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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   28807 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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It's been a bit since we've check in the election. How are things going?

You might not know it, but Donald Trump's chances have had a bit of a resurgence lately. Nate Silver's model has him at a 61% chance to win the election. Polymarket has him at 51%.

I think the error bars are pretty wide here. A lot of things are going to come into play. Small decisions in swing states (such as absentee ballot policies) could decide the election. Another factor is how much the "Shy Tory" effect still matters. Exactly who are the people that answer for the phone for pollsters anyway?

The economy appears to be crashing at exactly the wrong time for Kamala. Prices have been increasing faster than wages, and the customer is "tapped out". The stock prices of many consumer-facing companies like DollarTree, Starbucks, Lululemon, and Nike have cratered along with sales projections.

All of this might force Kamala Harris to actually say or do something. For those following along she has made only one unscripted appearance since becoming the heir-apparent. It was an 18 minute interview (cut from 41 minutes) with a friendly interviewer and her running mate present as a chaperone. For comparison, here is the same interviewer with J.D. Vance.

But maybe staying hidden is still a good policy. The one time the Harris campaign did propose something, it was an appalling series of tax increases including an unrealized capital gains tax. If the polls stay close, Harris will probably stay hidden.

On the other hand, the Trump campaign seems to be very different than previous ones. He's not gotten nearly as much media coverage, either because he's not saying outrageous things anymore, or everyone is bored with it. He's done some decent long-form interviews with podcasts such as Lex Friedman, Theo Von, and All-in. But these are just reaching his core audience of bros. Meanwhile, and uncharacteristic for him, he's spent a lot of time playing defense, having to counter the lie that he will ban abortion nationwide. Perhaps it is ironic that a politician who built his political career on a vicious lie (birthergate) will ultimately be undone by one.

As for myself, I will be voting for Trump even though I think he's a bad person. I prefer a bad person to bad policies. And I think Harris represents everything I hate about the Democratic party: racial grievances, suppression of speech, strident militarism abroad, and increased regulation and taxation. But in the end, I'm not sure how much this election will matter. Both candidates are so unpopular the backlash may outweigh the value of having the Presidency.

So... who are you voting for?

I'm a single issue voter. The worst thing Trump did was permit the Democrat response to covid instead of protecting American citizens from Democrat governor self-coups, an absolutely monstrous failure that should be disqualifying in any other circumstance. This is, however, not a good reason to vote for the Democrats, who instead actively supported it, rather than passively permitting it. Therefore, begrudgingly, Trump. That the Democrats would want me treated as a second-class citizen, and made it illegal for me to visit the US until May 2023, only further solidifies the choice. Except I'm not a US citizen so I can't vote.

Probably Trump. I've been a lifelong (Well, 12 year) Democrat voter, but I'm pretty dissatisfied with the direction of the party at the moment and I don't dislike Vance. Tbh if Trump had just refrained from flirting with insurrection back in '20, I'd be a lock.

I live in Europe so the US presidency only really affects me through its effects on foreign policy. With that context, I lean towards Trump as he'd be far less timid towards Iran and their proxies, even if I don't like that he'd be less supportive of Ukraine than Biden (although my sense is that Biden's administration isn't providing enough support for Ukraine to meaningfully change the likely long-term outcome of that conflict anyway).

OTOH my family would probably be very upset if Kamala didn't win, so I guess I don't really know what outcome to hope for.

How likely is it that Trump will do something about the Houthis.

How likely is it that the Houthi shipping attacks will stop because they expect Trump retaliation without Trump having to do anything?

How likely is it that Trump will do something about the Houthis

Fairly likely, I imagine. It seems that the west has treated them lightly so far out of fear of doing anything that might result in civilian casualties, which I don't think Trump will be too concerned about.

How likely is it that the Houthi shipping attacks will stop because they expect Trump retaliation without Trump having to do anything?

I couldn't say.

How likely is it that Trump will do something about the Houthis.

Depends on whether they say something bad about him, I suppose. Or if they actually manage to kill a bunch of US service members. The Houthis messing up the Red Sea trade is a bigger problem for Europe than the US, which means the US isn't all that motivated to do something about them.

The Houthis won't stop on their own. They'll only stop if Iran cuts them off, or if they are otherwise forced to stop.

Trump. After the tremendous bad faith of the Covid response, the summer of BLM, and the social media control shenanigans of the last election, I’d take Xi or MBS (or even Putin, if I had no connection to the war zone) over any Dem.

I'm in a similar boat. Trump is sleazy, and kind of an asshole, but the Biden administration threatened my livelihood with their mandates. I'll be voting for whoever I think has the best chance of repudiating those policies and humiliating the people who enacted them.

So... who are you voting for?

I'm probably not. All the options disgust me deeply. And I don't live in a swing state, so it doesn't matter. (My lack of a vote may be taken as whatever signal it may be.) This will be the first presidential election since I was of age in which I did not vote.

The only thing I have to look forward to is schadenfreude. (Where I live, if Trump wins, and here, if Harris does.)

At least go to the polls to vote in local elections, and pick a third party (it'll be Libertarian as usual for me) to vote for for President while you're there. US voter turnout is commonly below 66%, and it's not because principled people who want to signal our protest would actually win elections if only we could coordinate, so without actually casting a vote for someone there's no way to send a signal other than "the couch is comfy".

