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It's been a bit since we've check in the election. How are things going?
You might not know it, but Donald Trump's chances have had a bit of a resurgence lately. Nate Silver's model has him at a 61% chance to win the election. Polymarket has him at 51%.
I think the error bars are pretty wide here. A lot of things are going to come into play. Small decisions in swing states (such as absentee ballot policies) could decide the election. Another factor is how much the "Shy Tory" effect still matters. Exactly who are the people that answer for the phone for pollsters anyway?
The economy appears to be crashing at exactly the wrong time for Kamala. Prices have been increasing faster than wages, and the customer is "tapped out". The stock prices of many consumer-facing companies like DollarTree, Starbucks, Lululemon, and Nike have cratered along with sales projections.
All of this might force Kamala Harris to actually say or do something. For those following along she has made only one unscripted appearance since becoming the heir-apparent. It was an 18 minute interview (cut from 41 minutes) with a friendly interviewer and her running mate present as a chaperone. For comparison, here is the same interviewer with J.D. Vance.
But maybe staying hidden is still a good policy. The one time the Harris campaign did propose something, it was an appalling series of tax increases including an unrealized capital gains tax. If the polls stay close, Harris will probably stay hidden.
On the other hand, the Trump campaign seems to be very different than previous ones. He's not gotten nearly as much media coverage, either because he's not saying outrageous things anymore, or everyone is bored with it. He's done some decent long-form interviews with podcasts such as Lex Friedman, Theo Von, and All-in. But these are just reaching his core audience of bros. Meanwhile, and uncharacteristic for him, he's spent a lot of time playing defense, having to counter the lie that he will ban abortion nationwide. Perhaps it is ironic that a politician who built his political career on a vicious lie (birthergate) will ultimately be undone by one.
As for myself, I will be voting for Trump even though I think he's a bad person. I prefer a bad person to bad policies. And I think Harris represents everything I hate about the Democratic party: racial grievances, suppression of speech, strident militarism abroad, and increased regulation and taxation. But in the end, I'm not sure how much this election will matter. Both candidates are so unpopular the backlash may outweigh the value of having the Presidency.
So... who are you voting for?
I do not live in a swing state, and I plan to not vote for either Harris or Trump. If I lived in a swing state, I would have to think carefully. I deeply despise both sides, but I might vote Trump in that case simply because he is slightly more likely to do something about things like violent crime, wokeness, and the Democratic Party's attacks on free speech.
I have seen unpleasant signs lately:
anti-heresyanti-disinformation operations: https://newrepublic.com/post/185668/fbi-document-influencers-russian-disinformation.And what is the anti-left coalition doing? Not enough, it seems to me. Do most people in the anti-left coalition even understand the extent of the left's hate for them? In my experience, most leftists are nice people in person, but if you start talking about politics, an interesting thing emerges... the average anti-leftist thinks that leftists are stupid, but only a relatively small subset of anti-leftists think that leftists are evil. On the other hand, in my experience the majority of leftists think that the right is evil and should be destroyed. Not necessarily destroyed through force, most leftists aren't in favor of concentration camps or killings. But they think that the right should be eradicated from the Earth. They are true believers in the idea that leftism is morally superior, and they believe it on such a deep level that trying to convince them otherwise is like trying to persuade some random European in the year 1200 AD that maybe Christianity is just bullshit.
Believing that your opponents are evil is stronger motivation than thinking that your opponents are stupid.
The left has suffered some defeats recently, like Musk buying X for example, and I think that in some ways peak woke is now behind us. But the swap of Biden for Harris has given the left a resurgent energy, and to me the Trump campaign increasingly seems to not be up to the challenge of winning the election. Which is bad news not because the Presidency really matters that much in and of itself, because for the most part it does not, but because the rest of the right does not seem to be doing any better than Trump is when it comes to winning elections and because a Harris win would energize the left.
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