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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   37284 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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The way I see the things in my bubble.

Watching the Democrats media machine spinning at full gears is impressive. Trump's assassination attempt is old news. It never happened. The iconic Pulitzer and election winning picture is nowhere to be seen. A lot of dem aligned twitter accounts suddenly are active and on the attack. Felon and rapist are everywhere. Suddenly Trump's age is a problem. Absolutely no accountability demanded from the people that were telling that Biden is ok. No talks if he is fit to be president. Their reality building efforts are smooth and from what I can see effective - no one seems to remember critics of her that they wrote from the ancient time of June 2024, let alone before. All in all makes you believe that Snowcrash's ur-language was not pulled out of Neil Stephenson's imagination.

On my side - Republicans are high on copium, seems to not have been prepared for Kamala, lack message and message discipline, and are on the defensive. JD Vance seems to be bombing. And for it - the election moved from landslide to at best narrow win. I still think that she is the second worst possible candidate after Joe Biden but probably ok enough to win.

The quantity of vitriol on both sides is extremely high, the quality is lacking. But I would say the Democrats are better right now. I feel that it is manufactured enthusiasm, but has the chance to become real one.

All in all bad news for everyone that hopes that mass migration to the west will be curbed before the mid 2030-s (lately I have become single issue on that issue).

Yes, the whole Biden/Harris thing reminds me of the bit in 1984 where Oceania goes from being at war with Eastasia to being at war with Eurasia in the middle of a speech, and everyone just turns on a dime (even as Winston and his colleagues at Minitrue have to go into crunch to rewrite their entire history.)

Complete with the memory-holing of articles that might be used to undermine Harris.

I've tried with good faith efforts to ask any blue-teamer including on this forum whether it matters to them that Kamala was in on the deceit around Joe's health, and whether allowing her to be chosen as candidate without following the prescribed process is rewarding her for such deceit.

I've heard no good reason for ignoring this factor. Just a kind of willful ignorance of the past because the consensus of the day demands it.

At this point, I do think the Democrats should literally just skip primaries going forward. They CLEARLY do not need them to form a consensus around a given candidate. Just let the Dem power-brokers make deals behind the scenes and present the winner at the convention. This would make the power-brokers happier as they can do what they normally do without having to worry about an upstart like Bernie Sanders upsetting things, and it would make the constituents happier because they never have to risk breaking with the crowd by accidentally supporting a different candidate than the ultimate winner.

I don't think Kamala should be judged for being in on it. I think a lot of people overestimate how plugged in VPs are. The President has no responsibility, none at all, to keep the VP in the loop on anything. So we don't know if Kamala knew anything.

Secondly, she's responsible and accountable to Biden, not the media. A VP that undermines the government she is in is acting irresponsibly. That loyalty isn't infinite, but it doesn't extend to making a judgement call that Biden isn't competent and then revealing it publicly. That's not just undermining Biden, it's undermining the position of the US Government.

Thirdly, had Kamala said something, you would as sure as sunshine be carping about what a disloyal, ambitious snake she was for doing so.

I don't think her actions were terribly unusual. It is very typical of politicians (or businessmen) to say that Mr X has their full confidence a day before firing him, or rebelling against him, or whatever. It is dishonest, sure. But such dishonesty is in some ways, necessary to keep organisations running. Certainly the alternative - for people to immediately blurt out every doubt and negative thought they have about each other - is unthinkable.

I think a lot of people overestimate how plugged in VPs are. The President has no responsibility, none at all, to keep the VP in the loop on anything. So we don't know if Kamala knew anything.

Well she should probably not be making statements supporting the president's and his mental acuity as though she's actually aware and in the loop, eh?

This is a bit ridiculous to argue if the premise is that Kamala didn't know what apparently, as we have recently learned, was evident to tons of people in Biden's orbit for months and months.

Like, she must have been intentionally ignoring it at that point.

Thirdly, had Kamala said something, you would as sure as sunshine be carping about what a disloyal, ambitious snake she was for doing so.

Nope. I don't go caring about how politicians treat each other in almost any context. The whole problem is that they're TOO loyal to each other and view their whole political class as an ingroup.

she's responsible and accountable to Biden, not the media.

Funny, I would have argued she's MORE responsible and accountable to her constituents. The ones she lied to. But as we've seen, the Dems don't actually need their voters input, so maybe you're right.

It is dishonest, sure. But such dishonesty is in some ways, necessary to keep organisations running.

So what, if any, punishment is proper for when the dishonesty actually had tangible consequences and is finally revealed to truth?

Or should we promote the dishonest person to a higher position?

I dunno, just seems like you'll get more dishonesty, which TO ME is a major detriment to having functional, accountable organizations.

There's a difference between something being known and something being known. There is no reason to believe that Kamala knew anything that wasn't published in the New York Times. And when I say "know", I don't mean in the smug way that people online apparently know everything, usually after it happens and rarely before. So what actually, should Kamala have said or done? Given a press conference to say that he stopped calling her? To say that he's old? To say that China should invade now while Biden's napping?

You do understand, I hope, the difference here? That actually, every level of government and business in the universe is built upon a certain expectation of loyalty and trust, and that is infinitely more true when we're talking about POTUS? It's not the job of the Vice President to brief the media against the President. If it's believed he's truly incapable, invoke the 25th. Otherwise, what exactly would be gained by gossipping to journalists who have no power?

There's no reason, either, that Kamala would, or should, see undermining the President and her party's Presidential candidate as good for the country.

As far as I know, there are no tangible consequences to the revelation that Biden is losing it, aside from him stepping aside as candidate, which is not even a tangible consequence yet (it might be in six months if Kamala becomes President instead of Trump). If there was some aspect of his responsibilities that was neglected, you'd say so. The real shocking part is not that the President is a vegetable, but that nobody really noticed any material difference in the operation of the country.

If there was some aspect of his responsibilities that was neglected, you'd say so.

If I point out that there's literal millions of illegal border crossing happening on his watch what would you say to that?

Does "controlling the influx of foreign citizens entering the country" count as an "aspect of his responsibilities?"

Does allowing millions to enter and remain in the country without documentation count as 'neglect' of that aspect?

Then that's one. I could go on but I don't think that's the actual topic we're on.

I don't think you're adding much to my judgment of her character or fitness, just further deflections.

I stand by my position that I cannot choose Kamala due to demonstrated incompetence, dishonesty, and lack of actual tangible support for her candidacy because she skipped the normal process.

And you've provided the same weak excuses as everyone else. "SHE COULDN'T HAVE KNOWN!"

A competent leader would have. And would have said something. And wouldn't have lied.

So I will not reward the deceitful, incompetent leader with a promotion.

Oh, I don't think that Kamala is honest or competent. But I don't put this debacle on her. It's ultimately Biden's fault, he's the President and 100% responsible for his decision to seek reelection.

Uh, there's a point here where if the whole argument is that he's becoming senile, then his 'decision' to seek re-election is, in a deeper sense, NOT his responsibility, because SOMEBODY WHO NOTICED HIS DECLINE COULD HAVE STEPPED IN, noticing that his judgment is faulty.

There is in fact an existing precedent for removing an unfit president and of course the Democrats can choose to hold primaries and candidates can choose to run against Biden, so I think 100% is a tad high.

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In my bubble, all my Democrat friends went from fear and loathing and despair to a sudden surge of optimism. Now they think they can win again and they are all-in on Kamala, as if they've always loved her.

Me? I despise Trump. I think he was a bad president before and will be a bad president again. I cannot bring myself to vote for him.

I also cannot bring myself to vote for Kamala, and I might just not vote for the first time. Democrats actually think it's cute for the Harras campaign to be embracing the "Kamala is brat" meme? No, it is not cute. It's infantilizing and embarrassing. Harris is an unaccomplished nobody, but I don't really hold that against her, nor her alleged trading of sexual favors during her climb to power. Historically, most vice presidents have been also-rans picked for whatever advantage they are believed to offer during the campaign and for being relatively unobjectionable compromise options in the event that they become an "accidental president." Harris was picked for her demographic attributes and because people didn't really have strong feelings about her otherwise. What I hold against her is being an intellectual lightweight with a cringey demeanor. But more than that, what I hold against her.... is her followers.

I fucking despise the hivemind that has taken over almost all the social media spaces and groups I am in. "Trump is Hitler, if he becomes president it will be The End of All Things" (even though he was, and it wasn't), and there is just... no discussion. No debate. No disagreement. Just such smug self-righteousness.

I can't say I will be happy if Trump wins, and it's remotely possible Harris could convince me to vote for her in the next few months. (For Trump to convince me to vote for him, he'd pretty much have to stop being Trump.) But if Trump does win, I'm gonna buy me a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy me some schadenfreude.

I know these are not noble sentiments or sober political thinking. But damned if I won't enjoy watching some epic meltdowns.

Me? I despise Trump. I think he was a bad president before and will be a bad president again. I cannot bring myself to vote for him.

