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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30121 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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I'd be inclined to believe Kamala's numbers simply because it seems so plausible that substantially more people prefer her than they did Biden.

My gut feel on this is that "generic democrat" polls really well generally, but no single answer polls better on hard issues like immigration, or Israel/Palestine, and such for which I haven't seen any concrete policy proposals from her camp.

There strikes me as an element of wish-casting generic candidates as "closer to my, obviously reasonable, position" than any real candidate can be. I guess we should expect real proposals from the convention at this point? Or maybe they plan to phone in the "pass the bill to know what's in it" strategy. I will admit I'm mostly avoiding watching politics closely so far.

I wonder if, lost in all this, there are lots of people who actually prefer Biden to Kamala but just aren't being amplified.

Elderly voters could easily fall into this bucket.

For all the Kamala content appearing suddenly on TikTok and Reddit, the elderly voting block is much more impactful than the youth vote.

Anecdata, but the elderly people in my life were the ones who most wanted Biden thrown under the nearest bus, and are most excited for Harris/Walz.

I would expect there to be some subset of the population who don't want to vote for a black candidate. Although Trump is busy convincing everyone she isn't black, and there's probably some subset of the black population that won't vote for her if she isn't black.

It all comes out in the wash.

My elderly relatives are the same way.

They are Waspy ex-protestants who vote blue no matter who. Their political allegiance never changes even though the values of the 2024 Democratic party bear little resemblance to the 1996 version that they also supported. They are true believers, and this is a quasi-religious belief system.

But not all old people are true believers that immediately install the latest software updates.

Mine are lifelong Republicans. My dad just loves Walz' schtick as given to him by the WSJ and cable news.

After Obama, the ‘won’t vote for a black candidate’ crowd are a nonfactor in partisan elections to the extent they exist at all, because they polarized into the Republican Party.

When we're talking about the elderly, it's not who the voters prefer that matters, it's who fills out the voter's ballots that matters.

Fortunately, that’s usually the voter!

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