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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   38924 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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It's officially Joever

Now we see if 3 months is long enough to rev up a credible presidential campaign.

He doesn't mention picking a successor, but may in a speech later this week.

E: He endorsed Kamala. Obama did not, calling for an "open nominating process", and didn't even mention Harris.

Obama is still holding firm, although I suppose he could capitulate at any time. I wonder what his game is, who his guy is.

The only top-level-ish comment I feel like making at the moment is that both Reddit and X are insane right now when it comes to politics, even more than usual. For X of course part of it is the algorithm showing me highly charged politics stuff based on my previous choices, but still. Both platforms seem to be overrun by some combination of delusional, hysterical partisans on both sides of the political spectrum, astroturfers paid by one or the other side, astroturfing bots, and fervid conspiracy theorists who do not understand how basic reality and politics work.

Reddit is mainly overrun by "If Trump wins, the orange traitorous insurrectionist Putin agent failed businessman will put all the LGBTQ people in camps and bring about Christofascist dictatorship" types of posts.

X is overrun by a variety of wild shrill nonsense... or, most charitably, rampant poorly-argued speculation... such as "The Democrats killed Biden and are hiding it", "Biden hasn't been told that he's been dropped out against his will", "The Dems pressuring Biden to drop out is equivalent to a coup", "The Trump shooting was a false flag done by the Republicans", "Kamala is not African-American because her father is Jamaican", "Trump should resign because he is the oldest candidate in history (haha I'm only saying it because you said it about Biden)", "Biden dropped out because he was behind the Trump assassination plot and it failed", "The New York Times is a right-wing organization that is responsible for forcing Biden out", and so on.

Reddit has been delusional and probably compromised for years. I had high hopes for X, but in practice, while I think that it's better than Reddit, it seems to be at the mercy of political campaigns that drown out organic discussion.

It's all kind of amusing, but tiresome, to expose myself to such a high level of inanity, insanity, and astroturfing. But I seem to be addicted to it on some level.

When you say “Reddit is compromised,” can you explain what you mean by that?

I mean astroturfed. I should have been clearer about that.

In internet slang, "astroturfing" refers to the practice of creating a false impression of grassroots support for a cause, product, or policy. This is often done by organizations, political groups, or companies that hire people to post favorable reviews, comments, or endorsements online, making it seem as though these opinions are coming from ordinary, independent individuals. The goal is to manipulate public perception and give the illusion of widespread support or opposition.

Reddit is mainly overrun by "If Trump wins, the orange traitorous insurrectionist Putin agent failed businessman will put all the LGBTQ people in camps and bring about Christofascist dictatorship" types of posts.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_tx6E3Gb78Q

We have some of those arguments here. Kamala (and Obama) not being ADOS has been well litigated here.

It is actually an interesting question why blacks in some areas seem to rise up faster than ADOS (Nigeria is mostly just a bigger filter). Kamala’s though is Tamil Brahmin class Indian elite married to an Askenazi Jew. Ethnically she has nothing in common in ADOS.

Obama isn't an ADoS, but Kamala is. It's not like Black people moved to Jamaica of their own volition.

ADoS refers specifically to descendants of slaves in the United States, not the Americas generally.

Yes, Kamala is an American Descendant of Slaves but not an official ADOS, which is confusing.

Fortunately for Trump's chances, the party's rapidly coalescing around Harris, with 125 endorsements from house democrats and a lot of state dems and delegates endorsing Harris. Dems weren't willing to rock the boat with the last terrible candidate, and when the debate forced them to notice, they immediately make the same mistake again and pick the obvious "consensus" candidate who happens to be mediocre. I'll again post How Democrats Got Here

Harris had just mounted an exceptionally lackluster bid for the presidency. Then a California senator, Harris had entered the race for the Democratic nomination with strong donor support and an early surge in the polls. Despite these early advantages, Harris failed to maintain — let alone build out — her coalition over the ensuing months, and her campaign collapsed before the primary’s first ballots were cast. Nor was Harris’s electoral track record before 2020 especially encouraging. She had never won an election in a swing state or competitive district. And in her first statewide race in deep blue California in 2010, Harris defeated her Republican rival by less than 1 percentage point. Two years earlier, Barack Obama had won that state by more than 23 points.