I don't envy the swing state voters, though. The game theory says to suck it up, figure out which of the two front-runners is less horrible, and vote accordingly, but how do you do that this year and not just feel soiled afterwards?

Edit: actually, I guess you want to figure out which of the two front-runners would be less horrible in context. You might think that Harris is less horrible but also more likely to have her horrible decisions supported rather than stymied by the rest of the government, for example, or you might think that Trump's positions are less horrible but that he's such a bad representative of them that 4 years of whatever he could enact won't be worth decades of increased backlash.

In that same vein: determine which presidential+congressional ballot is more likely to be split and vote for them. Seems like R president and D Senator? Perfect. Hate D president but think R senator can win? Vote for them. And so on.

I'm also not voting. I despise D and R candidates, and the 2016 election taught me that literally nothing will convince the voters in this country to consider voting for anyone else. So I'm done voting for President. I'll probably still vote for local offices and such.

The schadenfreude is going to be the best part of this election. I very slightly lean Kamala, but it's going to be a wondrous night schadenscrolling Twitter/Reddit/Facebook if Trump wins.

I do not live in a swing state, and I plan to not vote for either Harris or Trump. If I lived in a swing state, I would have to think carefully. I deeply despise both sides, but I might vote Trump in that case simply because he is slightly more likely to do something about things like violent crime, wokeness, and the Democratic Party's attacks on free speech.

I have seen unpleasant signs lately:

  1. The arrest of Paul Durov.
  2. The approval for the extradition of Kim Dotcom.
  3. The Biden campaign's recent attack on supposed Russian disinformation operations - which I'm sure exist, I just don't see anything in Biden's attempting to crack down on them other than a partisan attempt to attack the right.
  4. The recent attacks on Tenet media for being a Russian disinformation operation (and they might well be, but I don't care if they are), and the fact that it has become clear to me that Harris is in favor of more regulation of speech on social media (which she has been for a while, but I only realized it lately). It seems that the left-leaning establishment is pretty solidly unified behind the idea of cracking down on their opponents' speech, and is taking real, serious steps to try to crack down on it.
  5. The FBI's anti-heresy anti-disinformation operations: https://newrepublic.com/post/185668/fbi-document-influencers-russian-disinformation.

And what is the anti-left coalition doing? Not enough, it seems to me. Do most people in the anti-left coalition even understand the extent of the left's hate for them? In my experience, most leftists are nice people in person, but if you start talking about politics, an interesting thing emerges... the average anti-leftist thinks that leftists are stupid, but only a relatively small subset of anti-leftists think that leftists are evil. On the other hand, in my experience the majority of leftists think that the right is evil and should be destroyed. Not necessarily destroyed through force, most leftists aren't in favor of concentration camps or killings. But they think that the right should be eradicated from the Earth. They are true believers in the idea that leftism is morally superior, and they believe it on such a deep level that trying to convince them otherwise is like trying to persuade some random European in the year 1200 AD that maybe Christianity is just bullshit.

Believing that your opponents are evil is stronger motivation than thinking that your opponents are stupid.

The left has suffered some defeats recently, like Musk buying X for example, and I think that in some ways peak woke is now behind us. But the swap of Biden for Harris has given the left a resurgent energy, and to me the Trump campaign increasingly seems to not be up to the challenge of winning the election. Which is bad news not because the Presidency really matters that much in and of itself, because for the most part it does not, but because the rest of the right does not seem to be doing any better than Trump is when it comes to winning elections and because a Harris win would energize the left.

I vacillate between Trump, Kamala, and some random third party bozo. I live in SF, so my vote matters exactly 0 for federal; it's not even clear what strategy I should vote with since it doesn't matter anyway. The person I think would genuinely be best in terms of outcomes? The person most aligned with my values? The person less personally revolting? The person who an additional vote for would send the strongest message about how I feel about the ruling elite? Or by voting at all am I giving legitimacy to a system I detest anyway?

Local elections are a bit more interesting. I'm thinking of adopting the principal of only putting thought into local elections, and just voting R down the line for statewide and higher races (and, for primaries and such, the more electable R). The core issue with California is that it's a single party state; if Democrats faced meaningful competition, we'd get more competence and less corruption.

Or by voting at all am I giving legitimacy to a system I detest anyway?

By "a system" do you mean "the eventual winner(s)" or "democracy"? Voting against the eventual winner(s) gives them less legitimacy, while giving democracy more legitimacy.

Even if it's democracy you detest, though, it's got a commanding lead in public legitimacy, and it's hard to see how withholding your contribution will help change that. Half the point of a democratic state is that it naturally co-opts its own most effective enemies. If you want a revolution but not enough to drag yourself out the door to participate in the Regularly Scheduled Peaceful Revolution, you're probably not going to be participating in the violent revolutionary meetings or the guerrilla terrorist attacks either.

Lately I've tended to think that your vote for President not mattering due to being in a solid Red or Blue state shouldn't make you actually not vote for President because, even though it doesn't actually matter legally, people do pay attention to the National Popular Vote. It can and probably does affect the extent to which a candidate feels they have a mandate from the people to perform bold actions and the extent to which individuals complain that somebody "didn't really win" because they didn't win the NPV.

And so, I will vote for Trump despite being in a deep blue district (Manhattan) that has no chance of him winning.

In the primaries, is it of more value to try to get more electable Republicans, or to get less crazy Democrats?

Imagine having a primary...