I'm reminded of something a friend of mine said in the lead-up to the 2016 election. He was much further along the curve than me of what the MSM would probably call right-wing extremism, and what I would call anti-wokism. At the time I still clung to notions of "decency" in politics. But I asked him how he could vote for Trump. The man was a blithering idiot. He was crude, and he represented no right-wing values whatsoever. He had no political experience which meant his first term was doomed to failure. He had no ideological positions other than "democrats bad" for reasons which were unclear.

So my friend quoted Lincoln.

I cannot spare this man. He fights.

It is 2024. Trump is a blithering idiot. He is crude, and represents no right-wing values whatsoever. His lack of political experience meant his first term was doomed to failure from the start, and its failures will haunt his second. He holds no ideological positions other than "democrats bad" for reasons which I still do not understand.

But I cannot spare this man. He fights.

But I cannot spare this man. He fights.

Fights for what? His own ego? I see what appears to me to be a lot of denial from right-wingers. From the evangelical Christians who convince themselves that Trump is sincere talking about how the Bible is his favorite book to the nationalists who think he's actually going to make America great again (remember "We're going to win so much you'll get tired of winning?"), it's all nothing.

The only real reason to vote for Trump seems to be "He makes my enemies really mad." And yes, he does that. I admit it, some of the people I despise having meltdowns over Trump winning is, as I said, not enough reason for me to vote for him but enough reason for me to have a dark place in my heart that chortles a little at the thought.

But to the degree he has any policies that appeal to me, I see no concrete plans or any reason to believe he can actually accomplish those things.

The things he said during the debate with Biden about curing cancer, restarting the space program, making our enemies respect us, and stopping illegal immigration sure sounded nice! Unfortunately, I believe he can do any of those things about as much as I believe that he reads the Bible every night.

It doesn't matter what for. He fights my enemies, and sometimes he beats them. I don't care if he fights for his own glory, his own ego, his name in the history books. I don't care if he fights for chocolate sprinkles on bananas. He fights. And when he fights, he forces others to fight with him. Before Trump the Great Republican Hopes were Romney and McCain. Both of whom died whimpering deaths on the blades of a media that hated them. Because Trump was willing to fight tooth and nail using every dirty trick the mainstream Republicans considered beneath them, he won. He beat the Anointed Champion. Could Cruz have beaten Hillary in 2016? I doubt it. In 2016 Cruz was just as unable to handle a hostile press as every other mainstream Republican. A fact which boggles my mind considering how long the press have been hostile to Republicans.

Who else is left from the 2016 primaries? Trump and Cruz. Nobody else. Nobody else had the staying power and the only reason Cruz stayed is because he started to fight like Trump. In 2024 Cruz is a pitbull. He doesn't give a damn what the papers say, and I've watched him tear apart some of Biden's judicial appointees on live television. Where is Marco Rubio? When was the last time his name came up? He's a Senator for God's sake and he does nothing. His name was halfheartedly floated as a VP pick for Trump but nobody took it seriously. Ben Carson? Founded his own think tank where he sits and does nothing. John Kasich? Endorsed Biden. Jeb? Retreated from public life.

Trump has managed to remind the Republican party they are supposed to fight god damn it. They are more than Progressives in the slow lane. They are the goddamn conservative party and I want some conservatism. Is he the One True Conservative, destined to bring honor and glory back to the halls of the Grand Old Party? Of course not. I'd be shocked to learn that he believes in anything other than the Cult of Trump. He is a Manhattan real estate developer who voted Democrat like every other Manhattan real estate developer until he decided to throw his hat into the ring in 2016. I don't particularly like Trump. I don't like what his presence says about the state of the country I love.

But I see progressivism as the cumulative effect of memetic weapons deployed by the Soviet Union. I am utterly convinced that Gramscian Damage is real and McCarthy was right. And nobody else was willing to get down in the mud and fight it out. So I cannot spare this man. He fights.

(For Trump to convince me to vote for him, he'd pretty much have to stop being Trump.)

You don't vote for a president, you vote for the set of people who're going to get there. True, it's not at all certain that Project 2025 is going to play a significant role and it's rumored people like Pompeo would be back because of course the would, however, the mere fact that it'd be a Trump admin would mean lower migration and probably less insane cultural policies.

I don't see how anyone can just ..stand aside and not vote, when the alternative is clean lunacy of more pointless migrants, more trans* related insanity, more cultural revolution.

Yeah, dude, I know how voting works. It's not just my personal disdain for Trump (though there is plenty of that), it's that I saw no evidence that he's actually good at much and a lot of stuff he'll do is bad. I'm not primarily a culture war voter, so while I guess it might be amusing to see him fire Rachel Levine (I don't think he will, actually), I don't think he's going to retUrn us to some pre-trans, pre-DEI golden age.

while I guess it might be amusing to see him fire Rachel Levine (I don't think he will, actually)

You don't think he will ? A) They tried to have him shot. Even if he won't be able to go after the people who tried that, he's no doubt going to take out his rage on a whole range of soft targets, and Levine who is making US the punchline of a joke is very high on that list.

B) if you haven't noticed, this time it's not just Trump. Microsoft disbanded their DEI team, iirc. Google fired a bunch of activists even earlier. SV as a whole seems to be having second thoughts about the cultural revolution.

Then there's Musk who seems pretty irate and is probably in the world's top 1% of most single-minded people. With people like Rufo and Musk on board, odds are a Trump admin could change a lot of things. Unless, of course, he staffs his administration with neocons like the last one.

I honestly don't know but I'm slightly more positive than I was last time, because there's a lot more people invested into things changing. And also, yeah, a near-death experience and what they put him through re: the criminal prosecution etc probably changed a lot.

the alternative is clean lunacy of more pointless migrants, more trans* related insanity, more cultural revolution.

Was January 2017 to January 2021 notably free of these things?

I do remember a whole bunch of executive orders that Biden rolled back on day 1. Anger that the destructive diversity grift was no longer allowed on taxpayer dime due to an EO..

Migration was lower despite state and cities being uncooperative on this, and this situation nowhere near as dire.

Now I don't believe Trump will, this time, get useful people into his admin, but at the very least someone who isn't 100% on board with importing more future democrat voters is going to be less likely to promote just that.

If you feel that the first-past-the-post system that marginalizes third parties results in two candidates that are worse than they should be, as I do, you should vote third party as a protest vote. A third party vote in a safe state like California matters more than a vote for either red or blue, I would say.

(Compared to how they do it in Europe with run-off elections and ranked choice voting.)

Wild take: Right-wingers don't dislike Kamala. At least, not in the way they disliked Hillary. I don't have anything to back this up, just the general vibe from the usual online right crowd on Twitter.

Hillary (and her general circle of supporters) gave off a vibe of "do whatever it takes to win" that Kamala doesn't. But Kamala doesn't have the opportunity to do anything underhanded, she doesn't seem to have access to the underhanded cards in the deck. But presumably that will change now? Maybe?

I get the 'whatever it takes' vibe from Kamala, and am a bit surprised that she doesn't. From her start as a the politically-appointed girlfriend to get the foot in the door, to her prosecutorial role in sketchy prosecutions that suggest political motive, to the bail fund for rioters during the mostly peaceful protest season, to her already-emerging narrative defense strategies pre-emptively accusing critics of sexism and racism, and to her implicit role in the ballot-coup against she has the whole variety from abuse of state power to anarcho-tyranny to culture warring to personal ethical quandries.

There's also a point that almost every single youtube inter-video add for the last few days feels to have been a Kamala fundraiser add... even when I'm nowhere near political topic matter.

There's also a point that almost every single youtube inter-video add for the last few days feels to have been a Kamala fundraiser ad

If this is the same one I've been getting, my first observation was that the audio was terrible: echoes, ambient noise, and such. This was memorable because even low-budget YouTube channels have, I guess, been able to get good-enough microphones, acoustic panels, and turn off the air conditioner (things I've seen brought up in passing) to manage better than a multi-million dollar campaign that I'd think would be doing professional-quality media constantly.

FWIW I don't like Trump, and I have no idea who I will vote for since it will be a contest of which bag of shit smells least.

But I would vote for Kodos before I voted for Kamala.

Lefties hate Trump for Jan 6, which I cannot gin up enough outrage to really care about. It was one riot in a year full of them, notable only for the fact that it was righties instead of lefties, and they vandalized government buildings instead of destroying the lives of randos. Did Trump encourage them? Hard to say if he meant to, or they colluded, or they overinterpreted him, but either way it was a bad look.

But Kamala set up a bail fund for rioters. In the middle of destructive riots. The ones that did more damage than a Cat 2 hurricane and fucked up random business owners to no purpose whatsoever. Riots which ROUTINELY had been going for multi-night stretches in each location before petering out. But the idea of a single arsonist being forced to miss out on the second night of terror just because he'd been caught in the first night was so hateful to her that she organized a bail fund to make sure they didn't have to miss a single moment of terrorizing the people of the nation she was running to be VP of. Lefties think Trump is a traitor, I think Kamala is. Trump maybe encouraged a riot that didn't even do much. Kamala funded a terrorist insurgency.

Lefties hate Trump for Jan 6

Lefties hated Trump long before Jan 6. Jan 6 was just an opportunity for them to say "see I told you so".

Kamala set up a bail fund for rioters.

