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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26868 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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This may be naive, but screw it -- do you think Trump style populism is here to stay? Our political system is evidently a failure in regards to incubating genuine talent, and the biggest figures now emerging from the private sector seems to say a lot. Like, just as the Roman system acted as an insane pressure cooker for military talent until they could outcompete the elites, perhaps the same will just happen here along a different vector and real politics won't even occur along the old lines anymore.

Not exactly, but I think the law school to career politician to president pipeline is discredited. I think a lot of Trump's advantage is that he's been a familiar figure in American lives for so long as to actually be source of nostalgia, which is an electoral superpower, but without having been a career politician, who people generally dislike. This was Reagan's power as well. Both parties should invest more effort into recruiting candidates from outside politics who excude confidence and come with good long built-in relationships to the general public. The tricky part is finding ones who actuality want the job and are willing to endure the campaign. Democrats have a huge supply of sympathetic actors, though, so they should probably recruit there. Big problem is this would be extremely unpopular among the career politicians that run the parties, as they feel they have earned the right to run for the top position.

Depends on what you mean by 'Trump style populism' or 'to stay.' My inclination is to say no.

My basis of 'no' is that much of Trump's style is not simply anti-establishment, but a good degree of anti-PMC-ness due to the PMC disregarding/rejecting other groups even as the PMC has become significantly synonymous with the Democratic Party. The PMC class was able to dominate the Democratic party thanks to the rise of the Obama coalition and its sustainment through Hillary, Biden, and Harris.

The last two in particular have substantially discredited that approach, not least because the PMC claim-to-authority is 'we are effective' and they very clearly were not effective, or even sufficient to win. Political parties are built to win, and so while it will take time I suspect the Democratic party will move into a more populist position itself... but that position won't be Trump-style populism, and by departing from PMC-dominance, the Trump-style populism will also fade.

I suspect (though future events may change this) that Trump winning both the electoral and the popular vote in 2024 will contribute to Trump-style populism fading from the Republican party, transitioning into something milder (and thus different). 2016 was characterized as a dissident hand grenade at the political elite, but 2020's covid-irregularities and election-fortifications and such didn't convince the Trump electorate they lost so much as that they were denied. Had Trump lost last night I think a good deal of that sentiment would have survived- updating to things like politically motivated prosecutions and Democratic party coups and whatever late-night ballot drops changing that- but by winning, the Trump electorate could achieve a catharsis from 2020 and in turn accept a Trump departure in 2028 because such a departure would be natural, as opposed to imposed on political pretense.

Things could still bring that back- a partisan-motivated assassination, a post-2026 impeachment/removal from the presidency, post-2028 pursuit for revenge by resurgent Democrats- but if Trump concludes his term in 2028 (or at least dies for not-blamed-on-Democrat reasons) and then retires to a reliably red states for the rest of his life, I don't see what follows being Trump-style populism.

I keep seeing this PMC acronym, and I must've missed when it entered common parlance. Could someone please enlighten me? My search engine was no help.

As the others note, professional-managerial class.

It was originally an attempt to launder Marxism for the service economy. They don’t own the capital, but also aren’t big on the class interests of the proles.

Dean’s usage is somewhere between that and the category of technocrats.

Today, I’d say it’s mostly seen as a sneering shorthand for whichever parts of the middle class don’t agree with one’s politics. Kroger-brand coastal elites.

PMC = Professional Managerial Class

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/on-the-origins-of-the-professional-managerial-class-an-interview-with-barbara-ehrenreich/

Professional Managerial Class.

Vaguely meaning college-educated specialists, particularly those in positions of authority over others (direct management or as authority figures deserving deference like Doctors) who are often highly certified and educated, but deal more with managing people or ideas than actual building of things or manual work.

No because Trump is an outlier. Trump-style populism relies on his charisma; it's not replicable at scale. Not even Trump could build a machine that produces Trumps; and his party is not interested in doing so at any rate.

A big part of Trump's appeal is that, behind the spray-tan and the money and the political ambition, he just seems like a dude. There's an odd charisma to that. During his first term, sometimes you could tell he was just chilling in Cedar Rapids the White House watching cable, because Fox and Friends would be discussing some issue and the President of the United States would just... call in. Or tweet about the issue.

Trump's tweets themselves were a big part of Trump!45's appeal, as he just said whatever he was thinking about unapologetically. He felt raw. You talk to Trump supporters, and the number one thing they'll tell you is that Trump "tells it like it is." I'm not so sure about the epistemics of that, but certainly Trump frequently sounds like an actual person, he has the kind of political conversations people have with friends and family in private, but just in front of other people. That's why people go to his rallies, it feels like home!