For California in particular, I think more electable Republicans. Less crazy Democrats would be good and probably closer to my actual policy preferences, but having a single party system itself seems to lend itself to bad governance (at least in the context of American politics). Moderates and extremists will have different policies and spar with each other, but they close ranks when there is corruption or something that could affect the reputation of the party as a whole.

Unfortunately, California is now a one-party state. Barack Obama or Kamala Harris themselves could not win if they ran as a Republican.

I vote far right in state politics but back Trump for federal. Accelerationist voting I guess.

Why?

I vote pretty consistently for giving the state government more power. That winds up as MAGA federal and Christian nationalist/secessionist/Uber tea party(the three won’t run against each other) in state/local primaries.

What’s the latter’s chance of winning any seats in the state government, though?

If you mean the local far right more generally, they have more or less guaranteed a (probably relatively low)double digit number of state house seats(out of 150) after the last set of primary runoffs. No state senate seats and one or three statewide elected officials(Sid Miller for sure and both Ken Paxton and Dawn Buckingham may or may not qualify).

It's not outlandish to think that ten percent of the state house might sit comfortably to the right of the republican party of Texas, which is enough to demand concessions. In fact, due to a technicality in state house rules, ten seats(which are guaranteed) is enough to have some influence over the house.

I don't care for either candidate, but I'm leaning towards Harris. I despise the Ohio Republican Party, so I'm for voting blue no matter who for anything state-related.

For the US senate, you should vote Moreno. Here's why: if the Republicans win the Presidential election, they're basically guaranteed to have the Senate, as the vice president keeps tiebreaks, and so if they win tiebreaks, to lose the Senate, they'd have to lose in all of: (fairly likely) Pennsylvania, Maryland, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, (even) Ohio, (30% chance) Montana, and (fairly unlikely) one of Florida or Texas. So whether or not Moreno is elected shouldn't lead to a Republican trifecta, at least, in the next two years.

But if the Democrats win the election, then they win tiebreaks, and so don't need to win Florida or Texas. This makes Sherrod Brown likely to be the critical vote for whatever problematic things they try to pass. So if there are things you don't want them passing (e.g. the supreme court "reforms", bad economic policies, whatever else), it makes sense to vote Moreno.

That is, Ohio's Senate seat disproportionately matters if the Democrats win. Accordingly, if you dislike both agendas, it makes more sense to pick the candidate that will prevent party-line votes should the Democrats win the presidency.

Thanks for the breakdown. I haven't yet sat down and combed through all the candidates and the broader implications of their victories, so this is very helpful. I'm open to voting Republican at the federal level.

I always vote Libertarian no matter who their candidate is. I want no part of the bipartisan shitshow. I wish we had a Proportional Representation Single Transferable Vote system to allow a larger portion of the political spectrum to be represented in the legislature.

I get that the libertarian candidate often has the best policies, but do you not care at all about your vote mattering? I suppose some of this depends on whether you're in a place where there are competitive elections.

Fairfax County (like the entire DC metro area) is deep blue. I haven't seen a single Trump sign this year, and dozens of Harris signs. Four years ago, I saw two houses in my neighborhood with Trump signs and I can't help but wonder whether those houses got egged on Halloween.

It's endlessly frustrating reading the Post and the local subreddits where it's treated as axiomatic that any opposition to unending Third World immigration is xenophobia which is almost as bad, in their worldview, as advocating the legalization of rape.

Huh, just read through the Wikipedia page for it, actually sounds like a very interesting voting system. Problem is, I hardly hear anyone talking about voting system reform, just in a few places online, so public sentiment still has to come a long way before we get any kind of changes like that. Plus the two big parties probably don't want that to happen.

It would upset too many applecarts, so without some kind of coup or revolution it definitely will never happen.

(Unfortunately, this country is just too big. Each member of the legislature should represent no more than 50,000 constituents, but that would require a House of Representatives with 6,600 members!)

I wonder if a two-tier legislature would work. Bin the congresspeople into 82 "rooms" of 82 people, then these rooms nominate two different people to represent them in the house each month.

Note that doing this tends to mean that the top-level house is very one-sided; anything that relies on a supermajority (or on a large-enough majority to absorb a significant fraction of conscientious objectors) will be available far more often. As such, it's relatively easy for this to turn into a dominant-party system.

The most-well-known example of this system at present is literally the PRC, although in that case this isn't the only control preventing other parties from competing.

That's why I suggested each group nominates two different people. If the group doesn't have a supermajority, they will send two people with differing opinions.

So, the people could vote for representatives to elect the people who hold power? That makes sense. Maybe the first-tier representatives could even pledge themselves to a particular second-tier candidate, so people know what they’re getting.

Since the job of the first-tier representative is to elect a second-tier representative, maybe we could call them “electors.” And we could even combine them into a larger body of electors, an electoral college. Heck, while we’re redesigning the election system, we could even have these people vote on the president, too!

I kid. And obviously the chief complaint about the electoral college is that it’s designed to favor rural voters and small states. But if we redesigned elections around this particular model, maybe we could collapse a bunch of federal elections into one, while reducing the number of people per representative so the representation is more granular. I recall reading a proposal for something like that a while back, but I don’t remember where.

I agree that the Wikipedia article is quite illustrative.

I think I have a few objections to STV over simple proportional representation with party lists.

