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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.
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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.
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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.
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