Even back when I hated Trump, I acknowleged the rawness of his tweeting and speaking and found it impressive -- not in terms of his diction, but in terms of how he just communicated like some guy, just a guy being a dude. He contrasts so powerfully with the obvious fakeness of politicians like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, whose every word you know was focus-tested. Kamala Harris is terrified of verbal blunders -- that's why she falls into word salad, she's afraid of making a mistake and so just repeats the talking points she knows are safe.

By contrast, the big thing Trump's hilariously, ridiculously bad at is giving a prepared speech. He stands there and reads the teleprompter like a 10th grader reads their assigned sentence in Great Expectations. Sometimes you get the sense he's never heard the very words he's speaking before (and he probably hasn't), and you get Donald Trump live-tweeting his own speech, which is hilarious and strangely charismatic. I was just watching his victory speech, and he reads:

we have taken back control of the senate

And then, looking away from the teleprompter, goes:

Wow, that's good.

He's reacting to his own speech! He's not figuratively but literally going, "wow, we did? We took back the senate? Wow, that's great!" It makes you follow along his thought process, which makes you feel closer to him than you are. He combines this with frequent references to "we," and even infamously talked about himself in the third person at times during term 1. The point is that he makes people feel like they're up there on the stage with him: he makes people feel empowered. These are absolutely the sort of skills -- creating a sense of intimacy and power -- that come up in all sorts of interpersonal domains, like sales, friendly banter, and even flirting. The man is rizzing an entire country.

Calling it charisma is circular reasoning. People like him because he's charismatic. He's charismatic because of... his voice? His hair? His smile? What about him can't be replicated, exactly? Undeniably what he's giving us is rare, but it revealed to us something undeniable, this type of mass appeal we haven't seen before. He's like a businessman without the bullshit, like an old old American, so old that a huge subset of Americans can't even really fathom his appeal or why it works. And I think that in all honestly is the origin of TDS -- it's because they don't get his main appeal that they assume he's popular because of x/y/z -ism. Not even reds understand it, but crack the code and we'll be seeing more Trumps some day. Not soon, but it's coming. This isn't a stars-aligned moment, but rather a 'we've accidentally stumbled into something huge, and almost a decade later we're still working out what it means' type thing. This is clearly not a fluke.

I mean, I'm not proposing a model but an empirical observation. If the Republican machine could replicate trump to replace him they would have, considering how much they dislike him.

I don't think that "charisma matters in politics" is news. Plenty of American presidents have had mass appeal, just for instance Obama. But the Dems cannot produce Obamas anymore than the Reps can produce Trumps. If that's solved -- sure, but there's no reason to me to think that Trump moves us closer to solving it. American politics has had centuries to codify charisma and hasn't managed to do more than come across it in the wild.

Charisma is undeniable, but it's a holistic product of concrete things. Trump's charisma is not his background or his manner of speech or suit, but they all play a part in forming his charisma. So what's the nature of that charisma? Why does it work when Trump does the funny hand motions and says "I've got a deal with China, it's the greatest deal, you're gonna love it", when if any other candidate did this it would be suicide? Answer: It appeals to that old old American mentality I mentioned. That sort of enterprising, ungarnished, take-no shit ambition which historically defines this nation's existence. It's because Trump actually embodies these values that it works for him, and for that reason republicans can't produce a replica, because these are not their values. Which is really a failure of democracy: Like every system of morality known to man, when you optimize for trait X as seen from outside, you don't end up with a society full of trait Xers, you get a dog-and-pony show great at convincing swathes of the population someone has trait X even if they don't, and only that; Not actually getting trait X. But for this reason, red tribe could totally produce new Trumps if they recalibrate. The big obstacle is they're so divorced from the common man, they too can't quite fathom his appeal.

What are the actual values of republican politicians? Are they the same as the actual values of democrat politicians?

Self-replication is the primary one, and it goes for both sides.

Self-replication in terms of party, personal family, or ideology?

Party. It's a gross phenomenon when parties tailor their every little motion to match the flow of the crowd (or really a clumsy, out-of-touch notion of the people), and even uneducated Americans can probably sense they have no other real motive. Like parents who spoil their children and bend their will to match the kid, the whole process feels backwards. Presidents are leaders, but these apparatuses don't select for actual leaders because a tough guy maverick will refuse to play by the rules. I get the ick looking at parties; How's a bunch of followers going to produce a leader? It's backwards.

Not even Trump could build a machine that produces Trumps;

Some people are hyping up his kid, so it might turn out he literally is that machine himself.

Don Jr and Eric are weak and shit. Jared and Ivanka could have been worthy dynastic successors to Donald, but they don't seem to want it enough.

It's Barron that's getting hyped.

