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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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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.