This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So, Kamala Harris has her book tour with the election retrospective. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it blames other people for a few things. But what drew some attention is that apparently some of the digs at fellow Democrats were notable, actually giving some the impression that she must be retiring from politics, though she's since tried to unburn some bridges.
What's drawing possibly the most attention is her description of the VP selection process. She said Josh Shapiro was too ambitious and had started for asking details about the VP's residence. She said that Tim Walz was actually her second choice, which is a bit hurtful if you're Tim. Eyebrows have been raised at this, but even more so at her reason for not choosing her first choice, who was Pete Buttigieg - literally described as the "ideal partner", if not for this one flaw, she says.
He's gay.
It did not really go over well. Buttigieg himself said he wished she had more faith in Americans. She was confronted about it by Maddow recently, here's a clip, asking her to elaborate, as it's "hard to hear."
I saw one twitter user summarize her answer as: "I didn’t not choose Pete because he was gay… I didn’t choose him because he is gay and I had 107 days."
This raises a number of questions. Was it right to be tactical like that? Was she correct about the tactics? Was it particularly absurd to say it out loud? Was this just an excuse, and there was some other reason? Is it hypocrisy by Harris? Is her point about having less time to run a campaign cope, or on some level a legitimate objection that such a short campaign must by nature adhere to different rules and strategies?
On the one hand I can see it. It was a short campaign, and the overarching philosophy was to play it safe. In retrospect, probably wrong. (And also an I told you so moment for me). In that light Harris is being perfectly consistent. On the other hand Kamala herself acknowledges that her own identity was potentially a barrier, is the concept of 'too much diversity to handle' a real thing, much less from those on the left? It is true that even Obama had his doubters about whether his campaign was doomed because of racism. Personally I don't buy that, I don't think it made much of a difference, but some people do think about it and still do think along the same lines. The flipside of that is also true, however: say she names Pete, would any alleged homophobia backfire onto Trump and his team, would it supercharge identity politics within the base, or is it a non-issue altogether?
My honest opinion? Again, like Obama: I don't think him being gay would matter. He's a great communicator, and would have been an asset. Although, he would need something of substance to explain, so it's not a full slam dunk, and I don't think it swings the election unless Pete gets to tack on his own new policies.
(There's other stuff to say about the memoir but I'll leave that for a different top-level post if people want to get into it.)
In 2023 the Dallas Cowboys faced the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. It was probably the career-best year for QB Dakota Prescott, they had a strong team. Unfortunately the niners were having a better year, behind Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy's establishing campaign, and in the 4th quarter the cowgirl's season was on the brink: they were down a touchdown with just six seconds to go 76 yards. So the Cowboys draw up a hilarious trick play involving putting their running back at center and everyone else out wide, including the rest of the offensive line, and the plan appeared to be to try and lateral a series of hook-and-ladder runs up the field for the touchdown. It, of course, didn't work. Elliott got steamrolled, the pressure got to Dak and he threw it like seven yards for a short gain that accomplished nothing. They looked silly and everyone around the NFL mocked it for a while.
Now as much as I love mocking the cowgirls, realistically their win probability from that position was less than 2.5%. There was a 97% chance that the 49ers were going to win, and the play they called in that situation was unlikely to work. So I always thought mocking them in that situation was a little silly, they just didn't stand much of a chance to begin with so you gotta try something.
In the same way, mocking Kamala for her electoral results for not winning the election is kind of silly, like mocking Ezekiel Elliott and Dakota Prescott, a fun thing to do if you hate their team but ultimately not really the fault of the players on the field. She focuses on the 107 days, but the bigger problem was being tied to an unpopular incumbent president without the advantage of incumbency. If TPTB had the chutzpah to just kill Biden, Kamala would have had a chance: she would have been the first female president, she would have had the advantage of being in power. But running as an incumbent vice president of a clearly failed (because not-running) president, she had all the disadvantages of a failed admin attached to her while having none of the advantages of having concrete accomplishments to point to. She couldn't avoid blame for any of the failures of the administration eg Gaza and Inflation; she couldn't claim credit for any administration successes, eg the economy not cratering post Covid. The Democrats were doomed in 2024 when they nominated Biden and picked Kamala in 2020. Biden was always going to get old, Kamala couldn't be skipped over without pissing off too many people. The result in 2024 was pretty much set in stone, and confirmed when Trump turned left in Pennsylvania.
Pick Pete, don't pick Pete; you were losing either way. Accept what happened and move on, don't try to blame others.
