This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Of the major Democratic candidates waiting in the wings, it seems clear that Newsom is the only viable candidate. And if you’re Newsom, why would you possibly replace Biden now?
This is likely the only shot at President the candidate that (theoretically) replaces Biden has. If Trump wins, the loss against such a villain will serve as the ultimate embarrassment and humiliation for the Dem nominee. Even if they argue that it was Biden’s fault, the base is unlikely to buy it and the attack that the candidate “let Trump win” will be difficult to shake off. This is particularly relevant as the white man quotient in the Dem party continues to decline, raising ever more questions about why the party for which only a (shrinking) minority of white men vote and which is predominantly PoC and female should again elect a white male candidate, especially a loser, over a woman and/or minority who doesn’t have the black mark of “letting trump win” on her resume.
The polls are not favorable to the Democratic Party for now. Even though the economy is arguably fine, people don’t believe it’s fine, housing costs are increasingly unaffordable for many people etc. Newsom would find himself running a campaign built around defending the unpopular record of a mediocre president, including possibly an ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah depending on how that pans out by November. If Newsom runs against a Republican President or a Republican candidate after a GOP presidency, he can sell a purely optimistic vision without having to defend Biden’s record (he might have to defend his record in California, but most voters won’t care).
Trump still hasn’t built Trumpism into an actual movement that extends far beyond the personality cult when it comes to generating political figures who can take over his legacy. There are people who believe strongly in MAGA, certainly, but there are no incredible GOP candidates waiting for 2028. The non-Trump primary candidates this year were poor. Carlson probably won’t want to run and in any case still has a certain East Coast boarding school effete intellectual vibe to him, even with the log cabin studio. DeSantis is uncharismatic and greasy. There are options, but none of them seem likely to be close to as popular as Trump - certainly they are unlikely to have his pre-existing celebrity, wealth and talent for self-promotion. It wouldn’t even surprise me to see a Rubio return wrapped in a MAGA package, and that would be pretty dire. Gavin is stupid, but with enough training he would be fine against most likely GOP options in 2028.
The public’s desire for continuity often expires at the 8 year mark (if it does not do so earlier). A Democratic nominee who pulls off an upset and wins this year is going to be campaigning on 12 years of blue government in 2028, a proposal that hasn’t won in 70 years. The glory of a two-term presidency is much more easily attainable after the opposition is in power.
Amusingly, the only scenario in which Newsom would be smart to take over Biden’s candidacy would be if he genuinely believed that Biden was going to win. In that case, the 2028 race would be much harder for a Democratic candidate; Kamala would likely be the default pick for it’s her turn reasons and because Trump would have been safely defeated and probably too old and beleaguered to run again (allowing ideology to take precedence over raw candidate strength) and 16 straight years of Democratic control of the presidency seems very unlikely. If Biden wins, Newsom’s next good opportunity might be 2032 or even 2036, in which case he’d be 77 upon leaving office after 2 terms, and that seems like a slog.
I mostly think the Dems won't attempt a Hot-Swap for all the reasons you outline for why Newsom wouldn't do it. The candidate is likely doomed. That said, I think your analysis misses a bunch of key points that need to be considered, and if there was a Hot-Swap I wouldn't be surprised to see Newsom placed in the candidate slot.
Newsom would get to run for President against Donald Trump. That's a huge advantage being handed to him. The campaign so far has had the feeling of one of those extra inning baseball games where nobody seems to want to win, and both teams seem unable to string together any hits. Rat race for last place vibes. Trump's support is terry cloth soft among a large part of the suburban Republican base. This is hard to see on the internet, the left wants to paint every Republican as a MAGAtard and the online right is largely running Trump for GEOM. But day to day, it's different. Going door-to-door for local candidates, you run into a lot more of "I'm a registered Republican but I haven't voted Republican in years" or "I'm a Republican but I'm embarrassed about it." Nikki Haley continued to get 20% of the vote in states where she was on the ballot, even after she dropped out and stopped campaigning. His favorability is 11% underwater among the general population. He could literally end up with a prison sentence!