Given that Biden was 77 in August 2020, the likelihood that his running-mate would one day become his party’s standard-bearer was unusually high ... Biden’s primary consideration in choosing a running-mate should have been his or her electability. Instead, he put enormous weight on demographic considerations. “I think he came to the conclusion that he should pick a Black woman,” former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the New York Times in the summer of 2020. “They are our most loyal voters and I think that the Black women of America deserved a Black vice-presidential candidate.”

On Polymarket, Harris's chance of winning is 30%, to Trump's 64%. Trump was up 71% right after the debate. Better than Biden's conditional probability of 25%, and Harris'll probably go up a bit when she gets the nomination, conditionally that's 35% but while that's better than Biden's 25%, it's not a great outcome for dems.

In a way, though, I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.

The reason 3 months will be long enough to run a campaign for president is because the party will quelch dissent in record time, disseminate new marching orders, and can generally expect their people to hop to it and follow through regardless of who the candidate is both because of fear of Trump and the unwavering belief that blue tribe has their best interests at heart.

And I wager that none of the rank-and-file democrats will be bothered by the fact that the party elites, including Kamala, were complicit in pulling the wool over their eyes and creating this situation.

That said, they're inheriting most of the same disadvantages Joe was already laboring under (sans the age/dementia one), and one hopes that independent voters are noticing both that they were lied to for months if not years, and that a party forcing a new nominee down their constituents' throats without primaries and 3 months to the actual election is a signal of deep dysfunction. Every other attempt at rehabbing her image has been a failure.

On the other hand, the independent voter who is looking for any excuse not to vote Trump has an easy out, the Harris administration would promise to be the most seamless transition and least disruption to whatever the Biden admin's goals were.

Indeed, one can argue that (modern) historically the VP is meant to perform this role, stepping right up to the plate to keep things humming along. Ehhh, except she's NOT getting to step up, unless Biden formally resigns or they 25th amendment him. Which, I'm willing to give you even odds that's the next big 'crisis.'

I mean, yeah, it is objectively unpleasant. Look at this guy, who shilled for Biden's fitness right until he dropped out, and pivoted to Harris, renaming his account, without even thinking about it.

On the other hand I don't think this is a Democrat thing, it's just as unpleasant how many anti-trump reps who had "principled disagreements" pivoted and fell in line behind trump when the party moved that way.

Such is the nature of power.

I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.

One could perhaps say "unburdened by what has been".

I refuse to adopt the meme phrase, even if I find it funny.

That said, it is amazing to see that Party continue to march on as if past evidence has ceased to exist. Heel-face turns are common in politics. JD Vance has to contend with his history of anti-Trumpism, after all. But now there should be people wondering why Kamala got to get the nod WITHOUT going through the standard selection process, but I'd bet for real blue-teamers, in their mind she would have won anyway so why bother with the formalities? In fact why even think about that! We've got an election to win!

but I'd bet for real blue-teamers, in their mind she would have won anyway so why bother with the formalities? In fact why even think about that! We've got an election to win!

As a blue-teamer myself, that is definitely my view. And everyone else I know's view. Though there's also the notion that if you have a president and vice-president - or presidential and vice-presidential candidate - who are voted for, and the president/presidential candidate steps down, people expect the second-up to take their place.

Sure, I just haven't gotten a single good explanation for why you are ignoring that Dem elites, including Harris herself, lied to you guys and covered up Biden's condition for months or possibly years, and have caused the current bout of chaos by failing to get Biden to step aside earlier. I got into a long exchange on twitter where I pointed this out and repeatedly asked why Kamala should be able to skip the normal process one would go through to earn the nomination, especially when she has demonstrated incompetence in how this Biden situation was handled.

They skipped over the primaries, which means millions of Dem voters did not get to register their voice for whom they'd like to have as a candidate. The whole premise for skipping the primaries was that Biden was mentally fit and able to run. And this got revealed as false in the most spectacular way. Kamala, in particular, had to be aware of this issue, and yet never raised it once. Why is the outcome to reward her for this?

This should cause SOME kind of backlash from the constituency for both denying them a voice AND lying in such a way that now the Presidential race is in flux and may very well have handed it to Trump.

