
Interesting divergence.
ThenElection
10d ago
I unironically think probably the best way to get people to drop the histrionics and making politics their primary identity is to just lead a happy life and flamboyantly feign ignorance of anything political. Oh, I didn't vote. Or, I voted Trump, because Biden banned abortion.
You can't reason people out of something they didn't reason themselves into.
ThenElection
10d ago
You can even feign ignorance if that's more up your alley.
Who's this Donald Trump guy? Wasn't he on the Apprentice or something?
ThenElection
10d ago
Howard is a solid guess. Throw in a book deal, lucrative speaking engagements with audiences who don't really care what she has to say, maybe some corporate board. She'll be well taken care of. Not for any particular affection anyone has toward her, but to signify to others that they'll be well taken care of.
ThenElection
11d ago
That indicates that Democrats are weak when it comes to earned media. That's a massive issue, but it's a separate one from "I have a giant bag of money and need to spend it." The latter is a good problem to have, even if you're chasing after increasingly marginal edges with each additional dollar.
ThenElection
11d ago
The debt won't exist 6 months from now. The campaign will continue collecting contributions, pay off the debts, and Kamala will walk away with none, rested and ready for her sinecure.
ThenElection
11d ago
The part missing in all of these is some kind of a trade in return, for instance China dropping all claims on Taiwan.
Has the United States ever made this request? It recognizes that Beijing is the sole legal government of China, and that Taiwan is part of China.
The debt isn't a bad thing: it's common for campaigns to end up with debt. 20M/1000M is 2%. When you're spending those kind of sums over a very short time period in a high stakes situation, with uncertain, variable income streams, it's almost inevitable. It will end up being paid off, and IIRC donation limits are reset after the election (though, if someone was a Kamala donor, I do not envy how much begging they're going to endure for the next couple weeks). Maybe Trump will magnanimously bail her out.
And, although she lost, I'm not sure you can say it was badly spent. As stupid as it is that paying Beyonce to fart in your direction can make voters want to vote for you, if you're flush with cash and you think it'll help, why not? What else would the campaign spend it on? Yet more clueless college grads to run social media accounts and spam Reddit with Kamala memes?
Final point: Kamala did much better in the swing states where the money was being spent than the country at large. A ~2% shift across every state would have resulted in Kamala holding the blue "wall" and winning the electoral college, while still losing the popular vote. Going into the campaign, the expectation was that Kamala would need to be running 2-3 points ahead of Trump nationally to have a shot at those states, but the campaign managed to eliminate this gap. This wasn't done through offering thoughtful policy proposals that addressed their specific regional concerns, or through her personal charismatic connection with white rust belt voters.
Money is good, and it's an edge Democrats will have for the foreseeable future, even if there are diminishing marginal returns to it. They just need a better product to market.
ThenElection
11d ago
Hypersonics are asymmetric. A hundred hypersonics flying toward CSG-7 have much more significant implications than a hundred flying to some missile battery in Shandong.
ThenElection
12d ago
Testosterone causes the closure of growth plates. So, surprisingly, lower testosterone might lead to taller heights.
Eunuchs in China were notably taller than men who were whole, and it's been known since antiquity that castration results in larger male bodies (Aristotle: "As a general rule, mutilated animals grow to a greater length than the unmutilated").
ThenElection
12d ago
Most voters, even Democratic voters, don't actually buy the bodily autonomy argument, even for abortion. If you ask if women should be able to abort a day before she's scheduled to give birth, for no reason beyond feeling like it, most will just divert the conversation ("that never happens!") instead of biting the bullet. It's something cooked up in a philosophy journal that works as a convenient one liner.
ThenElection
15d ago
California is an interesting case. It has more Republicans than Texas does. But because of the total dominance of the CDP, it's pretty pointless for Republicans to vote. The last Democrat for statewide office to get less than 50% was for Attorney General in 2010, a certain Kamala Harris, with typical vote shares hovering around 60%. Sometimes, because of the primary system, there isn't even a Republican on the ballot for the general.
This suppresses turnout of Republicans a lot, because why bother? But if Trump gets people excited enough to vote for him, even if it's pointless, maybe it'll knock the California Republican Party out of its stupor to realize some races are winnable.
ThenElection
15d ago
Clinton came pretty close to winning in 2016, and if things had shaken out in a different way (e.g. Obama decides he didn't want to run in 2008), she would almost certainly have become President.
Tons of countries have elected female heads of government and state. Of course, plenty of European and Anglo countries. But even outside of those, you have Rousseff, Gandhi, Aquino, Arroyo, Bhutto, Sukarnoputri, Sirleaf. Are all of their countries more gender progressive than the USA?
As far as the black aspect, if the US had a prominent black person who had run for office and won the Presidency, twice, that would be a piece of evidence that blackness doesn't preclude anything.
ThenElection
15d ago
He has this manic charisma that makes no sense but is incredibly compelling. Imagining a counterfactual Harris victory, her speech would be full of positive words but have no joy behind them.
Trump has an optimistic vision of the country, who he is, and his role in it. I think that's what won it for him.
ThenElection
15d ago
After 2012, establishment Republicans conducted a similar autopsy and concluded they were too hard on immigration. Then the base ignored the result, and elected Trump, to some level of success.
I would love if Democrats took some time for self reflection, but elections are very noisy signals. There's no particular reason to think anything in elite culture will change because of this.
I'd also point out that Trump isn't particularly conservative or right wing. He's just a moderate populist.
ThenElection
15d ago
She's swallowed more bitter things on her path to power.
ThenElection
15d ago
Clinton started the trend.
My take: politicians have less connection with their supporters nowadays. If you manufacture support, then you owe nothing to the manufactured supporters. Once there was a reciprocal relationship, but that no longer exists. So why not wait until the last possible moment to concede?
ThenElection
15d ago
NV played a nice role in most 269-269 scenarios, at least.
ThenElection
15d ago
Clinton seems to me to fit an iron lady archetype very well. (Kamala the Brat, less so.)
ThenElection
15d ago
I blame the locomotives.
For a second I was thinking maybe it was warped because of the risk of no longer existing if you win the bet (is there a name for that? Not quite counterparty risk), but that would cause mispricing in the opposite direction.
It seems the Yes side is whale dominant. A nuclear test explosion would also cause it to resolve to Yes; the big Yes whale could well be some Russian or North Korean general with insider knowledge of an upcoming test hoping to make some side money.
ETA: the Yes whale has also bet on Iran getting a nuclear weapon before the end of 2024, so I guess that's his theory.
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