It's worse than that. When she was California AG, her office was responsible for writing the titles and summaries of ballot initiatives. She decided to title one of them - Proposition 47 - the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" with an innocuous summary. What Prop 47 actually did was downgrade a whole host of significant offenses, including forgery, fraud, and theft or receiving of stolen items valued at less than $950, from felonies to misdemeanors. [EDIT: I was corrected by /u/sarker on this below] Her office also refused to seek the death penalty for a man who shot a cop in cold blood, and didn't bother to contact the man's widow at all.

She also has a track record, both as AG and as San Francisco DA, of things we would normally associate with hard-ass overzealous prosecutors; failing to disclose significant potentially-exculpatory evidence to opposing counsel in violations of rules requiring her to do so. Her office covered up a lying forensic technician in over 600 drug cases, letting a corrupt fire investigator create an illegal slush-fund and falsify records to pin a major wildfire on private landowners, and fighting to defend several blatantly false convictions.

The combination makes sense to me; I recognize her type from my time working in the guts of the administrative state. She's the worst kind of anarcho-tyrant. Someone who will use every trick in the book (and a few that aren't in it) to keep their budgets full, perquisites in place, authority unquestioned, and metrics good, while studiously avoiding anything that smacks of hard work even at the cost of significant injustice or community harm. Goodhart's law made flesh. "Progressive" when the incentives tell her to be progressive, pro-cop when the incentives line up that way instead. But almost always in the worst, most counterproductive way possible.

She decided to title one of them - Proposition 47 - the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" with an innocuous summary.

You (or whoever told you this) made this up.

Ballotpedia

Ballot title The ballot title for Proposition 47 was as follows:

"Criminal Sentences. Misdemeanor Penalties. Initiative Statute."

Ballot summary The ballot summary for this measure was:

“ • Requires misdemeanor sentence instead of felony for certain drug possession offenses.

• Requires misdemeanor sentence instead of felony for the following crimes when amount involved is $950 or less: petty theft, receiving stolen property, and forging/writing bad checks.

• Allows felony sentence for these offenses if person has previous conviction for crimes such as rape, murder, or child molestation or is registered sex offender.

• Requires resentencing for persons serving felony sentences for these offenses unless court finds unreasonable public safety risk.

• Applies savings to mental health and drug treatment programs, K–12 schools, and crime victims. "

Quoted text above is taken from the information booklet sent to every voter.

The initiative was pushed by George Gascón, San Francisco district attorney, and William Lansdowne, former San Diego police chief.[20] Supporters referred to it as The Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act.

That was never the official name of the proposition, it is simply marketing from the supporters and is not within the AG's remit.

You are correct, she did not title the Proposition; that title is in the Proposition's text. However, the information booklet's text is not necessarily the same as the text on the actual ballot.

However, the information booklet's text is not necessarily the same as the text on the actual ballot.

I'm not aware of any cases where the name of a proposition is different in the information booklet versus the ballot. Please provide an example.

As a former Democrat, perhaps I was never able to summon a burning dislike for Ms Clinton, although I was never her fan. I didn't vote in the matchup between her and Trump. My opinions of her only turned more negative further down the line.

By comparison, I find Kamala to be odious on nearly every dimension. I might have given Hillary a lot of shit, but I never doubted her intelligence or general political savvy. Kamala is a bobble-head, and while I could have tolerated her existence as a fashion accessory for the Biden campaign, watching her get escalated to her current position without having to jump through a quarter of the hundreds of fire rings Trump had to circus through is now insulting.

I think she will ultimately do herself in. But I admit that every couple of hours I have a mini-freakout about her being this close to POTUS. I relax when I remind myself that she never had any momentum and has been entirely reliant on elder statesmen's protection and hiding her from view. Now she has nobody else's wing to hide under and there's no more safe spots to bail to.

never doubted her intelligence or general political savvy

Victoria Nuland and her type are also 'intelligent' on the same level and look where their brilliant group think has gotten America. Into the enviable position of supporting a meatgrinder that has, so far, killed something like half a million people.

Ask yourself how you'd feel about the intelligence of Chinese politicians if they staged a coup in Canada, replaced the Canadian government with a pro-Chinese ones and then were surprised by US invading the place.

But not surprised by the "US" annexing the oilfields and key military locations, right?

I don't think they'd bother tbh.

Canada has always been a 'fake' country of sorts, and after 1945 it has existed purely on US sufferance, as a place where Americans can do shady shit like illegal experiments on people and US courts have no jurisdiction.

They'd simply fix the Chinese influence problem and return things to how they were before.

Wow, that's an awkward interjection of a tired conspiracy theory for a pet topic. Really couldn't hold it in, could you?

For your parallel to hold, you'd have to change some things- like that instead of a Chinese politicians staging a coup in Canada to get a pro-Chinese government, it was the American president bribing, sanctioning, and then successfully pressuring the Canadian Prime Minister to start shooting supporters of his own government in the street, only to find that the Toronto Mayor wasn't willing to go along with a lethal party purge and then the Canadian PM fleeing the country for the United States before he could be impeached.

And then the United States conducting an invasion of one province, and then astroturfing an insurgency in another in an effort to start a civil war, and then having to intervene to sustain the insurgents when they start to fail, and then maintaining a frozen conflict for half a decade while attempting to coerce the Canadians into changing their constitution in a way to give the American proxies veto-authority over Canadian foreign policy but empowered them to have their own foreign policy with the US.

And then giving up, calling them all Nazis and not a real country anyway but actually American and outright invading with pre-made plans for all the pro-Canadian and anti-US advocates to go to the torture sites and mass graves.

'Tired conspiracy theory'

Are you seriously suggesting you'd not be blaming Russia for January 6th had one of their foreign policy officials gone there and was photographed being nice and chummy with the insurgents ?

Sure. Not least because January 6th didn't have insurgents.

If you have to invent alternate history comparisons- twice- to validate your conspiracy theory parallel, that in and of itself is indicative of the quality of the original metaphor.

High ranking foreign policy officials greeting and handing out cookies to actual insurgents - people in armed militias engaged in violence against the state, not just 'pretend' insurgents who are there to create a spectacle..

Yes, perfectly normal, in no way was it a message to the militias that they had official support of the White House because no diplomat or foreign policy official would ever meet publicly, on camera, with armed resistance without an official blessing. Unless he wanted to get shitcanned spectacularly and probably charged with something the next day.

You know, you're not a weird person. You seem more like an NPC.

High ranking foreign policy officials greeting and handing out cookies to actual insurgents - people in armed militias engaged in violence against the state, not just 'pretend' insurgents who are there to create a spectacle.

And here we are appealing to more alternate history caricatures, for a third time. That bored with this timeline, huh?

Feel free to keep on. I promise to go 'Uh-huh' for any more efforts.

You know, you're not a weird person. You seem more like an NPC.

Uh-huh.

More comments

Data point: one of my more MAGA baptist friends told me the other day that he found the whole anger about the switcheroo confusing and lame, because the conservatives were all screaming they had to switch from Biden and then the Democrats did and the Republicans were like NO FAIR.

But the Brat stuff will wear out. The excitement is overrated. I was guilty of saying it was over after the assassination, but I just don't think the fundamentals of the race have changed that much. Trump is in the lead, with about a 2/3 chance of winning the election in November. Tons of stuff will happen in between now and then, but that's what a 2/3 chance looks like.

I think Kamala was a good move for the Dems, but more to get the good vibes going for the undercard. Kamala is here to keep the loss to respectable limit. She's much more likely to pull off the Popular Vote and hold at least one house of congress. That will materially limit what Trump can accomplish, and help keep the #Resistance moving. But I don't think she's going to change the base odds of the race.

As for me personally, I don't hate Kamala, and technically my vote is back in play. I was pretty much certain to vote third party, in that I was more or less morally precluded from voting for either of Trump or Biden. She could persuade me to vote for her, but I doubt she will.

Republicans are hating on the switch because they see it as a potential weakness, and the reason it doesn't seem to be getting traction is that Democrats are so totally shameless about having spent the better part of a year trying to gaslight everyone about Biden's age.

I'm sure they'd prefer to keep beating on Biden, but I'm not quite convinced that Republicans are 'freaking out' about Kamala switching with Joe. As is usual in partisan politics, the game is to criticize them for everything they do and to not allow any win conditions. First you yell at them for entrusting the country with a man who obviously needs to go, then you criticize them again for backstabbing/ousting their dear leader when they actually do away with him. Superficially, this looks inconsistent or hypocritical, but eh. I think this is totally normal.

It's also easier to justify if the argument is "I am criticizing literally every thing you do because they are all consequences of your enormous unforced errors", like an inverted Xanatos Gambit.

I agree. If any Republicans are actually worried about people suddenly recognizing Trump's profound weirdness and caring, I don't see why it would suddenly matter.

Different kind of hate. Hillary was deeply unpopular and hated because of her personality, her disengagement and distance from the base, and her disastrous record on foreign policy (to be fair, America has a pretty poor record on foreign policy generally and it's uncertain how much of her record was her fault vs Obama's). Her failings come from her thinking that she was better than everyone else and that she knew better than everyone else ("basket of deplorables" etc.) which are also the shared failings of the Dem party elite (The Squad etc.).

