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Notes -
"The Democrats' new sunny vibes"
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-democrats-new-sunny-vibes
Noah Smith argues that with Kamala Harris and her surge in the polls gave the Democrats more chill and optimistic vibes. Going back to normalcy. The only thing missing is a "It's morning again in America" ad.
Case in point: I read right now the headline that Joe Biden warns about the "bloodbath" Trump allegedly promised if he loses the election. It is like soothing cool aid for /r/politics, but it does sound a bit hollow from a cranky old Biden, doesn't it? I don't think Harris will make the same doom & gloom attack. Maybe there is a bit good cop / bad cop dynamic here.
Regarding her VP pick Tim Walz I read the worst about him here, but looking at pictures of that guy I just don't feel it. He looks harmless and nice. Noah says the record shows that Walz is a pro market Yimby guy who is pro-nuclear. When the biggest problem of America is that it can't build anymore than you want a guy like him at the top. And mirroring the tone change of the Democrats Walz message is not an angry "kill the rich!" like from blue-haired-Antifa-communists, but a pragmatic "help the poor".
Walz may not appeal to social conservatives, but the aim is to appeal to independents/undecided anyway. And he is the sort of guy who both signals that woke is over, because woke won:
"Post-protestant middle-American orthodoxy" is quite mouthful. But it is not quite the professional–managerial class, instead a bit more folksy.
Regarding the lefty fringes, neoliberalism is back on the menu:
All the talk about the shift in "vibes" and re-energizing of the Democratic party under Kamala, as well as the talk about how good this "weird" insult is at owning the Republicans just makes me think of someone noticing an ignorant child tilting his head with a quizzical expression and quickly shutting that all down by ostentatiously shouting out that everyone in fashion agrees that the emperor's new clothes will absolutely revolutionize the industry with its creative use of sleeves or whatever. It's just narrative built on top of narrative said by like-minded people, which doesn't imply it's false, but when the people pushing forward the narrative also happen to be people who like the narrative, largely based on what other people who also like the narrative say, it certainly implies that great skepticism is in order.
The bigger issue I think this raises is, if the narrative turns out to be false and people notice that, then that will result in the many journalists and media outlets that pushed forward the narrative having discredited themselves, which will mean fewer trustworthy resources for the American electorate to learn about their politicians. This phenomenon of journalists discrediting themselves through politically-motivated messaging has been going on at least since the 2015 Trump campaign, and it seems to just keep getting worse, and I wonder if, eventually, something will have to give.
Here I come with my big fat black pill again. Choke it down. I'm just hoping I'm as wrong about this as I was about Biden staying in the race.
Before Kamala was crowned in corrupt undemocratic backroom deals, I was feeling good. I fully bought into the zeitgeist that the MSM was powerless, and rapidly losing control of The Narrative. Alas, looking back that appears to have been a coordinated effort to starve Biden out of the race, because as soon as he was gone, they turned it right back on again. All I see, even in otherwise critical independent media, is that Kamala's popularity is through the fucking roof. Panoramic photos of some rally she gave lately that easily gives a Trump rally a run for it's money. It's inexplicable to me. Everything we knew about this woman in the 2020 Primary, in her appearances as VP, say this should be impossible. And yet here we are. They've managed to invert reality once again. Apparently she's even trending on TikTok for reasons I'm sure are not suspicious at all. Leftist are euphoric, conservatives are manufacturing cope. I bet I'm gonna get an earful the next time my in laws are over about how amazing Kamala is, for no reason they can articulate at all.
It's not impossible at all. Sure, a lot of the excitement is astroturfed, but not nearly all of it. Democrat-supporters are genuinely invigorated.
Trump and Biden have dominated the political discourse for 9 straight years. Many people were just sick of it. Kamala is a young, fresh face who is relatively unknown, so it is easy for Democratic-leaning people to project whatever good vibes they want on her. Most people do not pay as close attention to politics as the people here do. On the Democrat side, they don't know and don't care about Kamala's record, what matters to them is that she's young and fresh and she is running against the orange man. On the Republican side, they don't really know much or care much about Kamala's record either, they're just going to vote against her because she is not the orange man.
Democrats love young, hip politicians. JFK, Bill Clinton, Obama... etc. Kamala isn't hip but she is young-ish, and that counts for a lot when she is running against a 78-year-old.
Kamala's poor primary performance is kind of irrelevant now because back then she was running against Obama's Vice President and a bunch of other Democrats, whereas now she is running against orange man. Against other Democrats, she had to make a positive case for herself without just criticizing everybody else. Against Trump, she just needs to criticize him for his weaknesses, like his age, his scandals, January 6, etc... while doing the bare minimum to make it seem like she herself has some positive qualities.
It's not like Democrats are completely dominating the narrative, they're just doing a pretty good job of claiming a chunk of it. There are millions of people who are more tuned into the Republican narrative than the Democratic one. They're all over X, for example. They're on Fox News. It's easy to find them. It's not like we live in some kind of pro-Democratic narrative hegemony. The election is still going to be very close.
Strongly agree. Also, I think a lot of commentators are reading too much into the current media wave. There's still a very, very long time until the election. We won't even get a debate for another month! Elections always tighten and get more intense in the last few weeks; it always amazes me how much people tend to forget this. She will be stress-tested eventually. Current enthusiasm is a mix of a ton of Democratic-leaning orgs and individuals who were keeping their powder dry due to Biden fatigue suddenly igniting it all at once, and some genuine ground-level celebration that something on the wishlist of at least 3/4's of America ("don't give us another Trump-Biden election with two soon-to-be-80-year-olds") suddenly came true (or at least half-true). Human psychology is such that a feeling of "relief" doesn't immediately give way to being confronted with the demands of reality, humans like to bask or indulge in the relief for a little while.
Quibble: Biden is not a soon-to-be-80-year-old. He's 81.
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