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This weekend, I witnessed the Vibe Shift firsthand.
When we met for lunch, my mother’s first topic was the DNC. Who spoke and how great they sounded. How excited she was about the whole thing. She corrected me on “Comma-lah’s” name, which I’d apparently been mispronouncing, and used that as a springboard to discuss Kamala t-shirts. She didn’t mention that watching the DNC had been inspiring enough to get her volunteering to write postcards and stuff mailers. It was clear that she was all-in on the program without ever discussing policy—or even Donald Trump.
Dad chimed in a couple times to note that the overall messaging was much more positive, except for Bernie Sanders, who sounded unchanged from the last ten years. He appreciated this. I’d say he represents a section of the populace with immense distaste for Trump, but a comparable disdain for politicians who spend too much time talking about the man.
I had been under no illusions that Mom would vote anything but Democrat. Dad, not so sure; I’d have given good odds of a protest vote if the Libertarian candidate wasn’t such a non-entity. More likely that he abstained. But the last couple weeks appear to have left him much more comfortable voting D. The same has to be true for Mom, too, as I never saw this level of enthusiasm for anything Biden did or said.
That’s the Vibe Shift: apathy to enthusiasm.
It doesn’t take a coordinated blitz of friendly op-eds, since my parents were getting this straight from the TV. It doesn’t take an iron grip on that TV presentation; the DNC herds their cats, but they can’t convince Bill Clinton to get off stage. And it doesn’t even take a winning policy slate. The Democrat base, the casual never-Trumpers, maybe even the grillpillers? They’re just glad to have a candidate under the retirement age.
My dad loves Tim Walz. I haven't seen him like a politician this much in decades. It's weird to me, because I'm way too cynical. It feels like when my wife makes me watch TikTok videos that have obviously been staged, and I can't enjoy them because I can't suspend disbelief, while she does. She's not a gullible person in general, her job depends on not being taken in, but she enjoys the videos and I can't. My dad is a smart guy, and a very cynical guy about politics, but Tim Walz' nice-guy schtick really works for him. He teared up repeating lines from one of Walz' speeches to me (my dad tears up a lot as he's gotten older, actually, and it makes me very uncomfortable), and he won't stop inventing things he wants Tim Walz to say to J.D. Vance.
I don't really get it. I like Tim Walz' schtick well enough, as schticks go it's better than some, but buying into lock stock and barrel seems kinda over the top. On the other hand, he's so out of the great white north that it seems Republicans won't come up with decent attacks before we get to November. ((Before someone brings them up, no, the horse semen attacks weren't decent, nor were the weirdo implications about race fetishism. The riot stuff might stick eventually, but it hasn't so far.)) Idk, I just can't get up that kind of enthusiasm. When I listened to Pod Save America after the debate, I'd hear them curse and think that I need to work on cursing less.
Trump supporters seem grimly determined. It's hard to get excited about Trump anymore, we know what we're getting.
I feel bad for JD Vance. I identify a little with him, and he's just getting hammered on bullshit day in and day out, over and over. I don't think he's doing great, but he can't get out of his own way. In many ways, 2024 Vance is like 2020 Harris: he's running against his own type. We're seeing it, once again, with Dave McCormick, who will spend millions of dollars telling me he was in the army for a minute and likes hunting; until I read his wikipedia I never knew he got a fuckin' PhD from Princeton, and he never brings up that he ran one of the world's biggest hedge funds. Vance and McCormick are running against their own achievements and their own intelligence and their own qualifications, which says something absolutely tragic about the Republican base electorate.
It's not hard. Tim is a guy everyone knows. Almost Forrest Gump-esque in his sincerity. Join the military, teaches at a school, coaches a football team and then runs for office. Minneapolis is one of the few non-coastal American cities with a positive storyline from the last decade. Dude has made no money from politics, loves his kids, is religious and just kinda does his thing.
You know when people say, "I'd vote for a random dude off the street, rather than a slimy Harvard educated lawyer."........ Tim is the random guy off the street.