Kamala is hated because she's a female politician with no clear principles who is also a naked opportunist willing to do anything to further her personal stake. The same applies to Trump to some degree, but what codes as Trump being a savvy businessman or alpha in a male context, when female-coded, comes across as Kamala looking for the next back to knife or connected boyfriend to trade up on. What ironically helps Kamala is that the Dems didn't prep for her at all so she looks a bit more of a longshot outsider, which is an advantage in an exhausted voting base sick of Business as Usual. She's also more connected to younger, idealistic voters who have yet to encounter a situation they think can't be solved by the destruction or humiliation of their political opponents.

Speaking as someone who is entirely selfish and outside America, Trump, to my great sadness, has the best record on foreign policy out of every American president since Clinton. Kamala is an unknown risk, nothing she's done personally or professionally makes me think she knows how the world of international realpolitik works beyond the reach of her own grasp. At best she's considered a harmless, ineffectual joke by other heads of state, at worst she... accidentally blunders into WW3, either egged on by the MIC, bipartisan hawks, or a complete misunderstanding of how Putin and Xi view the world.

Kamala just seems like she would be more fun to have a beer with than Hillary. She's awkward and weird in a fake politician way, but somehow manages to seem more like a human being than Hillary did. Kamala bullshits in public and is a hypocrite but seems like she might actually be oddly fun to hang out with, which might appeal to right-wingers because that's basically Trump's energy too. Even the allegations that Kamala used sex to jump-start her career, in a way, help feed into this impression because it would be hard to imagine 2016 Hillary having sex at all. And if Kamala did sleep her way into her career, it doesn't even make her look weak because well, at the end of the day she became a Senator and then a Vice President. Her having been a prosecutor also probably appeals to the typical right-wing mind on some level.

but seems like she might actually be oddly fun to hang out with

Even according to democrat media, she's an horrible boss with a really high staff turnover. So.. good to hang out with ?

Hanging out with a boss as an employee is often very different than hanging out with the boss as just some random person.

Wild take: Right-wingers don't dislike Kamala.

Not wild. I'm as opposed to DEI and representationalism as anyone. Here's (what I'll try to make) an unvarnished report of my feelings.

I feel no animosity towards her. From the catbird seat, she will doubtless say things to make me dislike her in the future. But for now, I see her as a minority actress who was chosen to play the wife of an rich white guy in an insurance ad, except instead of playing wife she was playing vice president, and the rich white guy wasn't her husband but Joe Biden.

My animosity is for the people who put her there, both on the supply and demand end. That animosity is fairly strong, more or less whenever I see a BIPOC/gender-nonconforming minority in a leadership position now.

Yeah, I often view questionable DEI appointments as essentially human-shield tactics. Now all criticism of her can be suspected as an attack on women and minorities. And of course there's people who do just hate women and minorities, just like some Zionists do want to see dead innocent Palestinians. Their tweets and memes can be amplified to garner support, at the expense of all the women and minorities who let it get to their heads. Quite tragic.

This is a time thing - Hillary was basically Public Enemy #1 (even more than Bill) from their arrival into national politics in 1992 to Obama showing up in 2008. So much was thrown at her (the truthfulness is up for you to decide) that it seeped into even left-leaning people's view of Hillary.

Kamala's only been a national issue for around five years and in that time, honestly, the wider Right has been from the outside, seemingly more obsessed with AOC & Hunter Biden than Kamala.

Anecdote, but I absolutely despise her. I think she's a genuinely terrible person, combining vacuousness and disinterest in personal conviction with a thirst for power. The only thing she truly believes is that she should be in charge. I would be surprised to find that others with my general inclination think differently.

The one caveat would be that I think I would probably get along with her just fine in person, but that's true of many terrible and destructive people.

I think she's a genuinely terrible person, combining vacuousness and disinterest in personal conviction with a thirst for power. The only thing she truly believes is that she should be in charge.

I think this is true of many, perhaps even most, politicians. Some of them just do a better job at hiding it.

Relatedly, I think an underrated force in politics is that the job of being a major politician, along with the process required to get there, is genuinely very unpleasant. Not only is the pay low and the workload high relative to other options, but people are constantly criticizing you, mocking you, scrutinizing your every word for a way to use it against you and combing through your personal life for damaging stories. You also have to do a lot of personally awkward things like call all of your friends and ask them to give you as much money as they possibly can just so you can be elected. Without the motivation of either intense ideological commitment or extreme megalomania, it seems to me that it would be very difficult to remain in politics for long, especially on the national level.

Just want to echo your sentiments.

Especially during the Kavanaugh hearings, and then the VP debate with “I’m speaking….Im speaking.”

She comes across as a bitter “cool wine aunt” who doesn’t understand her place in the world.

She comes across as a bitter “cool wine aunt” who doesn’t understand her place in the world.

I don't know exactly what your thought process is to get to this sentence but to me it just sounds like you're saying she's a woman who should know her place and leave the male politicians to get on with the important business of striving for power.

Or understand how dumb she is, or understand that people who disagree with her have rights.

To the extent that this is true - and I’m not sure that it is - it would be because Hillary Clinton was seen as a very serious and dangerous person, with the power and know-how required to do very serious harm to her enemies. Kamala, meanwhile, is widely seen as a joke. Someone with no real skills, or base of support, or chance at achieving any real power.

Now that she has been thrust into a position where she might actually pose a real threat, expect to see the knives come out immediately as people grapple with what four+ years of a President Kamala Harris would mean for this country, both domestically and internationally. For my part, I have made my strong loathing of Harris abundantly clear and have spoken about it numerous times here, so you can’t say I’m not doing my part.

Something that may give you hope is that while I have an extreme aesthetic aversion to Trump, I will need Harris to run very very far away from her 2016 tax and financial platform to not consider voting with my wallet. I learned during Trump's first term that the sky would not fall, and Biden certainly failed to be the Obama redux I thought I was voting for. I suspect that more of my white collar, blue tribe cohort will be of a similar mind than you fear or Dems appreciate. Given the layoffs in tech and so forth, I also think that Dem efforts to talk up the Biden job market (which overheated and gave way to inflation, so thanks? a sin for both parties on this one thougb) will fall on somewhat deaf ears for the upper middle white collar workers.

I think that Trump might be in a bit of trouble because many voters are probably tired of politics discussion being dominated by him for almost 10 years except for a brief interruption during Biden's first couple of years in office, and Kamala seems shiny and new in comparison to both him and Biden. Kamala can also be pretty articulate and well-spoken when she needs to be, and while she has some off-putting mannerisms, watching her doesn't have as much of a "nails on chalkboard" effect as watching Hillary Clinton.

The Democrats have been doing a pretty good job of putting a pause on the kind of radical culture warring that turns many people off from them. Instead they are focusing on things like abortion, Trump's age, 1/6, and the fact that Trump is technically a criminal. Those are all fields in which they have a good chance of winning the battle for public opinion in swing states.

There are still months before the election, and the Democrats could easily fuck things up. But their chances seem much better right now than they did a week ago. The Republicans need to develop a strong anti-Kamala message and they need to do it ASAP if they want to win.

One way or another, it will be a close election that is decided by a few states.

The Democrats have been doing a pretty good job of putting a pause on the kind of radical culture warring that turns many people off from them. Instead they are focusing on things like abortion, Trump's age, 1/6, and the fact that Trump is technically a criminal.

All of those things (with Trump's age as the only exception) are 100% culture war topics.

Abortion - American's don't have solid positions on Abortion over time or even when asked different questions about it. Part of that is biological ignorance and part of it is that the landscape of laws after Roe vs Wade and certainly after Dobbs is all over the place. A patch work of laws at the state level makes it hard to be on one "side" or the other (which side of a dodecahedron are you on)? A similar situation arises with Gun Laws. So, most Americans respond to polls and surveys about Abortion with very personal vibes based emotionality and/or religiously informed morality. Those are two of the key ingredients of Culture War.

Jan 6 - Literally half of the country does not see this as a major issue when compared to BLM riots of the previous summer while the other half sees it as the most significant domestic terror incident since the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion.

Trump Technically A Criminal - This was mainstream Motte Culture War Thread material before, during, and after the trial.

But [the Democrats] chances seem much better right now than they did a week ago.

So still abysmal?

The structural components of the race have always been against the Democrats. In a Presidential election, the Democrat handicap is generally -3 or -4 in the popular vote due to how the electoral college is apportioned. That's why anything less than "Biden / Harris +5" is something like a toss up and "Trump +3" is a HOLY SHIT moment.

I'll allow that Kamala has brought some great boxed wine vibes to the party and is enjoying a not bad start, but do you really think she's bringing structurally potent capability to the campaign? Furthermore, the critical states are Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Please tell me how a BIPOC daughter of two college professors who spent her formative years in Canada before going to college in DC and then living her entire professional life in California is going to make her appeal to rust belt women across three generations? Biden could do it barely.

The novelty and suddenness of Kamala being sprung into the election is her biggest asset. It was perfect to get people’s dopamine systems charged up.

A lot of people are tired of Trump and Biden and she offered a huge psychological release.