Now if we want to play "How did Kamala manage to lose so badly?" then there's room to analyze performance. But losing was always her fate.
I always felt, and said so loudly at the time, that just like you say if you're in a losing position you might as well try a trick play or a Hail Mary pass. It felt like an obvious mistake to bet on anti-Trump sentiment alone. Biden didn't beat Trump's re-election because he was someone other than Trump (or Clinton) - he won because people thought he seemed at least a halfway decent bet, even if nothing too special. The wrong lessons were learned... again. Crazy.
It depends on your goals. Kamala's realistic goal was always to lose the electoral but win the popular vote and provide enough support to hold onto at least one house of congress. She failed at these minimal goals as well, because she was a bad candidate and faced constraints on maneuver (can't go against Israel). Wild moves might increase your odds of winning the white house marginally, while costing you seats in congress or require touching third rails (Trans, blacks, olds, Israel).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If only there were a role given the power, nay the responsibility, to, under the 25th amendment to assemble a majority of the cabinet and compel a Congressional vote of confidence in the President. Not saying that wouldn't have been a long and potentially-destructive option, but the lack of motion there wasn't IMO a compelling story once Biden stepped aside.
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is, that is a double-edged sword: give the masses the chance to see President Kamala (as she takes over from Biden and finishes out his term) and maybe we all see how badly she does when given power. See Ford versus Carter for how being the VP who took over as President wasn't any advantage.
But maybe she does okay, or at least can shuffle off any blame onto the first half of the term when Biden was still in power. Faced with Trump, maybe the Democrats rally behind her as "well, no point changing horses in midstream".
Or maybe there is enough of a run-in to let them have an open primary and choose a different candidate. How gruntled will Kamala be then? Will she get behind the new choice for the sake of the party, or will there be splits and rival camps?
The difference with Ford is that Ford succeeded (as Speaker of the House, not VP) from a disgraced Nixon admin. Kamala, succeeding a dead Biden, would not have been concerned with those disgraces. Witness St. Charles of Kirk; we still avoid speaking ill of the dead. Still moreso a dead president, still more a dead president who was mediocre but ultimately started no wars and kept unemployment under 4.5% for effectively his entire term. She would have basked in the twin glows of succeeding a martyred president, and being the first woman in the white house.
The dems could never choose a different candidate after they picked Kamala for VP. They picked Kamala to be a BLACK WOMAN, and they couldn't be seen to skip over a BLACK WOMAN.
Just to correct the record (reference not intended), Biden only committed to picking a woman, not necessarily a Black woman. Two of the four on the shortlist were white. I know it's a punchier line to say, but it's not true.
Beyond that, it's true that passing over Kamala as the replacement would be a bad look, but that would be (not equally, but mostly) also true even if she were not. Vice Presidents are quite literally successors. And Biden in particular had bad personal feelings about not getting Obama's full support in the primary for 2016, so it seems extra unlikely that Biden would actually backstab Kamala in the same way, even on just a purely personal level (even if he was tempted).
I don't know that they committed in advance that "it must be a Black Woman" but I do know that during the Summer of George they picked a Black Woman, and that they absolutely thought about her status as a Black Woman when doing so. I don't think it makes any difference. Passing over the Black Woman who was his natural successor would have been a bad look with significant IdPol portions of the Democratic base, in a way that passing over Joe Biden wasn't.
It wasn't really Joe's call to make, once he had dropped out. The Democratic party circa July of last year isn't beholden to him on this.
Stop saying “I don’t know that they committed in advance to a Black woman”. This is factually wrong. Biden did not. Pointing to being aware of her being Black after the fact is backwards logic.
“They” did not pick her either. This is also wrong. Picking a VP (for the 2020 campaign) is one of the few decisions that voters and party insiders have remarkably little influence in. Yes, they sometimes run little low key pressure campaigns, but ultimately it’s an individual and personal decision. There’s no election. The nominee picks someone, and the party sucks it up. At least this started to be the case especially after 1944 when FDR rejected the party choice, and this solidified in the two decades or so after. In one single case way back in 1972, McGovern’s pick was partially forced out because he had undergone electroshock therapy so there was concern about fitness. That’s it. That’s the whole modern history. Otherwise it’s a rubber stamp.
