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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   32968 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Kamala's VP pick is in: Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota. Shapiro was apparently off the board because of some botched case from a decade ago. Although Walz is an unknown to most American voters, he conveys "midwestern good vibes" and seems like a pleasant enough white guy. Probably will be harder to go after than JD vance. Any minnesotans got any cool stories about him?

Any minnesotans got any cool stories about him?

Some of the stuff coming out about him includes:

  1. Claims that he quit his National Guard post when they were called up to Iraq but has continued to play it up in his bio, including citing a retroactively invalidated rank
  2. Was once arrested for DUI going nearly 100mph in a 55 zone
  3. While he allowed Minneapolis to burn in 2020 his wife found romance in the smell of the fiery destruction
  4. Presided over the redesign of the MN state flag to resemble the Somali flag
  5. "Tampon Tim"

Can't vouch for the truthiness of any of these. Interesting how #1 & #2 strongly echo attacks on Geroge W Bush in 2000 and 2004.

He advocates for an assault weapons ban and has a line above how he carried those weapons in foreign battlefields and that's the only place they belong. He has of course never been in combat and quit when it seemed he might actually see combat. Which is actually fine in isolation, but really puts a stink on his rhetoric used to justify banning guns.

Presided over the redesign of the MN state flag to resemble the Somali flag

The evidence for this seems insanely thin. The report never mentions anything to do with Somalia, the creator denied it and nobody bragged about it, and if anything they kept writing about it being an indigenous / native inspired design. It has a (very different) kind of star, a different layout, and a different shade of blue entirely.

While he allowed Minneapolis to burn in 2020 his wife found romance in the smell of the fiery destruction

What does this mean?

Presided over the redesign of the MN state flag to resemble the Somali flag

Extremely weaksauce claim. The similarities are:

  1. Flag has blue

  2. Flag has a star

Which coincidentally are also features of the US flag.

What does this mean?

Here she is recalling indulging in the smell of burning tires as an evocation of our times: https://x.com/JessicoBowman/status/1820975378485100928

There's another one of her hoping the riots / looting last as long as they need to. I'll post it when I find it.

What does this mean?

This interview clip from Gwen Walz has been making the rounds, including this weird quote

I could smell the burning tires…I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.

Back to you-

Which coincidentally are also features of the US flag

The Somali flag complaint is overblown, but the new MN flag is a lot closer to this, this, this, Texas, or Djibouti, than to the stars and stripes.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/07/us-news/gwen-walz-said-she-kept-windows-open-during-george-floyd-riots-to-smell-burning-tires/

“I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing,” Walz said of the BLM protests that swept Minnesota and beyond, including the area near the governor’s home in St. Paul. “I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening,” she added.

“Ted Kaye of the North American Vexillological Association called the new design "outstanding" and said that it has a place in the top 10 flags of the U.S. Despite praise from the organization, a poll found that just 23% of Minnesota voters supported switching to the new flag, while 21% supported replacing the flag with a different design and 49% wished to keep the existing flag. The flag officially became the new state flag on May 11, 2024.”

This one paragraph explains more about the American political situation than a thousand thinkpieces.

New slogan- Trump/Vance 2024: Stop Changing the Fucking Flags.

As a flag nerd I actually followed this process as it was happening. The original submissions are still up here: https://serc.mnhs.org/flags

An advocacy org but together a shorter list of the ones they liked here: https://newmnflag.org/designs

My personal favorite was #1304: https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Imported%20images/1cc6671bd76cede520772dafec0adfa2effd303d81b709c42ec59b16f5aff59c.png

There's been a recent push to change a whole plethora of state flags to look more akin to Microsoft Office clipart just because some rando with delusions of competency put out a pamphlet of what he thinks state flags should look like.

There are some people who really should have been bullied more in high school.

The old Minnesota flag was kind of dogshit, but the new one is too far into current year /r/vexillology trends, so I can understand why people were unhappy with it.

I generally like a lot of the vexillology flag ideas and am generally a proponent of flag reform. When it offers a good and memorable design, I think it serves as a great icon for a community.

But I think one of the issues is that they're deciding on flags by committee (or in NZ, by voting), and so you end up with bland, inoffensive, plain designs that don't take any risks -- and one of the big points for flag reform is specifically so different places can have distinct, interesting flags. Minnesota got to their flag by taking the blandest design and making it blander. That sea of light blue is just too bright.

My first thought is that I doubt Kamala picked him. My second thought is that he's a diversity hire just like Kamala. Whether you like or dislike Trump, if you vote Trump, then you are getting President Trump. If you vote Kamala, then you're getting a figurehead. This VP pick further drives that point home to me. Perhaps the president has been and should be more of a figurehead. Maybe that's what people want.

People have been begging the past 8 years for a 'return to normalcy' and believe that Kamala, whose sycophants are scouring the internet in an attempt to rebrand her as a moderate Democrat, will most likely represent this return. Trump can never brand himself as status quo by the sheer nature of his personality. The media is guaranteeing that upon reelection the media is promising 4 years of obsessive hatred and hit pieces against the man.

The best thing Kamala can do is shut up, hide, and let the Democratic machine work their propaganda. The less she says and the less she's in the spotlight the more likely the strategy can work. As soon as she comes on stage and exposes herself the jig will be up. The Democrats only hope is that their spin overwhelms anything she the person excretes.

I don't really understand the line of attack claiming Kamala is hiding? She's been speaking constantly, to far larger crowds than Trump, and Trump is the one who backed out of the pre-arranged debate.

  • -12

Has she taken any questions during these appearances? Any non-screened questions? Any tough questions?

Besides the event where Trump said Kamala wasn't black, has he? He's the one backing out of the debate, not Harris.

  • -11

Notably, at that event, it was Harris who didn't show up (and had been scheduled to).

This is almost bad faith.

A agrees to X with B.

C now claims A is backing out of X because A isn’t doing X with C.

Formally, the agreement was for a debate among all candidates who had broken 15% in certain polls in a certain time window. Maybe Trump assumed his opponent would be Biden but that was not part of the actual terms.

I don't think Trump has an obligation to stick to the planned debate. But I don't think you can say Kamala's the one trying to stay out of the spotlight either. If Republicans want a spotlight on Kamala to put the screws to her, all they'd have to do is stick to the original planned debate.

Trump offered her a debate and she said stick to the one you negotiated with Biden but substitute me. I’m sure they’ll both cave somewhere in the middle.

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Oh other than the 1 hour absolutely hostile interview he did with 2 people who despise him and a crowd of people who probably despise him?

That's a big deal, and that is the exact type of thing I would like to see Harris do.

He did a podcast interview with Adin Ross, but that was a friendly interview. So that makes two, one friendly, one tough. But more importantly, Trump has also been campaigning a long time as being top of the ticket, and has done many interviews, both hostile and friendly. Kamala has an obligation to now speak for herself and represent herself to the American public, now that she is not under the obligation of supporting Biden.

Also, has far as I can tell, Kamala has never done a tough or hostile interview during her entire time running for VP, as VP, or running for president. (If you can find an example, I'd like to see it.)

Trump has an interview with Elon musk coming up Monday as well.

This lacks context. Biden got Trump to agree to absurd debate conditions that Kamala wanted to hang onto.

I'll powerlift against @practicalromantic anytime anywhere, if @Walterodim wants a foot race I'll ask for conditions.

Not a botched case.

Cover up of a homicide. Homicide likely involving a guy from a very rich family his family are friends with.

Far more serious than mere botching.

I wonder what attacks on their campaign are most likely to stick. There is no record for the future, just vibes. Maybe the best attack on that is that she caves to pressure, especially from leftists? This sort of attack seems better to match the amount of agency she is projecting herself as having, and allows you to show why that's bad.

Debates soon would be good. Once they start actually taking positions, then you have positions to attack.

You don't need her to take positions. Attack the Biden admin, force her to defend Biden, join in the attacks and split her party, or admit she has no power in the admin and her job is fake and gay.

She's vice president. She can't disavow the admin policies. Differences will be around the margins and mostly stylistic.

Not only do you not need her to take positions, there's a strong incentive for her to not take positions. Stand for nothing and people will fill in the gaps in their own mind. I bet if being a human being wasn't a requirement we would have a pet cat as a president.

Mayor Max likes this comment!

My favourite part of the linked page (my bolding):

Idyllwild is known for being one of the first places to elect a dog for mayor

There's a trend of this happening?

According to Business Insider, "9 dogs, 1 cat, and 3 goats" have been mayors of various towns in the US, though various towns including Idyllwild appear to have animal political dynasties going.

Apparently Max's page is peddling fake news, however. Wikipedia's "Non-Human Electoral Candidates" page has a large number of, uh, interesting winning candidates who predate Max's tenure.

Trump finally taught dems that the right way to campaign against him is with name calling and vibes so that’s what we’re going to get until he’s gone. It’s funny we only hear the right complaining about this once the weird couch fucker attacks from the left start landing.

  • -11

2012 Joe Biden said that Mitt Romney would put black people back in chains. Name-calling and lousy smears aren't a Trump invention.

It's pure shithousery, trying to play ugly and get a close draw or maybe sneak a win. Kamala is playing one news cycle at a time, tragically, and hoping to get a fast break late and win it.

I'm still negative on Kamala's chances, but I do think we're much more likely to see a Popular/Electoral split decision and a Democratic House than we were with Biden.

