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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.
I'm obviously not in the position to confirm or deny any vibe shift happening half a world away, but my ongoing frustration with the whole Kamala thing is that there's always at least one degree of separation between the enthusiasm and the person reporting it's existence. I'd love to hear the thoughts of an earnest supporter, starting with what they're hoping to get from her that they weren't getting for the past 4 years.
As someone now leaning Kamala (despite having some nasty things to say about her earlier), she isn't embarrassing in the same way Biden was (or Trump, to a lesser extent, is). When she does something goofy, it's more endearing than terrifying.
I'm unhappy with both candidates' "policy platforms," but in the end neither will be enacted to a meaningful extent. Kamala's also more allied with my geography and employers, so I might receive more benefits from federal largesse.
Does that count as enthusiasm? Hah. My vote doesn't matter anyway.
Are you sure about that? The chance of a trifecta, provided a Harris victory takes place, is about 50%, per the betting markets, I believe. That's high! They might not be able to get some of the price controls stuff through, but if they get 50%+1 in each house, they absolutely will enact "court reforms" (term limits, which are really court packing; the No Kings Act, which is really a way to force the judiciary to stop taking positions one dislikes, constitution be damned) that have popular sounding names and high esteem among democrats (so they'll pass), but have the long-run effect of destroying the independence of the federal judiciary and our system of government. Also, no way they crack down on the border, which will over time, as those here illegally get citizenship, push the country farther left, and get you some more of those policies you don't like.
I am skeptical about the judiciary changes happening: if Democrats win the Senate and the Presidency, the court "reform" (I agree it would be bad, and I'm pretty content with the composition of the current court) is a much bigger lift than simply appointing new justices. In fact, I'd say that Trump winning actually increases the risk of judiciary reform over the next decade, if he replaces one or two of the Democratic justices and Democrats feel increasingly desperate and hopeless. If court packing is going to happen, electing Harris or electing Trump just shifts it a couple years forward or back.
As far as immigration goes, neither Trump nor Harris will do much to change the existing system. They'll take different rhetorical approaches and make some marginal changes, but both will more or less maintain the status quo. The constant stream of millions of illegal immigrants is just too critical for the lifestyles of both Democratic and Republican donor classes to allow for any real action to be made. You'll still see roughly the same number of immigrants in the US regardless at the end of their respective terms.
The only place I see a substantively different choice of futures is foreign policy, particularly China. Who's better to avoid a war with China? This is not obvious and requires some guessing: Harris is a sock puppet for the existing foreign policy establishment, while Trump's approach is (charitably) more personalistic. As much as I dislike the foreign policy establishment, they provide predictability. Major wars break out when one side doesn't correctly predict what the other side will do; if everyone can predict what will happen and the costs to each party, it greatly increases the likelihood of managed transitions that don't go kinetic. A war with China will hurt the economy far worse than cherry picking all the worst policies from each candidate, so that ends up being one point in Kamala's favor for me.
I don't see how this follows at all. If one side is able to predict with relative precision the costs of a conflict will be, they will be more likely to do it whenever the benefits exceed those costs. Predictability alone is not a prophylaxis, you need a robust and credible cost infliction strategy to actually generate deterrence.
You absolutely need a cost infliction strategy. But the competitor needs to be able to predict costs will actually be inflicted. Otherwise, they can convince themselves it would be lower cost than it actually will be.
For a Taiwan contingency, I believe the variance of costs (or, more precisely, China's perception of the variance of costs) is higher with Trump than with Harris. A war resulting in a quick, painless victory with minimal worldwide economic repercussions is likelier with him as he's more likely to call bluffs and cow China with escalatory responses, but so are disasters where we tumble into massive total war because China mispredicts US responses. (He's also more likely to sell Taiwan off, which isn't great but still a much better scenario than the total war outcome.)
I acknowledge this is guesswork, and the primary determinant of how horrific war will be is decisions on the Chinese side, not the US side.
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