Regarding the Biden dropout, an event you seem to unnecessarily conflate, Biden could endorse someone, or he could call for a mini primary. Most people seem to agree those were his only two options, and endorsing anyone other than Kamala was basically unthinkable (as I’ve argued on more than a merely idpol basis), so it’s at most three options: endorse Harris, call for primary while pushing Harris, and call for primary while sitting it out. Remember that as sitting president, guy with his name on the PACs and war chests, and effectively party leader, Biden did have the leverage to enforce his decision on a practical basis.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And pardoned Nixon, which was extremely unpopular at the time.
More options
Context Copy link
If Biden had dropped dead, sure. But the more likely path for President Kamala would have been Biden having to step down, so he would still be around while she finished out the term. Much more difficult to navigate that; a dead Biden would have meant "don't speak ill of the dead" and would have won her more time to distance herself from any unpopular decisions, but if Joe is still alive and kicking (and the Bidens every bit as bitter about power being yanked out of his grasp as they were this time round) then trying to go "no, that unpopular policy belongs firmly in the lap of my predecessor" would evoke "oh yeah? funny how you said nothing against it at the time, traitor!" from them or loyal ex-staffers.
That was the point of the hypothetical.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ford was never Speaker (he had previously been the house minority leader) and he was indeed made VPOTUS after Spiro Agnew resigned.
You're correct, I had forgotten this fact.
I'm not really pulling back on the point though. Ford was appointed VP during the Watergate process, he was never really part of a functioning Nixon administration.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That election was winnable. First of all, 107 days is plenty of time for an election - fellow non-Americans, back me up on this. The last 7 days are more important than everything else put together. Secondly, Kamala Harris made a lot of unforced errors in that campaign. She basically hid from the public and she had no iconic or easy-to-understand policy goals. Compare some policy ideas from better politicians, like Build the Wall and Medicare for All. Iconic, bold, and yet emblematic of what the politician stands for. Inseparable from the personality of the originator. Give me a policy goal that fits in 3 words and you've got a shot at winning.
I don't think you can really say she had no chance considering how out-of-touch the campaign was. I think if Justin Trudeau (slightly slimy former PM of Canada) was zapped into Kamala Harris' body Freaky Friday style he could have won that election pretty easily. Trump is an unpopular, divisive figure and he's never won an election against an opponent who wasn't historically unpopular. He is not a strong candidate. The Democrats lost by being even weaker, not because the contest was impossible.
Eh? Do American voters really have no attention span, they forget about inflation that happened a couple years ago?
Biden and Kamala should've just done proper economic management and they could easily win. Don't talk about building/repairing infrastructure, build it or at least seem to be building it. Lower the price of energy and make people feel richer. Make them be richer.
Don't let in millions of people through the Southern Border either.
But they couldn't do that because the structure of US governance means the govt struggles to do anything correctly, plus the nature of Democratic policy and staffers means they can't focus on easy wins or implement them if it means compromising on climate, DEI, mass immigration and so on... DEI is how Kamala got into power at all.
Voters can have a long memory for things that actually happened, and a shorter memory for campaign messages. Conventional wisdom among both professional politicians and academic political scientists is that voters look back 1-2 years, but not a full term, when evaluating incumbents' record on the economy (and, presumably, other real issues like crime).
One interesting and afaik formerly unstudied possibility that emerged from the 2024 election is that voter anger about inflation can persist a lot longer than voter anger about other bad economic outcomes (in particular, temporary high unemployment) because "prices are higher than I think they should be" is something voters feel in the present even if the inflation has stopped.
Part of the point Cummings was making about the Brexit campaign is that the nature of paid online advertising allows you to back-load your campaign into the last week in a way which was impossible with a campaign involving a lot of activist effort, and difficult with paid MSM advertising because the media is already saturated with political ads the week before the election.
Indeed, more studies are necessary to explore scenarios like "people see with their own eyes that they can now afford less than they used to", which flabbergasted the academic political scientists. Why aren't they satisfied with the rate of decline of their purchasing power slowing down? It is difficult to tell, but probably has something to do with right-wing propaganda.
I mean that the claim "voters respond to price levels, not to inflation rates" is a claim that could be empirically tested using the standard methods of political science research, and has not been.
The voters who swung hardest against Biden in 2024 were working class non-white voters - roughly the group who were most likely to see their incomes keep up with Bidenflation. Historically, voters were pissed off with inflation even when wages were rising faster than prices economy-wide, which is why Nixon felt the need to promise to "Whip Inflation Now". The "voters punish incumbents for inflation" effect appears to be distinct from the "voters punish incumbents for falling living standards" effect. Conventional wisdom among both politicians and political scientists (backed by empirical research which you may or may not believe) is that the electorate as a whole evaluates "falling living standards" based on the first derivative over the 1-2 years before the election. (Voters who personally suffer a large drop in living standards will sometimes turn against the party that was in government at the time for the rest of their lives - one of the advantages Reform have over the Conservatives in the UK is that voters in the North of England don't blame them for Thatcher). It is therefore a surprise if voters evaluate "inflation" based on the price level.