Name-calling and “vibes” were also the strategy in 2016. Racist/Sexist/Orange/Fascist have literally always been the plan of attack against Trump. I don’t see “weird” as changing that, it’s just an admission that their favorite cards have been overplayed

Name-calling and “vibes” were also the strategy in 2016. Racist/Sexist/Orange/Fascist have literally always been the plan of attack against Trump.

Trump is nothing new in substance, only in style. He's the ugly reflection of politics-as-usual who doesn't feign civility while throwing the same knives.

I'd just attack her for all the positions she took in 2020. If she wants people to believe she didn't mean the things she said repeatedly on video, it's her job to convince them.

And presumably she needs to say “and this is why I changed my mind.” If she just says “well I was campaigning” then she admits she was lying either then or now and which is it.

And if she can change her mind on so many issues in such a short period of time, that per se is a worrying thing. Sure, changing your mind on one thing or the other is a good thing. It shows you are willing to update. But changing your mind on like 5 or 6 major things in a few years when you are a major pol?

I do think the flip flopping will be one of the best lines of attack against her.

In her case, she’s very lucky to be running against Trump who changes his positions with the wind.

Is that true? With Trump, he seems relatively consistent. He is anti immigration, favors protectionist trade policies, skeptical (but not exactly hostile) towards foreign alliances and foreign wars, likes lower taxes, doesn’t care as much about spending, and supports reduced regulations.

That has been pretty consistent since he has been on the scene. Where was the flip flopping?

Too many to list, but for just one example he's gone a complete 180 on the Jan 6 rioters - on Jan 7th he said "The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay." By contrast these days he opens his rallies by saluting them, calls them political prisoners and promises to pardon them.

And he could point to a bunch of new evidence that seemingly does suggest that a decent number are being wrongfully charged, especially relative to the norm.

Okay, but that's shifting the goalposts. You were saying "Trump doesn't flip flop", now you're saying "Trump was correct to change his position". Those are different arguments.

You could, if you were so inclined, come up with a sympathetic argument for why Trump changed opinions on any given issue. Sometimes those arguments might even be somewhat true. But I think the underlying reality is that Trump just honestly doesn't have strong beliefs on many issues and changes position pretty easily.

The most recent was on the Tik Tok ban which he rallied for then turned against.

Yeah agreed. That is a flip flop. But that also seems like a rather tertiary issue (can’t imagine it is a top ten issue for voters per polling). On the big issues he has been very consistent (and that isn’t always great because on some of those positions he is wrong).

On the big issues, Harris vacillates.

The Tik Tok thing is a core representation of how Trump thinks and makes decisions though. He supported banning it on what seemed like a whim, a rich investor who seems to have some financial connections to China made a big donation, and then Trump came out against the ban. He repeats this pattern over and over. He seems uniquely and obviously prone to self-enrichment and therefore a completely untrustworthy on major issues like China, both to domestic people but also importantly to international partners.

Some other obvious flip flops/inconsistencies that come to mind with 10 seconds of thinking:

  1. Immigration, he recently went on the VC grifter podcast and said he's all for skilled immigration. He said the same thing before he was president but one of his first acts was to totally fuck up the visa/green card process for all my high skilled immigrant friends and leave them randomly stranded far from home.
  2. Stances on crypto
  3. Stances on taxes

Here are some more details: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/22/trump-policy-flip-flop-00164538

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TikTok ban, for example. At least Trump’s flip flopping is easy to predict (preferences of the last rich donor he interacted with)

I started getting attacks on Tim Walz for going after Christians over following biblical views that liberals don't like within a few minutes of the pick being leaked.

It's entirely possible the Trump campaign is sending different messages to different voters. I think "Kamala is a dot indian" is another example of this.

Which views?

Mostly that he unfairly targets/disadvantages Christians who hold traditional views on gender, sexuality, and LGBT issues.

I haven’t checked these very much at all because I’m voting for Trump anyways.

Politics · Trending

#TamponTim

178K posts

God damn it.

I get what they're going for here. Trans is unpopular and weird. Tim Walz signed a law that all school bathrooms (including boy's rooms) have to have tampons available. Totally weird right?

The problem is that no one cares about girls using the boys room. People do care about boys using the girl's room, but that's not what is evoked by the imagery being used. This plays right into the narrative that Republicans are obsessed with controling the female reproductive system.

Disagreed. Tampons in boys kindergarten bathrooms is looney. If progressives want to push the very fringest policies, then Republicans are correct to point that out as an attack. The median swing voter won't like this gender ideology in their schools.

The bigger problem is that gay and trans stuff is generally just not a good attack vector for the right. It's a red meat issue to fire up the activists, sure, which is also why the activists often concentrate on it, but insofar as I've observed the normie right-winger would just prefer to not think about LGBTQ-related matters at all, ever. Thus, if there are Pride parades or prominent trans celebs constantly on TV, or so on, it repels them, but if there are right-wing politicians constantly going on about trans or gay stuff it repels them, too, since it also forces them to think about things they would rather just not think about.

I could observe this very clearly about 10 years ago when the ex-leader of the local right-wing populist party, towards the end of his rule, really started banging on about anti-gay stuff all the time; eventually, the party's supporters started going "Uhm, why is this fatty so obsessed with the homos? Is he maybe a homo himself?", and others (probably correctly) clocked this as an issue he was trying to use as a deflection on his utter failure to limit immigration according to his previous promises.

Also, the "No, it's not us that are weird! YOU'RE weird!" attacks on Walz just look like the "Vance is weird" thing REALLY got under GOP's skin and that they're doing the thing that demonstrates an attack has been effective - mirroring the attack. This sort of mirroring rarely if ever works in doing anything more than just giving more strength to the original meme.

I cannot say I'm an expert on right-wing political strategy, but if I had to find an attack vector on Walz, I'd probably just hit him on 2020 and Floyd riots repeatedly. Potential pitfalls there, too, but less than with other stuff.

I'm fairly sure being against child transitioning has been a pretty winning tactic for the Right so far. Youngkin and DeSantis are both examples for statewide office at least.

This sort of mirroring rarely if ever works in doing anything more than just giving more strength to the original meme.

It’s ironic that the original “weird” meme could have been easily countered with either of the two classic responses: “I’m rubber, you're glue, anything you throw at me bounces off and sticks to you,” or “I know you are, but what am I?”

Make it clear they’re using playground insults, third-grade level at best, and don't deign to rise beyond that level of seriousness with a considered and unique response.

Unfortunately the fact is that not ever even having to think about LGBTQ-related matters is a luxury not affordable to the rightist normalfag griller demographic in a society that bends to the will of the LGBTQ lobby every time. If they want to see pride parades discretely removed from Main street and trans celebs removed from prime-time TV, they'll have to politically act accordingly. I'll agree though that devoting too much time and energy to this issue isn't a good idea politically, but you can say the same thing about any other issue as well.

Also, the "No, it's not us that are weird! YOU'RE weird!" attacks on Walz just look like the "Vance is weird" thing REALLY got under GOP's skin and that they're doing the thing that demonstrates an attack has been effective - mirroring the attack. This sort of mirroring rarely if ever works in doing anything more than just giving more strength to the original meme.

Yeah it’s very obvious that the people doing/cheering on the “weird” counterattack have really bad intuitions about how ordinary people read situations like this. Like no you don’t beat weird accusations by posting a thousand anti-trans memes and calling Walz a cuck.

the "Vance is weird" thing REALLY got under GOP's skin

I've seen this claim a lot on Reddit, along with the celebration of Waltz's dig at the Vance couch rumors. I think it's either a disingenuous interpretation or a case of the Democrats getting high on their own supply. Here's how I interpret the Right's indignance at both of these attacks:

They are both completely manufactured by the powerful coordination of Democrat politicians, the media, and big tech. The individual claims are a trifle, but it's the ease by which both were able to propagate into culturally pervasive conventional wisdom in hours is pretty frightening. They're also completely transparent in their engineering, which goes like this: 1. Make some oddball claim that is either opinion or invented from whole cloth. 2. Follow quickly with a barrage stories about how wounding this claim has been to Republicans. It's dizzying. I would be that most Republicans hadn't even heard of these attacks until after the round of stories came out claiming how devastating these attacks have been.

It's also notable how inauthentic these two claims are in that the attacks therein are virtues within liberalism, where weirdness and sexual noncoformity are supposedly sacred. So it also exposes a deep hipocrisy within Democrats who will apparently say anything to win (I'm not exempting the GOP/Trumpism from this, BTW, just pointing out that the lack of concern for principles is rarely this brazen and happy to be this brazen).

I'm surrounded by Republicans who don't care about these attacks. They're laughable, absurd even. Except for how powerfully they've been executed.

This whole thing is very "fake it 'til you make it". It might even work, just like following the original saying often does, but I find it hard to believe anyone, especially on this site, actually believes the actual content of any of these claims.

I've seen this claim a lot on Reddit, along with the celebration of Waltz's dig at the Vance couch rumors. I think it's either a disingenuous interpretation or a case of the Democrats getting high on their own supply.

Neither. The claim that the attack worked really well is just the second prong of the attack. Vance himself seems to have moved on to attacking Walz.

