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Notes -
The Political Horse Race Two Weeks Out
Apologies to our foreign or American friends who may be bored by the non-stop election coverage, but I just can't get enough.
A couple weeks ago I predicted with 50% confidence (the ultimate in weasly predictions) that we'd see an October surprise timed for maximum damage to the Trump campaign. I think we just saw the attempt. It was dumb as you could expect.
Yesterday, nearly every single media outlet in the country ran the same story. The story? John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, supposedly once said that Trump told him "Well, Hitler did a lot of good things". Kelly also said something about Trump praising Hitler's generals. The story was first reported in 2021. It was denied by Trump the next day.
Somehow, three years later, it was front page news in nearly every mainstream outlet. It was an incredible example of media discipline and coordination. See for yourself:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=trump%20hitler%20comments
So... did it land? No I don't think so. Comparing people to Hitler is the oldest game in the book. Does anyone remember the Lyndon Larouche campaigners with their Obama-as-Hitler posters? Moreover, we've heard everything about Trump. 99% of people have made up their mind already. And Trump is also omnipresent. Today's Hitler story is yesterday's news as Trump appears on Rogan or works at McDonald's or eats a burrito bowl or something.
Harris tried to make the story work. In between cringe videos of her latest town hall appearance, her Twitter account tweeted this:
So how are the betting markets taking it? Well, there were a couple more flash crashes in Trump shares on Polymarket. Around midnight, his odds briefly dipped under 60%. Was it manipulation? I don't think so. To paraphrase Stanley Druckenmiller, sometimes it's better to just buy the rumor and then ask questions later. Maybe it was worth a gamble to see if the attack stuck.
As of right now, Trump is up near 65% again. Interestingly, his chances of winning the popular vote have crept up to about 40%. In polls, according to Real Clear Politics, Harris's nationwide lead has fallen to 0.3%, while Trump maintains a 0.9% edge in the seven swing states.
It really is too close to call at this point. Will we see a "real" October surprise against Trump? It feels unlikely. There just isn't any more unspent ammunition. Will the Trump campaign produce some valuable oppo research against Harris? Again, unlikely, since the media wouldn't report on it anyway.
The election is 12 days out, and many ballots have already been cast.
I guess I'll just use this thread to say: I fucking hate this election.
I hate my choices. I hate having to choose which shitty option might taste slightly less like shit. I hate choosing from two stupid, bumbling mediocre embarrassments and knowing one of them is going to be the fucking President of the United States of America. "Vote for the lesser of two evils" has been a motto representing resigned acceptance of political reality my entire life (I have the Cthulhu for President t-shirt and everything), but never have I felt it so keenly. They're both bad and repulsive, and I honestly don't know which of them will actually be worse for the country because I expect either of them to be terrible. I have said before I probably won't even vote, for the first time since I turned 18. (At least for president; I'll still probably vote for local/state candidates.)
And it's entirely the fault of both parties for putting us here. The Republicans, for letting MAGA cultists take over the party and drive all serious grown-ups out, and the Democrats, for letting bad faith woke identity politics take over everything. And both of them, for turning us into a gerontocracy that very effectively shuts younger candidates out before they can even sniff a primary.
If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I guess it would be Kamala. But I might take the bullet instead.
I think Trump will be more damaging to the economy, and I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world. I think he will be an embarrassment who fails to accomplish any of the things his followers think he will (just like last time) and what he does accomplish he will fuck up. I think Harris will continue our inflationary money-isn't-real spiral into economic doom, hand out more gobs of cash to whatever identity group is most effective at yelling and screaming, and I think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will roll her like a floured chicken breast. She's a midwit mediocrity who should never have come within line of sight of the Presidency, and I cannot believe how quickly I watched people in real time shift vibes to Kamala-enthusiasm, Kamalanation, Kamala is brat (W. T. F????) and pretend they had always been enthusiastic about her. Way back in 2019, when she was being floated as a Democratic candidate and I knew little about her, I admit I was tepidly favorable towards her because she seemed like maybe the least bad of a mediocre lot, but nothing she's done since has impressed, and she seems like Generic Extruded Political Product.
But, you know, Trump. I do not have TDS, I do not think he is Literally Hitler, but I do think he's a con, a huckster, an embarrassing buffoon who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life. I think he totally would become an absolute dictator if he could manage it, but it would require too much effort and political acumen and cunning, which he does not have. He has a huge personality and charisma, and some people think that translates into him being a skilled politician. He's not. He's got performer's instincts and a gift for graft. This doesn't really make him unique among American presidents, but it makes him uniquely bad in this time and place.
