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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Harris seems to be polling quite significantly better than Biden. Nate Silver is giving her close to 50%. It could be Netanyahu felt the way the wind was starting to blow and felt that waiting until after the election would risk losing the chance to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.

Question is how much of it is honeymoon v reality. Trump negatives are pretty baked in. Are Harris’ negatives? Dems were smart to wait until 100 days (or maybe even 50) to make her the nominee. The negatives might not be baked in by the time election comes around.

Another reason why what the Dems did was wrong.

The negatives will definitely show up, give it approximately two to three weeks until she has her first major accusation or oppo thing the GOP breaks (or possibly a verbal slip that goes viral), and about four to six weeks for people to start to pay attention to the vibe her speeches are giving. And at some point there will be a debate which will make an impact. And the state of the economy around late September/October will also play a big role. Trump's team mostly fumbled their first big chance to set the impressions, but they will have others. Chris LaCivita is a smart cookie, so they will eventually settle on a theme or line that is at least decent, but it's going to be at least a month before the GOP figures out some messaging discipline.

I don't expect we'll see the negatives. Harris will be run as "generic Democrat" and just slide into office, her policy positions barely even being mentioned in the media until after the election.