Serious question: why bother with primaries at all, going forward, if it is acceptable to just let the elite consensus dictate who gets the nod, and all you proles just fall in line? I can believe it if someone says "These are extraordinary circumstances, not to be repeated." BUT THE PARTY'S ELITES CREATED THE EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES. I think any reasonable read of this situation has to agree that it is anti-democratic.

My position is that I can't see myself supporting or voting for Harris given the apparent dishonesty around Biden's health (who knows what else), overall lack of competence for the job, and the fact that there's no demonstrated support for her candidacy since she hasn't gone through the process. Seemingly the only way you can overlook these factors is A) Abject fear of Trump, or B) just being so loyally committed to blue team that you'll suffer any abuse in silence. Both of these imply that there are no repercussions for blue team leadership abusing your trust, which is a recipe for disaster.

In a way, though, I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.

Republicans demonstrated much the same ability in 2016, though, albeit on a longer schedule.

And 2024. After the attempt by the Dems to lawfare into breaking up the GOP coalition the GOP quickly coalesced around Trump.

Politicians and voters are capable of reading the room. In the Dems case it’s on an accelerated timeline because the runway is short.

The republican case is actually more noteworthy IMO, given how much of a departure from typical Republican candidates Trump represented.

The situation neatly demonstrates both the advantages and disadvantages of highly centralized power.

On one hand as you say they will likely get everyone in line behind Kamala in time for the election and I'm already seeing people shift to commending Biden for having the humility to part with power. People who days ago all collectively had their knives out and were shivving him while shouting for him to step down. It'll all be memory holed by next week.

On the other hand if power wasn't so centralized there would've been more dissent in upper leadership as people who recognized how unhappy the base were with Biden and how poor his mental state was would be more willing to break rank. Instead all the higher ups in media and the Biden admin covered things up and pretended the emperor wasn't naked which got them into this predicament where 3 months short of the election the dissent from the rank and file got too extreme to ignore.

So I guess it's a double edged sword.

It is indeed.

The outcome we're seeing was set in motion almost directly as a result of the same mechanisms that originally cleared the way for Biden back before Super Tuesday in 2020. The same iron hand that brought all other candidates to heel and lined Kamala up for the VP spot is now having to execute some delicate maneuvers to oust one candidate and elevate another without generating more chaos than already exists and handing the election to the guy they were worried about beating all the way back when they originally coalesced around Joe.

The big failure of Dem's centralized leadership, in my view, was not holding Joe to his 'transitional' role. It would have been far more believable for Joe to declare that he had fulfilled his main objectives and now wanted to enjoy a well-earned retirement and either bow out entirely or anoint his successor than to cancel the entire primary season THEN 'decide' he wasn't cut out for running again.

But the OTHER feature of centralized leadership is never letting go of power once it has it, even if it has worn out its welcome or is incapable of wielding authority effectively.

It is really funny seeing Twitter accounts that just yesterday were decrying the campaign to remove Biden as playing right into Republican hands suddenly shift their tune and celebrate Joe heroically doing the best thing for his party.

Are you sure you're looking at the same people?

Yes! Why would that be in any way surprising?

We might just be seeing different Twitter posts because of the algorithm, from what I am seeing it seems to me that the people who were against removing Biden yesterday are largely now grumbling about how their guy got unfairly forced to quit, not celebrating him leaving.

I do wonder if it’s the algorithm. It’s weird seeing End Wokeness, Matt Walsh, and LibsOfTikTok as the top replies on every single Democrat tweet.

Yep. But that is just par for the course too. Such people only dared speak different opinions because there was an obvious breach in the consensus that made it 'safe' to deviate from the group. The group being in the process of coalescing once again is their signal to jump back in line.

I'm mostly amused by Aaron Sorkin suggesting that they should nominate Mitt Romney EARLIER TODAY then aggressively walking that back as soon as the decision was made.

I'd be disgusted at such spinelessness if I thought it mattered at all.

It's also amazing that they are managing to convert the "Biden and Co. hid his decline from us all!" into "he is a hero of democracy for nobly standing down." Although it shows a good grasp of classical conditioning. Reward the behavior you're trying to encourage.