This sucks.
So I will repeat what I said a few weeks ago: my only consolation is going to be breaking out the popcorn and watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth post-election night. If Kamala wins, I will read the Motte and other places for the rage, the futile fist-waving, the impotent Internet tough-guy promises to Res1st and Retrn and start a civil war or some shit. If Trump wins, I will read Twitter for the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the hordes of smug, self-righteous fucks driven to existential despair, and I will drink their tears.
This is not nice, it is not charitable, it is not noble. It is petty and mean and beneath me. It is my coping mechanism, because this election sucks.
This is basically where I'm at. My vote doesn't matter, but it's going to Kamala (unless I get particularly annoyed at something in the next week). Regardless, it's a bad sign for our institutions that these are the choices we've been given.
My personal wish casting is Republicans take the legislative branch, to make all of her policy platform stillborn. And she wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote (appearing slightly more likely in recent polls). The wailing and gnashing of teeth from everyone would be amazing.
I wouldn't count on it. The Republicans in the legislative branch have purposely thrown away their majority, and caved on every significant issue the Uniparty truly wanted. FISA courts stayed, endless money for foreign wars stayed.
I wouldn't count on them to serve as any significant check in Kamala's agenda, especially the worst parts of that the Uniparty clearly wants. "Misinformation" and "Hate speech" laws, further weaponization of the DOJ against political opponents like Musk, endless wars, a "path to citizenship" for all the illegals they've shipped to battleground states and/or quietly allowing illegals to vote by making it impossible to check the citizenship status of voters or coercing Soros DA's from prosecuting them.
They only way to block a Kamala/Uniparty agenda is if Trump is butt in seat in the Oval Office.
I agree that all of those things are bad, and I suspect some of them will be worse 4 years from now even in my "ideal" scenario.
What I don't see is Trump effectively pushing back against them. His election will cause a refocusing of the progressive movement, who will make effective state-level efforts and sabotage his leadership of the federal government. But they'll barely need to do anything to sabotage Trump, since he's pretty much self-sabotaging: he's lazy and erratic, and although he has all the right enemies, he has all the wrong enemies too.
Why not? Look at the four years we already had with him. Yes, the generals rolled Trump and lied to him or sabotaged pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan. But they weren't able to talk him into new wars. Try as they might to stop it, Trump successfully fixed the border. Even without a full wall, the remain in Mexico policy was an enormous success getting numbers down and discouraging the attempt. There was relative peace in the Middle East, and Trump's executive actions kept Iran boxed in and without funds to create proxy wars all around Israel.
No, we didn't get the CIA shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered in the wind. I think we can largely blame Pompeo for that, and Trump will have better people around him this time. Yeah, we still got massive deep state censorship in violation of the 1st amendment. But that was before Elon bought Twitter.
We may not get mass deportations in another Trump admin. But I'd expect him to fix the border same as he did before. I'd expect Iran will be boxed in again as best as can be done, denying them assets to fund proxy wars. I'd expect no new wars, and maybe even having one or two buttoned up. Might look similar to Biden's pullout from Afghanistan, but I'll take what I can get. That's on the generals IMHO.
Compare where we were in 2017 to where we were in 2021. Was the state more or less intrusive into our lives?
Now, you might say that's unfair, and there were new circumstances that gave the state more opportunities to seize control that Trump was unable to effectively push against. And yes: that's exactly my point. Even his greatest success during the pandemic (getting the vaccine developed ASAP) was seized from him by bureaucrats who delayed its release until after the election for the sake of "political neutrality."
Inevitably, there will be new circumstances that arise from now until 2028. The state will maneuver around him, and he'll just flail around at best. War with China? We need copious controls to make sure no one is misled by misinformation. New pandemic? Now we know better how to do a real shutdown for public health. Etc.
That trend is inevitable, regardless of who's in office. My belief is that Trump's flailing will likelier hurt the market and my 401k worse than Kamala's empty suit.
Somehow I don’t see Trump taxing unrealized gains. So that’s one mark against your 401k
Trump undoing this terrible, actually destructive tax on theoretical non-real numbers would be worth the entire 4 years. And I'm not just talking about proposed future taxes. I mean the CAMT that was baked into the IRA of 2022. It's brain-dead tax policy and will make America a worse place to live.
I said the same thing about the Trump tax cuts the first time around: it was worth it all.
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