The main way she can screw it up is if people get tired of her before the election, which is also very possible.

All my coworkers can talk about is 1) the assassination attempt and 2) Biden dropping out. Usually in that order!

Do you work with propane and propane-accessories?

Nope, but I am a Texan.

Eh, I'm a bit more sanguine. Firstly, Trump supporters were probably high on copium before the candidate switch, and even Biden probably could have tightened things up a bit before the election.

Vance is disappointingly bad at message discipline (Please don't publicly project your mommy issues into your politics about women!) and the "hillbilly who made it out" schtick can be grating (I say this is someone from a close enough background that I I want to like him, but it comes across as less sincere than it probably is.), but it's entirely possible that the Democrats will stoop to their level and be emotionally indulgent with their own VP pick (Mayor Pete or Beshear, also a possibility that 2028 frontrunners are trying to stay out of it.) and in the end I don't think VP matters much or that Trump had a slam dunk option (DeSantis isn't any less awkward at Trump's style of campaigning.). It could have been worse; he could have picked Tommy Tuberville.

Harris will definitely be better at fundraising than Biden was, but I'm not sure how much that moves the needle on its own. She will definitely supercharge enthusiasm among the media, college educated women, etc. but those are the groups that needed the least persuasion in the first place and were unlikely to forget to vote or defect to Trump. Harris remains relatively untested at things that aren't intra Democratic Party politics and is likely to remain weak in the Midwestern swing states that actually matter for winning the electoral college. The Trump campaign can hit her for things she said during the 2020 primary while trying to outflank Biden from the left.

I expect polls to tighten up and that Harris will definitely get a DNC bounce, but we'll know more in a few weeks to a month where things really stand. With that, as much as I wanted DeSantis the first place I don't think he would be running away with this either. Presidential elections are hard and Republicans being bad at winning them has been an issue for them since Reagan was no longer leading the charge.

Roy Cooper would seem to be the best VP choice simply because he specifically looks (and has the name of) a fake TV president who gives the hero orders and a godspeed speech in some epic action movie. Like someone had morphed both Bushes, Reagan, Clinton and Biden into one superpresidential figure.

Optically, Cooper seems like a great choice

This is your reminder that you are literally on business day 3 since Biden dropped out, and still in the midst of the initial Democratic media campaign push. If you're vibing off of what you're seeing and hearing in the media, especially the larger share of which is already Democrat aligned, you're basically just partaking in anecdotal bias of a bandwagon effect.

The American political narrative machine has worked like this for years: a surge of high-tempo media insertions when there's a planned push, down to spamming the youtube commercial adds, and then an ebb as the narrative push ends and messages prepare to shift. It will occur again, and continue, and keep continuing throughout the election cycle. If you think the election is turning because the Democratic-aligned media is being optimistic rather than pressimistic, then you need a better barometer of the health of the parties involved.

On my side - Republicans are high on copium, seems to not have been prepared for Kamala, lack message and message discipline, and are on the defensive. JD Vance seems to be bombing. And for it - the election moved from landslide to at best narrow win. I still think that she is the second worst possible candidate after Joe Biden but probably ok enough to win.

If you ever thought the election was going to be a landslide, you were already high on hopium. The withdrawal effects may be nasty, but they don't make everything to the contrary copium.

Republicans don't have a message for countering Kamala yet, in no small part because Kamala doesn't have a message to be countered. Kamala Harris has been a practical non-entity for most of the broader electorate for the last few years, and even in her emergence as the Democratic nominee she still hasn't taken a meaningful stance on, well, anything. Right now she's the not-Joe Biden / not-Donald Trump candidate, but the former is not a policy position, and the later not being enough is precisely why Biden resigned.

The Democratic Party is not united simply because the party elites insist it is, and Harris is going to have to take positions for the sake of managing her party coalition. Joe Biden could be consistently attacked because his coalition politics were stable: Harris's is not, and attacking her for things that she's not taking a stand on is a waste of money and makes her job (putting the coalition back together again) easier, whereas Harris has a well-earned reputation of bad office/coalition politics to leverage over time.

The Democratic convention is right around the corner, and the Democratic-aligned media is going to present it as a success no matter what does or does not happen, just as they were intent on presenting the Republican convention a dismal failure from the start. The story for the next weeks is- regardless of Republican attack adds- going to be the Democrats coming back together and uniting and how this is a new chapter.

The Republican campaign, in turn, is going to find the things to pick at. But as this is Kamala's first real time for national attention, given her earlier flameouts, the national-level criticism is going to follower her taking national-visibility stances.

Yep, I said last week they were going to go into overdrive, and even I was surprised.

Everyone says this is a distributed propaganda system with no central direction, but I think that's obviously wrong and a handful of highly placed people may as well have a phone app with "media machine turn on" buttons.

Seems insane to think of this as a conspiracy theory when the media spent all last week talking about how big donors had organized to cut off biden's funding. Not to mention the Time "how we did it" piece on 2020.

Coordination problems are hard, but they’re not that hard. Everyone wanted Joe out of the race and Kamala is the natural successor- similar people with similar incentives are going to behave the same way.

Polymarket currently gives Trump a 63% chance of winning, and this anti-Kamala ad seems pretty good, so it's not just "copium" Republicans are high on.

The ad is decent, but the issue is message discipline. If Republicans can stick to the ads' line, they're in a much better spot.

Agreed. To win the message is San Francisco liberal not cackling childless cat woman.

This is why I don’t mind Trump saying the election was stolen from him. The propaganda from the left is a 1984 dream. It’s embarrassing what this country has become imo … I don’t see the difference in conversation between the US and a communist state.

Note: the conversation, not actual living standards, etc.

What exactly is the communist style 1984 propaganda dream that’s happening now? All I see is people making memes on twitter trying to pump up the likely candidate who they want to see win.

It just seems like typical political campaign stuff. Ignore your candidates flaws and pump them up as awesome. It’d be strange if that wasn’t occurring, a bunch of different partisans engaged in a mutual information war is what we would expect to see when looking at a representative democracy in an election year.

They are literally deleting and rewriting articles about Kamala being named border czar in 2021 and being ranked the furthest left senator in 2019. Its very much a "we were always at war with Eastasia"

Which is exactly what you’d expect partisans to do in a political campaign

This is just watering down the meaning of “1984” and “communist state” the same way the other side does with “Nazis”

You know, this kind of blatant rewriting of very recent history was not the norm 10, 20 years ago.

Back then people could convincingly lie. But now we're pretty squarely at "they know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, and yet they're lying".

My take is that we passed through a threshold with Covid and tore something that was already scratched in the 10s. Now people change dictionary definitions as a matter of course instead of making decade long efforts to build academic corpora to do it. It's not the same.

I think you’re right, but I do wonder how much we saw this sort of thing in other deeply polarized times.

Or if it’s unique to the particulars of our current media ecosystem.

Rewriting the past is a pretty central part of the media propaganda in 1984. This isn't some big stretch like calling Mitt Romney a Nazi is. I don't think one needs to wait for people to have rat cages appended to their faces to start making 1984 references.

“Some of the news organizations in our media ecosystem are partisan and have shitty practices”

….

“I don’t see the difference between the US and a communist state”

I mean come on.

Well I didn't write that part. But establishment media is getting far too close for comfort.

I haven’t personally seen any articles rewritten. Do you have any links

In addition to the Axios one zataomm linked, there is this one that govtrack deleted from its own website: https://web.archive.org/web/20200816001336/https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/kamala_harris/412678/report-card/2019

Link to the Axios community-noted tweet: https://x.com/axios/status/1816078350659494130

The shooting would still seem to be news with the Cheatle hearings and resignation. It's just not the main news right now because the Biden replacement with Harris is genuinely huge news with massive implications - hard to see how it would be otherwise. Pretending it isn't the main news now just seems silly. Things would presumably be different if Trump had actually been killed.

On my side - Republicans are high on copium, seems to not have been prepared for Kamala, lack message and message discipline, and are on the defensive.

It seems to me that they are on the attack - it's just a very stupid, self-destructive form of attack. Calling Kamala a "childless cat lady" just makes Vance look like a weirdo who has been marinated too much in online right-wing men's chats, normies don't feel the anger towards childless women that is evident in such circles - like, to me, a childless aunt is the literal childless aunt of our kids (i.e. my sister) who doesn't own cats or drink wine but helps us often and is beloved by the kids.

Or the whole "Kamala got her first job by having sex with Willie Brown" - even if one assumes there's a quid pro quo aspect, well, it's something that happened decades ago and I don't think that there are suggestions that Kamala has used sex to advance since then, so it just comes off as more random misogyny (and that's assuming one even knows what the original context is when they see the meme with a woman giving a blowjob in the Harris logo etc.)

It seems to me that they are on the attack - it's just a very stupid, self-destructive form of attack. Calling Kamala a "childless cat lady" just makes Vance look like a weirdo who has been marinated too much in online right-wing men's chats,

This was not a new campaign attack against Kamala. This misquote comes from a resurfaced Tucker Carlson interview from three years ago when JD Vance had just entered the Republican Senate primary.