Reaction to inflation is less "a carton of eggs continues to be 0.1% of the monthly food budget tacked to X% of the total budget tacked to my current income, and so the increase in price is irrelevant to my increased income" and more "holy shit eggs $10 a carton and not $2.50." Much of that was bird flu culling, not inflation, so prices have come back down... but some of it was inflation, so they're still higher than a lot of people locked onto as "the reasonable price of eggs." And since the culling was happening at the same time as the inflation, it gets conflated in the brain for a lot of people.
Orange juice shrinkflation annoys me more, though, and I would suspect that plays a role too. "I'm visibly getting less for my money" is more instinctive than a budget calculation.
When the fuck did Oreo packages get so small?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know if this is a wise way to investigate hypotheses in political science. Even in psychology, medicine, and biology, where metrics are much easier to measure, and conditions are much more controlled, study replication rates are dismal. If you want to measure something this aggregated with no controls, godspeed.
What do you think you're proving with that?
Let's take an analogy, like the ol' race vs crime that comes up here. When you look for things like "crime by income and race" you get things like this that, for some mysterious reason, talk about the correlations of wage gaps and crime, and it's not until you go to advanced internet racists that you see a straightforward presentation of the relevant data. Same thing is happening with your proposed relationship with Bidenflation and increasing wages. And this is before you start taking into account things like "there was more than one issue that swung the election.
Politicians communicate to voters is not the same way that economists communicate with each other. You can't bring up an old campaign slogan to prove that ackshully the voters were angry about about (the wrong) line go up. Again, you'd have to show that the people he was targeting did actually see the wage increase, and even if they did, that does absolutely nothing to address the issue we're discussing. Is it really so hard to believe that "I can't afford as much stuff as I used to" would be a compelling electoral issue?
I will again point out that you have absolutely no controls in this attempt to measure correlations.
If, and only if, you are having Managerialism injected directly into your veins. Like how in Jesus' name do you expect people to forget "I used to be able to afford a lot more with the same salary > 2 years ago"?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Avoiding inflation was structurally impossible when Biden entered office, at best he could’ve kicked the can down the road a bit, but not enough to save his regime. He still would’ve gone senile, had a migrant crisis, etc.
He didn't have to have the migrant crisis; he could have done what Trump has done. Nor did he need to fight for Build Back Better.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know how well-supported this is (and it's obviously impossible to conduct double blind laboratory studies on election phenomena) but one of the things Dominic Cummings advocated for with the Brexit campaign was to save their money for a massive ad blitz in the week leading up to the vote. The logic is that the effect of an ad mostly wears off after a few days. You only need people to agree with you on the day of the election, so the best time to buy ads is right before.
They won, and AFAICT the British people really did support Brexit on election day and not a moment longer, so it's hard to argue with the results.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
All of these things were baked in by that point. Kamala had no policy because as VP she couldn't walk away from Biden, especially taking his people and endorsement. She had no policy because she ran away from the only thing she could have been said to be successful at (being a prosecutor) due to George Floyd and she couldn't flip flop again. She couldn't escape the things she did in that time like the quote that gave us the they/them ad.
She was simply an awful candidate, notwithstanding her (justified imo) insecurity and incompetence in the social realm.
More options
Context Copy link
I never blame it on the timeline. Rather the major problem is that she can't have
Because she was VP for four years and didn't try to do anything. She can't have policy goals separate from the Biden administration's policies. It just doesn't make any sense. She can't escape the questions of "Why haven't you done this already?" She's on the horns of the dilemma, she can be gored by "So you were powerless to advocate for your positions for four years?" on the left and "So you're saying Joe Biden was a bad president?" I don't see how you make any bold policy proclamations as Kamala Harris circa July of last year that don't fall victim to one of those two criticisms.
She could claim none of the Biden administrations' accomplishments, such as they were. She couldn't claim to be a steady hand, who had kept the country safe and the economy humming. She also couldn't claim to be a voice for change. Where did that leave her messaging-wise? What bold policy slogan could she have used?