What it reflects is a radical moving on from focusing on existential fear for democracy to something much easier for those who struggle with abstracts to be a part of. Finally the Dems have realised that being self serious gives Trump an aura of incredible power that plays well for him. If he can genuinely threaten a hundreds-year old institution, there must be something formidable about him. Moving on from this rhetorical trap has obviously been hugely liberating for the Dems -- finally they can be the ones to mess around and enjoy making schoolyard attacks, Trump's domain for a decade.

Personally I think the new attacks represent something highly authentic though much like Trump's attacks are not to be taken literally.

I don't think the policy has much to do with it beyond a mild justification. The nickname has more to do with calling him a tampon as (supposedly) an effeminate submissive man who exists to "support" a woman.

The deeper policy debate if there is one isn't going to be another round of trans bathroom bingo. It's going to be about casual misogyny, treating female bodily functions as disgusting, etc. Which could make either side look weird.

#TamponTim definitely falls in the online weirdo category of insult. The problem with this line of attack is that Walz comes across as so extremely normal that if anyone gets into this kind of argument with him the optics are that he's a guy you trust to coach your kid's football team and some deranged looking guy is next to him talking about grooming kids. It just doesn't matter who's the accused and who's the accuser in a situation like that.

Except it isn’t “extremely normal” to put tampons in the boys bathroom. Pointing that out is pointing out that actually Walz is super freaking weird despite how he presents.

If females want to use the boys bathroom, no one really has an issue with it. They're using it at their own risk. The danger comes from males using girl's bathrooms.

Putting tampons in a boys bathroom makes normal people go “huh, okay” and they shrug and move on. Making a huge deal out of it and calling someone Tampon Tim makes normal people wonder if there’s something wrong with you. Like why is your team spending so much time thinking about girls’ bathroom habits. It really just feeds into the weird accusations.

  • -17

makes normal people go “huh, okay” and they shrug and move on

Don't know where these normal people would live, around here people (even normies) think it's a weirdo gender-bender-cult thing.

The democrats whole campaign for the last few weeks is “JD is weird.” What is more weird than putting tampons in the boys room? I guess trying to protect pedos as a sexual class…

It's not even the weirdest thing they found on him, apparently he signed a bill that redefined the term "sexuality" to include pedophilia.

I don't think this attack works. The new definition specifies that sexual orientation is an attraction to a person without regard to their sex. Age is not sex. "I'm attracted to this person because of their age" would not be a sexual attraction under this definition.

Disagree. The definition is kind of a disaster in general. As you say it states that it is "attraction to a person without regard to their sex" which is not at all the same as "attraction to a person because of their sex". If a person is equally attracted to little girls and little boys, how does this definition exclude him?

Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex. Whether someone is a pedophile seems to me orthogonal to the question of their sexual orientation under the statute. The age part isn't relevant to the analysis. "pedophile" is not a distinct sexual orientation because it's not about the target of attractions sex.

That seems like what the original wording that was removed in the redefinition Walz signed, "Sexual orientation does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult" would imply?

If someone was a bisexual pedophile, I would expect discrimination against them based on their bisexuality to be prohibited, but discrimination against them based on their pedophilia to not be prohibited. So I'd want to clarify in law that pedophilia is not a sexual orientation for the purpose of discrimination law. That seems like exactly what the pre-revision wording does.

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Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex.

And does the statute protect people on the basis of their, ahem, "bisexuality"?

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Holy shit that is damning.

The most generous thing you can say about the amended statute is that it doesn't explicitly make paedophilia a protected class. But removing the explicit exclusion while directing the courts to interpret the bill's provisions "liberally" is more than a little alarming.

Black letter law is that you make inferences from what a legislature strikes. So if there was an extant provision excluded X and then the legislature specifically strikes the X exclusion, courts must infer (unless there is strong evidence to the contrary) there is no X exclusion.

This coupled with the explanation makes clear what this law results in.

Sure... I still doubt a court would actually read the law that way (even though I totally agree that would be the normal and "correct" reading), just because WTF. But even if so, there's still no excuse for making the change in the first place.

Haha yeah. The legal implication is clear but sometimes courts will go out of their way to avoid such a crazy thing.

That…that is something the republicans need to blast 24/7 (after the Dems confirm him as VP).

I'm not sure if it's sufficiently substantive. Do issues like this motivate people at the national level?

I feel like “dude wants to protect pedos” plays.

Rogd is a bigger issue in teen girls, and schools supporting this / putting them in risky situations by encouraging them to use mens rooms is definitely an issue, even if not as immediately off-putting as men using women's rooms. At the same time, they're two sides of the same ideology coin anyway. Putting tampons in mens room comes with letting biological men into women's rooms, and I think people get that.

It all falls under the 'woke teachers are grooming children' category.

Do the ROGD girls actually use men’s facilities? I’d thought they hung around their own and tended to use the women’s room because they were scared of actual natal males.

I'm already seeing subversions like #TamponTim is going to stop the red wave.

I think #TamponTim could stick.

It's weird to want to put tampons in the boys room.

On a visceral level, people think tampons are a bit gross, and it will make Walz look a bit pervy to be so interested in them. This of course isn't really fair, but that's politics.

It also just seem woefully prone to the triumph of ideology over pragmatics.

I'm absolutely pro-trans in the sense that I think trans men shouldn't have to duck into women's rooms to get tampons. I'm also familiar enough with how teenage boys work to realize that it would take minutes for men's room tampons to end up up someone's nose. Yes, having tampons at the nurse's office will be ever so slightly more uncomfortable and awkward. But it's an answer that doesn't sound like it was thrown out of an ivory tower.

A high school boys bathroom can’t even be trusted with paper towels. Someone was always clogging the sinks with them at my school.

I mean, it seems like a middle or high school should have feminine products in the nurse's office anyways, as it's presumably a common-enough issue with adolescent girls to worry about.

I believe that having them in nurse's offices is common, though I can't say for sure if it's universal.

The theory for restrooms is that periods are an incredibly embarrassing thing that might come up with little notice or have to be handled multiple times in a day, so they shouldn't be only available through the nurse's office. I don't know that it needs to be a law, but it's not fundamentally unreasonable as a policy, and there's at least plausible funding authorization reasons.

It's just the men's room bit that's hilariously dumb.

I dunno, I think highlighting your opponent's weird ideological obsessions is a good play. No one is threatened by jewish space lasers either but if Marjorie Taylor-Greene were Trump's VP pick you bet we'd be hearing about them.

The problem is that Walz reads as such a turbo normie that an attack like this just ends up highlighting YOUR weird ideological obsessions.

I have no opinion on Walz directly, due to having only learned of his existence with the VP nomination, but the whole narrative surrounding him, as well as the Harris candidacy in general, reminds me so much of that Game of Thrones line "a king who must say he is king is no true king." The past few weeks, all the messaging that I've perceived "in the wild" in places like news shows and articles or political advertisements has been talking about how Harris's nomination was so energizing to the party and gave everyone hope that we might be able to actually defeat Trump, but the actual displays of energy were few and far between. For Walz, I keep getting told that he's a "turbo normie" (in different terms, of course, that a normie might use) instead of it being actually demonstrated. The whole thing also reminds me of Clinton in 2016, when we were constantly told that she was the most qualified presidential candidate ever, which screamed insecurity versus just showing off her credentials and history and letting the voters conclude what they will about her qualifications.

Maybe it's early enough on in their campaigns that they're just warming up the applause lights before their actual demonstration of the underlying qualities that actually give hope for winning the correct states in this election. That in itself would still signal insecurity, but at least there'd be more of a there there.

The problem is that Walz reads as such a turbo normie

I think this is the crux of the issue. There's a difference between objective weirdness and perceived weirdness. The higher your social status, the lower the perceived weirdness of any given action will be, and in today's world turbo-normality probably gives politicians close to peak social standing among people who just don't want to have to think about politics that much.

Maybe for someone in Blue Tribe spaces this is true. It is not for Red Tribe people.

I too can just baldly assert things. Things like:

Walz does not come off as a turbo normie. And he looked freakin' strange on the stage next to Kamala in a way that Vance doesn't.

We’ll see when they start polling Walz but the Vance favorability polls speak for themselves.

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If you want to make a case for his favorability ratings versus Vance, I won't argue with it. I would contest that this anything to do with him being a 'turbo normie', which you claim as seemingly self-evident.

I don't buy this at all. He's more personable than the average Democratic politician, but the progressive wishcasting that he's got an aura of normalness so strong that he can define weirdness and normality by force of personality is nonsense. Walz talks up his small town bonafides, but he's not winning small town votes. He's winning Minneapolis votes, and Minnesota is a sufficiently urbanised state that that's enough.

I know the BabylonBee is supposed to be satire but in this case I think they may have scooped the New York Times.

Democrats worried that choosing a Jewish vice president may cost them the all important death to america vote

If the two main candidates were Shapiro and Walz, I am not surprised that Harris went with Walz. To maximize her chances of winning, Harris needs a "generic white guy" to balance out her being a black/Indian woman. So it's understandable if she and her team did end up deciding between two generic white guys. However, Shapiro's being Jewish and his history of being strongly pro-Israel and working for Israeli organizations does not make him a good Democratic VP pick in today's political environment. Trump voters aren't going to go vote for Harris just because she picked Shapiro. On the other hand, it is possible that a decent number of Democratic-leaning voters in swing states where the election will come down to a difference of a few tens of thousands of votes would just decide to not vote instead of voting for Harris/Shapiro.