  • I don't care for districts. The idea to physically visit my representative's office in town would never cross my mind, the internet exists. The only thing districts exist for are redirecting federal gravy trains to their constituents. I have no problem with voters voting for someone from their own city or state, but that should be their choice, not pre-baked in the election system.
  • If you put all the candidates for a parliament onto the ballot so I can rank the candidates who I actually care for, that will be a bloody long ballot. There are 733 representatives in the Bundestag, the number of candidates per seat are likely higher by a factor of five or so.
  • While Arrow's theorem affects all voting systems, it does not affect all voting systems equally in practice. With party-list proportional representation, if I have an oracle of how everyone else will vote, there is just so much strategy I can apply. You could check if your vote will influence the possible coalitions (which would be very unlikely but also very powerful), but otherwise, you vote for whatever party best represents your values. (Without an oracle, it is generally a mix of both of these considerations.) However, with STV, strategic votes matter a lot. Suppose my preferred candidate is very popular, and I expect a ton of people to vote for them, so he gets x>q votes, where q is the quota for election. This means that in the next round, my vote will be discounted by factor of (x-q)/x. So if I know beforehand that my preferred candidate will get elected, it would be rational not to vote for them, and instead put all my efforts into backing my next preference. However, this strategy is not stable -- if everyone assumes that their preferred candidate will win anyhow, nobody will vote for them.
  • In list-based proportional representation, the one thing keeping representatives in line is that if they don't vote along the party line, they might not find themselves on a favorably spot on the list for the next election. The deal offered by parties is basically: 'be our straw man for voting in parliament, in exchange you get to shape (party) policy in some area and have a relaxed job with good compensation and little heavy lifting'. If there are no lists and getting elected depends on the population searching for your name on the ballot, incentives change dramatically. Your most likely competitors for votes are your colleagues in your party. Your best strategy is to throw them under the bus. If your party is woke, accuse them of being racists. The resulting equilibrium would be that you no longer have parties (yay!), but instead have a parliament filled with 700 independent representatives who were the most successful at selling their own brand like some youtubers. Now imagine having to find a majority coalition among the top 700 youtubers.

While I am a strong proponent of 'one person, one vote' for electing parliament, I don't think it is required that every representative shares the same voting power in parliament. Instead of transferring votes, one could simply say that if a candidate reaches x>q votes, their voting power in parliament will simply be scaled by factor x/q. You would get much smaller fractions where a few key players of each party make up most of the votes, plus perhaps a few hanger-ons whose main appeal is that they represent niche interests, plus some popular independents.

Finally, you are correct that changing voting systems is hard. The powers that be have formed in response to the present voting systems. While it is sometimes in their best interests to change particulars to entrench their party interests (e.g. gerrymandering) it will almost never be in the interest of a supermajority to fundamentally change the voting system, especially not in a way which lets in outsiders.

All of this might force Kamala Harris to actually say or do something. For those following along she has made only one unscripted appearance since becoming the heir-apparent. It was an 18 minute interview (cut from 41 minutes) with a friendly interviewer and her running mate present as a chaperone.

The Kier Starmer approach of staying out of the media and just not being the other guy(s). No positive vision or policy, just "not the other guy".

I wonder if this will become a trend and keep happening on the left the world over?

Starmer previously served as leader of the opposition party. He was not the incumbent. Are American voters really willing to give current Vice President Harris the benefit of the doubt?

When Al Gore ran for President in 2000, he had served as then-President Bill Clinton’s VP. Gore didn’t run away from their record, he embraced it and made it a key aspect of his policy!

(Now that I think about it, there are so many similarities with the 2000 election as with the current one. A formidable third party that could act as a Democrat spoiler. A scandal that makes the incumbent Democrat President a liability to campaign with. Concerns about election integrity. The Republican nominee criticized for lack of ‘presidential’ qualifications. A tech bubble which was at its peak value. Criticism of the Democrat President involving the country in a war in Eastern Europe. Criticism of the President’s handling of evacuating soldiers from a collapsing Muslim country where servicemen ended up dying.)

Who’s the formidable third party? The Libertarians and Greens are a joke as always, and Kennedy endorsed Trump.

Kennedy was polling historically well for a third-party candidate, and he will remain on the ballot in most non-swing states. The nationwide realclearpolitics polling average had him at about five percent, which means 5-7 million votes.

I guess I don’t consider that formidable. Gary Johnson was polling at around 8% in early September of 2016, but he ended up getting only 3.3% of the vote. By the time he dropped out of the race, Kennedy was polling at a measly 3.9%, and he would almost certainly have gotten an even smaller percentage of the vote if he had stayed in until November. In contrast, Ross Perot garnered 8.4% of the vote.

Notably this was how Anthony Albanese won the 2022 election in Australia - the small target strategy, banking on Scott Morrison's unpopularity after a series of scandals to shift votes over to him.

We live in an age of negative partisanship - "I'm not the other guy" is the dominant strategy on most sides of politics right now.

Australia's kind of a special case because IRV+compulsory voting means that the two big parties wind up very close to each other, so aside from scandals there isn't really that much to go on.

Of course, while Labour did win, their primary vote was historically low and the Greens nibbled away at Brisbane; the tactic worked, but it could easily have left Albanese leading a minority government (and, well, good luck lasting more than one term while also placating the Greens; they've gone bananas).

Yes, compulsory preferential voting means that elections are decided by fighting over the middle, which means that both major parties have strong structural incentives to moderate and focus on the swing voter.

