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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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I can't imagine a single man who would react in the way the campaign would want them to.

Lots of liberal men would react the way the campaign wants them to.

The ad is targeted at men who already support Kamala. The goal is to remind them to go out and vote. It's not supposed to win new converts to the cause.

A lot of advertising works that way. McDonald's commercials aren't designed to get vegans to eat at McDonald's. They're designed to get people who already like McDonald's to think "oh hey, I should get McDonald's for lunch today".

EDIT: I missed the part about the ad spending being targeted at women. That's utterly bizarre and I don't know what the play is there. I watched the ad itself, it says "Don't get popped." at the end. The man is the one who got popped. Men are at risk of being popped, not women. There is no possible coherent way for this ad to be targeted at women.

Maybe the message they're trying to impart to women is "no self-respecting woman would date a man who refuses to vote, no matter how physically attractive or financially viable he was. Be like the women in this ad and don't give politically disengaged fuckbois the time of day." And then if it became common knowledge that women as a group considered voting a rule-in criterion for any prospective partners, single men would adjust their behaviour accordingly.

That seems like the steelman to me, too. And from my experience this actually works, in the sense of a) directly benefitting the left parties through making some men outright change their voting and b) making coordination between members of other parties difficult, since they risk ruining their dating prospects if doing so in public. Though as @jeroboam notices, it usually does not benefit the women themselves.

The ad is targeted at men who already support Kamala. The goal is to remind them to go out and vote. It's not supposed to win new converts to the cause.

Right. I note that they don't ask the man who he's going to vote for - they ask whether he's going to vote. They ask him if he "has a plan" to vote (which sounds weird to me, because you shouldn't need a plan beyond "rock up to a polling place", but maybe it's playing on ideas about voter suppression?). It's turning out the base, not persuading unsure voters.

They ask him if he "has a plan" to vote (which sounds weird to me, because you shouldn't need a plan beyond "rock up to a polling place", but maybe it's playing on ideas about voter suppression?)

It is because when you ask someone about how they plan to vote, it takes them from an abstract vague thought of voting as "I like candidate John and hope he wins" into thinking concretely of how they will commit the physical act of voting. Without that step a lot of people won't actually go vote. I've seen races decided by literally one family going to the polls instead of staying home.

Do they know the correct date? Will they have time to go before work? After? Need to request time off? Be out of town at their cousin's wedding and need to early vote or vote by mail? Where is the voting booth anyway? Can they walk or drive themselves to the polls or will they need a ride?

Imagine if you and a bunch of your boys were like "You know what? We should all go to Yellowstone." If one of you looks at the best month to visit Yellowstone, starts pushing everyone to see if they can take off work during that month, finds some hotels, plans how you will get there, makes sure everybody is saving up and puts their vacation request in, etc it will probably actually happen. Otherwise "we should all go to Yellowstone" is going to just be an idle notion rattling in skulls for decades that never happens.

t. veteran campaigner

If the ad is actually targeted at men, maybe the "has a plan to vote" verbiage is to make it sound meaningful, agentic, and even heroic. You make a plan to found a business, or win a war, or build a home. If you just say "are you going to vote," it makes it sound like all you are doing is filling in a bubble on a sheet that has approximately zero chance of changing anything.

You need a plan to vote if you're an hourly worker who needs to put in for time off in order to get to a polling place at a time when you can vote. Or wake up early. Or go immediately to get in line after you get off work.

That makes sense in the US context - I'm Australian, so here voting is always on Saturday and legally compulsory, so if you work on Saturday, it is very likely that your workplace will make arrangements for everybody to go and vote. Or failing that, early voting is relatively easy here. I understand that voting is usually more of a hassle in America?

Varies wildly depending on where you live.

But the biggest thing in my mind is just that if you're not THAT attached to the idea you just might not get to it. Sleep in so you don't get to it first thing before work, didn't ask off work so you can't go until after, uh oh I have to go to the bank/mechanic/whatever. For some portion of people it might slip through the cracks.

Keep in mind that as of last week 800,000 ballots were already cast in PA. We're watching the strategy in the 8th inning of a baseball game in which neither we as the audience nor the players or the managers know the score or what happened in the earlier innings.

Well voting always happens on weekdays in America for one. Polling places usually stay open until around 8pm, but that still might be cutting it close depending on your work schedule, and unless you're a white collar professional you might have difficulty getting time off from work to go vote. In terms of actual physical access to polling places, most people will have at least one relatively close by, but some people might have to travel longer.

Or you can just do a mail-in.

There's no set closing time, even based on state?

Here, for instance, polls always close at 6 PM, in every state. I believe if you are in the line (the website says "still in the polling place", but since the place may be outside or split between several buildings, e.g. at a school, it is usually interpreted to mean anybody who's present and wishes to vote) at 6 PM they will stay open just long enough to empty the line, but no more will be admitted. In my experience (having worked as a polling official), it is extremely rare for that to matter, and usually at 6 PM there is nobody around any more.

Thus my usual experience of voting, when I'm not working at the polls, is to stroll down the road on Saturday and usually I can be in and out in five minutes.

I believe within a state there’s one set closing time, but different states can have different closing times.

We also have the rule here that if you’re in line before the closing time, they won’t kick you out.

Depends on your state--it's all very decentralized in the US. I received an absentee ballot, and the only real difficult part was getting through the annoyance at having to vote for over a dozen different offices and two dozen different propositions.

Men are at risk of being popped, not women.

If you extend getting 'popped' to the broader concept of social exclusion then women are absolutely susceptible to this. More so they would be more sensitive to the idea too.

To simplify, the message is 'if you don't sign up to vote (for kamala) then you will be socially rejected', but its sugarcoated with 'you have the power to do this to high status men' so it doesn't cause anxiety in the message's recipients.

Edit: There's also an element of 'thinking past the sale' where there is a presumption that the group consensus is already 'its low status not to sign up to vote (for kamala)'

the message is 'if you don't sign up to vote (for kamala) then you will be socially rejected', but its sugarcoated with 'you have the power to do this to high status men' so it doesn't cause anxiety in the message's recipients.

You might be right. That could have been the explicit idea behind the ad. But if so, it's deeply distressing that a candidate (and/or their campaign team) who would come up with an ad like that has a legitimate chance at becoming President, and it's also distressing that people who would be receptive to an ad like that are a large enough percentage of the electorate that their opinion matters.

This just feels like the absolute worst kind of petty high school drama bullshit. All pretense of engaging in actual object-level politics has been dropped. Only overt status games remain.

Funnily enough I find it far more upsetting that they're shoving politics into personal romantic relationships than that they're turning political discourse into a status game.

The second part of the first question is literally "how much do you make?"

As far as the ad is concerned, personal romantic relationships and status games are literally the same thing.

My point isn't about shoving petty status games into romantic relationships (which as you point out were always there), it was about shoving politics there.

it's deeply distressing

It so is, these are the same kind of people who ask for height requirements right in their profiles or judge based on what brand of high-tech-slop your phone is. The worst kind of superficial narcisists, and the trend is for their kind to increase.