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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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I mean you’re not wrong, but in context of this being an apparent campaign message from the top of the democrat party ticket, I just don’t understand what they how to actually accomplish here. Most of the too-online liberals are already completely sold on “vote blue no matter who” so there’s no need to appeal to them. They’d vote for a moldy peach if it was a registered democrat. And as far as reaching anyone outside the circle, as a strategy, it makes no sense. We aren’t voting for homecoming court members, we’re electing a government. Just saying “they’re weird” doesn’t convince outsiders that they should vote for you. And right now, it’s the middle of the country she has to convince.

I think it's a case of typical-minding. Progressives like the message, so they spread the message thinking that other people will like it too. Republicans do the same thing - "I am your retribution" is not a selling point to anyone not already on the Trump train.

I think you over-estimate the amount of secret coordination that occurs. Coordination happens a lot, but it often happens pretty publicly. Politicians frequently use the media to talk to each other. I don't think this was a case of the Harris campaign circulating memos saying "hey we're going to call republicans weird". I think it was a case of one guy saying a thing, other progressives liking and repeating it, and still other progressives going "Oh I guess this is the line we're running with now? Sounds good, let's reinforce it." Now, possibly somewhere along the line we get an actual focus group message testing this pitch to see how it does with swing voters, and possibly the line gets dropped or modified in response to that research, but I don't think that's the first or even the fifth step in this process.