Possibly something like that is what they're up to now - Labor pick a fight with the CFMEU, who are traditionally their allies, on the logic that this will sway centre-right voters, and lefties who flee to the Greens are going to preference Labor above the Coalition anyway, so maybe it will all work out? But given their dismal primary vote, I really doubt Labor can afford a strategy like that for long, especially after the last few years have been disastrous for them both in terms of big symbolic actions (the Voice) and in terms of kitchen table issues (they just don't seem able to beat cost-of-living). I really would not like to be in the Labor party room right now.

The weird bit for me, as a libertarian/alt-lite, is that the outcome I really, really don't want is specifically the election landing in the middle; I do not want a Labour minority government with the Greens, because lol the Greens are now enemies of liberal democracy (they want hate speech laws and to ban a couple of political parties for opposing SJ). Labour majority isn't too bad, and Coalition majority isn't too bad; I just don't want Labour minority.

I can't disagree with that. The Greens have always been fruit loops, but they've gotten significantly crazier lately. The chance of them controlling the balance of power is terrifying.

I used to be a Greens voter, actually; it's only lately that they've lost me (both because I've swung toward conservatism and because they've gotten into SJ). Prior to SJ, and in the 90s/00s when great-power conflict wasn't such a big deal, their big policies amounted to environmentalism (which I mostly agree with), social democracy (which I agree with) and marijuana legalisation (which I agree with, although I've never used it personally). But yeah, wanting to ban opposing parties (even if for now it's only minor ones; come on, we've all read that poem in school) is an immediate "welcome to just above the bottom of my preference list, right above single-issue parties whom I think are pushing the wrong way on that single issue (e.g. the Animal Justice Party, since I oppose animal rights)". I was already pretty cross with them over their peacenik tendencies (they're opposed to our alliance with the USA, basically hoping to let the US do the dying for our freedom in WWIII, and I think that's dishonourable), but wanting to ban opposition parties is "no way, no how, this risks irrevocable harm" territory.

I think I preferenced the Greens once in the mid-2000s, in one of the first elections I voted in, but I went on from that to be a pretty consistent Labor voter, and only over the last few years I am drifting towards the Coalition. The thing is, in the 2000s the Greens genuinely seemed credible - anti-war looked great when Iraq was still going on, environmentalism is a concept that it's easy to have warm and fuzzy feelings around, and their stance on social issues at the time was basically secularism and gay marriage. Of course, I may also have been fooled or just an idiot back then.

Now, though, I feel more aware that they're just, well, kind of nuts. They're currently all-in on Gaza, they're demanding rent and price controls, they're the loudest supporters of the Voice and treaty, they oppose the US alliance, and they suck up to China as well. Pieces like this are pretty eye-opening for me.

I just don't want to let those people anywhere near the levers of power.

More comments

I feel like Trump is just too old and tired now. Not as much as Biden, but he's clearly lost a step compared to what he had before. There's no energy, no zingers, no new ideas, nothing but repeats of his old slogans.

On the other hand Harris is also just... a shockingly bad candidate. She was terrible in the 2020 primary debates. She didn't understand the issues, she didn't have any charisma, and her most memorable moment was... attacking Biden for being racist. I couldn't believe that he still chose her after that, and then now basically gave her the nomination. She would have been destroyed in a proper primary.

So this is a weird election where most of the focus is on the VP picks, because they're a lot more articulate than the actual presidential candidates. I guess the strategy will be for both candidates to just limit their appearances as much as possible. Very odd.

I won't vote because I hate the stupid charade that my one vote is supposed to matter, and because politics is the mind killer, so not voting keeps me sane. But if you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose one of them I'd pick Trump.

Not to worry, the media has Harris’s back when it comes to her debate performances. I heard the following on NPR just the other day:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

When Kamala Harris ran for president five years ago, there was a moment from her first debate that ignited enthusiasm for her campaign.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: And that little girl was me.

KELLY: Harris was attacking her then-opponent, Joe Biden, for his record on busing and working with segregationists. It was a highlight for Harris, one of many she has had in debates over her career.

The bolded struck me as particularly ridiculous. I really wish there had been someone else in the booth to ask “Really? Name two.”

She apparently beat Pence in the VP debate. I didn’t really watch but the voting afterward of who won favoured her

I actually watched that debate and was stumped by that consensus. I didn't think he crushed her or anything, but he was the clear victor to my eyes.

I think it's worth considering the 'fly factor' for that. The image of a bug stuck to his head wrote all sorts of jokes in the aftermath, and it would be enough to do him in.

He also speaks in the most boring slow “I’m saying something profound” way.

I couldn't believe that he still chose her after that, and then now basically gave her the nomination.

I think it makes sense to me. A lot of presidents seem to pick weak VPs on purpose in order not to be outshined. See Vance for instance, he’s articulate but not actually liked or charismatic at all. Neither is Walz.

I think the tempering is because he was shot in the face about 2 months ago.

People are trying to kill him. He avoided death by about a centimeter.

I think that’s what caused the mood shift.

Your vote absolutely does matter! You might not live in a swing state, but your vote can and does affect the ideological disposition of local elected candidates for office.

For example, if you are a Democrat in a red state, you might not succeed in electing a Democrat to your local congressional seat. But, on the margins, your vote can influence how radical the elected Republican might feel they are allowed to be once they get into office. I don’t have data to back this up, but I have two hypotheses which some political scientist might study someday. Elected officials with a low Cook Partisan Index score (closest to zero) are more moderate politically, and candidates elected to office with the thinnest margins display more moderate behavior in office than in blowout elections.