Anecdotally, I'm not seeing the same enthusiasm for Trump I saw in prior years. Fewer Trump flags, fewer red hats that aren't for the Phillies, a lack of homemade Trump signs, less outre Trump memorabilia. It's early yet, and I didn't keep records, but at this time in 2016 and 2020 it felt like every road trip through the country was filled with homemade Trump signage and billboards and barn paintings. This year, it mostly falls flat. Even at the beach, even in North Carolina, the novelty shops aren't stocking Trump-joke T shirts and knick-knacks the way they did before. There was a Trump rally in my town, and my whole family planned our day around it, basically planning on avoiding leaving the house for fear of traffic/disruptions; this was based on prior experience of Trump visits. Nothing really happened, the turnout numbers are always fake and gay, but there wasn't even really a profusion of signs on the route for Trump, just for other Republican primary candidates who wanted to piggy-back on him. A lot of Republicans want to be rid of Trump, even if it cashes out to just a few percentage points it makes a big difference on election day.
But the biggest weakness for Trump isn't the Republicans who lack enthusiasm, it's the die-hards who have too much enthusiasm for Trump and who they are. This is why I'm still expecting Dem victories in November despite the headwinds, what Trump supporters might do (and/or be baited into doing by November. I fully expect someone in a red hat to shoot a cop by October, and for that to be treated as the number one issue on the news for weeks. The other thing you run into when you go door-to-door is people who scare you. Guys adjacent to this aren't all that rare and a lot of them have Trump flags outside their home. Does Trump actually control their actions in any reasonable way? No, but when you lie down with dogs you get fleas, and the media certainly isn't going to be hesitant to tie them together.
Newsom also gets the nomination handed to him in a way where California is massively valuable, having a huge mass of delegates and a font of fundraising, rather than a liability in a primary campaign where significant numbers of Democratic primary voters might not like the place. Which isn't a small thing, many cognoscenti anointed candidates have fallen apart in the primaries, from Mario Cuomo to Ron Desantis. You might get unlucky like Hillary in '08 or Huntsman in '12 and run a good campaign but run into a better talent on the other side that you don't even know about yet and can't beat. If you get on the ballot with a major party nomination, you at least get a puncher's chance.
In sports, I frequently talk about how we underrate runners-up, second place finishers. The Reid-McNabb Eagles teams I grew up with are always considered bridesmaids, teams that were good but never quite made it, because they never won the Super Bowl. But if, say, Tom Brady tears his ACL in the playoffs in 2005, we're talking about them as the first Eagles team to win the Super Bowl. And you can never know when someone will tear their ACL. Boxing and MMA are littered with examples of guys who were considered routine title fights for dominant champions, or guys who never should have gotten title shots at all, and got lucky. Chris Weidman won his first shot against Anderson Silva because Silva got cocky and lazy, and won the rematch against Silva because Silva's leg just kind of did that. Matt Serra and Buster Douglas were both lucky enough to get shots at dominant champions when those champions were partying too hard. My point being, if you get a title shot you should take it, because you might get lucky.
Because everything worth doing is worth doing with fake math, let's play with the numbers a bit. Assuming that we're only modeling odds of becoming POTUS, other goals are diffuse enough and unpredictable enough that they may be served better or worse by either course.
I think the puncher's chance for any candidate of a major party is never below 15%, because something horrendous can always happen to the other candidate. Plus whatever the chance is that everything goes right for both teams and Newsom and the Dems still win. FiveThirtyEight currently gives Biden a 51/49 edge in odds to win the presidency, while Manifold gives Biden+Harris+Newsom 37% odds. Let's take the Manifold number for a Dem winning is a good conservative estimate: Newsom gets somewhere between a 15% and a 37% chance of winning the presidency if he accepts the nomination.
