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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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The implication of having to identify a group for X is that said group typically doesn't support X but this particular groups does and that hey, maybe you fellow member of that group should also support X. There's literally dozens thousands of us!

Will this actually gain support for Kamala Harris among white dudes? Well, the likely answer is that it probably will get a few, but not enough to shift the needle for this demographic in any particular manner.

If you're a white guy, what policies/cultural stances does Kamala have that would want to make you vote for her? I know it hasn't been long since the Democratic Party decided she should be their candidate, but I have heard very little about her actual stances and policies that wasn't something I had to look up my self.

So far, I haven't seen anything that would shift someone that wasn't already planning to vote for her (likely due to her being the democratic candidate, than anything else) to vote for her.

If you're a white guy, what policies/cultural stances does Kamala have that would want to make you vote for her?

Getting laid with whatever female demographic are rabbid Kamalah supporters is the reason.

Thank god for the secret ballot, then.

It’s not meant to shift support, it’s a fundraising/organizing gimmick.

40% of white men voted for Biden. Even if you drop that 10% for Harris, that's still tens of millions of people.

If she losses an incremental 4% of white men, she is DOA.

And if she loses them 80-20 (and loses every state but CA and NY) that will still be millions of white men voting for her. More than enough to fill a fakakta digital event.

Oh I agree. Her getting 10k white men on a call is meaningless

Not quite meaningless- it shows that she has the institutional capacity to get 10k white men on a call. That's an absolutely doable challenge for a major campaign, but otherwise quite difficult.

I suggest that her real concern here is to show democrat insiders that she has the backing of the Biden campaign infrastructure.

I was being a little cheeky there with the number quoted in the article, which was "Over 10,000 white men from all across the country are expected to join the effort this week and will be on hand to welcome Vice President Harris to the presidential race and pledge to help get her elected".

but I have heard very little about her actual stances and policies that wasn't something I had to look up my self.

And you won't. The path to Democratic victory is selling Kamala as a generic Democrat, not her actual policy stances which weren't popular with Democrats last time and will be even less palatable to Republicans and squishy centrists. Just because GovTrack deleted their page naming her the most liberal senator of 2019 doesn't mean it wasn't true.

She is both a far left extremist who supported BLM and in height of violence saw the protests as necessary to continue to get more change, favored police decriminalization, open borders, DEI, Green New Deal and a mainstream Democrat. This republican anti Kamala video includes most of them except her BLM 2020 protests comments https://youtube.com/watch?v=bHlb0z1vZm8

How much backlash did Kamala face then or now for any of this? And how alone has she been?

This is what the Democrats are now. Maybe she is somewhat even more left wing than any random Democrat, but they are a far left party and the difference between Harris and other Democrats will not be significant as the default of liberal democrat politics has shifted to a more radical direction. It represents the 21st century type of far left which is of course different than early 20th century far left of orthodox marxism. Nor is this a constantly anti-establishment far left but a pro being the establishment far left.

As for the voters, I do think that there will be an attempt to fool the electorate by promoting her as a more moderate politician than she is. But the issue isn't X or Y random politician but a broader trend of a shift of the mainstream, and of the Democrats in general towards the far left.

There is an obvious bias by many against describing the Democrats as far leftists, under the fear of being perceived too partisan, or right wing. Suppose someone writes an article analyzing the election and the candidates, it would actually be their duty to properly inform people about where the parties and candidates stand and to talk about how far left the Democrats actually are.

To say she supported BLM is a bit of an understatement. There's a decent amount of evidence, her last presidential campaign was supposed to have followed Jussie Smollett's attack (lynching) and her Federal anti-lynching bill but the whole thing fell completely apart as more of the story of the attack came out.

I will preface by stating an agreement in principle with the strong judgment expressed by the video, but the hyperbolic rush of right wingers to class everything as BLM open borders defund the police has unfortunately clouded the waters. Harris is a climber bending her opinions to the whims of idiots, not an originator of bad ideas (my bogeyman for that is Pramilla Jayapal).

Harris is a modal minority democrat who post 2020 has to position herself as against the modal white democrat because she is pretty poor quality as a white democrat. Barack played the white (Centrist Democrats) game well, and Cory Booker is a black democrat who plays the Centrist game pretty well too. By contrast Bernie doesn't play the white democrat game well, and neither does Warren. I hope this elucidates my general observation of white vs minority democrat styles, in crude classification.

Harris is a climber sanewashed into centrism by association with Biden, and her progressive points post 2020 are likely a positioning game to be a champion of an otherwise disrespected democrat political caucus. Her actual voting history is unsympathetic to black and brown issues, and the current brattification/wokeification of Harris is just throwing anything at a wall to stick.

How much backlash did Kamala face then or now for any of this?

Her abysmal primary performance was enough. But all that's being erased now. The Democrats will promote her as a generic Democrat; all for women and minorities, for taking from "the rich" and giving out goodies to the good people. No need to go into specifics.

Suppose someone writes an article analyzing the election and the candidates, it would actually be their duty to properly inform people about where the parties and candidates stand and to talk about how far left the Democrats actually are.

But if that someone is writing for the mainstream media, they are a booster for the Democrats, so they will not. If they aren't writing for the mainstream media, they are preaching to the choir and will make no difference. Control of all the "neutral" institutions is a ridiculously powerful tool.

Yeah, I don't think American Democrats generally realise that their party is substantially further to the left than e.g. the UK or Australian Labo(u)r parties.

It... depends what you mean by "left". Economically the US Democrats don't seem to be more socialist. Socially, yes, they're more progressive.

Is GovTrack an actual reliable source? I saw an article about how six democrats voted with the GOP to condemn Kamala Harris as the Border Czar so I looked up these six democrats (and to no surprise ideologically they're in the middle). So I just clicked around, and their political stance becomes obvious with a page like this:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/ted_cruz/412573

The "Elections must be decided by counting votes" specifically, that's apparent if you select the page for numerous Republican senators. Factor in the fact that they removed the scorecard page labeling her as the most liberal senator and their bias is clear, but I did find utility in their Ideology–Leadership Chart as well-being able to view their voting records and bills.