I think it probably would have helped, actually. It's the moderate position. I assume you win more undecided independents by being pro-Israel than you lose far-left by being pro-Palestine.

And Shapiro's the governor in what's currently the most important state.

If Trump could get Kamala out of the basement, with Shapiro out of the picture, Israel and Harris's pro-Palestinian position would be a good line of attack. In addition to helping directly in the Philadelphia suburbs, it would force her to defend her flank in safe states. But this isn't that kind of election; Kamala need merely do nothing and she wins with the media just repeating "Kamala is great. She is much better than Orange Man. You should vote for her again and again".

The fear of being too pro Israel isn't so much about votes as a first order effect, it's fear of protestors>>>confrontations>>>viral video of riot cops pepper spraying teenagers>>>losing votes.

Not that many Democrats are truly pro Palestine from the River to the Sea, though I think the Israelis have overshot just how much margin for brutality they have. But Democrats naturally identify with young antiwar protestors at an emotional level, in the same way Republicans identify with churchgoers or families. Protestors, even ones they don't approve of, getting pepper sprayed or beaten or shot with rubber bullets is going to cause problems for Harris.

The fear of being too pro Israel isn't so much about votes as a first order effect

It is about votes if you need to win Michigan.

It’s a tricky one and I think it could easily be argued that Shapiro would have been the better choice. Nate Silver had a ranking of swing states by importance to probability of winning the electoral college, and in both cases whoever wins Pennsylvania has a ~90% chance of winning the election.

Shapiro is popular in Pennsylvania and that’s probably enough to tip the state to the democrats.

But yeah there does seem to be one too many skeletons in his closet and I’m sorry, the IDF thing (whatever you want to call it, it’s at least a conflict of interest) is fucking “weird” and probably should disqualify him from any kind of national office dealing with foreign policy.

Probably will be harder to go after than JD vance.

You sure about that?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/minnesotas-lurch-to-the-hard-left/

2023, Kamala Harris' running mate Tim Walz supported and the Minnesota legislature passed the following legislation:

— All limits on abortion at any stage of pregnancy were repealed, as were laws requiring doctors to treat infants born alive after an abortion. References to "women" in the new laws were replaced with "pregnant people".

— Minnesota declared itself a “refuge” for transgender surgeries and therapies for minors. Gender surgery will now to be publicly funded.

— Public and charter schools are mandated to teach “ethnic studies,” and school boards are instructed to adopt "antiracist" curricula and teach “the history of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples."

— Drivers’ licenses and state-funded health care are now available for illegal immigrants.

— Private religious colleges are forbidden to “require a faith statement” from enrolling students.

— Convicted felons now have the right to vote before completing parole or probation.

as were laws requiring doctors to treat infants born alive after an abortion

Is there more information about that? Not treating the infants would be highly unethical and even without specific laws illegal, wouldn’t it?

Alas, no. In Ralph Northam's words, "The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Basically the standard practice is you get care if the people who just tried to kill you decide to give you care.

EDIT: Apparently, there were 8 aborted babies born alive in Minnesota during Walz's tenure until he repealed the requirement to report these survived abortions.

Basically the standard practice is you get care if the people who just tried to kill you decide to give you care.

Wow, that's some real bullshit, if I were on Trump's campaign I'd make it a talking point about dems being baby killers or something. That's so beyond the pale it's unfunny, they tried to kill the baby? Fine, but if it still survived after being born it should be treated like any human with dignity.

Trump has brought it up, and it puts the red tribe in a frenzy to be reminded that it sometimes happens- even red tribe leftists- but blues don’t care.

I think if anyone brings it up, it would have to be Vance, citing specifics. If Trump brings it up, no one takes him seriously.

As @Felagund says, Trump has brought it up. This is what he's referring to when he talks about "post-birth abortion". Unfortunately he lacks the clarity and credibility for people to understand and believe him.

Of course the left and the media (but I repeat myself) insists that this never happens, even when we have abortion doctors on video openly saying it sometimes happens and they just allow the baby to die when it does.

Trump's brought it up several times. But no one believes him. You're right that this could probably be pressed in a more serious manner, but merely having Trump repeat it does not work.

See also Montana's failed referendum to protect those children.

I wish so, but it happens to about 500 neonates a year and goes largely unnoticed and unprosecuted.

Like Kamala he is pretty far to the left. But the question is can the Republicans make it stick? The media will be 100% onsides to defend the narrative, and they only have to keep it up for 3 months. Early voting starts even sooner.

Private religious colleges are forbidden to “require a faith statement” from enrolling students.

This is a particularly bizarre law. Was it really necessary? I mean, really?

The reality is that private religious colleges generally provide a lower-tier and more expensive education in exchange for providing students an environment where they're surrounded by their co-religionists. The faith statement requirement is the actual selling point of religious colleges.

And with the exception of a few institutions like Notre Dame, I can't imagine a scenario where a person applies to various institutions and the least expensive or most prestigious option, or even the option with the best cost-to-benefit ratio, is a religious college. (Insert jokes about Notre Dame being as religious nowadays as the owners of the similarly-named cathedral in Paris.) Attending a religious institution is always a sacrifice on the basis of explicitly wanting a college environment that requires tests of faith.

I guess maybe it's oriented towards closeted atheists, kids whose parents don't know their religious beliefs and who push them into attending a private religious college, and who fear for their future should they openly resist. But while I'm more sympathetic to the clash of conscience-vs-convenience such a scenario invokes than you might think, the idea that we're going to prohibit a practice that provides benefits to people of diverse religious backgrounds on the off chance a closeted deconvert has to have a confrontation with their parents just doesn't pass the "compelling state interest" test.

More realistically, it's just an attack on the existence of religious colleges at all. Which is shameful. Though it's probably tied to funding requirements, which make such things more thorny. I believe in the freedom of association to create religious colleges and require a faith-based test for admission, but I do have skepticism that such institutions should receive state funding except for strictly secular safety-and-utility matters a la Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, and my feeling is that Espinoza v. Montana DOR was wrongly decided precisely because state payments to religious institutions creates government leverage that can be wielded against the conscientiously-held doctrines of the religious. The separation of church and state is not about protecting the state from religion, but about protecting religion from the state.

A lot of students attend small, private religious colleges because they want to play a sport in college and aren’t good enough to make it on the team in a large school. Religious affiliation is a complete afterthought.

I, an atheist, went to a Christian college (as it seemed like a safer/saner choice than the local state school), and I wasn't required to make a faith statement (that I remember), though I was instead required to take a "Christian Worldview" class.

More realistically, it's just an attack on the existence of religious colleges at all. Which is shameful.

Specifically, religious colleges can (and do) use faith statements to effectively exclude homosexuals from professorships. Their position is essentially "There's nothing wrong with being homosexual, it's just that you have to sign a statement saying that you won't do sinful things, like have homosexual sex." This is why organizations like the American Philosophical Association changed their anti-discrimination language to something like:

This includes both discrimination on the basis of status and discrimination on the basis of conduct integrally connected to that status, where "integrally connected” means (a) the conduct is a normal and predictable expression of the status (e.g., sexual conduct expressive of a sexual orientation, conduct expressive of a disability status), or (b) the conduct is something that only a person with that status could engage in (e.g., pregnancy), or (c) the proscription of that conduct is historically and routinely connected with invidious discrimination against the status (e.g., interracial marriage).

In other words, it's not enough to say "we accept everyone as long as they live up to our religious standards"--you have to accept everyone, and their "integrally connected" behaviors, too, even though the failure modes of such a requirement are probably easy to imagine. Anyway, as a consequence, some religious colleges lost the ability to advertise jobs in APA publications.

Progressives dominate academia, by a wide margin. It's pretty important to them to keep the door slammed very firmly in the face of possible competitors to that monopoly on propagandizing America's young adults (and is probably also why they tend to be in favor of pushing "college for everyone" even when the economics of such a thing make no sense).

It would be... interesting... to see how all this might interact with a Muslim-sponsored university, but there aren't many of those in the US. (Yet?)

And with the exception of a few institutions like Notre Dame, I can't imagine a scenario where a person applies to various institutions and the least expensive or most prestigious option, or even the option with the best cost-to-benefit ratio, is a religious college.

BYU is both highly ranked and quite affordable

I assume you meant to reply to @urquan, since that is who you're quoting. But you're right:

Notre Dame and BYU are far from the only well-respected religious university in the U.S. Notre Dame is far from the only well-respected Catholic university in the U.S. Georgetown is technically Catholic, Marquette and Gonzaga and Loyola as well. They don't seem to care much about homosexual conduct though, as far as I can tell.

Southern Methodist... it's in the name. Pepperdine is affiliated with the Church of Christ. Pepperdine as well as Baylor (Baptist) have codes of conduct that exclude homosexual sex, though they otherwise seem happy to use progressive-approved language in discussing sexual identitarianism. I have no idea how serious they are about enforcement, though.

But most of the schools I just named are "top 100 national universities" in the US News rankings.

That's a fair summary.

And BYU is another university like Notre Dame that strikes me as quite willing to compromise on values for tuition money, though I understand they do have a large student population that is practicing LDS. My mind skips BYU sometimes because I'm not from that part of the country and have no connections to the Mormon community; but my understanding is it's right on the edge between being a relatively prestigious university and being a finishing school for the children of elite LDS members. And I didn't even realize Georgetown was historically Catholic -- and, I mean, Yale and Harvard were historically religous, but no one would confuse them for Bible College.

