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Stolen valor.
Outside the media distortion field he's an extremely capable speaker.
This kind of political analysis basically assumes that the mainstream media frame is the only frame. It isn't. Most voters reject it.
can you show me examples of JD Vance being an effective speaker? I'm not doubting you but I want to see this.
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Being an intelligent & articulate speaker does not mean you're a capable speaker.
Obama is considered a generational speaker not because of the contents of his speech. It is because he can spontaneously create 'Russell Crowe Gladiator' tier moments around him, week in and week out. I used to do a lot of stage performances & skit comedy when I was younger. Obama is the greatest performer I've seen on TV. You should slow his videos down and study him. His suits, posture, micro adjustments, voice cracks, his wife, his kids.....everything is perfectly done. If you put a obsessive director in a room and asked him to micro-adjust a public speaking movie scene to platonic perfection, you'd get Obama on any random weekday. And no, this isn't me retroactively fawning over Obama's traits. Because the textbooks were written long before him. This came out years before Obama. If you saw it today, you'd think writer lazily wrote a 'what if Obama had aids' script. But in fact, Obama has modeled himself after the archetypical black inspiration that Hollywood had been doing for decades. (see any Denzel, Morgan Freeman role). Putting on that performance matters big time in popularity contests.
Public speaking is diction, content and performance. JD Vance is bad at this specific type of performative public speaking. And it's the most important one for winning presidential elections.
Pete Buttigieg is a similar type of speaker to Vance, but he adds narrative pacing to his conversations, allowing him to have little "gotcha!" wins and "damn brother!" retorts. Vance comes off.....academic. He is a 'bad' public speaker, and us nerdy types liking his speech style has very little impact on how the rest of the world perceives it.
I always thought Obama was a mediocre public speaker propped up by media hype and social consensus. My evidence for this is that now that he's out of office, nobody especially cares about the occasional speech he gives. Every few years the left falls in blind love with these wunderkids who all present the same front: Obama, Beto, Wendy Davis, Stacey Abrams, now Kamala. The men are skinny and roll their sleeves up, the women are spunky and loud. We go through this routine every few years, and the eventual result is always that, win or lose, this once-in-a-generation political superstar is revealed as another mediocrity who doesn't really know anything but runs great when the media is nice for them. I think subconsciously it's all aping after the JFK aesthetic.
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Vance screwed up a conversation with normie minimum wage employees in a donut shop. He is bad at many types of public speaking, though he can write a decent essay.
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I find it hard to believe that the average voter - or indeed almost any voter not already all in for Trump - who cares about the distinction between serving at a rank and retiring at that rank, especially when it's the Minnesota National Guard. Complete inside baseball.
Well he simply is not popular at the moment.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/jd-vance/
He lied about serving in combat, or allowed his allies to lie on his behalf. You cannot systematically lie about your military service and then claim, when finally called out, that it doesn't really matter anyways. Then why lie?
JD Vance propelled his unlikely political career on the basis of his memoirs, which were unusually popular and well-regarded. The man is very smart and a good public defender of Trump's ideas. I predict that these qualities will age well and any temporary unpopularity is the result of a concentrated media push.
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I don't know about the latter, but it's definitely frustrating to have that frame pushed here by default, without anyone bothering to make an explicit argument for it.
That "frame" is basically the Harris campaign strategy. It's being pushed on all the media, social media, and through all the informal Democratic networks in all the institutions. It would be shocking if it didn't make it here.
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The Motte is honestly the most fatalistic place I know. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe smart people read history and spend too much time contemplating the death of Western Civilization. The Republicans I know are in good spirits about the election. Trump is polling well, at or slightly above a tie, whene he was supposedly -10 this time 2020. He's been endorsed by Musk, Tulsi, and RFK, and is putting together a unity ticket of conservatives, moderates, and classical liberals. The assassination shocked a lot of powerful people into joining his team. RFK's people are organized and working with MAGA. Then I come here and it's all about how Kamala is too powerful, nothing Republicans can do is working, Trump is hated, Trump is doomed, etc. etc. etc. I really don't get it.
Most people here just hate Trump. 'The adults are back in charge' was the common phrase uttered when Biden was elected, which aged like sour milk. 'It's just a stutter', which also aged like sour milk, was the common reply when others pointed out Biden's declining mental capabilities.
For all the claims that this place is very much right-wing/alt-right coded, it's still very much a liberal-leaning bubble that tries to hide alot of it's biases behind a layer of claimed neutral observations.
They can put it to his name, but it's not Trump they hate. It's the cold reality of neoliberal consensus being shattered. If not for Trump, somebody else would be the face of history not ending, and they would hate him too for rallying the plebs against those that know better.
I know this because Europe has a lot of slightly different political microcosms and every single one has its own avatar of "populism" that the middle class ritualistically fears. In the UK "Trump" is called "Brexit".
I just wish this was the 40s and they actually had the balls to say that their rule is scientific and good and that you shouldn't oppose them because they'll bring wonders and solve your problems instead of protesting impotently that the plebs should know their place and shut up about the obvious shambles their betters are making of everything.
My kingdom for a competent elite, any competent elite.
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Most people who post here are Grey Tribe and ensconced in heavily blue cities. Some are not American. They are not a good representation of the American electorate.
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There's something to be said about us growing older and more cynical, remembering all the shenanigans they managed to pull off with impunity, and going from outraged amazement to it's-all-so-tiresomed resignation, but personally I think Trump stands a decent chance of winning. The fatalism might set in later on, because the first question I want to ask is "so what?", after seeing how his first term went.
I imagine Napoleon and Alexander felt the same way: so many victories, success unimaginable, unparalleled, and yet, and yet, and yet. So much unrealized. It's really always been this way.
I don't imagine even a Mega Trump who accomplishes more than anyone can imagine can solve all the problems we need to solve. I don't imagine these problems can even be solved in my lifetime. But I imagine that a lot of good can be done anyways.
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