Here is the full quote by the way:

We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make sense that we've turned this country over to people who don't have a direct stake in it? I just wanted to ask that question, and propose that maybe if we want a healthy ruling class in this country, we should invest more, we should vote more, for leaders that actually have kids because those ultimately are the people that have a more direct stake in the future of the country.

So she is not directly singling out and attacking Kamala as being miserable cat lady, there are two separate sentences.

like a weirdo who has been marinated too much in online right-wing men's chats, normies don't feel the anger towards childless women that is evident in such circles - like, to me, a childless aunt is the literal childless aunt of our kids (i.e. my sister) who doesn't own cats or drink wine but helps us often and is beloved by the kids.

Dread Jim has a take that the problem is childless older women who haven't played a role in raising their nieces and nephews tend to end up hating children. I think there is something probably to this, and the childless women who have climbed the corporate ladder are probably less likely to have played a role in the lives of their related children than your sister. I don't know how active a role Kamala played in the life of her nieces and nephews, but there are several clips of her giving a cackling laugh at the plight of parents, and that does make me uneasy. And she is a wine-drinker.

Anyways, I do agree that calling out Cat-Lady-Occupied-Government is bad politics, even if it is a real problem worth being concerned about.

I don't know how active a role Kamala played in the life of her nieces and nephews

No nephews. Kamala only has a niece, Meena Harris (father publicly unknown), who has two small daughters (attractive husband, happy family).

She also has two step children, but they were in their teenage years when their father married Kamala. (Wiki says they call her “Momala”, which is kind of adorable).

Okay, serves me right to not get a full context and just trust clips.

How does that make it better? I think it makes it worse – it's not just calling Kamala Harris names but an attack on all people without biological children (stepchildren apparently don't count for Vance). That's more than 50% of American households that Vance says don't care about the future. And aside from being completely unevidenced, insulting tens of millions of voters also seems not very smart.

I mean, this is a general problem for the current GOP, which is different from the past.

As a dirty left-winger, I opposed the Bush GOP with all my heart, but I understood they were trying to win majority support. They failed in 2000, but even putting aside everything post-9/11, they governed in a way to try to get a majority in 2004 - Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, etc. along with social conservative stuff I didn't like, but was at least far more popular at the time.

Which, they were then rewarded with the last electoral Presidential majority a Republican candidate has received in 2004, that then they decided to blow-up by trying to privatize Social Security.

Now, the GOP seems not interested in actually winning over a majority of voters. The view seems to be, run a straight flush, win with 47.3% of the vote, then act like you won a 35-state mandate in your actions afterward, then be shocked you become unpopular 19 seconds into office.

Ironically, that's why beyond pure partisanship, it would've been nice if what looked like was possible in 2004 - Kerry winning w/ a popular vote loss - would've happened, because then there might've been a bi-partisan movement to trash the Electoral College, and I'm not saying that as somebody who believes the GOP would be unable to create a platform and argument to win a national popular vote.

Completely agree with you, but also I don't see how Republicans could conserve their policy positions in popular vote system. There is huge demographic change going on that is realistically irreversible, but also generally US population is very progressive and there is little momentum going on in other direction compared to, for example Europe. I think the only way this changes in the near future is emergence of some great figure that can run on bipartisanship platform leaning left on economic issues and right on social ones either from an established party or even as third party break out like Ross Perrot, Trump could have been such figure but he wasn't.

The GOP is better-than-even to win the popular vote in November, and it's not because of Trump -- if anything he's a liability there.

The reason is that although the policies espoused by the left edges of the Democratic Party are very popular and easy to sell, the easily forseeable results of those polices are profoundly unpopular with virtually everybody.

Until either the left backs away from those policies or the populace gains the ability to connect the dots between the policies and their results in advance of casting their ballot, we will see the popular vote swinging wildly every 4-8 years -- sadly this does seem like the most likely outcome.

As a dirty-not-left-winger, it is apparent to me that a voting majority of the United States holds views, that if actually followed in practice, will lead to a great squandering of our potential, in the medium term will lead the US to be a third-world country, and in the long-term will lead to ultimately to the destruction of the nation.

At this point my advice to the GOP would be to ditch policy and ideology altogether, that is, just refuse to have any platform or ideology, and instead just try to run a decently competent, smart, charismatic fellow who promises to govern in the best interests of the people.

The problem is that any smart, non-leftist probably has a paper-trail of past statements that the current zeitgeist views as repugnant, eg, JD Vance. So very hard to find the guy who the party knows is solid but that hasn't tainted himself to the general public.

Now, the GOP seems not interested in actually winning over a majority of voters. The view seems to be, run a straight flush, win with 47.3% of the vote, then act like you won a 35-state mandate in your actions afterward, then be shocked you become unpopular 19 seconds into office.

I guess this is because they've doubled down on Trump; he's inherently polarising so there's little point in trying to win a wide majority. Enthusing the base is the only way.

I think they'll need to reboot the party a bit once he is finally off the scene, we'll see.

Liz Truss when she was UK prime minister came up with the idea of an anti-growth coalition that was just a long list of her enemies that – as she defined them – easily encompassed a majority of the electorate. I don't see how that kind of failing to reach out can ever lead to sustainable government.

I think on the other side that democrats spend so much time getting permission to actually do things that they mostly end up running out their own clock and doing nothing until after they’re losing seats in congress. The end result is that they get very little of their own agenda done and mostly end up being babysitters until the GOP wins. I think we could have lots of nice things — universal healthcare, working on the student loan crisis, affordable housing, better public transportation, fixing education, you name it. Instead they don’t and so nothing happens.

I don't think that electoral college should be trashed, but made stronger. A lot of problems could be solved if it was beefed up. Think something along the lines of - people really vote for electors of their state - as in there are lists with people and they can choose 1. The first X people by votes are the states electors. The electors are free to vote to whomever they desire in DC. The candidates have to actually campaign to the electors to convince them to vote for them. The person that got most votes becomes president. The person with second most - becomes vice president.

people really vote for electors of their state - as in there are lists with people and they can choose 1. The first X people by votes are the states electors.

Or pick 54 random Californians, 40 random Texans, 30 random Floridians, 28 random New Yorkers....

Buying votes has never been this easy.

Sounds like a great way to incentivize assassinations!

I honestly don’t see how the full context makes it any better.

I can see how the general line would be insulting to the childless, but it’s also…kinda true? To take one prominent and recent example, Merkel destroyed Germany both economically and socially for the indefinite future, and it’s easy to see why you would spend a country into endless debt if you know it’s not going to affect you in a few decades anyway.

Merkel's premiership was also characterised by stereotypically childless-person behaviour, e.g. her short-sighted and emotive decisions on nuclear power and migrants. Her outreach attempts to Putin, even as he conquered parts of Georgia, was also reminiscent of this Family Guy sketch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9FTk3SawjX4

Mostly commenting on it not being an immediate reaction to the Kamala nomination.

I'm gonna be honest. None of this shit is good for my health. Just this whole presidential cycle, the constant hysterics and nonsense about this judge or that prosecutor or some bureaucrat. Endless think pieces about how every single bit of minutia will decide the election. I've been trying so damned hard to just tune it out. I'll start paying attention again in October when I'm about to vote, but maybe not even then. I'm so hardened in my choice, it's difficult to imagine anything changing it.

Yeah, I watched the first debate, because I wanted to see a primary source first hand before the spin machine got to it. That was sad. Biden was old, but Trump seemed old too, just not as much by comparison.

Yeah, I got sucked into the hysterics after the assassination attempt, but I'm trying to stay away from the conspiracy rabbit hole. I want to believe it so bad, I have a feeling if I start down that road, next thing I know I'll be getting sued for $1B.

I honestly didn't believe Biden would drop out, but here we are. All the coup talk, it tickles my lizard brain, which makes it even more dangerous.

I think I need to try harder to just ignore all that shit. For starters, it stresses me the fuck out. Second, it keeps me way too distracted from work and family. Third, I'm so close to wrapping up this bitchin walnut gaming table I'll be posting all about in the Friday Fun Thread, and the last thing I need is to be doom scrolling instead.

Fun aside, had a huge storm around here lately, and for whatever reason we lost cell phone reception in our area again. So now my shop it totally unreachable digitally. I kind of love it.

I just want to go into a coma until after the election at this point. I'm done. I can't take it anymore.

I started to feel better about the current state of political discourse when I realized that probably a large fraction of the online political discourse is created by astroturf campaigns, not by people arguing in good faith. This is probably part of the reason why one sees so many online accounts make stupid arguments that fall apart after just an instant of thinking. It is not just because there are many stupid people, it is also because, since there are many stupid people, astroturfers have an incentive to craft the kind of simple, catchy arguments that appeal strongly to emotions even if they do not hold up to rational analysis.

Besides astroturfing, another issue is that actual organic online political discourse on both sides is dominated by people who sit online for hours a day making political content. And people like that are not representative of the overall US population. I think that on average, they are less mentally stable and more prone to wild irrational theories. After all, you're probably more likely to spend hours a day writing about politics if you actually think* that Project 2025 will put gay people in concentration camps or if you think that the Democratic Party is a front for a cabal of pedophiles who communicate by talking about pizza than if you think that no matter who wins, it doesn't really matter that much. It also goes the other way. Being constantly exposed to other mentally unstable people's political arguments online can have a radicalizing effect, especially if one gets caught in an echo chamber.