But to be clear, my point isn't that religious universities are bad — far from it, I have friends and family embedded in religious colleges. My parents met each other at one. But my position is that they're typically worse in comparative terms especially when accounting for the other institutions that are likely to have accepted a particular applicant for admission, when the explicitly religious nature of the college is excluded, and particularly if we're being practical and evaluating public universities in the calculus. I don't include colleges that are willing to sell out their faith for prestige in the definition of a religious institution, especially since they won't be willing to enforce faith standards that are the topic of this discussion. I suppose time will tell whether BYU, Pepperdine, Baylor, and Notre Dame end up sliding more or less in that direction.

as quite willing to compromise on values for tuition money,

Do they? I would have thought they were heavily subsidized.

BYU is absolutely not willing to compromise on values for tuition money and requires a pastor’s letter of recommendation regardless of denomination.

I have no idea how serious they are about enforcement, though.

Given that I can't remember any media frenzies about students being disciplined for having gay sex, I can conclude that the level of enforcement is somewhere between zero and zero.

BYU is affordable if you are mormon. If you are not, it is not actually a good deal.

It looks like it's 13000 per year for non-Mormons. That's not bad, though there exist other options for similar prices.

Ah, that’s an angle on it I hadn’t considered: it’s an attempt to aid PhD’s in finding a job.

I’m definitely of the opinion that we have way too many people with postgraduate degrees and at least half the people we graduate from those programs, let alone initially admit, don’t belong there. Not always because they’re not bright enough or capable, but because education is an occupational credential and we need to get some of the bright young people pursuing doctorates to instead work towards more socially-beneficial pursuits.

But then again I’m someone whose preferred model of the university involves more teaching than research, and believes that popular historians spreading relatively-accurate knowledge of history to a wide audience serve a much more important social function than historians writing boring monographs called “Catchy Title: Socially-Preferred Groups and the Function of Particular Economic Force in Time Period Place, Oddly Specific Year to Round Number Year.”

I think this is primarily about controlling the culture of education. There are a lot of religious schools in MN and there is a lot of tension between them and the DFL. See also the ban on banning books that doesn't actually ban banning books.

some botched case from a decade ago.

More than botched, Ellen Rae Greenberg's death is just a hair less egregious than "suicide by two bullets to the back of the head". When a woman dies with 20 stab wounds, several of which were to the back of her neck and head, and it's ruled a suicide, and the state continues to this day to fight her parents' attempts to get it reclassified and investigated as a homicide, people do tend to raise an eyebrow.

It's kind of wild that her door was broken down by her fiance too. Like I get that his story is she locked herself inside and then stabbed herself and he broke down the door to get to her, but hoo boy. A broken down door, a woman stabbed to death, and a male partner placed at the scene is a fact pattern that normally is gonna lead to a prosecution.

I thought I just saw something about that: The parents of Philadelphia teacher Ellen Greenberg, who was found dead in 2011 with 20 stab wounds in what was deemed a suicide, have won the right by the PA Supreme Court to challenge the suicide ruling. The state is fighting their attempts to get it reclassified, but at least they're losing.

Kamala’s career intersected with a case like that as well: https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/california-ag-wont-review-suicide-findings-in-bizarre-death-of-rebecca-zahau-6630223

Short summary, lady was found hanged using knots she had no business knowing, while her son was hospitalized after a suspicious fall, and a strange message scrawled on the wall.

Do we want every controversial decision by local governments reviewed by state governments?

As someone who follows true crime more than is average for a guy, Zahau's case was absolutely sketchy. But if everytime a controversial decision is rendered, it needs to be reviewed by a Higher Power, there's basically no point in having a local justice system. You can say a review is necessary only under very clear criteria, but that's what happened here: it didn't fall under any clear criteria (the local system being idiotic is not one of them).

So someone without a lot of national stature, from not only not a swing state but from the bluest state in the union in terms of the Presidential race. And a very progressive record, as I understand it, so no balancing the ticket. This does not strike me as her best possible choice.

I think Harris is really not making any effort to get out of the echo chamber.

I really get the sense that Harris is making her own strategic choices for this campaign and/or listening to her more radical staffers for advice.

Which, to be clear, I think could still pay off in some way if you get the base excited (?). If she's making her own decisions at least that's a step up over Biden.

Some polls are already suggesting that the media machine's fast spin-up is bearing fruit. The Economist has her leading Trump by 2 points.

Hadn't really clicked in that way but yeah, her actually being in the driver's seat is inherently a step up from Biden, when you couldn't be sure who was driving, and it seemed like several people pulling in different directions half the time.

I just would not want to be a passenger on that particular bus.

Test if there are high ranking people in the Trump campaign here.

Under his watch, Minnesota's public health authorities set up a hotline to allow people to report their neighbors for violating the state's strict social distancing rules, which included the threat of 90 days in jail for violators. When Republicans in the state legislature called for the hotline to be shut down, Walz defended it. He also told pandemic-weary Minnesotans to stay away from relatively safe outdoor activities like spending time on the state's famous lakes.

He has a German name, looks like a cousin of Erich Honecker and the above paragraph. Nickname him Stazi Walz and be done with him. It will stick.

Given the importance of the Midwest in US politics, doing anything to suggest German = bad is not a good idea. Plus, AFAIK, most people these days have no idea who the Stazi were ("Some sorta Nazis?").

Covid totalitarianism was memory holed so I doubt this slogan would work, but tbf the closest thing German's have to any collective identity is their weird guilt pride. So I don't see calling him a nazi backfiring by angering Americans of German descent, if anything it would be extra effective on them.

the closest thing German's have to any collective identity is their weird guilt pride

That sounds more like Post-WWII Germans, but most German immigration to the US was well before that.

Germans have their weird guilt thing, but German-Americans do not. German immigration almost entirely stopped before 1930, so virtually no German-Americans have any ancestral connections to the Nazi party. German-Americans still wouldn’t care, but that’s mostly because they’re completely assimilated.

Isn't Minnesota known for Swedish-Americans anyways, though?

The state is both heavily Scandinavian and heavily German.

Making Covid stuff into a campaign issue in 2024 doesn't sound likely, and polling indicated there were a fair few voters back then (ie. the olds, some Republicans too) who liked the Stasi stuff and would have preferred more of it.

he conveys "midwestern good vibes"

  1. 20 years as a teacher. In the pocket of the huge teach unions (like NEA).
  2. All kinds of efforts as governor to interfere with businesses in goofy pro union ways. Mandated some sort of "ergonomics" study
  3. In favor of all the abortions all the time

Don't fall for the shtick. He's a progressive. He'll trot out his military service (in the national guard ... during peacetime) ... but this is not in any way a centrist pick.

His military service he is a vector of attack, Apparently he cut it short just before he'd have been deployed to Iraq.

What you say in no way counters what op said. Walz projects Midwestern good vibes, whether his policy positions back that up or not and I don't think your objections to him speaks negatively to swing voters anyway. Its not like its some hidden secret that he holds progressive views, its on the New York Times front page.

I doubt the intention was that he was going to appeal to rightwingers on theMotte.

Bold move. I thought PA's electoral votes made Shapiro a lock in, but apparently experience walking the tightrope of letting race riots run rampant, and yet not having them stick to you electorally was more important. I know what I'm expecting the next few months until election day.

There's also the Jewish question aluded to above. Democrats need to drive turnout and and that means keeping Dearborn and and all those student activists waving Palestinian flags onboard.

Not sticking regionally doesn't guarantee that it won't stick nationally.

The Harris campaign simply never misses.

It's telling that in two weeks MAGA went from assured of total victory to stolen election mode:

https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1819726527141208279

As urban youth would say, they shook.

And then there was me, who was convinced they still probably could rig it with Biden after the debate.

On one hand, yes, the decision by Democrats to stop asking America to vote for an Alzheimer's patient has dramatically improved their prospects.

On the other hand, I think it's a bit silly to ascribe any particular genius to Harris or her campaign. She has a pulse, and that's honestly enough to be competitive against Trump.

The Harris Campaign has existed for all of two weeks and has thus far managed not to accidentally shoot themselves.

That this is impressing anyone says more about the current weakness of and low-expectations for Democratic Party than it does Harris' strength

This is probably just sour grapes on my end, but I think a distinction should be drawn between her campaign itself and the backwinds of one of the softest, non-hostile media environments I have ever seen for a candidate. People are giving Trump crap for his NABJ appearance, but are there any examples of Harris or her surrogates being able to survive a similar waltz through a lions' den? Every interview I've seen with Harris has her nonsensically flubbing through easy lay-ups provided by sympathetic journalists. Then there's the retroactive editing of articles from years ago, the refusal to grill her at all with regards to covering for Biden's obvious unsuitability for office, and an inability to make a case for her beyond riding a coconut with a smile.

Without the aid of the news orgs and a voting base that has totally mindkilled itself in the last few months to justify her ascension, this campaign would be stillborn. The power comes not from some expertly-run campaign, but the media putting its ass on the scale to glide her through. Biden was a beneficiary of this dynamic, too. This isn't a novel whiny excuse. Rightoids have tagged this as the true threat for years, and it doesn't matter if Biden, Harris, or some other thoroughly unimpressive Dem candidate is the avatar being supported.

