This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Relative to the general public, we probably do. I don't think it's circle-jerking to say this forum is, on average, more intelligent, more educated, and more political aware than the average American (or the average redditor or Twitter poster). That doesn't mean we're a bunch of geniuses or that people here don't fall into the same predictable mindkilling partisanship as everywhere else, but yeah, the entire point of this forum is to try to make discussions more than exchanging insults and memes. The majority of the flack we mods get is because someone just wants to shit on his opposition and then feels mistreated when told he can't.
To answer your real question:
Yes. The overrated "undecided" or "swing" voter. They exist. They may be less than 10% of the electorate (maybe 5% or 6%?) but they are the ones who decide the election in battleground states. You're right that most people in the general public, and also most people here, are very unlikely to change which way they're going to vote even if Biden shits his pants or Trump eats a puppy on live TV. But there are people who are still swayable, and they're the ones who matter, basically.
You may also underestimate the impact of actually getting the vote out. A lot of people may be unwilling to vote for the other candidate, but if they find themselves thoroughly disgusted and demoralized by their candidate, they can just choose not to vote. Speaking personally - I do not like Trump, and do not want him to win (although I have to admit that if he does, I will feel a tiny frisson of schadenfreude enjoying meltdowns in certain quarters), but I am so unimpressed and unenthused about Biden that I'm almost in the "fuck it" camp myself.
I don't deny the existence of about this level of self-reported undecided, but I'm starting to develop an alternative theory.
I believe it was NBC (could've been CNN) ... after the debate, they had an "instant reaction panel" populated by "double haters." These are people who say the don't like either Biden or Trump, but still, I guess, intend to make up their mind and vote for one or the other. My pre-existing suspicion here was, "what new information are you waiting to see from either candidate?" For a time, the strongest answer to that was waiting to see if Trump got convicted. He did and that is legitimate new information. For those who are still undecided, I am having trouble identifying what new information is even out there for discovery?
But I digress. What came across as incredibly obvious during that "insta-panel" was that 4 of the 5 people there were obviously not double haters and were going to vote for either Biden or Trump. It was plain to see by how they answered the open ended question of "What's your initial reaction to the debate."
And I think there's a sizable about of voters like this. They say they're undecided or a double haters for a variety of vapid, stupid reasons. It get's them attention (in that people will try to convince them one way or the other), they get to demonstrate how "above it all" they are, or how they have these amazing nuanced and complex views that don't fit neatly into blue vs red.
Except that it's all made up and they probably know exactly who they're voting for.
A televised panel is never going to be actually any good. There's way too much "look mom I'm on TV". A well put together focus group is superior, and these actually do tend to reflect actual campaign trends pretty well. Even survey takers are subject to "this is a survey" bias, but we've gotten better over the years at comparing these surveys to physical realities, namely the public vote counts broken down by polling precinct, that most of the time we can figure this out and make appropriate adjustments. And all of these methods have found that yes, swing voters do exist as a small group, and yes, things like enthusiasm do predict turnout.
I believe you are correct.
How many "double haters" would voluntarily show up for a no-cameras focus group? It certainly wouldn't be zero, but I think it would be drastically less than the "10% of likely voters" number I see thrown around all the time.
In my opinion, Presidential campaigns since about Bush-Gore in 2000 come down to 47%/47% Blue vs Red default vote. We know the two big structural variables are the economy and incumbency advantage. Sometimes war is also that, but generally only one the U.S. is fully and obviously involved in and that has some strong immediate emotional saliency (Vietnam in 1968, Iraq in 2004).
Beyond that, it's mostly about the candidates building competing narratives targeted at the most important voter demographics in swing states and a little "get out the vote" party machinery. Therefore, running an effective campaign in the sense of management and execution - almost at a corporate level - isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing. Substance, issues, vision kind of doesn't matter if you can't get it into voters heads, and you do that with a lot of activity that looks more like a corporate marketing campaign than you do with impassioned Patrick Henry level speeches.