There are two things in play. One, there's no clear Trump successor who can fully capture the populist appeal as it currently exists. However, there IS a template for it, so we might see someone replicate his style of "say whatever and people won't hold it against me" but not for another 10 years or so. Part of this is his personnel decisions are somewhat unpredictable. So my certainty level on what exactly replaces it is low. Watch his cabinet picks carefully, and their reception, which will be a bellwether for 2028. We probably will see a continuing trend of corporate to politics pivots, to mixed success. For specifics on the other end, I could honestly see a Mark Cuban 2028 campaign. Appeals to working class people and a message in economics is probably here to stay for the next 5-10 years for the GOP, but how well Trump's economy actually does will play a role, because the rhetoric and think-tank support isn't super well defined for Trumponomics at the moment. That kind of "intellectual cover" is often the glue that makes a movement something lasting vs ephemeral (think Reagonomics which had intellectual influence well into the Bush years).

The second thing in play is how the Democrats respond, which determines how contested the middle, moderate, everyman vote is. They have some decent historical DNA for a return to their working class roots and appeal, but have a GIANT millstone around their necks -- the college educated crowd. There's a huge bubble among the college educated that we've seen over the last 10 years. It's (probably) slowly popping especially as Millennials age, and to a lesser extent the younger Gen X, but it's hard to get a sense for how fast that's happening. If the Dems do a better job with the working class, that changes the whole picture quite a lot. But if they stay in liberal la-la land, that leaves a ton of space for the GOP to solidify their gains into the gap.

Edit: removed polling specifics as I need to look at some more crosstabs. Good news for moderates: looking at NBC's "key states" exit polling (includes TX, FL, OH in addition to the swing states) a full and healthy 34% of the electorate say "independent or something else" about their political identity. That's pretty good from a moderate perspective. People themselves are still open despite the strong two-party machine.

We probably will see a continuing trend of corporate to politics pivots, to mixed success.

Trump looks like a corporate-to-politics pivot, but he is actually a reality TV-to-politics pivot - he was mostly a failure as a businessman, but a once-in-a-generation success playing a businessman on TV. I think it is significant that the only two Republican candidates that the base doesn't regret nominating (i.e. Reagan and Trump) are both actors. The machine that produces Donald Trumps is the machine that produces good conservative movies and TV - and someone needs to build it.

I could honestly see a Mark Cuban 2028 campaign.

The thing about politics is that when a well-liked public figure enters the arena, the arena almost always win.

Cuban has already lit his reputation on fire with half the country. If he puts his hat in the ring, the scorn will only intensify. I doubt he has what it takes to endure it. Furthermore, he's a lot less informed and well-spoken then he thinks he is. He sounded pretty vacuous on "All In" when he got grilled by David Sachs.

All of which is to say, politics is a tough, tough game. People think they can win at politics because they won at business. Usually they can't.

The best best for the Democrats in 2028 is a free and fair primary process, which they haven't had since at least 2008.

I think the real future looks more like his south American imitators actually- Bukele and Milei- who combine the trump personality style with far more concrete results. Jury still out on how much real change trump can effect once he takes office.

just as the Roman system acted as an insane pressure cooker for military talent until they could outcompete the elites

What do you mean by that? Military service was a required stage of the cursus honorum, you couldn't be a Roman senator if you hadn't served in the military. And you couldn't be appointed a propraetor or a proconsul if you weren't a senator, and thus a member of the elites.

I mean that on paper, the Roman system was designed to select for any number of positive attributes, but what it really ended up selecting for is military genius, to a point where they became the real heart of the Roman world, and the republican institutions were like some awkward growth inessential to its subsistence in later years. And to the extent the senate tries to justify its continued existence in the face of obsolescence by staking claims on the military, it faces immense pressure not only from the generals, but from the populares who feel the senate's authority is far out of proportion to their real importance.

Which period of the Roman history do you have in mind?

Late Republic

Then I disagree that the republican system was designed to select for that. I think its biggest issue was that it was simply unsuited to managing an empire. Proconsularship was a band-aid that ruined the concept of "one consul - one term". If you could spend a year managing a province as a consul and then another year as a proconsul, then extending the term for a third year started to sound plausible. This made a proconsular appointment much more attractive than a regular consularship.

Why do you disagree that they selected for it? The link is undeniable. Especially because consular appointments are annual, and it's very hard to judge the wider decisions or impact of a consul on that time scale, and conquest is one of the lone things that's obviously an immense positive, just like rhetoric, except proconsular appointments shatter that dynamic and form an even greater imbalance of power. If we're not selecting for great orators or great generals, then what are we selecting for?

Power-hungry politicians. A simply great general would have been content with triumphs and adoration. Someone like Pompey or Caesar viewed conquest as a stepping stone towards their main goal: political domination.

Right, but if the main road to political domination is military genius, the selection pressure falls on tactical brilliance.

Trumpism is the future of the GOP. there will be others who will emulate his style after he is gone

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