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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34275 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Criticism of Hillary's demeanor is around being elitist and robotic, which beats Harris's positionless word salad.

No it doesn’t. Hillary seemed like a bitch on a personal level, whereas Harris seems like a wine aunt with a xanax problem elevated beyond her station in life, which is fundamentally more sympathetic.

People (including many people who were not on the hard right, like average New Yorkers) hated Hillary, or at least saw her as a megalomaniacal, power hungry social climber willing to do anything (even eg humiliate herself during Bill’s affairs) to advance her own ambitions.

Nobody seems to really hate Kamala; they may think she’s stupid or incompetent or a standard “woke” Democrat, but she isn’t personally repulsive in a way that the average politician isn’t, but in which Hillary was.

"Last enemy wasn't so bad now that we have current enemy" seems like a pattern on both sides.

Nobody seems to really hate Kamala

Yes they do. There are many people who hate Kamala. None of them would have voted for Biden or a Clinton instead but plenty of them weren't utter nutjobs about, well, at least about Biden.

More specifically, there are lots of fairly sane conservatives who have serious concerns about Kamala's understanding of constitutional rights as they apply to her opponents where they mostly don't about Biden.

More specifically, there are lots of fairly sane conservatives who have serious concerns about Kamala's understanding of constitutional rights as they apply to her opponents where they mostly don't about Biden.

What does this mean? What constitutional rights does Kamala not understand?

Nobody seems to really hate Kamala; they may think she’s stupid or incompetent or a standard “woke” Democrat, but she isn’t personally repulsive in a way that the average politician isn’t

I think Kamala is every bit as bad and dangerous as Hillary, but for different reasons. Kamala comes off as desperately insecure and thin-skinned, as though she’s terrified at every moment of being found out as a fraud.

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but she knows how intelligent she is, and has a clear plan to utilize that intelligence. Kamala seems like she’s only pleasant until the second someone corrects her, or pushes back on her, and then she’ll do anything in her power to tear that person down in order to protect her ego. The classic crybully given more power than she’s capable of wielding. “Excuse me, I’m speaking now!” As if she has been victimized by being challenged.

As if she has been victimized by being challenged.

When you're wrong and know being correct is beyond your capability, evolutionary biology mandates you treat challenge and victimization as the same thing.

All politics (and the divisions therein) are merely downstream of that.

I’ve always thought that “at least he isn’t X” as a particularly good long term strategy. It marginally works when neither candidate is exciting their base well, and the Not-X candidate is at least a competent seeming middle of the road person who will do nothing more than keep going down the path. But if not, then it’s really more of a choice between X but he’s doing thing people like, or Not-X and incompetent.

There’s really nothing in the Kamala campaign that’s telling us she wants to do anything as president. When she makes her campaign stops, she’s talking about how scary and weird the other guys are. Well, after the concert anyway. But after nearly ten years of “he’s terrible, horrible, they’re evil” and him doing very little of evil, terrible, horrible things, it’s not landing anymore. Outside of the breathless true believers, nobody thinks Trump is evil. And now that this is gone, what’s left to scare people to the polls to vote Kamala? They don’t hate her, but what is there, besides the rapidly failing “Orange Man Bad” meme is there to get people to actually choose to stand in line for an hour for Kamala?

But after nearly ten years of “he’s terrible, horrible, they’re evil” and him doing very little of evil, terrible, horrible things

Trump had a serious effect on border policies and overturned roe. To voters who are very concerned about republicans implementing a republican agenda that isn't just tax cuts, these things are a big deal.

Now I doubt that progressive culture warriors are a majority of the electorate. But the idea that making an orange man bad pitch to these people is without basis is itself without basis.

Conversely, if Kamala wins, does that mean you underestimated the power of Orange Man Bad?

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