site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

(though I understand why Trump supporters will be unhappy since it was obviously to Trump's advantage for Biden to stay in)

Not sure I agree with this or that the data does either. If there did exist 'Generic Democrat' waiting in the wings - a candidate everyone had been secretly hungry for in '20 that never threw in their hat - then maybe so. If Andrew Cuomo hadn't been MeToo'd and his corona press conferences in the windbreakers were everyone's last memory of him, maybe so.

But the democrat bench is structurally unsound to a degree that's been (imo) hidden by the conspiracy of silence surrounding the topic. The GOP in '16 (their last contested primary) had an embarrassment of riches, which the media lovingly referred to as the 'clown car.' Like 6+ popular governors running (Jindal, Perry, etc), some from non-traditionally safe republican states (Bush, Kasich, Walker, etc). All those guys are completely wiped out, granted, but the GOP has been consistently spitting out new guys like Vance, Hawley, etc for '28

The democrats have had exactly 1 clear-the-benches primary this entire century. '00 was smooth sailing for Gore, '04 for Kerry, '08 was Clinton-until-it-wasn't, '12 incumbent Obama, '16 Clinton-and-it-was.

But in '20 when the opportunity was ripe and it was all hands on deck, the democrats were running Joe, Bernie, Kamala, Warren, and the mayor of some town in Indiana. There was and is no Klobmentum.

Frankly, it seems to me as though their repeated decisions to 'clear-the-board' for their preferred candidate rather than the benches, the party may have cooked itself for the foreseeable future

  • Josh Shapiro won Pennsylvania handily and has great approval ratings.
  • Jared Polis is a popular two-term libertarian-ish gay governor of Colorado who got Covid mostly right and is still only 49.
  • Andy Beshear won re-election as governor of KY by 5 even while the GOP kept a supermajority of the legislature.
  • Joe Manchin has an ego the size of the Appalachians, and a history as an effective legislator.
  • Gavin Newsom has failed to actually fix anything in CA, but he certainly looks Presidential, has boatloads of money, and is quite glib.
  • JB Pritzker has all the money in the universe and has run IL like his own personal fief for a while; he might have higher ambitions too.
  • AOC will be eligible in 2028 and remains very vivid and high-profile (though I can't vouch for whether the progressive wing of the party still likes her)
  • Gretchen Whitmer is also someone people still talk about, though I don't understand why.

And that's just off the top of my head.

/u/Outlaw83 "Yup!"

Shapiro by admission quite publicly of democrat party elders is a no go because he's a Jew

Polis (he changed his name from Schutz a few years ago 'because he liked it better'), see above. Also he's gay. A gay Jew for VP?? Maybe we're there already and I'm even more wrong then I thought I was, sure, but...to put him up as a bencher is bizarre

The rest of the 'top of your head' is the same. Beshear put all the kids in masks, closed all the small businesses, released uncountable numbers of violent criminals, and the day before it was all challenged...dropped it all. Machin is not even a democrat anymore dude. Newsome has failed to actually fix anything in CA so hard he's driven literally millions of taxpayers to other states. Pritzker is a 400lb Hermaeus Mora tentacle figure who nobody besides the two of us even knows, and if they did, I doubt they'd be enthralled. AOC???? And people still talk about Whitmer because she faked a kidnapping plot.

Yup, this weird view the Democrat's have no bench just isn't true. Roy Cooper, Tim Walz, Mark Kelly, and others you haven't listed are also reasonable contenders.

The actual dirty little secret is the GOP bench is kind of bare, when it comes to people who appeal to the median voter - yes, there are plenty of candidates who win red states by 20, but outside of that, when it comes to swing state or blue state Republican's with any crossover appeal who have a chance of winning a MAGA-tilted primary, there's Brian Kemp from Georgia and that's about it, and even he has obvious issues with the whole "not going along with Trump after 2020."

The reality is, in 2028, if Kamala wins this time, and the ticket is say, J.D. Vance/Kristi Noem, I'll have zero worries about that ticket outside of a 2008-style economic collapse.

It's a shame that DeSantis flamed out so spectacularly against Trump - someone who can take a purple state and turn it blood red through competence and effective culture-warring, as DeSantis did in FL., would definitely belong on that list.

I’m not sure he is dead. If Trump loses, then he is the favorite for 2028. He lost due to the cult of Trump (RDS still had high favorables among the base—just they preferred orange man).

I hope you're right.

Oh, I am not saying the Democrats had a particularly better candidate. But Biden in his current state was about the worst candidate they could have - just about anyone else will give them more of a fighting chance. You are right that the Democrats have left themselves with no real good options.