Damn, I called this one wrong. I was convinced he wouldn't drop out until there was a declared candidate against him.

It's really weird that this happened by letter posted to twitter rather than an appearance in front of cameras. Almost makes you wonder if something happened e.g. the Covid got him harder than we all expected.

It's really weird that this happened by letter posted to twitter rather than an appearance in front of cameras.

Indeed. There’s a reason world leaders take more pics than a thirsty Instagram model on her first trip to Verona.

As much as we mock them, press conferences are as essential to the current political paradigm as PoW is to the Bitcoin blockchain. They are the mechanism by which consensus is demonstrated.

I am glad I didn't have any money on this. I have found no one can predict political outcomes reliably, and nothing confers an edge unless you are an insider.

5 hours later and there still isn't any announcement on Whitehouse.gov or joebiden.com, only twitter. All his staff are saying they found out from Twitter too. (Edit: an announcement popped up on Biden dot com about an hour after that)

I really am starting to wonder if Joe knows he's dropped out yet.

It would be interesting to go back and see when the paperwork for "Harris for president" was filed.

Don’t worry. Joe Biden dot com now redirects to act blue.

They probabaly held a gun to his head (figuratively) and he’s fuming mad and won’t/can’t get on camera.

Either that or the speculation of him being out of the loop in his own resignation are true.

He knows. If you watch his last few press appearances, he's slow and he loses track of his thoughts frequently but he's clearly not so far gone that he wouldn't notice if people dropped him out of the race without consulting him.

I don’t think he could make an announcement like that via WH.gov.

It does seem very odd to me that he announced this in twitter or all places.

There are some strong palace coup vibes here, in the sense that the decision of how to release the information wasn't Biden's, but on the part of whomever needed it released ASAP. If you want to put bad news, that'd typically be a Friday afternoon, not Sunday afternoon, and if you want a normal controlled release, you do it via press release on Monday business hours. Sunday afternoon is for if you want it done, and have a first-mover advantage when others are taken by surprise and not in work yet.

A more conspiratorial take might be that the release of the concession preceeded the actual capitulation- that Biden could have been shown the tweet and been forced into a position in which he'd have to reveal he lacked control of his own White House / social media platform if he wanted to compete against it, which would be further political kryptonite.

More likely, this is something more akin to the pro-Harris faction in the White House just marching it over to the Twitter-handler desk, which they could have access/control to, and releasing it as soon as Biden capitulated, but before any other planned event. This would allow the Harris-faction to steal that march on immediate coordinations to pressure others not to capitulate / not announce contestation this coming week.

(Harris has the lock on the Biden-raised money, reportedly, but several of the reported key players behind Biden dropping out are- allegedly- less committed to his replacement being her. Thus, the Harris-faction needs to work fast with the advantage of being the first aware of the concession.)

The whole bury it on Friday thing is old-fashioned in our era of 24 hour news and doesn't apply to major stuff like this anyway. Considering the major networks brought in their regular anchors and preempted programming, the day of release probably had little to do with anything. Waiting until today wouldn't have done anything, so they released the news as soon as the decision had been made.

The whole bury it on Friday thing is old-fashioned in our era of 24 hour news

The era of 24 hour news is precisely why the US political ecosystems continues to relies on the Friday news dump to bury bad news: because most people go home for the weekend, and by the time they come back the news cycle has passed on with at least 2x morning-news cycles having passed, minimizing the political impact. Not only the information proliferation muted due to fewer people tuning into it on the weekends, but the coverage is decreased as it's more 24-hour cycles out of date from being breaking.

Choosing to do it Sunday afternoon is the opposite, in that it makes it the primary topic of discussion for Monday morning news, which increases the political impact for shaping perceptions. It's an indicator that the people arranging for the timing didn't see it as bad news.

I really am starting to wonder if Joe knows he's dropped out yet.

I was stunned by Biden's withdrawal, though probably not as much as Biden himself.

He doesn't mention picking a successor...

To be clear, he didn't mention anything. I know we're all in habit of treating statements on Twitter as though they come from the principal agent that the account is listed as, but there's basically zero chance that Joe Biden wrote the letter involved and posted it to Twitter. The situation is much weirder when accurately described as, "an unspecified Biden staffer tweeted a letter saying that Biden is leaving the race".