Getting the media to put its ass on the scale to help you is part of what it means to have an expertly-run campaign. Of course, the media in general leans Democratic, but that shouldn't necessarily be an excuse if you're a political strategist who is getting paid millions of dollars to help the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign strategists have done nothing to grab the narrative away from the Harris campaign ever since she replaced Biden as the Democrats' chosen candidate. It's been several weeks of nothing from them, meanwhile the Harris campaign is full steam ahead. What are the Trump campaign people even doing? What is their strategy?

I think that Trump has a problem in that compared to Harris he just seems old and he has been in people's political attention for nine years straight except for a brief interruption in Biden's first couple of years in office. Trump is still entertaining, but he's no longer the novel maverick, and probably a lot of people are just tired of hearing about him. Harris, on the other hand, is shiny, new, and relatively young for a recent Presidential candidate. There is an element in the voting population that loves shiny and new optics. Bill Clinton playing the sax, Obama flashing his pearly-white grin and talking about hope and change, etc. The Trump campaign hasn't managed to do anything to seize the national narrative away from Harris. I feel like they need to come up with something if they want to win.

Getting the media to put its ass on the scale to help you is part of what it means to have an expertly-run campaign.

Let's not be ridiculous. She was immediately benefiting from media hagiography right after her President - whose acuity she herself defended - was drummed out of the race for being unable to do the job.

The fact that it instantly went into K-Fever instead of serious questions about Biden's fitness and what Kamala knew about it had more to do with media partisans finally being glad they could go back to business as usual without Biden dragging them down and making their usual work look silly.

She inherited that media. It took literally zero effort on her or her campaign's end to spin up the gaslighting machine in her favor. If you're able to show me a throughline between an action she took or a message she broadcasted and the ridiculously fawning coverage she has received (between bouts of imitating ostriches), please do.

If this is what qualifies as 'expertly-run' under your definition - which is to be understood as third parties doing all the heavy lifting for you -then it means nothing to me.

I am not saying that Harris' campaign is necessarily expertly run, but I am surprised by their adroitness. Even though they have much of the media's help, they still have been doing a great job of avoiding making any mistakes. So far the Harris campaign has been a slick, fine-tuned machine that has managed to hide all of her weaknesses and accentuate some of the Republicans' weaknesses.

The media leans Democratic, but that did not stop Trump from getting elected in 2016 and then only narrowly losing in 2020 (and that only after the pandemic). We clearly see that it is possible for a Republican president to get elected even despite the hostile media environment. So I think that Trump campaign strategists who are getting paid millions of dollars should not get to use the Democrats' media domination as an excuse for not doing a better job of marketing Trump's campaign.

She's basically barely running a campaign and only going to friendly media. There is no adroitness there, its just banking on the partisan media being partisan. And the other thing is Trump surrogates have been making the rounds and they aren't getting viral clips because everytime they are on something other than Fox the host doesn't let them speak.

Even though they have much of the media's help, they still have been doing a great job of avoiding making any mistakes.

People make mistakes when the spotlight is on them. Kamala parachuted into the race near the end and the media is disinclined to question her. Has she done a single adversarial interview?

Trump going to the NABJ may have been a mistake (especially after Biden dropped out). But it's a mistake because he had to go somewhere and be accountable to someone.

The media leans Democratic, but that did not stop Trump from getting elected in 2016 and then only narrowly losing in 2020 (and that only after the pandemic).

The media leans strongly Democratic and they had endless struggle sessions about their role in electing Trump and vowed to never let it happen again.

So I think that Trump campaign strategists who are getting paid millions of dollars should not get to use the Democrats' media domination as an excuse for not doing a better job of marketing Trump's campaign.

Sure, but that's because they took the money knowing the landscape. Doesn't mean the landscape isn't skewed or that skew isn't problematic.

but the media putting its ass on the scale

First time I've heard that expression.

"Thumb on the scale" is the common expression.

I know. I was referring to the "ass", as it were.

Kamala was invited to the NABJ and turned it down. Most likely fearing questions about Palestine.

If I'm advising her, I'm telling her to avoid every interview possible. She's a terrible interviewee. She gets nervous, says ridiculous things, and laughs awkwardly at things that aren't even remotely funny.

All the right-wingers I know are escastic. Walz is a dumb governor who says dumb things on camera. Shapiro was the smart choice who had pundits scared.

I feel like they were pretty happy with Kamala as well underestimating what a full court media press can do for a candidate when the bar is set for a living dead man.

Harris is bad product with good marketing, so I continue to be near certain she ends up dragging in the polls when the honeymoon period ends and she actually makes public appearances.

I've been asking blue teamers to name the most impressive achievement attributable to Harris.

Aside from "got picked as VP" then "got picked as Presidential candidate" there's literally nothing. Every other attempt to rehab her image failed, too. She's got almost every liability Biden has aside from age, yet none of the experience or achievements to her name.

Unless they pull the "she makes no appearances publicly unless absolutely necessary" strategy that Biden pioneered, there's simply no possible way her public persona improves the current situation, and many ways it harms it.

Ironically Walz might have been chosen simply because he's really good at putting a decent spin on his own bad policies and that's literally what Harris needs to do right now.

I've been asking blue teamers to name the most impressive achievement attributable to Harris.

I don't care about any policy achievements attributable to Harris. I think Team Biden has done an extremely good job and that Team Harris will be a continuation of Team Biden. I do, however, think that Harris is a good champion to finally defeat Trump and permanently demoralize MAGA, which has been an insanely negative drag on our country since it sprouted up. I want and need nothing else from her.

  • -15

I think Team Biden has done an extremely good job and that Team Harris will be a continuation of Team Biden.

I have a Pier in Gaza to sell you if you're willingly advertising this as your true belief.

Price is $320 million btw.

The irony here is that MAGA hasn't had control of any major institutions at the Federal level, but we can objectively see people Voting with their feet to leave places like California (Kamala territory) and Minnesota (Walz territory) to go places where red tribe rules.

This is what we call a 'revealed preference' and its perhaps the most hilarious possible indictment of blue tribe governors as theydrive away their tax base

So I dunno, if you really want to show MAGA what for, just move to/remain in one of those blue tribe strongholds and let everyone else go where they please, please.

I'm a Pennsylvania voter so you're all stuck with me :)

I agree blue states have done a terrible job on building housing, and housing costs are really the main driver of outmigration, plus boomers retiring to the sunbelt. I'd be a single issue voter for any party that could credibly increase the housing supply in high demand areas.

I'd be a single issue voter for any party that could credibly increase the housing supply in high demand areas.

Isn't that party just the GOP? Like it's more a state and local issue than federal, but when you look at places with unified Republican control and a lot of people wanting to live there you're looking at places like Texas which does in fact build a lot of housing.

Actually it's probably tax policy beyond anything.

Because if it were housing policy, the outmigration should be driving house pricing back down towards 'affordable' levels too.

You get guys like Bezos and/or Billy Joel ducking out of places with income tax to places without it, it seems pretty obvious.

And you can argue he's not representative, but Musk moving his companies to Texas also indicates the issues blue states are creating for themselves.

But again, you do you. Just silly to scapegoat MAGA when you can't point to places where MAGA actually has political control of government and are 'a drag on the nation,' compared to places where blue tribe controls government and is literally driving people away.

The reason for business relocations to Texas is probably actually regulations, not taxes. Texas is not a low tax state, despite advertising as such, and while plenty of ordinary middle class people might make that mistake businesses probably don’t.

And Texas is the biggest beneficiary thereof, so it’s not as if this is an exception that tests the rule. It’s the trendsetter.

The easiest way to end team MAGA is to let Trump win, suck it up for four years, and then he'll be done and go back to golfing for the rest of his life. If he had won last time MAGA would be already over. If he loses he'll probably spend at least four years complaining with support from his base.

If you want the anti-woke impulse or populists to drift off that's a separate problem, but the MAGAists will go away when he does. Let him win and the timer starts and then he'll be bored and gone.

Yes, the way to defeat a movement is to give them power for another 4 years.

It's a movement 100% centered around an ancient guy with little real interest in politics and no real possibility of a successor that doesn't switch back to usual Republican politics. Trump would be functionally gone at this point except for screeching on social media and attempting to make himself relevant with endorsements if he won last time.

The anti-woke and normal republicans exist independent of Trump and will exist after he is gone. MAGAists are Trump fans.

Hell, if he somehow managed to get himself elected for a third term....guy would just die of old age.

Normal Republicans are great. I wish the Romneys and Rubios were in charge of the party.

I don't know how broad your definition of anti-woke is but I think the set of republicans whose brand is anti-woke (like the "intellectual dark web" people) are basically Trumpers in disguise or at least exist only to pander to Trumpers.

I’m no fan of MAGA but I don’t think that’s a good thing. I’m not just anti-MAGA, I want someone who is at least nominally capable of doing the job I’m voting for her to do. She might surprise me, but I’m not convinced she would be able to get bills through congress or handle a national security issue or emergency situation. If WWIII happens, do you trust her to be in the war room?

In elections, achievements do not matter in and of themselves. Only optics matter. Achievements only matter insofar as they help the optics. Trump had pretty much zero political achievements when he ran in 2016, but he ended up completely clobbering the rest of the Republicans and then beating Clinton.

Harris might not have Trump's high levels of charisma, and she might have no achievements to speak of, but that won't matter if the Harris campaign succeeds in framing the election as a fight between "fresh young hip Kamala and her cool cats" vs. "old stale criminal Trump and his gang of weirdoes". The facts don't matter, the reality doesn't matter. Only the optics matter.

