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Well, this is the Trump experience. I mean this debate. He started out really strong, was totally defeating Harris for the first ten minutes or so. Then he just couldn't help but start rambling and making unforced errors. Why decide to bring up abortion and ramble about ninth month abortion? That's not one of the Republicans' strengths. Why bring up Marxism? Outside of the highly online left and right, people generally think of Marxism as some boring thing from decades ago, not as an important issue. Why bring up the Springfield pets thing? That's another highly online issue that plays weird to normies.
Why not just focus on your strengths of crime, the economy, and immigration? He's starting to try to pivot more back to those now, but now he's rambling and raising his voice and acting defensive, which looks bad.
This guy has always sucked at debates other than in the 2016 primaries and when he got to go up against Biden a few months ago, but almost anyone could have won that debate against Biden.
Kamala is a competent but relatively weak debater, a strong debater could easily run rings around her. But Trump has learned nothing, it seems, from past debate performances. He keeps making the same kinds of unforced errors and making himself look bad. He can't stop himself from getting defensive and rambling and bringing up stuff that most people don't care about, or even stuff that favors his opponent.
If he could have just stayed calm and focused, he would have this debate in the bag by now. Instead he is fumbling it. How the fuck can a man have nine years of experience at politics and political debating and not learn the simple lesson of staying calm and looking calm and tough when the context makes it the right decision, instead of getting flustered and emotional all the time?
Taylor Swift has officially endorsed Harris/Walz. Specifically citing both the debate and various AI memes of her voting for Trump, even referring to herself as a childless cat lady. It's Joever for Orange Man.
This is the actual meat-and-potatoes culture war topic coming out of the debate.
My model of a swiftie is a PMC or PMC-lite woman between 22-35 without much political awareness but who is very relative-status and fashion aware (in the cultural sense). She more than likely has a male significant other. This is where things get interesting.
Straight men who aren't hyper culturally attuned don't like Taylor Swift. Her songs are about break-ups and girl power, there's very little common ground there. Those same men generally don't care if their wife/girlfriend is a big swiftie - it's her thing, her hobby, go for it. But the Kamala endorsement is doing something tricky - it's, overnight, turning some portion of these fans into "politically aware." They will defend Kamala nearly as rabidly as Queen Taylor. Even a hint of disagreement could be met with "nuclear levels of sour."
The evidence for this was how women suddenly became die-hard Chiefs fans overnight after Swift began dating Travis Kelce and appearing at games (fun fact: If you watch chiefs games this year, and Travis Kelce scores a touchdown, the camera will cut to Taylor in the booth.). The online NFL community has a not-conspiracy-conspiracy that the NFL made sure the Chiefs won the superbowl last year because there was too much swiftie money on the line for them not to. I remember reading that Chief's merchandise sales more than doubled.
I don't get worried about political polarization between urban and rural, bachelors degree and non, even poor and rich. Those are the basic cleavages you see time and again through human history. Harsh polarization between men and women gets worrisome - this is how women end up with actually curtailed rights and the legal status of property of male relatives. Again - the worst victim of feminism is women.
I'm tired of this campaign and whoever wins in November, the country loses in a meaningful way. One of my effortposts last week was on the fact that neither candidate has any economic plan that's connected to reality. The one thing I'll be looking at with excitement (nervous in nature, however) is exit polls on men and women between roughly 20 - 50. If we see gaps of over 25%, strap in.
@Crowstep
Wouldn't the best historical example be the christianization of the Roman Empire, where women converted at much higher rates, and male Christians were much more often babtised by mothers or nurses?
Gibbon et al had plenty to say on the topic.
@hydroacetylene
In an extended sort of way, Gibbon would argue that, yes, the Christianization of the western Roman empire lead directly to its fall, which lead to the barbarian conquests and the dark ages. Where all kinds of bad things happened to the daughters of Roman citizen women in the roughness of the times.
The last part is pretty much Canon on a lot of the DR isn't it? "Modern Western Feminism, in being pro immigration and wussifying western men, will lead women to a future in which they are treated much worse than they are now, by destroying the western civilization which currently protects women's freedoms."
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