I agree that Trump has way less energy now, but I like this version of him a lot better. The zingers didn't really do it for me.

And I believe, if he wins, that his administration will be better run this time.

I expect Trump to lose, but then again that Harris CNN interview (despite the sympathetic interviewer and Walz chaperone) is…really bad. She truly does sound like she’s on strong downers, struggling through the haze. She has negative charisma. She slurs. She can’t really answer questions. She might actually be completely destroyed in the debate this week.

So I’d say my current prediction would be that Harris has the slight edge but that a Trump win would be unsurprising, which in the end means I’m saying nothing at all.

I vote in Manhattan, so my vote is worthless at every level of government (perhaps except to some extent in the DA primary race, but that’s not happening this year).

I know New York has a lot of Jews. Do you expect 10/7 to result in some more elections going red?

I doubt it will shift most relevant races enough to make a difference, but the long term realignment will continue to trend in that direction (slowly).

Another factor is how much the "Shy Tory" effect still matters.

Polling institutes in Sweden have had pretty severe issues with the "shy Tory" effect the past few elections concerning SD, the anti-immigration populist mildly reactionary party, not the traditional right wing.

In the elections in 2010 and 2014 (first time they made it into the Parliament) they were pretty severely underestimated, by as much as 20-30% (easier when their total vote share is relatively small). The pollsters were heavily criticised and even accused of partisanship for this with many people asked how they could possibly have made such big errors and if their methods really lead to representative results.

Then in 2018 they ended up actually overestimating SD by about 10%. Everyone were equally as surprised by this polling result as they were the previous two, but none more than the some of the representatives from SD in TV panels, who strongly believed in getting as much of an overperformance as previously.

Then in the latest election in 2022 SD were as accurately polled as anyone else.

My point is that I don't think its wise to rely on or expect a shy Tory effect because polling institutes can adjust and so can the population.

So, will Trump be underestimated or overestimated in this election? Are people outside of blue strongholds actually still "shy"? I have no idea, but I do think it's questionable to continually rely on this polling pattern over time when making predictions. Polarisation surrounding a candidate should probably be treated more like a thing that increases the margin of error of polling, especially when the worst of the hysteria seems to have died down.

Hot take: election prediction should be split into two different jobs: pollsters and oracles.

Pollsters should just ask short, neutral questions and just report the results without any leeway to skew things, like "if today were US presidential elections, who would you vote for?"

If 10% of the respondents are jokesters who reply Lizardman Hitler, they should just report 'Lizardman Hitler at 10%'.

Oracles are the likes of Nate Silver (formerly 538), who have their voting models which takes in polls and any other considerations ('Lizardman Hitler is not on the ballot', 'Shy Tory effect', 'My goldfish Frodo is more depressed than usual') and form a prediction out of them.

If they get it wrong, you can give the oracles shit, but never the pollsters, because they just truthfully reported what people said they were going to vote for. If you trusted people not to lie, that is on you.

The conspiracy theorists who won't answer polls correctly will statistically all break for Trump.

The polls underestimated Trump by 3-4 points in both of the last two elections. There is no reason to think this has changed.

“Surely they wouldn’t make the same mistake three times!” Please allow me to introduce you to managerialism.

I'm not sure where you're getting the 3-4% number from. Polls underestimated Trump by 1.1% in 2016 and 2.7% in 2020. They also overestimated Romney by 3.2% in 2012. Drawing strong conclusions from n=2 in a system where there's historically been no net partisan bias is misguided.

We'll see but I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption that the pollsters would try to improve and trump voters would become less shy as support for him is normalised.

This is literally what happened in Sweden.

It depends if polls are intended to show a snap shot of the election or intended to influence the election.

Polls by the big mainstream pollsters are loss-leaders for said pollsters' commercial market research operations. Accurate polls are a better advert than message-concordant ones.

Who helps liberal media financially more: Trump or Harris?

Polls in 2016 and 2020 had Trump ten points behind. He wasn't. Now polls have him tied or ahead. He's going to win.

Kamala is abad candidate. Her early stage momentum is over. There will probably be new twists and astroturfs and a few October Surprises. It's hard to predict exactly what's going to happen. But two months ago Democrats felt terrible about Kamala becoming the nominee, and I suspect that's the baseline to which they will return.

Also I don't think Trump is playing defense. The man does not stop. He was hit in the head with a bullet and then started a fight chant. He allied with RFK the day after Kamala's speech at the convention. To the extent the secret service will let him he's still giving packed rallies promising mass deportations. Meanwhile they're trying and failing to put this man in jail. Nothing has stopped him. Abortion is a speed-bump and if the media isn't talking about him it's because they're trying a new way to beat him. It won't work.

I'm voting Trump and I'm having fun.

I was wondering what he was doing while Kamala was getting feted by the press; it turns out he was courting Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.. Successfully, though in both cases in large part because the Democrats snubbed them (ain't no rule in politics about not taking advantage of your opponents unforced errors!)

The problem is the media. I don't think anyone but Trumpists hears anything about Trump except when it's bad, like the whole beating up an Arlington employee thing.