Trump had pretty much zero political achievements when he ran in 2016,

And virtually everyone he ran against had a ton of political failures that he could pin them with because holy cow the years leading up to Trump were dismal in terms of anything good coming from the political process.

People don't remember that pretty much nobody on the debate stage could make a case for their great leadership or successful policy goal they'd helped push through. They all came across as feckless, useless grifters in the sense that they were asking for support when their records showed that they'd not done anything to earn it.

At this point, Trump AT LEAST can say he helped bring about the most conservative Supreme Court in decades, and can continue that trend if he gets elected and has support from the Senate.

The facts don't matter, the reality doesn't matter. Only the optics matter.

Yeah but the optics didn't used to be COMPLETELY illusory.

If we're through the looking glass at this point then literally nothing matters. Run whatever candidate you want and voters will accept just about any narrative about them.

If we're through the looking glass at this point then literally nothing matters. Run whatever candidate you want and voters will accept just about any narrative about them.

Yeah we are in a post post truth world. Whoever writes the best story wins.

And the optics are decided on by the media, who are a wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC. Game, set, and match.

And the optics are decided on by the media, who are a wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC. Game, set, and match.

And social media, which is more of a mixed bag.

And yet Democrats sometimes lose elections. Kamala might well lose, her chances are worse than Hillary Clinton's.

Harris is bad product with good marketing, so I continue to be near certain she ends up dragging in the polls when the honeymoon period ends and she actually makes public appearances.

There's not a lot of time to kill the honeymoon here. It's August.

And we don't have a media willing to force her to make public appearances, at all. Republicans don't have a candidate willing to do so either, since he's still so obsessed with crushing Biden he wants to just run off of that victory.

There's not a lot of time to kill the honeymoon here. It's August.

The irony is that there's not a lot of time to build up a campaign and a candidate's public image, but they're attempting it anyway.

Not sure how to react to the revelation that you DON'T necessarily need the 1 year plus leadup to the election in order to build public support for your candidate.

Why not have one month of campaigning, hold all the primaries on the same day in July, and then we can just have a 3 month race for president starting August. Much more efficient.

Not sure how to react to the revelation that you DON'T necessarily need the 1 year plus leadup to the election in order to build public support for your candidate.

You would, if "not Trump" wasn't enough to carry a boatload of people.

Trump is a weak candidate, helped once again by an even weaker Democrat. Now that Biden stepped away the problems inherent in that are rearing their head again

Political parties are mechanisms, at this point, for funnelling donations from the faithful into the pockets of campaign managers so they can run ads telling the faithful that their enemies are weird.

In this campaign, you don't need "public support", you just need "less public disapproval". Trump is at +8.3% disapproval right now; Harris has plummeted from a recent +17.4% disapproval down to a mere +5.5%. RFK is at +7.8% and Chase Oliver is at "Who?", so she's currently the most popular candidate not by virtue of being popular but by being less relatively unpopular.

If someone wanted to nominate a good candidate then their opponents might have to worry about having enough time to convince the public that their candidate is also good, but for some reason there just hasn't been much threat of that happening for the last decade.

but for some reason there just hasn't been much threat of that happening for the last decade.

I really wish I understood why, my only guess is that smart, well-rounded, virtuous people don't go into politics any more, because the level of media attention and frenetic partisanship make it totally undesirable for all but the most commited ideologue or the most narcissistic idiot.

I've been asking blue teamers to name the most impressive achievement attributable to Harris.

Things I've heard:

  • she's charismatic (??)

  • she's young

  • she's not trump

  • her prosecutorial record as AG is actually very progressive (this claim seems to be p-hacked to looking at drug convictions only I think)

Her prosecutorial record is astonishingly weak and it blows my mind that the Trump campaign hasn't started running huge numbers of ads showing what she did and said during that time. She was just beyond ghoulish in her decisions and I think that the sheen on her image will evaporate once that stuff gets more widely known - at the very least enthusiasm on the left will take a nosedive when they realise they're voting for the cop who wanted to keep innocent black men in jail for prison labour.

Her prosecutorial record is astonishingly weak and it blows my mind that the Trump campaign hasn't started running huge numbers of ads showing what she did and said during that time. She was just beyond ghoulish in her decisions and I think that the sheen on her image will evaporate once that stuff gets more widely known - at the very least enthusiasm on the left will take a nosedive when they realise they're voting for the cop who wanted to keep innocent black men in jail for prison labour.

Law and order appeals to the median voter, I think. Not sure that would help.

Except you don’t say “Kamala was tough on criminals.”

You say things like “Kamala fought to keep exculpatory evidence under wraps for an innocent man on death row.” That isn’t law and order; that is attempted murder!

Just "Kamala deliberately put an innocent man on death row" would be simpler. Don't complicate it with talk about evidence, the media is just going to say the claim is "without evidence" anyway.

Yep. And none of those really qualify as 'achievements' in my book.

Although in modern politics it probably makes strategic sense to avoid having your name tied to any major event or policy lest those end up going sour in retrospect.

I don't so much mind people trying to hype their candidate (although its spooky how they all pivoted on command when doing so) but c'mon at least realize what you're trying to shove down our throat.

I guess I'm just remembering that previously it was expected that the candidates for president had DONE SOMETHING demonstrably leaderlike in order to show they were up for the task of managing an entire administration. Acting as VP is usually an argument for this, but for some reason we've not been allowed to analyze her time as VP too closely.

I continue to be near certain she ends up dragging in the polls when the honeymoon period ends

When was the last time a democrat nominee's honeymoon period didn't last until election day? Dukakis in '88?

Kerry got absolutely soaked in 2004. The amount of credibility given to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was ASTOUNDING!

Well, when he let himself get photographed crawling around in that anticontamination suit he took some ridicule, I'll give you that.

But as for the swiftboat vets, I remember them being vehemently denounced by all the unbiased, non-partisan media.

Can anyone give me the rundown on Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Curtis Yarvin seems to think they were obviously right, and that it was the shameless media pile-on that pulled the term “swiftboating” out of the air and discredited them off of nothing.

I was too young back then to follow this stuff, so I have legitimately o clue who’s right.

The thing is, I feel that in the context of a Presidential election in which military service of the candidates is an issue, it does not matter much whether the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were right or not because at the end of the day, if you are someone who values service in the US military, the worst that one can say about Kerry's service is that he saw combat but then lied about some things. On the other hand, though, George W. Bush never saw combat at all and spent the war in the United States.

This is why the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth thing has never made any sense to me. No matter what Kerry lied about, he still demonstrably put himself on the line in service of the US military much more than George W. Bush did. And I am pretty sure that, with his connections, George W. Bush could have made his way to Vietnam if he had really wanted to fight there.

I can give a broad overview.

Post Vietnam war there was basically a domestic truce declared between the pro-war and anti-war sides. People who served in the war were patriots who loyally served their country. War protesters were patriots who wouldn't let their countrymen die in a misguided war.

When Kerry got back from Vietnam he became a major figure in the protest movement. There's some dispute about what he actually said personally, but he at least associated and sat on panels with people who were saying horrible things about US soldiers. People from his old unit got at least the impression that he was saying he saw them commit horrific war crimes.

Since this was back in the 70s there aren't many recordings showing exactly what he said when.

Once things quieted down it wasn't heavily criticized due the de facto truce and he went about his political career.

Then in 2004 when he was running for President he wanted to play up his war record. Bush only served in the air national guard while Kerry was deployed and won a silver star. Bush is a little younger than Kerry and got a deferral to help on one of his father's campaigns. By the time he would have been deployed things were winding down in Vietnam and the NG didn't really need him for anything.

In the Presidential campaign Kerry cast himself as a proud veteran. Meanwhile other swift boat veterans were still pissed off at him. They had been quietly shit talking him for 30 years.

Some of them got in contact with Republican organizers and we got a bunch of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads.

Basically a bunch of people who had reason to dislike him came forward and badmouthed his claims about his military service. I have no idea what the truth is or the specifics of the claims.

The Dems organizers didn't really understand that just because other veterans weren't talking about him publicly didn't mean they didn't still carry a grudge. They don't run in the same social circles.

So from the Dem point of view it was a manufactured conspiracy that came out of nowhere.

Interestingly there seems to be similar situation brewing with Walz.

https://facebook.com/story.php?id=100006969510534&story_fbid=2192944367614526

That post is from 2018 but i expect that it will be either memoryholed or suddenly relevant shortly.

Basically a bunch of people who had reason to dislike him came forward and badmouthed his claims about his military service. I have no idea what the truth is or the specifics of the claims.

Their claim was that he was a rich kid who wanted military "experience" for his future political career and didn't do anything as soldier. IIRC they even suggested his Silver Star was earned via an intentionally-inflicted minor wound that also got his tour cut short.

That was the first time I saw election memes and they were devastating against Kerry. I can't find it now, but it was a series of pictures of Bush/his wife looking presidential and Kerry/his wife looking silly (e.g. breaking the law of politics that you never, under any circumstances, wear a hat) that had me laughing, even as someone whose politics at the time largely consisted of "I hate neocons."

when the honeymoon period ends and she actually makes public appearances.

Why is there an expectation that she will actually make public appearances? She's going to vibe her way to Nov and win. I increasingly can't understand any argument otherwise, except as wishful thinking.

