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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   37693 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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RFK is a wild card. He's polling near 10% which is larger than Trump's margin in most swing states. Are people really going to vote for him on election day though? And if not, which way do they break?

Anyway even without that I think Biden's chances are bad but a lot could happen between now and November. He could do better in the second debate, Trump might have another scandal or end up in prison, or turnout could be low and ballot harvesting pushes him over the top.

I don't think RFKs polling means much. It's caused by Democrats shocked by Biden's performance looking for another Democrat to say they support. At the end of the day nearly all of those people will not vote third-party; they'll hold their nose and vote for Biden or they'll stay home.

And some who would otherwise vote Republican, because they like RFK's vaccine skepticism.

Yes, I should have distinguished between the pre-debate RFK supporters, who are likely mostly single-issue anti-Covidians from both sides (still probably leaning Democrat, though), and the large bump from the debate, which is what I said above.

I live in a red tribe crank bubble- 0% of the people I know well enough to have talked about it with will vote RFK. The like two red tribe leftists will vote Biden and everyone else will vote Trump.

In real life republican conspiracy theorists have issues other than vaccines that they care about(abortion, guns), accept that Trump will stay within acceptable bounds on vaccines, and don't trust RFK.

I live in a red tribe crank bubble- 0% of the people I know well enough to have talked about it with will vote RFK. The like two red tribe leftists will vote Biden and everyone else will vote Trump.

I'm in a similar bubble in a blue state, but at least half of the red tribers close to me are voting RFK as a protest vote. My wife -- who campaigned against state vaxx laws a few years ago -- has an RFK sign and is putting it in our lawn.

I try to tell them that absent vaccines they would loathe RFK, but it's hard to draw that distinction when the other options are so revolting.

Blue states probably have different dynamics.

I've totally lost touch with almost everyone who got fired for not getting jabbed (a lot of them were basically migratory workers or ready to retire and leave this blue hellstate anyway). Are people still so single-issue about it?

Maybe that's the wrong way to put it... The whole thing just fed into my existing partisanship along with all the other 2020 insanity. I can't imagine picking out the vax as the One Thing that radicalized me about that year. Aren't lockdowns just as big an issue?

Kind of a shocking reminder of Scott's old "different worlds" essay (which, holy fuck, has a David Gerard quote in it, talk about bubbles)

Yes, there are a lot of young male republicans for whom the vaccine was the government trying to force us to poison ourselves.

But trump is anti-mandate, so these people are voting for him because guns, even if the vaccine is a top issue for them.

Personally, I find nowadays that anything relating to COVID and/or vaccines for it just makes my eyes glaze over, as a result of hearing about it constantlly for two years.

I'm rather surprised that there still seem to be so many cranks who are obsessed with being anti-vax or anti-lockdown after this much time has passed.

To be otherwise is to be fiscally irresponsible, I’d argue.

20% inflation over 2 years while saving no lives and being forced at gunpoint to inject myself with something that doesn’t help, as well as being a prisoner in my own home?

Never Again.

People are also still obsessed with slavery, government treatment of natives, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Jim Crow, and apartheid, and much more time has passed for each of those. It’s not surprising that some people who feel that their rights were violated will hold a grudge and want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Not quite single issue, but the COVID-19 vaccines are still a no-go in most of the Trump crowd. The phrase “turbo-cancer” has joined “died suddenly” in the vocab of people convinced the jab is the greatest threat to public safety since AIDS.

greatest threat to public safety since AIDS

I mean unless you're a gay man or shoot up heroin, has AIDS ever really been much of a threat?

It's not, but we were told it was -- which creates some interesting parallels with the covid situation.

I think RFK could end up being pretty bad for the Democrats. Many of his policy positions are conservative adjacent (anti-vaccine, pro-Israel). But the real risk is low-information Democratic voters getting to the polls and seeing the name “Bobby Kennedy Jr.” on the ballot. That’s why Democrats have been freaking out about him so much more than Republicans lately.

Hard to call Democrats anti-Israel. There might be a lot of pro-Palestine rhetoric in the voting base but I've yet to see that born out in any policy or elected official rhetoric outside of 'the squad'.

And even the Squad are having their wings clipped. Bowman was disposed of, AOC (always the most pragmatic one of the bunch with the highest potential ceiling) had to make some moderate comments condemning antisemitism.

The Left is arguably anti-Israel but I suppose it hasn't saturated the Democratic Party yet.

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