In this alternate universe she would have some kind of sincere belief to advocate for. Obama clearly believes in socialized medicine or he wouldn't have fought for Obamacare. Trump clearly believes in barriers that separate the nation from the outside world or he wouldn't be so consistently interested in walls and tariffs. Kamala Harris doesn't seem to actually believe in anything, and that's the problem.
I think it's a lot harder to be a charismatic leader if you don't actually believe in anything.
That being said: Just pick one! Pick a direction and start directing people! She was running for President, people must have been beating down her door to give her policy proposals. She was VP for four years! Did she not have a single idea in four years?
To be honest, I don't think that would stick to a VP who was trying to spread their wings and fly in a new direction. The answer to that question is obviously "Because I was the Vice President, not the President." Everyone watching that clip would know that's what the answer is. This isn't an obscure point of political minutia, everyone knows the VP isn't allowed to go behind the President's back like that. It's an empty gotcha and I doubt it would resonate.
If- and this is the sticking point- if she actually stood for something, if Harris had hit the floor day 1 advocating for Medicare for All in a clear departure from Biden's policies, I think people would respect her for that. The problem is that she actually doesn't have any policy differences from Biden. My read on Kamala Harris is that she wanted to be President because she likes to be the top banana, not because there's something in particular she wants to do with the most powerful office in the world.
I think it was much longer than 4 years where she didn't have a single idea.
More options
Context Copy link
She believed in what can be, unburdened by what has been 😁
More options
Context Copy link
And what's the answer to the other question: "Was Joe Biden a bad president for not listening to you on Medicare For All/Free Palestine/Abolish Prisons/Annex Cuba?"
Kamala would never survive being disloyal to Biden. She would have been electorally doomed if she was perceived as disloyal.
Friendly media gave Harris easy opportunities to differentiate herself from Biden without being disloyal. The correct answer to "what would you have done differently?" is not "Nothing" - it is "With hindsight, we should have stopped the pandemic-era emergency spending as soon as everyone who wanted to be was vaccinated and pivoted to controlling inflation."
"So why didn't you do it?"
The problem is that, while the VP has no formal powers, a politician good enough to be President should be the kind of person who exerts power just by existing in the space.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Joe Biden was a great president, and we've worked together to achieve great things over the past four years. We delivered a great economy, we passed legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and Build Back Better that helped millions of Americans, and (<insert third thing here, I'm having trouble remembering what Biden did during his term>). I consider myself privileged to have been given four years to learn from one of the great statesmen of our time."
"But there are so many more things to do. As your nominee for President of the United States, I'm ready to build upon everything President Biden and I achieved together over the last four years. To that end, I am proud to introduce a new piece of legislation for consideration of Congress (or whatever you say when you do that), the Medicare for All Act, co-sponsored by my good friend Bernie Sanders. I believe that America is the greatest country in the world, and I believe that we can deliver healthcare to every single citizen of this great nation."
"It won't be easy. Trump and his Republicans are going to fight us on it every step of the way. That's why I need your help, America. I need you to come out on election day and give me the Democratic majority I need to get this bill through Congress. I need you to give me four more years! If you choose me to represent you as your president, I promise I will deliver healthcare for every - single - American!"
(Hold for applause from friendly L.A. or New York studio audience.)
No personal offense meant, but any time you start writing a fanfiction speech for a politician, just realize that one is wrong.
You are the one who asked. This is an answer to your question.
Step 1: Ask question.
Step 2: Get answer.
Step 3: Blue screen.
Step 4: Accuse interlocutor of writing fanfiction?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For what its worth, I agree with most of what you're saying. I think it would be trivially easy for a savvy politician to show that, while she respects Joe Biden and agrees with him on most things, there's still a few specific differences that she's going to focus on. Anyone who isn't completely brainrotted by partisan politics can handle that sort of nuance.
But... she was in sort of a unique situation where people were really unhappy with some things and Joe Biden was taking the blame. Covid, inflation, the fall of Kabul, and everything else bad, were all seriously tanking Biden's favorability ratings. I think it also could have been a valid campaign strategy to completely throw him under the bus, criticizing him strongly and presenting herself as a completely different president (even if her actual policies would have been pretty much the same as his). A savvy career politician like Biden would understand that winning elections is more important than being nice to him personally.
But in the end she did... nothing. "Nothing comes to mind." She just kinda floated along with the current and wasted the entire 107 days.
I don't think Biden would have stomached that. Throughout the process he was not willing to be a bullet magnet.
More options
Context Copy link
I think this sums it up. There are a lot of things she could have done, and if she had picked one of them and committed to it I think she'd have had a chance. But she didn't, so she didn't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link