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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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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.

Who would see them? The mainstream media won't play them and swing voters aren't paying attention to right-wing media.

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.

Sure. agreed. which is why I think she'll ride into November in the basement.

I don’t think Kamala can avoid going to a debate.

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.

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