They were snubbed for a reason. Trump getting their endorsement may get them part of the crank vote, but at the same time it labels them the party of cranks. If you look at the numbers, Biden won Pennsylvania in 2016 by winning over a lot of Democratic "legacy voters", mostly white working and lower class voters in rural areas, particularly in the western part of the state. Trump actually did even better among these voters in 2020, but he lost the state anyway, as his antics alienated suburbanites who typically voted Republican; Biden gained 80,000 votes in Allegheny and Montgomery counties alone, which is more or less the margin of victory. An endorsement from Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr. does nothing to get you these voters, and, if anything it turns them off even more. Especially in light of the fact that a guy like RFK is well left of the Democrats on most matters, but is given a pass by Republicans because he hopped on their anti-vaccine bandwagon. Acting like this does anything to move the needle is acting similarly about Harris getting Dick Cheney's endorsement.

Outside of “not liked by the DNC” makes Tulsi a crank?

Apparently her family has some "pray away the gay" skeletons in its closet; that's the first thing that came up when I mentioned her way back when to a lefty friend.

Apparently she’s part of a pseudo-Hindu cult that believes gayness can be cured with yoga, or at least was part of it.

She's not a crank herself, but she has the reputation of one among normie suburbanites who only hear about her media heel turn. The people I know who supported her in 2020 were all the kind of lefties who expressed support for Ron Paul in 2008. Fair or not, that's the reputation she has, and I don't think her endorsement of Trump moves the needle very much, if at all, considering those same lefty supporters I was referring to tend to despise Trump.

My guess is she doesn’t have a big following amongst normie suburbanites one way or the other. But she has some Rogan cache. The endorsement doesn’t move a lot either way but helps create positive news / momentum / probably very much on the margin.

The RFK Jr one may matter. If he can get 60% of his block to vote for Trump that’s a 1% net boost. Question is whether it has negative effects but he may be a “crank” but at the same time he is associated with the left and is talking about historic left issues (eg anti war, pro free speech). It is a bit hard to reconcile that with an authoritarian Trump. So it shows that while Trump might be a bit weird, he is t the threat the Dems keep making him out to be.

Trump, even if the only thing he achieves is stacking every level of the federal judiciary with a cadre of reactionary counter-revolutionaries who will do everything in their power to destroy civil rights law, root and branch, and comprehensively overturn as much of the Warren Court’s jurisprudence as humanly possible.

So... who are you voting for?

Is it too late to get Biden back?

I do wonder if some of the elderly dems out there will look at what happened to Biden, see themselves, and vote for Trump. Overnight, the entire Democratic party pivoted on a dime and said "Biden who?". It was an incredible demonstration of power and message control. But that's just the media. Somewhere, there must be real Biden supporters who are mad about what happened, right? Even if it it's only a couple percent.

Trump supporters are confused by this because there is no backup Trump, if Trump had turned right instead of left the entire policy platform of the GOP is up in the air. Kamala is 99% a like for like replacement for Biden. Nobody was ever that dedicated to Biden, only to what he could get them.

If anything it's the elderly in my life who most wanted Biden out on an iceflow. Possibly just because of their tendency towards conservatism, but many cited directly to their own experience: I can't do what I used to do, he can't either, he shouldn't be president.

Trump supporters are confused by this because there is no backup Trump, if Trump had turned right instead of left the entire policy platform of the GOP is up in the air. Kamala is 99% a like for like replacement for Biden.

If Trump supporters are confused on this, it might be because they took Biden supporters seriously when they argued that Biden was, in fact, meaningfully different from the rest of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, an old-school moderate who would tone down the crazy progressivism of post-2018 blue tribe.

I'm curious about Biden himself. He's rightfully pissed and right now nominally the most powerful man on earth. I assume he sometimes have moments of lucidity where he could act on his resentment.

I'm really hoping for him lobbing some grenades while on his way out at the people who discarded him that callously.

I'm really hoping for him lobbing some grenades while on his way out at the people who discarded him that callously.

He won't. If he really wanted to lob a grenade, he would have pardoned Hunter as soon as the ink was dry on Harris's selection.

Would posing in a Trump hat qualify as a grenade?

It's kind of hard to tell if that was...

a) exactly as his PR claims it was and he deliberately did it in an attempt to show bipartisan spirit,

b) a mistake his PR is trying to spin as deliberate because the alternative is admitting he's not sharp enough to read bold fonts on a hat, or understand their significance anymore,

c) a deliberate fuck you to Harris. Of course he's not going to officially endorse Trump or anything that dramatic but "accidentally" putting a very embarassing picture like that in the news is not exactly going to help her. Has he even ever been photographed wearing Harris campaign merch?

That was really funny. I assume it wasn't a), because that's crazy talk, but I think either b) or c) is possible. It's not much of a grenade, but it's at least a small firecracker.

It would be pretty funny if he got more write-ins than Kamala.

States don't count all write-ins, sadly.

Meanwhile, and uncharacteristic for him, he's spent a lot of time playing defense, having to counter the lie that he will ban abortion nationwide.

Yeah, that's going to be permanent, if the politics in the country to the US' immediate north are any indication.

Actually, the politicking seems to be somewhat of a version of this; Conservatives here have figured out that you just shut up and rely on people knowing what to expect (to be anti-bureaucracy is to be anti-welfare; the bureaucratic state and the expansion thereof is welfare, though few fully recognize it as such) as your campaign message.

It's a more diffuse version of abusing the fact the media can't help but fellate the righteousness of their preferred candidate, and polarization doing the rest. Which is also why Harris, and the party of a moral majority far overdrawn on social credit, don't want to campaign.