The accurate knock against the 2016 Trump campaign was that it was poorly run. It absolutely was. But it was better run than the Hillary campaign that (a) Took off the month of September and (b) routinely dismissed highly reliable polls on the midwest and didn't focus her visits there when it mattered.
So when I look at Trump vs Biden in 2024, I'm looking at who's running a better campaign like an investor looks at the operations of a logistics company. Obviously, I can't get into the various war rooms on a day to day basis, so I have to use public appearances and general messaging as a proxy. The debate on Thursday showed me that with a full week of preparation and multiple months of "he's cognitively sharp!" messaging, the Biden campaign couldn't turn in the basics. This is like my analogous logistics company failing to print shipping labels. It's a failure at such a basic level.
Whatever the recovery plan might be - Biden stays in, but Harris becomes more visible, a ticket flip (Harris-Biden instead of Biden-Harris) - it doesn't matter. The ops are broken. The basics aren't in place. Certainly not at the level to achieve an insanely high risk stunt that they now have to do because of the Debate.
There is a reason why focus group participants are paid. How many double haters would explain just how much they hate both candidates in front of a sympathetic audience for $100? Quite a lot.
The point of a focus group isn't to get a large enough sample for statistically meaningful results - it is to listen to what people say. You only need 5-15 people to hear all the common opinions, so you can afford to pay them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I imagine there is more movement in who votes than in changing votes.
More options
Context Copy link
The price of gas in late October, cynically. Optimistically there are always a few candidate specific issues we can learn more about as time goes on, although the biggest one in this race is probably 'how senile is Joe Biden, exactly?' and normies are taking last night as a definite answer.
More options
Context Copy link
I think there are probably very few people who are genuinely so undecided that it's a coin flip which way they'll go. But I think there are a fair number of people who lean towards one or the other but might still be convinced (by a disastrous debate performance, by some new breaking scandal, by an emerging crisis) to go the other way.
That said, I agree that a lot of "undecideds" just like to pretend they're open to being persuaded so people will fawn over them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Pretending that canned practiced debate lines is meaningful is worse than insults and memes. It is actively refusing to understand. The guy making memes has a better worldview: he sees Biden looking old and lost, and he feels panic or glee. Only in this highly reified artificial fake turfwar debate do we say, "Aside from the stuttering, the mumbling, the bad faces, the halting voice, the aged walk, and the glazed eyes, how did he do?"
I appreciate that the Motte is smarter than average, which makes it even more frustrating to argue made-up intellectual exercises. The guy posting memes of Biden in a diaper has a better understanding of the debate. The guy saying he doesn't care because he hates Trump has a better understanding. The guy saying Biden looked horrible and needs to drop out has a better understanding. The guy saying that Biden did fine, because he did better than he expected, has no understanding. He has negative understanding. Normies are just seeing Biden's decline for the first time, but I'm smarter and world-weary and cynical and jaded and I can judge Biden's real performance. Using more intelligence asking the wrong questions means a worse answer. That's what we're doing.
Your whole premise is flawed. It might make sense if we had some rule that everyone has to watch the debate but we don't. Normies wouldn't be caught dead spending over an hour watching two old people spittle on each other. CNN seems to have claimed somewhere between 50 to 80 million people tuned in, many of which could be internationals. What does influence normies is what their politics brained friends and collogues tell them happened and that is downstream of the words and the performance.
I think normies tune in for the first thirty minutes or so.
A single poll before the debate very roughly broke it down into one third of US adults were very/extremely likely to watch live. Slightly more than that were going to watch clips or analysis after the fact. Due to splits in response, this was a bit over half overall of respondents who were very/extremely likely to get some form of debate content, and only a quarter who weren't going to tune in or look after at all.
