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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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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.

  • -12

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.

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