So in the span of 8 days: trump assassination attempt, Cloudstrike, and now the presumptive democratic nominee steps down, a first in decades. I think you'd have to go as far back as LBJ the last time this happened. The big winner is Elon Musk and twitter by putting himself center in the media spectacle. In hindsight, it looks like his purchase will pay off as the news cycle continues to intensify and twitter surges in use.

MAU aren’t even up that much.

Twitter has done to traditional news media what TikTok has done to traditional entertainment.

Twitter is just way more addictive and informative than watching CNN or reading the NYT or whatever. I'm not sure it's good for the world, but Twitter will continue to eat away at news media's ratings/circulation. Why would I want to read yesterday's news written by biased journalists when I have the world on my phone right now?

It's hard not to see this as another massive win for Elon. The doubters were all wrong.

He still overpaid at least couple of billion more than needed.

What price can you put on being the most powerful man in the world? At a minimum number 2.

He toppled an Empire with the purchase. And it’s not like he needs more money.

Can you really put a price on being the only American citizen to whom the First Amendment meaningfully applies, though?

I'm not gonna believe this until he posts a tweet containing the word "nigger".

"So what, are you saying I'll be able to say the n-word on the Internet?"

"No. I'm saying that once you're ready, you won't have to."

Maybe. Keep in mind that at first the left was united against him buying it.

Then when he threatened to back out, they said “no you have to buy it”.

When he eventually did buy it, the left thought they had struck a great blow against him. Otherwise there’s a good chance that lawfare would have got in his way.

Some will say it’s not 4D chess just dumb luck. But isn’t it weird how the same guy just keeps being phenomenally, impossibly, successful at multiple different things?

But isn’t it weird how the same guy just keeps being phenomenally, impossibly, successful at multiple different things?

If there is any human being on earth who I might believe is actually playing some form of 4D chess at this point it'd be Elon.

The only other explanation is that he is actually from outside the simulation and has access to the in-game console.

elon is one of those people who can make anything work

Once in a century pandemic

Tempting fate here, with avian flu spreading freely in American cattle...

Is it really "tempting fate" or is it just battlespace prep for November?

Sorry, what do you mean?

Im asking a question is "avian flu spreading freely in American cattle" or are partisan operatives in the cdc trying to muddy the waters?

Fact is that the Influenza A pandemic of '68, and the swine flu outbreak of '09 were both more deadly on a case-by-case basis than covid-19 turned out to be. Covid was not unique in its risk factors, it was unique in that that it came at an opportune time.

Edit: given what we have since learned about the whole "lab leak theory" a cynic might fibd themselves suggesting that Fauci and friends are litteraly the bad guys from V for Vendetta.

Fact is that the Influenza A pandemic of '68, and the swine flu outbreak of '09 were both more deadly on a case-by-case basis than covid-19 turned out to be.

Source? My understanding was that Covid truly was more deadly (albeit slightly) than the ‘68 and ‘09 influenza viruses, but that might only be because we’re an older and fatter population now.

I think Covid is and always was significantly more infectious. Per-case deadliness doesn't matter if a virus can only get a small fraction of humanity to start with. And of course, the deadliness estimate for swine flu depend on the actual number of infections, which may be underreported. So either it's deadly but not very virulent, or it's virulent (but still less virulent than Covid!) but not very deadly. The original Covid had both virulence and deadliness, which justified the extreme response.

The highest estimates for H1N1 I can find are 10% of the population being infected. Do you know anybody who's never had Covid? Google puts the US at 77% with antibodies as measured in 2022. That's not comparable.

Hong Kong flu was up there too. And the world barely noticed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu

The point of COVID was the noticing more than it having any insane outlier effectiveness as a disease

In the US, COVID was the most deadly pandemic since the Spanish flu of more than 100 years ago. That makes it an outlier in my book.

Had the most aggressive attribution modelling, the highest population of US citizens, incredibly fallow grounds in terms of the vulnerable (More obese, elderly, immunocompromised exist today than at any other point in human history). It was the biggest in a while (though I do think if the same laxitude of attribution was extended to other historic bad flus it'd likely be very similar), but was hardly an outlier.

It's the worst pandemic in the US since the Spanish Flu even in per-capita terms.

