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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.
Is this not just the visual version of friendly op-eds? Outside of the explicitly right-wing media entities, everyone else has granted Harris what seems like fawning coverage to me. I hear that she's running a great campaign but haven't actually seen her do anything other than read a couple speeches off of teleprompters. I quite literally haven't heard a single word that's actually a thought that occurred in her head rather than something that someone else wrote down for her to say.
I'm not doubting that there's a vibe shift, but I do absolutely marvel at how people's vibes shifted so much when nothing actually happened. As I covered a couple days ago, I thought it was a good speech as far as such things go, but I really have trouble relating to people that treat these sorts of things as decisive factors for themselves.
Change the genders and that is just Obama's campaign in 2008. It's all vibes, and always has been.
The difference is that Obama is actually good at this. Harris is a prop and she has been her entire career.
I'd say he's been the best President of 2024.
I was digging through Google for old articles about Harris from when she was elected AG and a huge number of them were direct comparisons to Obama when he was the Hot New Thing. She's been pretty directly groomed for this and she still can't do much more than read from a teleprompter.
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