The idea that Kamala will be forced to make a fool of herself in public is Q-Anon level cope.

A major economic downturn or a bungled military crisis are the only two outside shots Trump has.

Debates?

I think there's too much unpredictability. I could easily believe Trump crushing Kamala in a debate. I could easily see the opposite. Trump's not the best contrast to Kamala's weaknesses of vapid and ramble, while Kamala is a great contrast to both Biden and Trump re: not geriatric.

Either way, are debates really going to happen?

Shucking and jiving outside your campaign bus or calling Repubs weird gets you somewhere with the faithful but it won't win over anyone who isn't. Kamala is going to be in fundraising mode for two months and only then will switch into targeting votes instead of donations.

If she can successfully manage not to interact with any voters for 2 months, that's a huge win on her part. If I were her campaign manager, I'd be telling her to do exactly that (making it until election day would be even better). Go have fancy dinners with donors, talk to friendly and allied interviewers, maybe take a month long vacation at the beach, and let the media and TikTok do all the heavy lifting. It's a pretty solid strategy.

I mean, she can do that if she really wants but this would be very unorthodox. Dare I say it, even weird.

Shucking and jiving outside your campaign bus or calling Repubs weird gets you somewhere with the faithful but it won't win over anyone who isn't.

Maybe not, but being 59 instead of 78 will, and being a relative unknown instead of someone a decent fraction of the electorate is probably simply bored of by now also will.

Can Kamala stay as Mystery Democrat for three months? If she doesn't explain herself to the electorate, Trump will do it for her.

Can Kamala stay as Mystery Democrat for three months? If she doesn't explain herself to the electorate, Trump will do it for her.

How? Nobody who isn't already for Trump listens to Trump, and whatever he says bad about her the media will just report as "Trump falsely claimed..." or "Trump claimed, without evidence,..., and actually Kamala Harris is the greatest candidate ever"

Video clips. Flood the market with video clips of Kamala in her own words.

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It won't? Why not, she's only rising in the polls. What is the mechanism that will end her honeymoon before November? It's pure copium.

What is the mechanism that will cause this two week trend to continue forever, until presumably Kamala is acclaimed as Emperor of the Universe?

so to be clear, I don't think it will last forever, but will last till november.

Because when someone enters the race they typical get a boost and then fade.

That and hundreds of millions of attack ads.

When was the last time anyone entered the presidential election this close to the election as a major party candidate? I really don't think we could draw too much guidance from primary candidate fades.

Different country, different circumstance, blah blah blah, but Rudd replaced Gillard in 2013 three months before the election. In his case the honeymoon lasted about one and a half months.

Why would she change? She can get all the votes she needs the way she's going now. She doesn't need to campaign, she has the media to do it for her. The more she does, the worse she'll do.

A 51% chance of winning means that it's certain, right?

Pretty much. In general, the Democrats/left only need a single temporary advantage to achieve a goal, whereas the Republicans/right need all the possible ones; any setback means failure. It's just the way the world works given the capture of the institutions.

People are literally too stupid to attach the downturn to her. Or too reasonable - she didn't have the power to do anything about it anyway.

The only thing that saves the Republicans right now is a big, unjustifiable spat of race riots where she doubles down again while nobody's feeling sympathetic. The problem is that summer is coming to a close, so the time for the media to make a mistake and race-bait us into that outcome is too.

Economic trouble won't necessarily be blamed on Kamala per se, but it will lock in a perception of probably the weakest aspect of the past four years of Democrat rule: economic stife via inflation. I think a real downturn will turn out the vote for Trump. But it's not something I'm rooting for.

She'll 'have' to do something if the polls are still close or Trump is narrowly leading in the 'must-win' states. Its not clear the media can drag her over the line with independents this time around.

A few offhand predictions, in no particular order:

  1. Harris slips a critical few points in national polls and swing state polls.

  2. Some new actual crisis WILL emerge between now and the election (odds seem to favor it, with so many in the last two years alone).

  3. Her first public outing without an inherently friendly audience, which might be a debate with Trump, does not go well.

  4. Some GOP candidate will probably screw up in their congressional campaign which narrows the contest for congress. And for some extra tinfoil:

  5. Biden kicks the bucket sometime around late September and Harris gets a sympathy bump in the polls, and also makes her President thankfully with only a very narrow window in which to screw something up before the election.

Why will she have to do something if polls are close if that something is objectively worse that hiding from scrutiny? She's not going to go on an adversarial program or field tough questions just because.

Why do you think Biden agreed to an early debate with Trump?

There's rumor that it was pushed on his side to basically force him out quickly. I think that's plausible, but even the more benign reasoning, concerns about Biden's age related fintess were real, causing him to sink, and needed to be addressed quickly. Biden had already worn his honeymoon for 4 years. Kamala needs to sprint into November from the basement.

He personally wanted to debate, and it gave more time for any bad impressions to wear off (which, in fact, did not happen, until he was forced out).

Actually, do people still think of Biden as too old now (on a gut level)? Has that lessened since people stopped caring about it?

I'd heard the reason was "to catch Trump off-guard," among others, but that simply turned out to be a grave miscalculation on the part of the Dems, which they might not repeat with Harris.

Seems to have been a very happy miscalculation, as it led to them dumping the anchor they had at the top of the ticket.

Because he thought he'd win.

And there's your sign.

If she can finagle a situation where she thinks she has an advantage, then she may take the risk.

Biden kicks the bucket sometime around late September and Harris gets a sympathy bump in the polls, and also makes her President thankfully with only a very narrow window in which to screw something up before the election.

I was thinking that they might be holding a 25th amendment claim in their pocket for an October boost if they feel they need it. Get some "first female president" good vibes to propel them over the finish line.

“Generic Democrat” and “Generic Republican” almost always beat named candidates in polls. Right now Kamala is running as Generic Democrat, and it’s working. There are probably things Trump could do to take the shine off and put the ball in her court, but his campaign is MIA. What are they even doing? Where are the ads? Where are the memes?

There are ads. There are memes. They just aren't cracking the firewall that is MSM. They fortified their lines after 2016 and no Republican is allowed to speak even mildly freely on the big shows anymore. Im sure they will spin up ads more heavily in important states after the DNC, but IMO the race is a holding pattern until then. DNC will give a new vibe to Kamala, which might work or not. And then that is the vibe you have to take on.

What are they even doing? Where are the ads? Where are the memes?

Aren't these pretty much limited to X? No other platform wants them.

I mean, any resident of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, or in past elections, Florida & Ohio can tell you that TV stations have no problems taking anybodies political ads and running them.

As far as memes go, I thought with Musk in charge, X was now the land of free speech where the true non-restricted views of the people can run free.

TV stations are legally required to accept political ads.

A major economic downturn or a bungled military crisis are the only two outside shots Trump has.

I don't think is true, I think Trump is still favored at this stage. Kamala has a better chance than sticking with Biden I think, but that isn't a high bar.

PA is almost a must win for her, and that means carrying Philly, very strongly. Which means carrying the black vote very strongly with high turn out. And currently I am not sure that is going to be the case as I mention above.

Silvers model is now favoring Kamala, so are the most recent polls. I think Trump will only slide from here in the polls. There's nothing new to keep him up. He's at a ceiling between now and November.

Attack ads. And more attack ads. People know Trump. He is baked in. People will get to know Harris in the next 75 days. That will change the polling.

How will they get to know her? She'll hide in the basement, give pre-prepared speeches, and be Generic Democrat as far as anyone knows.

There's almost certainly going to be a debate or two, and Kamala just does not look good in front of a camera.

I think there's a very reasonable chance that Trump bombs in any debate with Kamala. Trump was only good in his debate with Biden insofar as he wasn't a corpse. Trump will be the geezer this time and Kamala will get the 'not a corpse' halo instead

Kamala came in third in the VP debate between herself, Mike Pence, and Mike Pence's housefly.

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Even accepting that, bad things can happen to Dems. Economic news can only be bad. Lurid crime stories. Netanyahu attacks a hospital and we get full 4k footage of a child literally being shredded. Zelensky takes some brand new American hardware and commits a cheeky war crime with it. A scandal comes out that we didn't even know about yet, who had "RFK hid the bear cub in the park in 2014" on their bingo cards? Biden can still suddenly decline in a way that makes things awkward.

Or she is having the bump from replacing Biden.

Fundamentals still favor Trump i think. The econony is not great, loss of incumbent advantage. Its a lot to overcome. Which isn't to say its a slam dunk.

Man, I see all the mana they have left is being put into making Kamala a thing. I'm a big fan of all saying about the fight not being over until you're dead, so I figure who knows, they might pull it off... but I don't know if I want to see what they'll pivot to in case she loses.

Scott Adams has been saying that the election will be stolen for a year now.

Did Scott Adams ever accept that the last election wasn't stolen? I don't get why you'd expect a different result on the second try.

Indeed. I call on the Right to protest this obviously rigged system by staying home on election day.

Voting just legitimizes the fraud.

  • -31

Speak plainly.

Comments like this are really the lamest kind of partisanship, and a waste of intelligence.

Thankfully I live in Florida where the Governor managed to sort the problem out quickly six years ago so not really a concern for me.

Of course the same Governor is so popular that Florida isn't even a swing state anymore so I might stay home just because I won't impact the outcome even if my vote IS counted.

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