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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:
What's most interesting to me about Walz, though I've been uncharacteristically out of date with politics the last week or so, is that I did see that he has a pathetically low net worth. Without his pension, it's only like 300k or something like that. Which is actually quite nice and rare! I can't remember the last time we had a major presidential or VP candidate who hadn't at least made a million off of books or something. So at least in one sense, he has a legitimate claim to the everyman title.
It's tautilogically true that, without their most valuable assets, most people have a pretty low net worth.
I actually find the complete reliance on public pensions and no IRA or 401k like the vast majority of Americans a little concerning.
Well yeah, he’s either lying or Mother Theresa or really bad with money. He certainly doesn’t seem to have taken a vow of poverty(and we’d expect it to come up) and he almost certainly knows better than to have no independent assets. So we’re left with ‘he’s probably lying’.
Or...as 5 people have pointed out, the disclosure form doesn't require he disclose certain assets.
Well yes, I'll lump that in under 'lying' even if it's technically within the letter of the law. Obvious bias is obvious and you can disagree, but using it to try to say he isn't a rich guy is just stupid.
You have a very different definition of rich than rich people have. Even having the level of assets that could be hidden within the constructs of that form puts him firmly in the poor house among the PMC.
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