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The way I see the things in my bubble.
Watching the Democrats media machine spinning at full gears is impressive. Trump's assassination attempt is old news. It never happened. The iconic Pulitzer and election winning picture is nowhere to be seen. A lot of dem aligned twitter accounts suddenly are active and on the attack. Felon and rapist are everywhere. Suddenly Trump's age is a problem. Absolutely no accountability demanded from the people that were telling that Biden is ok. No talks if he is fit to be president. Their reality building efforts are smooth and from what I can see effective - no one seems to remember critics of her that they wrote from the ancient time of June 2024, let alone before. All in all makes you believe that Snowcrash's ur-language was not pulled out of Neil Stephenson's imagination.
On my side - Republicans are high on copium, seems to not have been prepared for Kamala, lack message and message discipline, and are on the defensive. JD Vance seems to be bombing. And for it - the election moved from landslide to at best narrow win. I still think that she is the second worst possible candidate after Joe Biden but probably ok enough to win.
The quantity of vitriol on both sides is extremely high, the quality is lacking. But I would say the Democrats are better right now. I feel that it is manufactured enthusiasm, but has the chance to become real one.
All in all bad news for everyone that hopes that mass migration to the west will be curbed before the mid 2030-s (lately I have become single issue on that issue).
I definitely agree that message and meme discipline has been lapsing on the part of the American Right in the last few days. It looks to me like Trump has a dominant strategy for winning the election that can be summarised in the simple maxim "Don't scare the hoes" (as I believe the kids say). That means reining in bad messaging from the retarded and extremely online segment of their base. As it is, the right-wing bits of my social feeds are currently full of conspiracies (Trump assassination attempt was a plot by the Deep State, Biden is dead, Biden didn't agree to step down, etc.) and some pretty vulgar and dumb memes about Kamala and blowjobs. None of that will persuade your average normie voter and will actively put a lot of them off. Meanwhile, the equivalent messaging from the Left has been pretty bland and innocuous (remixes with coconut tree samples, lots of friendly memes about unburdening).
Unfortunately I think that the "weirdo activist" part of the US Right (Fuentes, BAP, etc.) has been gaining in visibility over the last few years. Regardless of whether you agree with their policy goals, I think this is bad news, because their memes and messages are baroque and weird to normies. The Left has had the same problem of being dominated by its weirdo activist members for the last decade or so, but thanks to their long march through the institutions they've been able to endow their shibboleths with cultural cachet: for white people, talking about "white privilege" or "patriarchy" is a solid (but declining) signal you're a member of the upper middle class and above. The same doesn't apply at all for the Right, so their weirdo activist elements just give people the ick.
I should add that I don't hold a negative opinion of weirdo activists in general; many of my close friends fall into that camp. I also enjoy reading conspiracy posts etc. in places like this, where I think it's safe to assume that everyone is an extremely online weirdo. But insofar as the Right wants to win the next US election, it needs to keep a lid on this stuff. For my part, I don't have particularly strong feelings about Kamala vs Trump, but it would be nice if the progressivism weakened its iron grip on our institutions, and I don't see that happening unless Rightists can lean into the contrast between themselves and the Looney Left.
The recent ad by McCormick is pretty powerful. That’s the messaging republicans will be broadcasting non stop for the next 100 days.
Link?
https://x.com/yashar/status/1815923743165956557
Thanks. I think it's good, not great. Democrats would probably "Yes, chad" some of this stuff.
A better ad would give people the ick and make people see liking Kamala as cringe and gross.
To the extent Democrats would say "yes, this is in fact what we want", that makes the ad more effective, not less.
I would call the ad "obvious" more than "powerful" but yes you absolutely should hang all your opponent's most extreme positions around their neck and tell all the middle of the road people what an extremist they are. It's politics 101.
I think painting her as having extreme policies like this would need to be part of a Republican strategy but it's not enough as most voters don't know or care enough about policy for it to make a difference.
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