It wasn't. It was on the level of flu outbreaks in 1970s.

The US had higher excess mortality than some other countries, totally due to unnecessary and wrong measures taken.

It was on the level of flu outbreaks in 1970s.

Give an example of such a flu outbreak in the 1970s.

Here it is: http://avepri.com/a/sweden1.jpeg

Notice that the little COVID bump is bigger than the bumps under any of the three arrows showing the "Severe Flu Waves". It's just that the general level of deaths per capita was higher in the 70s and 80s, not that the flu waves were worse than COVID.

More comments

I think Trump is in trouble vs Harris. Especially if she picks the PA governor as her running mate. Trump is very unpopular but had the benefit of running against someone even more unpopular.

Harris’s current numbers are bad, but I think she has upside once she’s untethered from Biden.

Either way 4 months is a lifetime in election politics and we are in for a wild ride to the finish.

I suspect otherwise. Kamala is not a very popular or effective politician. Her only election win was in deep blue California and it was very narrow. She did terribly in the primaries, where being Black And A Woman counts for much more than in the country as a whole. Though she does have a certain charm, she can also come off as off-putting. She neither has strong credibility as a progressive champion or as a moderate. Her record of executive experience or of campaign experience is also thin.

Kamala does have upside, she could surprise us all. But it would be a surprise if she turns out to be another Obama or Clinton (the first).

Harris’s current numbers are bad, but I think she has upside once she’s untethered from Biden.

This is a common issue for vice presidents as presidential candidates- they can't just "untether" themselves from the president. For good or ill, they served him loyally as his #2. If they go on camera and say "actually I disagreed strongly with him on that issue, I just kept my mouth shut for the sake of public relations" it looks horribly dishonest. If they just want to say that they supported the president on everything and will continue to do more of the same, it's hard for them to come into their own as a real candidate, instead of just a weak shadow.

It can kind of work when the previous president is still popular (Reagan, Clinton, and Obama) but still leads to a fairly bland, forgettable candidate (HW Bush, Gore, and Biden).

It's certainly a bad situation to be in. If a Veep speaks up, they can be accused of being disloyal, ambitious, two faced, a snake. And they have nearly no official authority in the WH. The show Veep got it right - it's a terrible position to have.

Just ask Cactus Jack Garner.

Do you not remember her primary run? She is horrible in front of a camera. She has a tendency say absolutely nothing in an overly long way by repeating statements. Even the left made fun of her for it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=72vUngNA9RM

She has Hillary levels of charisma, and a weird mumble giggle that seems to pop up mid sentence for no apparent reason. Only thing she has over Biden is that she's unlikely to die in the next few years.

The giggle is what gets me. It is so distracting and cringy.

Harris' biggest advantage is the online right is going to be totally unable to hide their power level, in ways that will be negatively polarizing to the median voter. This is already happening in this thread.

Eh, I'd say that's unlikely. The amount of direct sway that the actions and memes of the "online right" have on the "median voter", positive or negative, is practically zero; it's easy for us very-online culture warriors to lose sight of sometimes, but these are two different worlds. To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless. The racist frog people Kamala-posting isn't going to move the needle.

They have a weird amount of negative sway over my mother, who is online enough to see the collected lolcow posts reposted and laundered through Democratic party mouthpieces, but not online enough to run into it in the wild. So she's saying stuff to me like what's with the Nazi frog?

To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless.

I remember scoffing at "Twitter is full of Nazis" for years, until it eventually became true.

Harris’s current numbers are bad, but I think she has upside once she’s untethered from Biden.

What makes you think so? It's her administration too. It's not just Biden having personally done something terrible, people are actually unhappy with the outcomes of the administration policies.

She's been mostly hidden during the administration; it won't be difficult for her to stake out different positions that people who don't particularly like Trump but really couldn't stomach voting for a guy who appeared to be non compos mentis will believe. This isn't an election about convincing anyone - Trump's taken all the political oxygen in the room for all but a couple of months for the past decade - but instead about limiting discouragement among supporters. Remember, both the 2016 and 2020 elections went to the candidate who avoided having the last negative news cycle.