*Or if you have LARPed yourself into almost-thinking it, into enjoying it as an exciting fantasy while perhaps not truly believing it in the depths of your mind. Which I think is probably true of many people.

Are we talking about billiards and craps and whatever gaming table or are we talking about tabletop/miniatures games gaming table?

One of those nice board gaming tables with the recessed playing surface and the toppers for dual use. Been my project the last few months. Bought the lumber all the way back in April. Had to finish making the new kitchen cabinet doors before I could get to it though.

I'm gonna be honest. None of this shit is good for my health. Just this whole presidential cycle, the constant hysterics and nonsense about this judge or that prosecutor or some bureaucrat.

That is why it is prudent to limit general media intake.

Yeah, I watched the first debate, because I wanted to see a primary source first hand before the spin machine got to it. That was sad. Biden was old, but Trump seemed old too, just not as much by comparison.

What is the point of the debates, now? I have a general enough idea of what each candidate wants to if elected, enough to make a decision at the polls, so why do I need to watch them?

I noticed this yesterday as well. My wife was working from home, so we grabbed lunch together, and I just could not shut the fuck up about the Kremlinology of what exactly Nancy meant by the "easy way or the hard way" and the third shooter in Butler, and all sorts of other esoteric bullshit. All of this is interesting, but at some point, I need to just drop it and talk about what toy we're going to get the dog instead. My wife's patience for my babbling is near infinite, but I must be testing it at this point.

From the comments of "The wonderful clarity of white genocide":

The nation is the hand of the race, the family is the finger of the nation, the individual is the fingernail. If your vocation is to fight, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while you avoid seeding its’ fallopian tubes and instead mine more minerals and prepare to fight. Otherwise, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while spawning more overlords.

Don’t talk politics with your cow. At best, it confuses it, at worst, it makes it difficult for your cow to chew cud with the other cows, and cows need to be part of a herd.

The level of politics to talk with your cow is, America is good, we are an American family, nice things are good, criminals are bad because they ruin nice things, having nice things is the only valid virtue signal, tasteful religious displays on nice things are great, ugly religious and political displays on ugly things are stupid evil heresy, ignore any advice from the news and entertainment media because it’s a bunch of pedophiles raping each other.

If you want to argue that women are subhuman, or should be considered subhuman, you can actually do that if you want, provided you're willing to put the effort in to write it like everyone is reading; expending some effort into anticipating and addressing other perspectives, for example. What you can't do is post a low-effort quote that assumes women are in some way equivalent to cows as part of some ancillary point. Posts like this are not conducive to good discussion with people who disagree with you, and the assumptive close is generally not a communication strategy we encourage here.

Two AAQCs, but since then two previous warnings for the exact same infraction, and this isn't a particularly marginal example of rule-breaking. I'm giving you a three-day ban. Please take some time to consider how you're choosing to engage here, read the rules, and try to follow them better in the future.

Wow, this is one of the worst things I've ever read and I've been reading this forum since the ssc days.

Owning up to having sex with a cow is a weird flex.

I love seeing the flip side of the Law of Merited Impossibly coin.

The "Law of Merited Impossibility" can be summarized as: "It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it." This phrase captures the idea that those advocating for certain social changes often dismiss concerns about potential negative consequences by asserting that such outcomes are impossible. However, if those feared outcomes do come to pass, they are then justified as deserved by those who opposed the changes.

I'm beginning to find my purpose on the Motte.

I'm glad you're having fun.

But I can't tell what you mean, and I think it would be a better comment if you spoke clearly. Perhaps there's some parallel in Derek Jeter's life you could use as a metaphor.

The Law of Merited Impossibility is usually defined as "it will never happen and it's a good thing it did" and is usually (here, at least) invoked against the Dems/Left, the Motte posters implying that the left claims there's no intention to genocide whites while cheering for reduced white percentages (for example).

I'm assuming FiveHourMarathon means to say that in a very similar way, the reactionary right claims that they do not seek to oppress women, only to restore them to their "good and natural role", while on Jim's blog they relate women to livestock.

Do admitted neoreactionaries actually claim they don't want to oppress women? And do normal tradcons claim women are cattle?

The answer to both questions would seem to be no. Harrison Butker didn't say women were cattle; he said being a stay at home mom was more valuable than having a career. And the dreaded Jim just openly admits that he thinks women need domestic violence to keep them in line.

the dreaded Jim

Quick aside but how old is Jim do we think? Is there a general best guess? According to something I read somewhere he has been pontificating about how much all the groups of people he hates are bad and responsible for all the problems in the world since at least the mid 1990s. Its insane to me that he may be in his 70s or even 80s and still doing this. If I could find a woman who loves me the way Jim hates women and black people I would be very happy.

More comments

The invokers of the Law of Merited Impossibility rarely bother to check whether the people saying the two contradictory things are actually the same people, in my experience.

Perhaps there's some parallel in Derek Jeter's life you could use as a metaphor.

I'm flattered you pay this much attention to my comments.

You write well.

I've figured out the Derek Jeter parallel!

From 1996-2003, the Yankees won four world series and two other pennants. They had the highest payroll in the game, and were frequently criticized for buying championships. But, Yankees fans protested, Jeter and Posada and Williams and Pettite and Rivera were all farmhands, the Yankees had really developed their way to a championship. Then in 2009, the Yankees incontestably and openly bought a championship, signing big time free agents who lead the way. Still, the Core Four of it all, but it's tough for any fan not to admit some truth to those allegations.

Similarly, right wingers get accused of misogyny all the time. For every policy choice, even if supported by many women, probably for drinking Diet Mountain Dew. I'm used to dismissing it.And normally it's bullshit. But then you see a post like /u/erwgv3g34 above, and it is the real honest-to-goodness article, self-justifying its own hatred by the Law of Merited Impossibility. The wokie says: "Nobody is getting fired for not going to a mandatory Diversity training, that isn't happening; but the fact that you're so upset about this shows how important a Mandatory Diversity Training is, in fact you probably shouldn't be employed if you find that objectionable." This comment says: "Women are too stupid, cow-like herd animals, to understand politics. You can tell because when they try to do politics, they don't understand how stupid and cow-like they are." It's rare to see it in the wild, because typically online the demand for crazed misogyny outstrips the supply, but it's tough to deny on that one.

The women in my life are even more interested than I am. My mother has gone from hating politics and "not being able to look at that man" to watching the RNC each night and watching most of Trump's speech while reading aloud twitter theories about Biden almost dying, while my girlfriend went from saying she won't vote in November to wondering aloud whether she should vote for Trump. She also says repeatedly that she hates Kamala Harris and she hopes this is not who we end up with for our first female president. And both are pretty upset about the Biden situation.

I'm not sure that bullet changed Trump, but from my bubble it sure seems like it changed some moderates and conservative never-Trumpers into Trump-boosters.

I also think a lot of discussions about Democratic attacks against Trump being applied to any Republican, while true, miss that Trump himself has a polarizing effect with conservative women and moderates above and beyond whatever Democratic messaging says about him. Democrats will say any Republican is Hitler, and Democrats will always believe them. The problem is with not repelling swing voters and conservative women. The hoes that need to not be scared are voters who would go for Mitt Romney or Ron DeSantis (my girlfriend sent me repeated messages about Ron DeSantis being well-spoken and successful before he flailed out of the primaries, and my mother says she really likes Vivek Ramaswamy) but don't like Trump because he's a philanderer who insults people. If he can stick to not being overly insulting, he can win in November.

I think most of the interest is just how weird the election cycle is. Most people aren’t actually interested in politics, they’re interested in political drama. Ask these women to name five policies they actually want and who’s advocating for that policy, and 9/10 people couldn’t do that. They like politics when it’s juicy and nobody knows what’s going to happen next. It’s almost a soap opera at this point. And women tend to eat that up.

I think my wife has even less resistance to this shit that I do. She brings up stuff even I never heard about. So at least I know I'm not tanking my marriage by being too online.

If you’re trying to tune out, writing a big motte post about how much you don’t care is not really necessary, and is probably counter productive to your goals.

One of the dank failure modes of social media obsession is reading and re-reading one's own comments.

  • comments that are up voted generate feelings of being valued and understood
  • comments that are down voted generate feelings of superiority: those poor fools are not on my level!
  • all comments generate a reassuring feeling that at least one person on social media is writing sane comments

Picture the scene in a weeks time when Whining Coil succumbs to the temptation to re-read his own comments. Soon he reaches a big post about how bad all this is for his health. That gives him the opportunity to turn off his computer and play with his dog. That is in line with his goals:-)

Okay if you’re trying to tune out writing a big motte post about how much you don’t care is not really necessary, and is probably counter to your goals.

Huh?

It’s an interesting and self-aware comment about how overwhelmed he is. It’s probably pretty close to how the average politics spectator feels nowadays. Nowhere does he say he doesn’t care either—he cares quite a bit and explained its effects on him over 7 paragraphs.

