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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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"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.

along with the shift from Biden to Harris has come an abrupt and distinct shift in the Democrats’ tone. Whereas Biden’s messaging was often dark and dire, focusing on the MAGA movement’s threat to democracy, Harris’ has been lighter and more reminiscent of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Instead of calling Trump a would-be dictator, she has labeled him “weird”. Her campaign is overtly patriotic, draped in American flags. Crowds at her speeches chant “U-S-A! U-S-A!”.

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".

Culturally, everything about Walz is Middle American and middle-class. He spent 24 years in the Army National Guard, and in fact is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to ever serve in Congress. He was a successful high school football coach — in fact, Kamala Harris refers to him as “Coach Walz”. He’s a hunting enthusiast who poses with guns.

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:

He’s emblematic of the way that wokeness has become a sort of post-Protestant middle-American orthodoxy

"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:

I realize there are progressives out there shouting apocalyptic warnings about Project 2025, Trump as a fascist dictator, and so on. I realize there is a leftist fringe who is still ready to burn down America over Gaza. But crucially, none of those people is in charge of the Democratic Party right now.

The Democrats have realized that memory is short, at least in the sense that bringing up what your opponent did three years ago has less relevance than what he's saying now. Trump was unusually restrained while he was leading, and Biden's references to his past behavior didn't stick because they seemed at odds with the Trump of 2024. Now that Harris is the nominee the strategy is for her to run a straight shooter campaign that accentuates the positive and only criticizes Trump in terms of his most recent statements, to the extent that they even pile on rather than letting these statements speak for themselves.

One of Trump's primary weaknesses as a candidate is his tendency to pander to his base in situations where it costs him votes among constituencies he needs to win. If Trump calls Harris a DEI candidate then his audience cheers but ordinary suburban swing voters think "Is he really going there?" She doesn't even have to respond, since him belaboring the point is only digging himself in a deeper hole. Similar thing with Tampon Tim — trans issues get right wingers fired up but aren't going to swing an election. The more time spent attacking a vice presidential candidate on that just makes it look like the Republicans don't have their priorities straight.

The worst thing, though, is that Trump seems to be doing to himself what Biden never could. Trump was able to keep a more or less even keel through all of Biden's Threat to Democracy talk. Now that Biden's out of the race, Trump can't help but make election theft comments about a popular Republican swing state governor. Why should Harris say anything about it when Trump is all too willing to remind people himself? What does bringing this up accomplish for Trump? Are there really that many Biden voters out there who think the election was stolen? Do swing voters need Trump to remind them of all the things they find distasteful about him? As long as Trump keeps making these kind of bonehead moves, the Harris campaign is going to sit tight and talk about positive vibes. Why go after Trump in this situation? It's an attack ad without the downsides of running an actual attack ad. And Trump seems more than willing to oblige. The question isn't only one of how long the shine stays on Harris, but of how much Trump will add to his own stink.

If Trump calls Harris a DEI candidate then his audience cheers but ordinary suburban swing voters think "Is he really going there?" S

Affirmative action is incredibly unpopular across America. yet it surprises me how urban liberal types are so out of touch that they think people are clunching pearls over using DEI in a negative way. There’s a ton of resentful people who will be galvanized by seeing Kamala’s election as undeserved privilege being handed over yet again to someone with the right genitals and skin tone instead of the right merit

DEI is still pretty popular as a basic idea - https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4727744-americans-favor-dei-programs-poll/

Now you can argue people don't know what DEI really is or just not believe polling, but just throwing it out there isn't a boogeyman outside of right-wing circles.

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll also asked about companies taking up “programs to hire more employees from groups that are underrepresented in their workforce, such as racial and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities and to promote equity in the workplace,” to which 69 percent said was “a good thing.”

Sounds like the wording of the poll was biased to get the answers WaPo wanted. Because, at least the last time I checked, this is essentially affirmative action which has always been unpopular even among African Americans

I'd argue that wording actually does matter. There might be some misrepresentation all over the spectrum, but people do think differently about e.g. a program that deliberately goes out and seeks underrepresented groups and helps them prepare better for applications, and e.g. a program that sets a soft or hard quota for hiring a certain amount of underrepresented people, or even sets aside individual positions for certain people explicitly. Sure, you can argue that they might be roughly morally equivalent. But the shades of meaning do matter to people. In my examples, both technically fit the goal of promoting equity, but one is much more palatable than the other.

So yeah, though it doesn't make for snappy debate, you do actually need to define DEI at some point, and people define it differently. But if we're talking about the "basic idea" then Outlaw is completely correct, the basic idea IS popular. People are almost hard-coded to value "fairness" and so if DEI shows up with that framing, people will go for it.

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