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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.
To be honest the sense I get is that the Democrats have settled their major internal fights since 2022/2023, and Bidens age was a distraction. Three progressive democrat sacred cows were executed in 2022: racial hyperfragmentation, defund the police, open borders. Latinx as a neologism being thoroughly disparaged by the entire polity in 2022 put paid to the split-and-lift approach democrats had of highlighting racial subidentities and holding them in high esteem in order to oppose white men and drive turnout. Defund the police and restorative justice as a whole died with the COVID crime rises and Chesa Boudin being ousted put other prosecutors like Krasner, Price, Bragg and Gascon on watch for being overly progressive, with less public celebration of defending criminals. Finally, the migrant invasion into democratic cities has muted active open border proponents.
The democrats still are vulnerable on these issues, but the muting of the progressive wings gives normies hope that democrats aren't actively trying to end run the retard ball into an open goal. Yes the progressives are loud and extremely irritating still, but they aren't being actively supported by politicians anymore. Without the progressive bogeyman, much of the past 8 months has been focused on Bidens incapability, and with Harris wisely shutting up about specifics there is little attack material that is holding against her.
Culture war now is a wash for republicans, because abortion is remarkably salient, while Trumps centrality to the Republican establishment means his rambly whining and halfhearted autofellatio is taking up valuable discussion focus away from economy and border.
Hyperfocused overthinkers are wont to laser in on individual policies or vague connected webs to posit the end of civilization based on the extrapolated outcome, but most people don't care for that. Talking about democracy ending with Trump was not a vote winner, and talking about the woke mind virus isn't either. Democrats have pivoted to a surprisingly blank slate bollard of a candidate, Trump is still trying to gas up his hot air balloon while flinging shit at Harris. The election is still Trumps to win, but he's gotta get the cook going now.
I'm not at all getting the feeling that those holy cows are dead, just that they're swept under the rug for now.
Everyone seems to have gotten the memo that they need to unite under glorious leader of joy Kamala and her bright unspecified future because the dems do believe in winning, But while it's easy keeping divisions unstated when you are this vague, she's going to have to concretize at some point. Either during the debates or when she actually has won and must have a policy.
Hell, if things made any sense, she'd have to concretize right now given she's the incumbent.
This entire illusion rests on the sole condition that nobody asks any hard questions so she can maintain ambiguity. It's not a bad strategy when the media is on your side, Obama ran on the same sort of emptiness, but it's very fragile.
Anything that brings back the news cycle to some hard reality could bring it all down. You can't be a windbag if the economy is crashing or some serious international incident is going on.
Is it fragile? Obama won re-election.
Romney ran a bad campaign on what could have been a winnable election. Obama is still viewed fawningly by his supporters, but presided over a tremendous drop in elected Democratic officials nationwide. His presidency directly lead to the election of Trump. In exchange, liberals got... Obamacare?
So, while there were legitimate issues with Obama and his team's larger running of the Democratic Party, it's important to remember that of the supposed 1,000 legislative seats lost, 150 were in NH alone (because NH is weird and has a massive 400 seat legislature with lots of weird swings), and a lot more were in rural Yellow Dog seats in places like Arkansas, Mississippi, and so forth that were basically doomed the moment they could be put in a flyer next to a black Democratic President in a way that wasn't true of John Kerry or Al Gore.
I would say the nomination of Hillary and James Comey's choices of what to announce and when is what led to the election of Trump, but I'm aware the latter is the minority position here.
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