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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   6571 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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I saw what happened in Broward County in Florida during the 2018 election, and the aftermath.

That was a close enough election that one County could have flipped most of the races. Probably did, in one case.

Since then, I refuse to discount the possibility of wanton fraud as a factor nationally anymore.

It is arguably a glaring, Death Star-esque weak spot in our National Democracy that the actual sanctity of vote counts is reliant totally on local officials who are not beholden to some larger national standard/oversight. We'd hope that with enough voter participation all the fraud will end up being a wash, but the challenge is that one party has control of the districts in large cities where larger scale fraud is easier to hide, while the other has a coalition based in less populous but overall more numerous localities.

Since then, I refuse to discount the possibility of wanton fraud as a factor nationally anymore.

I mean, seeing what happened in Minnesota, holding your hand over your heart and swearing that no political operatives or voting bloc were ever involved ever at all in anything remotely dodgy is going to leave you with egg on your face.

I expect a certain level of mild corruption in any election in any country. Right now we've got both Texas and California competing as to who can be "most partisan gerrymandering in the history of the state". So all we can really expect is that most elections will be mostly honest, with any manipulating within small and manageable levels.

Minnesota providing an ongoing, real time example of most of the bad things that righties say happen when Democrats are in charge has been interesting to me.

Then you remember that they used Tim Walz as their answer to the Trump problem. Very odd they'd want to hold his state out as an example like that?

Kamala Harris just had no luck, or maybe no political instincts. She picked ol' Tim there mainly (what I've gathered from reading various reports) because he was willing to play second fiddle to her, while the likes of Shapiro were judged too ambitious (read: too much of a threat to her by comparison).

They wanted "redneck lite" and they got it, and now here he is: the much-touted successful smart governor with impeccable liberal instincts now shown to be presiding over multi-million dollar scamming where either he didn't know about it (doesn't look good) or it was known about but there was pressure to keep it covered up (looks even worse).

Doesn't look good for her if she's really going to run for governor of California. Then you have Gavin Newsom's social media putting out the likes of this which honestly makes my brain hurt trying to work out what the heck is going on (he was at some NYT bunfight? and there was criticism of how he crossed his legs? so this is meant to be a joke referencing that?)

That tracks.

Harris seems like the type who 'knew' she needed an old White dude on the ticket... but was ABSOLUTELY unwilling to accept someone who might overshadow her, like Newsom. She had to put up with being under Biden, after all.

When in reality, being in someone's shadow was the main thing that kept her viable.

I'm also willing to entertain the hypothesis that he was chosen in part so that when Kamala won, they could use FedGov power to cover up the problem/immunize him from consequences.

I'm also willing to entertain the hypothesis that he was chosen in part so that when Kamala won, they could use FedGov power to cover up the problem/immunize him from consequences.

I wish they were that efficient. That the scandal came out seems to have taken Walz etc. by surprise, so I don't think there was that much forward planning around "when I am elected, as of course I shall be, then we fix your little problem Tim, now hold my handbag for me while I speechify at this bunch of white liberal women".

I still haven't managed to finish reading her "107 Days" book, but searching through it on Kindle here's pretty much why she picked Walz:

He said he had no ambition to be president, that his aim as vice president would be doing meaningful work to improve people’s lives. It’s no bad thing for a vice president to want to be president, unless that ambition plays a corrosive role in the relationship and causes disloyalty. That wouldn’t be an issue with Tim. He had no fixed ideas about what the role of vice president should be, saying he would do whatever I found was most useful for him to do.

...To get a young person’s opinion, I called my godson, Alexander Hudlin, seventeen years old and very much a creature of the zeitgeist. He was for Walz. “Auntie, I like him.” [As an aside, I am very doubtful about any 17 year old who is interested in some old white guy governor of some state in flyover country. This little anecdote is a bit too pat for me to believe.]

My senior staff, to a person, strongly favored Tim.

...Maya and Tony were staying with us. They both liked Walz. Maya especially liked the fact that he was not trying to be anything but the best VP for her sister: “He’s loyal, he’ll have your back on the trail, and it’s clear that you like him,” she said.

...Our first encounter [Kamala meeting Walz' wife] was in the locker room of the Temple University gym, appropriate enough for Coach Walz. It was my idea for the campaign to lean into Tim’s brand as coach, a role that conveys both strength and caring. Tim was a relative unknown nationally, but there was so much about him that would be familiar to people’s everyday relationships and experiences. Not many people have met an astronaut, and they might not love politicians, but most people can relate to a high school coach. And with early voting starting in forty-five days, that immediate connection was important. Knowing that, I’d asked the team to print up COACH signs that people could hold up at rallies.

...My first job that night was to introduce Tim Walz to the country. This was not hard: the man has a biography that could provide scripts for several Hallmark movies. I led with how he’d coached a perennially losing high school football team—they hadn’t scored a single touchdown in the first six weeks of the season before he became coach—to winning the state championship.