Anecdotally, even some of the more politically-engaged people I know only tuned in for about 15-20 minutes, in most cases near the beginning, and in many cases a random stretch out of curiosity only. The actual viewership implies that the poll was either a significant over-estimate, or there were a lot of people why couldn't bring themselves to watch despite intending to. Probably the former, this kind of survey is not very accurate for this type of question, in part because the question reveals the simple fact that there is a debate happening! A fact most are only vaguely aware of, much less the exact day. Plus maybe some survey bias and personal overestimation of probability. I'm betting a massive chunk of the viewership were these already extremely-likely people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure what this has to do with me. Normal people don't watch presidential debates (?), therefore... we should debate made-up talking points made up by the politicians?
Normal people don't watch debates, they get their info from people who do. People who watch debates can take all sorts of things from them some of which are the actual policies hit on. It's a very dynamic thing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think your description of what the discussion here looks like is accurate. I mean, in the mainstream media, yes, there is a lot of cope and denial about Biden's mental acuity. Here, I don't see a lot of people denying that Biden is cognitively declining.
I think Biden did better than I expected (which was a very low bar). I don't know that I'd say he did "fine" - he certainly bombed with the audience. But it's not clear to me what you think the "correct" understanding of the debate would be that you think is being missed here. It seems like you want everyone to vigorously nod their heads at your own highly partisan take. Instead, we dissect what the candidate actually said, and we also evaluate to what degree Biden's faculties have declined, and also we evaluate how it's going over with the "normie" voter. Those all seems like fairly rational takes to me. No back-patting and circle-jerking required for us to be offering better discussions than people lobbing grenades at how much their guy sucks less than the other guy.
He has a better understanding of what plays well on social media, so I don't blame Trump partisans for posting memes of Biden in diapers. But this isn't that place.
I think the idea is this:
Imagine if Biden been a bit more together, and had successfully given a line about, say, "we spent 300 million more on Medicare". Realistically, that number would almost certainly have been Sir-Humphrey'd to death. 100 million of it would turn out to be money that they were already spending, classified in a way to allow it to be used for the factoid. Say, reclassifying 'elderly medical support' as 'medicare assist for the elderly'. Another 100 million would be money that hadn't actually been spent yet, but had been put aside on the budget and probably would be spent this year unless it got used for something else instead.
We, and the partisan media, would get to work on this. Some people will say that it's all bollocks and he hasn't done anything. Other people would say that no, the money is there and it's being spent. And in reality, very little new information would have got through. Biden is spending a bit more on Medicare, probably.
So I believe that @SlowBoy's argument is that paying attention to what is actually said in debates (or elections) is a fool's errand. Everyone knows that the promises will not be carried out, that the numbers will be carefully constructed houses of cards, etc. All the promises, the statistics, are intended to produce a vibe. The real message that Biden is trying to convey is "Biden cares about medicare. Biden strong."
According to this argument, people paying attention to what is said, rather than the vibes and the character that is revealed, are paying attention to the wrong thing. The debate is supposed to be a vibes-based slugfest.
More options
Context Copy link
My takes are highly partisan, your takes are... neutral and objective?
I don't think you are understanding me Mayne you want to reflexively defend the Motte. I am not arguing that anyone here is coping over Biden's decline. I am arguing that there is a lot of discussion along the lines of...,: -- "Besides that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" "We discuss what the candidate actually said." Yes, that's the rat trap. We all know that the promises politicians make are not enforceable. They are riddled with lies. They were rehearsed in a backroom focus test to sound good. They were designed to manipulate us. So why are we discussing them seriously?
As the "highly partisan take"-maker, I have a coherent interpretation of the debate: Biden showed serious mental decline, and lost. The actual specific answers aren't really important. And I don't think anybody cares really what either guy said.
So let's come back to this:
If Biden is in serious decline, why would you "dissect what he actually said"? How is that not an act in rationalizing?
Ultimately that's what bugs me so much about the whole "Trump lies" schtick I hear from the media and the PMC.
