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Notes -
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.
It would seem obvious to me that there are, in fact, a lot of Americans who like what the Democratic Party has on offer - obviously! A party can't survive for ages if no-one likes what it has on offer! - and are happy to have it represented by what has always seemed to me a basically (though not expectionally) competent politician (competent at politics, that is) who happened to have an off-season in 2020 and doesn't have an off-season now. Thus, there is not anything particularly special to what is happening now.
What I wonder about is how hard it seems to be for American conservatives to believe that there exists a non-astroturf sentiment (and what does astroturf even mean these days, anyway? Both major parties have well-honed political machines to make basically literally any movement existing within their purview at least partly astroturf if you choose to look at it that way) supporting American liberalism organically. Why wouldn't there be? The last four years have seemed to be quite good for a fair few Americans, materially, especially compared to what is the most natural comparison to me - Europe's continuing malaise and doldrums.
I think you've identified a genuine sentiment here, and it's related to the accusations of NPCism/groupthink that the right frequently levies against the left.
Other replies have brought up good points that I endorse. I'd like to add that there's a certain asymmetry to these accusations in general which could be taken as evidence of their veracity.
Both sides use plenty of generic insults that are little more than emotive expressions of sentiment. Rightists say that leftists will usher in an age of civilizational decline, that they're only doing what they're doing out of self interest, that they hide their true intentions until the right opportunity presents itself, etc. And vice versa. Precisely because these accusations are symmetrically employed by both sides, they don't reveal much interesting about the actual policy positions of the right/left or the psychology of rightists/leftists. There's little signal to separate from the noise.
The NPC meme, in contrast, is used far more often by the right than by the left. Why is that? If it was just a generic insult, if it was just a synonym for "stupid" or "uninformed", then we would expect leftists to use it too, given that it has proven itself to be a meme of rather potent virility. But they don't - not nearly as much, anyway. And I think that indicates that the left doesn't really believe it to be true about their opponents, whereas the right very much believes it to be true about their opponents. And the best explanation for a widespread asymmetrical belief of that sort is that belief having some actual correspondence to the facts of reality, however attenuated that correspondence may be.
Certainly there are versions of the NPC accusation that are employed by the left - it's common to hear rhetoric about Trump supporters being fascists who all march in lockstep, for example. But the tenor is different. There is a much greater focus on the morally deleterious content of the Trump supporters' beliefs rather than the form of their thought itself (the old "rightists think their opponents are stupid, leftists think their opponents are evil"). I think there's also the implication that the alleged fascist Trump supporter marches in lockstep because of some fundamental moral deficiency which draws them to fascism specifically, whereas the prototypical NPC could be made to follow virtually any ideology if the Cathedral declared it to be The Correct Belief.
All this is a very roundabout way of saying: I'm not going to evaluate the first-order claim that "support for Kamala/liberalism/etc is astroturfed", and at first glance I'd agree that that claim is not entirely fair. But the mere persistence of the claim indicates that there is some phenomenon here that is worth investigating. People don't just make shit up. If enough people are repeating something, there's usually some reason for it.
The only reason the left doesn't call the right NPCs is because the NPC meme is right coded and everyone knows it so left wingers find the idea of using it icky.
Instead every comment that goes against the left wing hive mind is a bot. Same idea, different terminology. Kind of like how Red Pilled and Woke mean exactly the same thing (awake to realities that normies don't or won't see) but everyone who uses one hates the other.
Bot implies that the personality behind the account is faked and it's being directly used by a malicious agent to spread misinfo, unlike the NPC meme where it's actual people who get "programming updates".
Also, it's been a while since I've seen "woke" used by anyone other than right wingers (as an insult).
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