I have a neighbor I like that is running for city council, so I feel obligated to go vote. Usually I prefer to stay home. There is a weird civic pride and happiness at polling places that I stridently hate. Old people handing out "I voted" stickers. Kids waving flags and handing out pamphlets. People smiling. Ugh.

I'm usually not a party pooper in my day to day life. But I'm libertarian, so when it comes to politics I absolutely am a party pooper.

Every time I go to the polls I am reminded that I strongly want a "none of the above" option, or more accurately "I hate all of these people". Something that just consistently says I disapprove of this circus. I don't care too much what they do in case a "none of the above" wins. Endless re-elections, a term with no one taking the position, etc. As it is I mostly just vote libertarian ticket if there is one available, since that feels like the closest option to me saying "none of the above".

I don't want to have to care about these elections. In some sense they kind of matter. They give a sort of mandate that pushes things one direction for a few years. In other important senses they don't matter, bother major parties seem equally capable of implementing policies that fuck my life up with me barely being aware that they've done it. Latest example is a Trump era tax cut and a change to how software development is amortized that has basically tanked the software dev job market and left me stuck at a job that is boring.

My hope is for deadlocked and unproductive government.

The 174 change has to be compared to all of the other changes (eg the 14 point rate cut). The nature of lowing the rate means the five year amortization pain is less because the deduction is worth about a third less. So that means the deduction isn’t driving decisions as much. Though yes I concede in the short run it is a bit of a drag.

The bigger drag may be Linda Kahn (sp) at the FTC killing M&A in the tech space. Tech development seems to happen a lot in an outsourced manner. Microsoft buys target X who did Y. Target X was funded by VC. But if FTC has practically shut down these outsourced R&D plays, then the economics means VC won’t invest as much into them since VC can’t exit timely. If VC can’t exit timely, then IRR gets screwy.

That's when the tax change came into effect.

The market tanked because there was an insane VC bubble that deployed trillions of dollars of QE money into unprofitable software companies. The federal reserve (and every other central bank) directly subsidized software jobs for 12 years and then it stopped.

That's simplistic. Yes, the techo ecosystem was largely a money incinerator with even the biggest companies (e.g. Uber) burning billions a year. But they could do that because they weren't taxed on those losses. For a personal example (I disbanded a company because of this), 17 million in, 22 million out = no tax. 25 million in, 28 million out = 33.5 million out (5.5 million in taxes, some coming back along 5 or 15 years (as interest free loans to the government)) We went from (hopefully) burning 3 million to 8.5 million, almost triple projected costs (and backwards from 5.)

This came into effect in 2022 before the first interest hike in March. (The equity correction started at new years, coincidence but not related.)

The math doesn’t really math. These companies that had huge losses would have NOLs. Granted, the post 17 NOL limited to 80% of operating income. But that would mean at most 20% of the income subject to FIT so or an ETR of around 4%.

Really the change to 174 really would only impact a company that has only R&D expenses but didn’t have material historic losses.

If you're right, I should murder my accountant.

Your particular facts may vary (eg perhaps you were in a pass through and already used prior year loss on other income; you historically never had large losses). But as for an industry wide problem, I’ve looked at a large amount of tech start ups from a tax perspective and while there is a cash drag due to Section 174 changes it isn’t massive due to the historic losses. The bigger issue often is the BEAT issue / offshore R&D.

I’m not disputing that these tax changes may have made a difference, your example is pretty clear. But at the same time from a finance perspective it also seems like what’s happening with software jobs is an exaggerated version of what’s happening in other industries that relied heavily on low rates and easy money, just in a more exaggerated way because tech benefited more than anyone.

See my point. Poster is ignoring NOLs. If the poster is in the weird situation where it doesn’t have big historic losses and is basically cash flow neutral, then the R&D is a timing difference and should be able to be financed.

The economy appears to be crashing at exactly the wrong time for Kamala.

The economy has been soft for quite a while, though the same people who were trying to sell Joe Biden's competency were (and are) trying to convince people otherwise. We had a LOT of inflation, which has gone down but remains at levels significantly higher than under Trump, and the job market is generally weak. There was recently a huge correction in the government "jobs created" figure, and just this week a private report claimed 99,000 new private jobs for August, which is quite low. It's not a matter of timing; the economy has never completely recovered from government reaction to COVID.

Real wages are essentially flat, though it feels worse because food-at-home and energy (some of the most visible and volatile expenses) have been higher than general inflation.

I will be voting for Trump, though New Jersey is solid (D) unless Kamala does something galactically stupid like go full Hamas. His policies this time seem worse than last time, but the bar set by Kamala is subterranean. And of course there's the whole identity politics thing.

The “official” numbers came out around 140k though the last two months were revised down heavily basically resulting in the ADP number. But yes, the labor market has been shitty for some time. The “official” numbers are catching up after they were manipulated.

Inflation is probably understated. Industry data on grocery store prices are about 75% higher than the CPI figure.

I too will be voting in our not quite fair state for Trump.

I will cast a blank ballot. (not in a swing state)

The Capitol protest and the Gaza War are the deciding factors. My previous record is Obama, Trump, Trump.

What about the capital protest and gaza war?

I interpret that as you being against Trump's actions regarding the election/validity thereof, and also against the Biden/Harris lack of support for Israel? Or am I inverted?

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