I went on to tell the story of how a student who wanted to start the first gay-straight alliance at the school had gone to this storied football coach to ask for his support. Walz immediately agreed to become the group’s faculty adviser. Tim said he thought it would send a message of inclusion if the adviser was a football coach, a soldier, straight, and married.

...A local farmer introduced Tim as “a lifelong Midwesterner” who “understands rural America.” Tim proved it as he spoke, connecting to the enthusiastic crowd and finding a Midwestern cadence in which to talk about reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and how Trump’s Republicans infringed on basic freedoms.

And once again, why the flip did they not listen to Bill? The guy has bucketloads of charisma, also navigated successfully the image of being a hick from the sticks, and knows how to win elections:

Bill Clinton, speaking for the twelfth time at a Democratic convention, delivered firm words. Like the cop who arrives at the door of a rowdy party, he wanted the music turned down a little. We were getting euphoric too soon, he warned. “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen,” he said, clearly referring to Hillary’s 2016 loss to Trump. Don’t get “distracted by phony issues,” he admonished. “Never underestimate your adversary.”

Bill Clinton knows how to weave a tale. He’s one of the best storytellers in modern politics. And why was I surprised that this night, instead of his allotted twelve minutes, he would speak for twenty-nine? He wasn’t the only speaker who went long. Once again, the keynote speaker, Tim Walz, was pushed partially out of prime time in the East.

Which was too bad, because Tim gave a great speech, introducing himself to the country, making the case for me, attacking Trump on abortion and on Project 2025, presenting the values of our campaign by calling on specific examples from his own life.

Also she is really salty about J.D. Vance being the rival redneck and campaigning successfully by - get this for wicked underhand tricks - being moderate in the debate with Walz! Oh, the effrontery! How could poor, decent, honest, aw-shucks Tim ever compete with some slick Yale graduate pal of Silicon Valley billionaires?

It was not a comfortable role for him. He had fretted from the outset that he wasn’t a good debater. I’d discounted his concerns. He was so quick and pithy in front of the crowds at our rallies, I thought he’d bring those qualities to the podium. He’d prepared with Pete Buttigieg, a consummate debater, and I thought his big heart and his good humor would counter J. D. Vance’s malice and pessimism.

But J. D. Vance is a shape-shifter. And a shifty guy. He understood that his default meanness wouldn’t play against Tim Walz’s sunny disposition and patent decency. Throughout the debate, he toned the anger and the insults way down. As Van Jones later remarked, he sane-washed the crazy. There were no cat ladies, no pet-eating Haitians, no personal insults. Just a mild-mannered, aw-shucks Appalachian pretending he had a lot of common ground with that nice Midwestern coach.

When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, “What is happening?”

I told the television screen: “You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.”

She doesn't like J.D. because he correctly forecast the election result 🤣

I got into my motorcade, but we weren’t pulling out. I asked Max why we weren’t leaving. That was when I learned we were being held up by J. D. Vance. He was out of his car and walking toward Air Force Two, in violation of every rule of security and protocol.

I later learned that he told reporters he was there because “I just wanted to check out my future plane.”

I later learned that he told reporters he was there because “I just wanted to check out my future plane.”

She (and/or the ghostwriter) is so good at making her enemies sound awesome.

I know! I'm only a few chapters in, but every time she seethes about Vance it's patently obvious that the Democrats had no answer to him. Tim was very definitely not the answer.

The amount of self-congratulation she engages in is also phenomenal, it's equally clear that this book was intended to be "Why It Wasn't My Fault". She's so desperate to demonstrate that she was omnicompetent, the best possible candidate because she had the greatest appeal to every single person in the country, she had all these relatable life experiences she could have shared if only they had enough time to run a proper campaign, that she occasionally veers into the territory of "Uh, you didn't really need to include that detail, Kamala":

We headed out of the city, through woods draped with Spanish moss and lush wetlands, to Liberty County High School in Hinesville, where the school’s marching band played for us. I told the band members that I, too, had been in my school band. I played everything from the French horn to the kettle drum. With the horn players, I shared that I’d given up the horn because it involved entirely too much spit. Tim and some of my team members later said that they were surprised to learn about my onetime musical prowess. It was another example of how there were so many more ways to connect with people, if I’d only had more time.

Or, one might say, that telling a bunch of 17 year olds how you gave up band back in high school because it was too spitty isn't going to win many votes 🤣 (And of course, SuperKamala couldn't just play one instrument, it had to be a gamut of them).

I've really got to finish this book, there are so many plums to pull out, it's just I have to stop every now and then to take a breath from the relentless "I'm wonderful, I'm special, I'm marvellous, I'm smart, everyone loves me, everyone agrees I'm simply the best, better than all the rest (it's not my fault we lost! it's not, it's not!!)".

With the horn players, I shared that I’d given up the horn because it involved entirely too much spit.

Given Willie Brown, too much spit being involved didn't get her to give up playing all horns. Hey-o!

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