Even Trump seems to like the guy (I know wikipedia is obviously biased, but the events happened)
Kamala is clearly going for a "neapolitan ice cream" sort of campaign. She needed an inoffensive flavor combination. She picked an inoffensive VP candidate.
I don't. You saw it with Bloomberg, and you see it with Vance. The typical executive types are too used to talking to intelligent people. Politics is a craft. Like standup, you need to work your audience. Meet them at their level. Vance is like people I meet in my peer group. The main problem with Vance is he's too smart to work for Trump. He can't play a wise-cracking used car salesman because he isn't one. He was only chosen because of the paypal mafia's outside support. He knew what he was getting into. Should've known better.
I agree that he's a guy everyone knows, but I don't agree even a little bit about him seeming like a sincere, earnest guy. He's the bullshitter, he's the guy that has to inflate every single thing he does. Even the things that are honest-to-god admirable, he still has to be an E9 instead of an E8, he doesn't just know a thing or two about rifles, he carried them in war, and so on. He's never invested a penny, never genuinely risked anything, and he resents the hell out of the guys that got more money and status than him in the private sector. He babbles about racial justice while a half billion dollars in damage is done to Minneapolis as his wife enjoys the vibes (and scent of burning debris). Someone else's business is a small price to pay for him to feel better about white supremacy.
Yeah, I know guys like Tim Walz.
In a way something quite Germanic about this
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And Trump isn't?
The media will fact check Trump for stating opinions that they don’t like.
Walz gets a free pass. There’s about half a dozen of his previous colleagues in the military that have come out against him, but a viewer of the mainstream media wouldn’t know it. The media has decided that they’re not going to allow swiftboating, whether legitimate or not.
I have a theory that the Republican strategy teams are waiting until the timing is just right to launch this one. There's some serious shit in Walz's "Military Service."
They're running out of time. More likely they just can't find a way to launch it outside the already-right-wing bubble, because the mainstream media is maintaining message discipline.
Also it’s rare that a VP sinks it. Palin didn’t sink McCain, Obama did and even then Palin was a character and an image very different to Walz, who is much more inoffensive. If he lied about his military career it wouldn’t affect much, Trump has not getting AIDS from whores as his ‘personal Vietnam’, Kamala is a woman, Vance was a ‘military journalist’ writing articles for the press office. There are no war heroes there.
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Is there an insulting mass media propaganda campaign insisting he isn't?
It's the same as biden's senility. The worst part was the lockstep lying in the face of what we could plainly see, which was then abandoned the literal second their political objective changed.
It's the difference between a used car salesman lying to you (expected, almost charming), vs realizing the mechanic you brought with you for advice is also working for him (creepy and sinister).
Then you turn to your wife who's had her heart set on this car at any price, and as you look into her pleading coal-black eye slits you remember you don't have a wife. All three of them start chanting in an unspeakable language as the stolen flesh melts from their faces, and the sky outside is red redredredredred.
In a final moment of sanity-shattering realization, you understand you will be walking out of there with a 19% financing agreement.
That's the basic sensation of watching CNN for five minutes. Or seeing a still frame of that Anderson Cooper(?) lizardman wax model robot.
The sensation of being under bombardment by the American media makes me jealous of the countries that just get regular bombed.
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Yes, the Orange Man is also Bad. To my knowledge, very few people believe him to be a sincere man, as was articulated about Walz above. I've got a solid decade of saying I don't like the Orange Man though, as where Walz being an annoying bullshitter is new to me.
So in essence, Trump being a bullshitter is already "priced in" whereas the worry is that Walz being (possibly) much the same might not be?
Walz isn't possibly. He's orders of magnitude above. Everything he claims is a lie. Trump says he gets the best crowds when maybe he gets the second best crowds. Walz lies about things for no reason. He claims to be head coach of a football team when he is assistant coach. Thats not exaggeration, its lying. I am an attorney. If I claim to be a good attorney despite losing a lot of trials, that is exaggeration. That makes me like Trump. Walz claims to have a great trial record in court despite both being a secretary, not a lawyer, and his superior lawyers losing all the time.
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Well, he is a politician.
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