Now, what if he runs in '28? I don't give any candidate a better than 50% chance of winning a national primary. Too many other candidates, too many variables. You might have a great campaign lined up and run into a junior senator from Illinois or a short-fingered vulgarian with his finger on the pulse of the nation. HRC in '16 was the best primary campaign ever run, having spent years putting the entire party apparatus behind her, and she only narrowly won. Then you have the odds that Dems win in '28. Obviously that depends on who wins in '24, and what happens to different political movements in between. If Biden wins on that 1/7-1/3 chance in '24, 12 years of Democratic rule seems unlikely, and if Harris or Whitmer win after a Hot-Swap then Newsom probably doesn't even get to run. Who emerges in the meantime on the R side, at this time in '04 Barack Obama hadn't even given his keynote speech at the DNC that catapulted him to fame; and at this time in '12 Trump was a punchline arguably at the nadir of his fame, with the Apprentice dropping from top-ten television to out of the top 100. Newsom himself will have significant weaknesses that grow between '24 and '28. But let's just call it 50% odds at this point, naively. That gives Newsom a 25% chance at POTUS if he runs in '28 or '32 instead, adjusted up or down for a number of other factors.
But we're probably modeling Newsom's decision making all wrong here. Maybe you know him personally, but my impression of him generally is a great haircut looking for a policy position. Nobody other than poor old uncle Claudius finds themselves in that kind of political power without a great deal of self belief. You don't survive multiple elections without self confidence, without thinking that maybe you're the best to ever do it. Newsom won't turn down the nomination if it is offered to him, because he's an optimist and an arrogant ambitious prick. He's likely to overrate his chances in '24 if he accepts the nomination. He's not a utility-maximizing computer program, he's not a timid investor carefully husbanding capital, he's an ambitious Governor, with only one brass-ring still to grasp, who got here taking chances and will keep taking them. Dangle it in front of him, and he's going to take it.
Further, theMotte has a noted weakness in always modeling institutional actors as cynical fakers. A lot of Catholic Church politics and policy, a lot of PRC politics and policy, makes more sense if you assume that a great many potentates within those institutions actually believe in what they are saying. Similarly, it is likely that Newsom rates the odds of Democratic victory a lot higher than we do, because he actually believes in Democratic policies, and thinks that the public does as well if only they had the right salesman. He likely believes in the Democrats' message, and if that message isn't reaching the public across the nation, he likely blames the messenger before he blames the message. With the right candidate, surely the people will see the light. Newsom likely doesn't believe that there's a huge backlash to woke/trans/BLM/LGBTQWERTY, or if he does believe that such a thing exists he believes that it is the result of misinformation, or a lack of zeal and skill on the part of the Biden admin. Put him, Gavin, and his haircut and his tasteful mild cosmetic surgery in charge of things and he'll roll up the deplorables and the bitter clingers.
So, that's my call: if Newsom were offered the job, he'd probably take it. And he'd probably be smart to take it.
Bryce Harper for President! I’d say Rob Thomson, but he’s Canadian.
My pick would be Trevor Bauer for maximum seethe. He currently wears a red hat for the Diablos Rojos del México.
It’s interesting how so many fans in baseball still don’t want him on their team even if he was good. There basically is no evidence some people will accept to exonerate someone accused of sexual assault.
He was guilty.
Guilty of providing the sexual violence that a woman craved, and standing up for himself instead of Believing Women when they say he's wronged them, accepting a plea bargain, compen$ating the victims, promising to be better, and seeking therapy. Cheap bastard even only gave a queen thousands of dollars instead of the $1 million she deserved:
True. Funny thing is these very same people would tell people not to kink shame.
There’s always an unholy alliance of conservatives and progressives eager to punish and villify men for women’s coffee moments, rather than consider if they should update their priors as to women’s Wonderfulness.
Men will continue to be confused and angry until they realize casual sex never existed and never will.
Maybe gay marriage got you turned around. The institution has a role beyond some legal conveniences and small tax advantages. There are some rules about it written down somewhere.
What happened to Bauer is obviously an outrage, but there were cultural protections that he didn’t feel like he needed for one night of fun.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Got into the league too young, he's still only 31.
Chase Utley, these days, is perfectly suited to be America's dad, having a catch. Utley/Howard '24? Pennsylvania is the Keystone.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link