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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Some of the object-level details in your post are wrong, but your overall message is correct: there certainly has been a change in Trump's campaign. It's a combination of Trump's visible aging, along with a decent dose of Trump fatigue. The man is old news by this point, so unless he does something very crazy, nobody really pays attention like they used to. He's also less energetic than he used to be and so he's likely abdicated some of his responsibilities to his campaign staff, most of whom probably want him on a tighter leash.

Claiming this is Trump "evolving" is... charitable. He's regressing to a more median politician in his old age.

For the object-level details:

The campaign is still very leaky, e.g. there was inside reporting on the disastrous weeks where he lost the polling lead, his anger at Vance, and his campaign getting hacked.

And Trump has been completely free to go even further, to discuss mass deportation, and this is somehow considered even less outrageous than the border wall was considered not that long ago.

This is a combination of two things: 1) the public becoming more anti-immigrant due to Biden's defacto open borders for the first 2 years, and 2) the public knowing that Trump is mostly BS'ing here. Trump promised deportations in his first go around and that didn't really happen. Trump was basically no better than Obama when it comes to stopping illegal immigration.

Democrats used to campaign on "defund the police" and other stances hostile to cops. Now Democrats are campaigning on having put more cops on the streets- the old Trump stance!

Trump even created controversy with his "America First" branding. But now Democrats are copying that in everything but name.

Democrats aren't anti-woke, per se. But they have abandoned almost all of their explicit pro-woke messaging, moving much more towards the Trump stance.

These are all true. Trump might have been a small part of changing the culture. Most of it is just woke burnout. If you want, I guess you could credit Trump with supercharging the woke movement from 2017 to 2020 which poured gasoline on the movement.

Trump was also the first President to constantly rattle on about the stock market and gas prices and so on. Now Biden/Harris do that, too.

He's certainly not the first to talk about gas prices -- that's just laughably wrong. I can't remember other politicians talking about the stock market so explicitly so this one seems true-ish.

I also frankly think that after hiring and firing enough people, Trump has finally ended up with a much more loyal staff than he's ever had before.

When he first became president, he tried hiring a combination of 1) establishment conservatives, 2) hard-right zealots, and 3) supplicating grifters. He'd eventually learn that he hated (1), distrusts but is forced to pay lip service to (2), and really likes (3). Now he knows to fill his staff with a sprinkling of (2) and a ton of (3). So yeah, I expect somewhat less churn in his admin if he becomes president, although that wouldn't exactly be a high bar compared to his first term.

Trump seems to have lost weight.

Yes, this is a common issue with the elderly.

His coloring is now so unremarkable

A combination of people acclimatizing to his face, and losing coloration from getting older.

Perhaps partly due to having less physical heft, he isn't as audibly "loud" as he used to be.

Yep, it's harder to yell as people get older.

I have been surprised at how little discussion there has been in the media

Agreed, there should be much more discussion of his age. Even Elon knew this a few years ago, but it seems like Biden being even older broke the media's brains a bit and so they put the yardstick for "old politician" at "unable to speak more than a few sentences".

Trump seems to have lost weight.

Yes, this is a common issue with the elderly.

LOL, earlier in the campaign season we were hearing all about how Trump was obese. He loses some weight, possibly a result of relentless in-person campaigning, maybe also an effect of the shock from the assassination attempt, and suddenly he's supposedly experience wasting?

Given he ran 2 other political campaigns where this didn't happen, and he's nearly 80 years old now, yes I'd say it's a reasonable conclusion. If the shoe fits...

‘Relentless in person campaigning’ is not going to burn enough calories to make a very fat man lose a lot of weight.

Hadn’t he lost weight before he started the campaign?

The exercise part won't, the screwed up meal schedule can.

Fortunately Diet Coke, McDonald’s and well-done steaks are available in every town in America.

The meal schedule would probably make things worse, though,. especially given Trump's known predilection for fast food. When your diet consists solely of restaurant meals and catered events, it generally isn't as healthy as if you were eating at home, even for wealthy people like Trump.