It's tone deaf and insulting to the public, because the public knows very well what they have in front of them. They know politicians are salesmen, pitching a product. Usually, pitching that product will involve some sort of lie if we take that word in an narrow sense. The car salesman who tells you the deal he's offering you is the best in the industry, is that a lie? I mean, maybe technically, but only a very socially stunted person would get offended by it, stand up and point at the car salesman and yell "LIAR! THIS ISN'T THE BEST DEAL, AT HONDA THEY MADE ME A BETTER DEAL!" The dude's trying to sell a car, you know that coming into the dealership.
And Trump as a salesman is a lot like a car salesman, Obama is more like a startup founder pitching to angel investors. But both are selling something, trying to make their product look as good as they can, and yes, technically lying. Or omitting important truths. But the public already knows this, they've interacted with salesman, they know that not everything you hear from a salesman is to be taken at face value. But the media thinks that since Trump talks like a blue collar worker and Obama like a university professor they can make you "realize" that Trump is lying but since he uses big words maybe they can fool you into thinking Obama is not. Which is insulting because the public knows they're both just as much salesmen one as the other for a long time, it's all been priced in already.
I think this is an especially important understanding because to a large degree, the job of United States CEO is about being the face man, in effect the salesman selling the United States position to the rest of the world and his federal government policy to the rest of the country. Therefore, being an effective persuader, i.e. being an effective salesman, is actually a major qualification for the job being sought!
More options
Context Copy link
And ultimately I'm in the camp that the debate is probably not going to move the needle much, unless it causes Biden to be replaced, because of the same reason. People know what they have in front of them. The only thing it will change is independents who already knew they would like to vote Trump but needed an excuse to voice it now have it.
I don't think anyone doubted since 2020 that Biden was not reaaaally going to be in charge. The guy was always entirely a vote in favor of letting the PMC/The Deep State/the Cathedral/the Swamp/The Adults In the Room/whatever you want to call it reassert control of the government, and they on-purpose pushed a candidate with little ability to assert himself to represent that choice. Biden's cognitive state never mattered, except that now they think they have an excuse to saddle him with the blame for all the failures of the last 4 years and replace him with someone who's going to come into this looking like a fresh start.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I wasn't really talking about my takes here, though yes, I do think I am less partisan and more objective than you.
I don't reflexively defend the Motte - I have a lot of criticisms of the discourse here. I just don't think your criticism is accurate.
Well, the general consensus is that Biden did very, very badly but for all that Nate Silver seems to think Trump is virtually a shoo-in, people have been dramatically wrong about how an election will turn out before, so if you want everyone to just settle on the consensus agreement "Biden lost and the election is over," I am not surprised you aren't seeing that.
Because it matters how serious the decline is. If he is (as some people seem to think) virtually non-compos mentis and only able to handle public appearances with serious drugs, that's different than if he's still more or less got all his marbles and has just slowed down a lot. If he's still functional but declining, then what he believes (and would do) as President matters. If he's a zombie being puppeted by his handlers, then no, what he says probably doesn't matter.
You seem to have misunderstood my argument as something dumb like, "Joe Biden is senile and poops in his pants and Trump is awesome the motte suxxxx hahahahaha BTGO".
What I'm telling you is that your objectivity doesn't exist, and debates are fake and gay, and I want to see Trump and Biden gorilla smash funhouse wrestlemania. I want us to stop reading fact-check statslop fanfic and pick up some Byron or Keats. I want to watch Rocky and Drago slug it out until somebody dies. I want to see Trump yelling. I want to see Biden yelling. I don't care about whatever some focus-tested Dem-Rep slogan-pollster convinced Biden to say. I don't care about made-up technical details. It's beneath my dignity to be manipulated.
Thinking empty things isn't thinking.
Well said.
More options
Context Copy link
I loathe fact checking. So many times the fact checkers are wrong, or take claims that obviously are claims of opinions as testable fact, or focus overly literally. It isn’t an honest enterprise.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think anyone is truly "objective", but not everyone wants the same thing. You want wrestlemania; fine. I care about facts, even if those aren't the things that win elections. The Motte leans more towards the latter, and "debates are fake and gay" I can get on Twitter.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link