Right back atcha: telling users a post was unnecessary is unnecessary, unless it’s rule-breaking.

My point is not that I don't care, it's that I'm trying not to care and failing. Include my post in my failures. There just aren't a lot of places I can get that meta about it.

I definitely agree that message and meme discipline has been lapsing on the part of the American Right in the last few days. It looks to me like Trump has a dominant strategy for winning the election that can be summarised in the simple maxim "Don't scare the hoes" (as I believe the kids say). That means reining in bad messaging from the retarded and extremely online segment of their base. As it is, the right-wing bits of my social feeds are currently full of conspiracies (Trump assassination attempt was a plot by the Deep State, Biden is dead, Biden didn't agree to step down, etc.) and some pretty vulgar and dumb memes about Kamala and blowjobs. None of that will persuade your average normie voter and will actively put a lot of them off. Meanwhile, the equivalent messaging from the Left has been pretty bland and innocuous (remixes with coconut tree samples, lots of friendly memes about unburdening).

Unfortunately I think that the "weirdo activist" part of the US Right (Fuentes, BAP, etc.) has been gaining in visibility over the last few years. Regardless of whether you agree with their policy goals, I think this is bad news, because their memes and messages are baroque and weird to normies. The Left has had the same problem of being dominated by its weirdo activist members for the last decade or so, but thanks to their long march through the institutions they've been able to endow their shibboleths with cultural cachet: for white people, talking about "white privilege" or "patriarchy" is a solid (but declining) signal you're a member of the upper middle class and above. The same doesn't apply at all for the Right, so their weirdo activist elements just give people the ick.

I should add that I don't hold a negative opinion of weirdo activists in general; many of my close friends fall into that camp. I also enjoy reading conspiracy posts etc. in places like this, where I think it's safe to assume that everyone is an extremely online weirdo. But insofar as the Right wants to win the next US election, it needs to keep a lid on this stuff. For my part, I don't have particularly strong feelings about Kamala vs Trump, but it would be nice if the progressivism weakened its iron grip on our institutions, and I don't see that happening unless Rightists can lean into the contrast between themselves and the Looney Left.

Well, I just watched left-aligned protestors in the real world crowd the Capitol, hoist the Palestinian flag over the US one, burn them for good measure, and write "Hamas is coming" on a DC memorial.

So I can take some solace that message discipline might also be a problem for the Left. And fortunately (also cynically) for me, I think this might be a bigger tire around their necks than what dimwits on X shitpost or an old quote from Vance. The 'Free Palestine' movement is practically autonomous at this point, and has made clear that they give no shits about alienating normies and non-allies. There's no 'off switch' at DNC HQ to punch, so their ability to manage these kinds of nasty, confrontational displays is probably limited.

Get a few more viral videos of US fraternities defending flags and statues from mobs and I think this could hurt the Dems if left uninterrupted. And I guess if nothing else happens between now and November. Low chance of that.

Weirdo activists are disliked by normies all the way, and weirdo dem activists are much more distasteful than weirdo repub activists. However weirdo repubs speak up alot more and have a media ecosystem dedicated to exposing their crazy shit, while weirdo dems get memory holed or explained away.

CNN till now has not covered the pro hamas protests - and these are EXPLICITLY pro hamas, with declarations of 'hamas is coming', defacing of american monuments, replacing of the american flag with the palestinian flag and calls to kill all the jews. I specify kill because genocide is a term that includes 2:1 civ-mil casualty ratios in dense urban combat environments, and displacement of squatters, so genocide is just a loaded term now. The lack of coverage of pro hamas dem supporters is tenuous and even Harris has been forced to acknowledge it. If it gains further traction, normies will see dems supporting active threats against america, as opposed to butthurt republicans upset DMD is racist.

Progressivism doesn't really have an iron grip on institutions. It has an iron grip on a subset of institutions. For example, academia and Hollywood. Probably also large parts of the federal bureaucracy. But it doesn't have an iron grip on presidential administrations, Congress, the Supreme Court, law enforcement, the military, the national intelligence agencies, or even the news media.

Presidential administrations are not "institutions", since they're replaced with every new president. Progressivism does seem to have control of the national intelligence agencies, the news media, and the upper ranks of law enforcement and the military. The way Supreme Court justices tend to move left has often been noted; Thomas is the main exception.

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.

The recent ad by McCormick is pretty powerful. That’s the messaging republicans will be broadcasting non stop for the next 100 days.

Link?

https://x.com/yashar/status/1815923743165956557

Thanks. I think it's good, not great. Democrats would probably "Yes, chad" some of this stuff.

A better ad would give people the ick and make people see liking Kamala as cringe and gross.

To the extent Democrats would say "yes, this is in fact what we want", that makes the ad more effective, not less.

I would call the ad "obvious" more than "powerful" but yes you absolutely should hang all your opponent's most extreme positions around their neck and tell all the middle of the road people what an extremist they are. It's politics 101.

I think painting her as having extreme policies like this would need to be part of a Republican strategy but it's not enough as most voters don't know or care enough about policy for it to make a difference.

The lack of preparation for Kamala is one of the clearest cases of political malpractice I've ever seen. It's not some black swan event: people have anticipated this for months if not years. Even the Trump campaign itself was suggesting it would happen! And yet Republicans are caught entirely flat-footed.

In retrospect, the Trump campaign should have anticipated the likelihood of Biden having a candidacy-ending disaster at a debate, and made sure every debate happened after the nomination.

The lack of preparedness seems more like a myth than fact. It looks like they already had ads ready to go and are outspending her 25 to 1.

https://apnews.com/article/advertising-presidential-campaign-kamala-harris-trump-aab73a0d9593afebd734c8f708632926

So do we know that it’s unprepared for? The switcharoo was announced 3 days ago and Trump had been running with a low profile strategy even before that.

Yep, given Biden's age when he took office plus the fact that Kamala is the VP and so would have a good chance of eventually running for President even if Biden was younger, Republicans should have started devoting massive resources to building effective anti-Kamala messaging as soon as her and Biden took office. As we now see, it is not safe for them to rely on Kamala's terrible primary performance and just write her off. Her being a woman, a prosecutor, and to some extent even her being an occasionally awkward public speaker all play different in the context of her running against Trump than in the context of a primary race against other Democrats. Her being a woman plays different because Trump has a history of sexual assault accusations. Her being a prosecutor plays different because the Republicans like to act like the law-and-order party. Her being an occasionally awkward public speaker plays different because Trump himself has a weird and unorthodox, though obviously very effective, speaking style.

Alternatively, the ROI on specific contingency plans is even worse than the baseline for political spending, so no one bothered.

Delaying the debates would have been an interesting strategy, but I’m not sure it’s generally advantageous. Trump wants to brawl, to show his teeth, right? He doesn’t maintain his brand by sitting and waiting for the opposition to get lost on the way to the store.

It’s not like influencing your opposition’s candidate pool has a great track record, either. See Democrats funding MAGA challengers to primary the Republican bench. I suspect reports of that tactic were overstated, but it certainly didn’t make for a sweeping success.

So what’s left? If Republicans somehow knew that Kamala would be up against Trump, what weapon should they deploy?

Short term doesn’t matter. Maybe they don’t want to destroy Harris before the DNC.

Yeah, if they have good anti Kamala messaging they’re going to sit on it until her nomination is a done deal.

Let them revel in Kamala memes for a few weeks and then start the assault.

Otherwise they risk the Dems choosing someone better.

No, if you’re the Republicans, you want to keep applying pressure to cause chaos. The one thing that will kill Democrats in the election is if they start admitting that they have to run a worse candidate because of diversity. You want the special interest groups at each other’s throats for as long as possible. This has the capability to drive long-term resentment of the establishment among sections of the Dem base.

Nate Silver had the same take. But I'm not sure what the Republicans could have done in practice. Biden had an 85% to be the nominee until 1 month ago.

What am I missing?

  1. Reduce opportunities for Biden's state to be revealed to the public. If you truly believe that Biden is entirely senile and demented only getting by on copious doses of Adderall, then wait until the Democrats are more entrenched on supporting him. They may still have had the ability to do a swap even post-nomination, but it makes that even more damaging and chaotic.

  2. Have a playbook on Kamala. Messaging and messaging discipline. The RNC was effective at making Trump cute and cuddly; don't throw that away with off-key messaging.

  3. Lay the groundwork well in advance for whatever attacks you are going to push. There's a balancing act here: too much attention on Kamala means less on Biden. But Biden's negatives at the end were much higher than Kamala's: the goal should have been getting them around equal negatives, so a swap doesn't help too much. Or, if you're absolutely certain Biden will drop out or die, then focus all fire on Kamala.

What am I missing?

One should always have plans B and C and be ready to switch to them in a nanosecond.

What should those plans be? TV ads? Social media? Multi tens of millions of dollar campaigns can't pivot overnight, and it would be wasteful to dedicate large percentage of your budget to a candidate who, less than a month ago, had a less than 10% chance of being the nominee.

Sometimes you can't prepare.

Just three days ago people like Obama were suggesting a speed run primary. Then Kamala got all the delegates in like 36 hours. It's unprecedented.

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