She is non-senile and capable of staying on message and repeating a talking point without mangling it. Biden runs well behind Generic Democrat on Senate and House polls, and if she can successfully approximate Generic Democrat, she wins.

Oh, I like her chance to be better than Biden, but I don't see much for true upside. The most likely scenario seems like returning to the pre-debate status quo, which was quite bad for Generic Democrat because the majority of Americans think the results from the last four years aren't very good.

The most likely scenario seems like returning to the pre-debate status qu

I would probably agree, other events excepted -- now that ~30% of America probably thinks that the Deep State tried to have Trump offed, and the undecideds literally just saw him putting his life on the line for (his conception of) America on live TV, I think Generic D would have issues, and Uncharismatic Nobody D will struggle hard.

Except basically Generic Democrat's are running ahead in swing state Senate races.

“Generic X” always does better than any concrete candidate because people will think of their own perfect idealized person. Means very little other than as an upper bound.

The PA governor is Jewish. I wonder if having him on the ticket would hurt with turnout with a segment of the Dem base?

I think everyone's forgotten about Palestine already. I can't tell what the new current thing is yet, but the flags in bios have slowly started to change again.

but the flags in bios have slowly started to change again

At first I thought you were making a joke about NPC firmware updates being rolled out. Then again, maybe you were!

"bios flags" now have two different meanings.

Wait until the fall college semester starts.

It's possible, but I doubt it. I don't think the anti-Zionist segment of the Democratic Party are anti-Jew enough to stay home over a Jewish VP candidate. I'm not aware of Shapiro making any particularly egregious anti-Palestinian statements.

The Muslims in Michigan absolutely are.

If the candidate doesn't signal support for Israel or preferably explicitly signals disapproval, I don't think many Michigan Muslims would care about the mere fact they're Jewish. At least not enough for it to make them not vote.

I don't think many Michigan Muslims would care about the mere fact they're Jewish.

My sense at least is that politically active and religious Muslims are generally pretty abundantly anti-semitic. And we're not talking about a guy raised secular who doesn't identify at all with his background; wikipedia describes Shapiro as an observant Conservative Jew and quotes him as saying, among other things "Israel not only has a right, they have a responsibility to rid the region of Hamas and the terror that Hamas can perpetrate".

Even without the above statements, any image of him entering a Synagogue or near an Israel flag would likely spread around hardcore Muslim communities like wildfire as proof he's a bloodsucking Yahud Zionist who they have a duty to treat as an existential fundamental enemy in their Holy War.

That's fair due to his statements about Israel. (That Wikipedia article shows even more divisive examples than just saying Israel should wipe out Hamas.) I think if he were just a random Jew who hadn't commented on Israel or was somewhat more critical, they mostly would be fine with voting for him.

Muslims can certainly be antisemitic, but - and I could be wrong - I think most Muslims in the US don't really have an issue with Jews who aren't known to be supportive of Israel. For some that may require active condemnation of Israel, but for others I think lack of explicit, vocal support is sufficient.

Muslims can certainly be antisemitic, but - and I could be wrong - I think most Muslims in the US don't really have an issue with Jews who aren't known to be supportive of Israel.

It depends on how religious/political the Muslims in question are. If we're talking about people who are basically entirely secular, then maybe they wouldn't care. But I doubt that's the case for those seem to care strongly about Israel, which seem to be those causing headaches for the Democrats in Michigan etc. I'd be stunned if the fervour of their anti-Israel sentiment doesn't strongly correlate with outright Jew-hatred. I can't imagine, for instance, a prayer in an American Mosque for Palestinian victory in their quest to murder all Jews in the Holy Land to end with a reminder to the congregation that American non-Zionist Jews are decent people, and it's important to be nice to them.

Hmm. Maybe Harris is better off with Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper, or Mark Kelly then.

The online Right has hypersensitive Jewdar, but I don't think the online Left is as attuned to whether random politicians are Jewish. He's not an Israeli. I'm trying to look up whether he has ever set foot in Israel. The answer appears to be not yet.

It might confuse voters who don’t want to vote for Ben Shapiro. I’m not kidding. It would be less stupid than the voters who couldn’t figure out what the giant arrows on the butterfly ballot meant.

