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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.
This one is Kamala's to lose.
The biggest sign was how quickly the Trump assassination story died down. The second Biden stepped down, he overwhelmed the media cycle and wiped the slate clean on both sides. Ofc, getting the support of everyone other than the crazies really helps. Every institution (left and right) is aligned on putting her in power. Look at Trump's new twitter, it has fully morphed into the caricature that Hillary claimed it was in 2016. (https://x.com/realDonaldTrump).
Kamala has picked a golden retriever of a VP candidate and has managed to be in public life for decades without expressing a substantial opinion. This is useful. It allows a vibes based campaign to flourish. If you have said nothing, they can't attack you. One big scandal from Kamala or Tim can potentially turn the tides, but so far she's been doing well.
Trump camp seems clueless too. Kamala is happy to fight in the dirt with Trump, because she too can have a full debate without saying anything substantial. So much energy was expended painting Hillary, Biden and Obama as evil, that Trump doesn't have much novel angles of attack. On top of that, JD Vance is clearly a terrible VP candidate (as much as us Rationalist types might agree with him). Kamala has avoided the obvious landmines too. She has steered clear of supporting Palestine and immediately stopped talking about the new capital-gains-tax before it could turn scandalous. She was a harsh prosecutor, so the crime angle doesn't work. Kamala has lucked into a pretty defensible position, because she is an uninspiring candidate for democratic primaries. But, her track record is pretty centrist for the generals.
All that being said, the electoral college is surely going to make this one a lot closer than it actually is. (ofc a lot can change between now and nov)
Stolen valor.
Outside the media distortion field he's an extremely capable speaker.
This kind of political analysis basically assumes that the mainstream media frame is the only frame. It isn't. Most voters reject it.
Being an intelligent & articulate speaker does not mean you're a capable speaker.
Obama is considered a generational speaker not because of the contents of his speech. It is because he can spontaneously create 'Russell Crowe Gladiator' tier moments around him, week in and week out. I used to do a lot of stage performances & skit comedy when I was younger. Obama is the greatest performer I've seen on TV. You should slow his videos down and study him. His suits, posture, micro adjustments, voice cracks, his wife, his kids.....everything is perfectly done. If you put a obsessive director in a room and asked him to micro-adjust a public speaking movie scene to platonic perfection, you'd get Obama on any random weekday. And no, this isn't me retroactively fawning over Obama's traits. Because the textbooks were written long before him. This came out years before Obama. If you saw it today, you'd think writer lazily wrote a 'what if Obama had aids' script. But in fact, Obama has modeled himself after the archetypical black inspiration that Hollywood had been doing for decades. (see any Denzel, Morgan Freeman role). Putting on that performance matters big time in popularity contests.
Public speaking is diction, content and performance. JD Vance is bad at this specific type of performative public speaking. And it's the most important one for winning presidential elections.
Pete Buttigieg is a similar type of speaker to Vance, but he adds narrative pacing to his conversations, allowing him to have little "gotcha!" wins and "damn brother!" retorts. Vance comes off.....academic. He is a 'bad' public speaker, and us nerdy types liking his speech style has very little impact on how the rest of the world perceives it.
I always thought Obama was a mediocre public speaker propped up by media hype and social consensus. My evidence for this is that now that he's out of office, nobody especially cares about the occasional speech he gives. Every few years the left falls in blind love with these wunderkids who all present the same front: Obama, Beto, Wendy Davis, Stacey Abrams, now Kamala. The men are skinny and roll their sleeves up, the women are spunky and loud. We go through this routine every few years, and the eventual result is always that, win or lose, this once-in-a-generation political superstar is revealed as another mediocrity who doesn't really know anything but runs great when the media is nice for them. I think subconsciously it's all aping after the JFK aesthetic.
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