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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)
There's a lot of passive voice here! Media outlets consist of actual people that make decisions about things. When we say that the Trump assassination died down, what we mean is that the media doesn't really have much curiosity about the shooter or why he putatively went unnoticed. Likewise, when we say that Biden stepped down and everyone rallied around Kamala, what we mean is that the media stopped being curious about what exactly Nancy Pelosi meant by doing things the "easy way or the hard way" and why it was that no one really mentioned that Biden was plainly senile.
There's this fascinating genre of Tweet/Post/Comment/Blog that I've seen among certain kinds of Rightists in the last month that goes something like "Why aren't we talking more about the Trump Assassination attempt? That was a really big deal guys!" But they don't seem to have anything to say about it to spark a discussion.
There's some Monday morning quarterbacking stuff with the Secret Service, but it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere interesting. The stochastic terrorism stuff never got any traction, with everything we know about the shooter making it feel like a reach, and there's not much appetite on the Right for "let's all cool down a little." It's not clear to me what advantage he's getting out of going in the little hamster aquarium they have him in now, I don't feel like he's any more likely to get shot tomorrow than he was yesterday.
I'm always kind of confused by this confusion about why the story died down, what else was there to talk about?
How long did the Uvalde shooting story last in the news? How long did Sandy Hook Elementary stay in the spotlight? Both cases involved controversy, to put it mildly. The incompetence of Uvalde PD rivals even the Secret Service's vaunted inability to pour water from a boot with instructions on the heel.
The 'stochastic terrorism' stuff is always a reach -- it's never a commentary on the perpetrator, but on the rhetoric of your outgroup. The Pulse nightclub shooting was blamed on homophobia until it became clear that it was a terrorist attack. Media bias means that the people in charge of news (90% leftists) likes to make a story about their outgroup, no matter how implausible the tie-in, but has no appetite for doing the same to stories about their ingroup. How long did it take after the Trump assassination attempt for Biden to double down on calling Trump a danger to democracy?
Let's say the roles were reversed -- let's imagine a world where today Kamala Harris dodges a literal bullet by half an inch on live TV, and the shooter turned out to have the internet posting history of Thomas Matthew Crooks. 1) How quickly would the attack be blamed on right-wing extremism, and how persistently would that blame 'stick' once more facts were in? 2) How long would the story remain on the 'front page' of media outlets? 3) How long would the story and its many many permutations (e.g., gun control, Secret Service incompetence) last in the news cycle? 4) How long would the story survive in the public consciousness, off of the front page but still in regular media references (e.g., whenever Trump says anything that could be interpreted as a call for violence?)
The answer feels almost self-evident. The only real question would be, by what margin would Kamala Harris win in November?
Yet somehow there's never a shortage of 'something else to talk about' in those other cases.
There's no appetite on the part of the victim(s) in this case to make the story about gun control. And the Dems lacked the guts to push it. No other angle really sticks.
Without gun control, we wouldn't talk much about school shootings either.
I have to put my cards on the table: I bought two ARs that Monday on fear of a fresh gun control push. More fool me, I guess.
If Kamala were shot at by a normie Dem they/them of color, the story would disappear almost before the shell casing landed; which would be the equivalent.
The story would be picked up by every major news organization and not dropped for years, much how they responded when Gabbie Giffords was shot, but not when Steve Scalise was shot.
Giffords’ shooting was a huge deal. I don’t think it can be understated how pivotal that event changed American politics. In my opinion, Giffords was being prepared for a long career in the U.S. Senate, perhaps even to become President someday. The shooting changed the trajectory of the U.S. forever. The media was right to cover it so much, because the shooting effectively robbed the U.S. of a future President. In another timeline we might be debating a Trump vs. Giffords election right now.
I say this as someone who lived somewhat close by to the ‘Congress on Your Corner’ event where the shooting happened. It was 2011. Giffords had served in the House of Representatives for the prior four years, and in Arizona state politics for the prior decade. She started in politics at the age of 30, and was 40 years old at the time of the shooting. A Jew, she is related to celebrity stardom (Gwyneth Paltrow) and married a corn-fed, non-Jew military guy, the current junior Senator, Mark Kelly, a man with no political aspirations himself before the shooting happened in 2011. Giffords went to the correct private liberal arts colleges, was a Fulbright Scholar, ran her family’s business, and spearheaded economic development initiatives in Hispanic, rural Arizona. Check, check, check. This was a woman with ambition for higher office. She had never spoken at the DNC but she was young. She, too, could have her 2004 Obama moment. Until a schizophrenic loser tragically came out of the woodwork.
How many ‘Congress on Your Corner’ mass public campaign events do politicians hold nowadays? Basically none, I think. If you’re not an incumbent you still have to hold outreach events, but they happen in private establishments, often with guest lists and operational security to control access. Or you just cut the populist facade and hold dinners that charge $50,000 per plate to attend. The Giffords shooting also sparked the resurgence of the gun control movement. The shooting was the beginning move toward a greater political polarization, since the media blamed Sarah Palin and her ham-fisted Internet ad about putting elected Democrats ‘in the crosshairs’ for unseating them at re-election.
Were the shooting not to happen in 2011, or if Giffords’ career hadn’t effectively ended that day, I have no doubt that she would have been Senator instead of Mark Kelly. They wanted her, not her husband. But she’s part of the same Orwellian Inner Party apparatus, that’s why she got a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022 as well as a speaking slot at the DNC this year in 2024, long after she’s become irrelevant. The DNC apparatus wanted her to become Senator, maybe even President. But it wasn’t meant to be.
It might have robbed the US of multiple future presidents.
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