An election’s outcome can potentially be flipped by bad ballot design – not just the misalignment of rows, but also choices as seemingly minor as the order of candidates’ names, which disproportionately favors those at the top of the ballot.

This sounds less like a ballot problem and more like an electorate problem.

On the one hand, I can totally believe this, but on the other hand I think anyone who would get confused by this probably doesn't know who Ben Shapiro is.

The evidence suggests Trump is more popular. Trump's turnout for 2020 was 10 million greater than 2016. You'd have to go as far back as Reagan for a candidate to be have a >55% of popular vote. Most candidates are not that popular, and the outcome comes down to the margins, like swing states, and that is where Trump shines.

He’s -12 in unfavorable/favorable on 538. It’s an improvement from when he was closer to 60/40, but he’s still very unpopular.

I also think trump is basically at his ceiling as people have very hardened views on him at this point. Was going to be enough to beat Biden but might not be enough to take on someone who isn’t 81.

I think Harris is less popular than Biden, or at least not significantly more popular.

I think Biden's popularity is lower than Harris's because his weakness and mental frailty has been in the news for a month. Meanwhile, she's been mostly out of the spotlight for years now, which is good, because when she's in the spotlight we're treated to monologues about the significance of the passage of time unburdening us from what has been.

Her favorability will go down once she has to speak extemporaneously and people have to actually evaluate her as a potential president rather than just someone with a pulse.

What do you think about this explanation for that recurring turn of phrase she uses?

https://x.com/conceptualjames/status/1815057918229975147?s=46

Is dude seriously saying she's doing a Luciferian incantation? That seems a very odd take.

Why are people replying to this like "oh, that's interesting"? It's paranoid delusion.

My main issue with Kamala is how do we reconcile the “coconut” comments with the “unburdened by what has been” comments?

If we didn’t fall out of the coconut tree, we exist in the context. But isn’t existing in the context, in essence, very similar (if not the same) as being burdened by what has been?

Because it's just random feel-good nonsense slogans. (Several prominent liberals on Twitter like Yglesias have also pointed out the inconsistency.) I'm referring to what's stated in that thread - people should scroll down and read it if they haven't. I'm not saying they're great slogans. I'm saying it isn't literally-Satanic-literal-communism.

Because everyone who thinks it’s paranoid delusion is just ignoring it.

I think Republicans should make this criticism central to their critique of Harris from now until the election.

People really overestimate the degree to which people plan their moment-to-moment actions/statements. 95% probability that someone wrote her that line in a speech sometime, she liked it/it stuck in her head, so it got filed away in her brain's library of verbal tics, the same way musicians fall back on favorite licks.

Can anti-Democrats ever stop making Democrats sound cooler? Esoteric incantations? I'm voting for those.

Seems like a stretch to me. She's just saying a random political slogan.

The whole "the elites are secretly occultist Satanists doing magic spells right in front of us" can seem kind of compelling but... I haven't found good enough evidence to buy it. Yet.

I think this particular gem of hers would fit pretty well on TimeCube:

It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.

Damn, I just checked and TimeCube is down! It's true. The internet really is dead.

https://timecube.online/ is a false archive of the TRUTH, a trap to make people educated stupid. Accept no imitations. https://web.archive.org/web/20160112193916/http://timecube.com/

I think that’s where the current polls are at. However, Harris is going to be able to launch a campaign that benefits from rock bottom expectations.

She could end up not improving her position but I think just based on those low expectations she has upside and it won’t take much of a gain to overtake Trump.

It won’t? He’s up 3-6 points in swing states. 3-4 on national polls where dems need +2 to break even.

I’m curious how you’re coming to “it won’t take much”.

Before the debate disaster it was much closer and 80% of the country thought Biden was too old to be president. Harris shakes that liability and will be able to actually campaign, unlike Biden.

Trump can still win but i believe Harris has a decent shot (unlike post debate Biden).

Trump was shot and showed real courage under fire. Biden dropping out doesn’t change that.

Would that gain him any new votes or make people who generally vote D but thought Biden was too old less likely to vote for Harris?

I think it might make on the margins some people more likely to vote for him

What about this idea: She picks a moderate Republican as a running mate. Boom.

I think the people people who voted for Haley are begging for any alternative to Trump. This would give them a way to vote Democrat in good conscience.