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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26039 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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Just a thought about Vance's chances for presidency. On the one hand his electoral chances are slipping. On the other hand he has the greatest opportunity anybody will ever have of becoming the "American Caesar": 25A Trump, attest to the foreign subversion of US government, invoke any and all power under the sun (all the ones Abraham Lincoln used, any new ones since then), ignore the courts, air out the dirty laundry to stir the masses, orchestrate mass FARA surveillance and prosecution campaign (remember FARA allows you to surveil anyone who is a degree of separation from the target), sue for peace with Iran with an offer that throws Israel under the bus.

It won't happen, but Vance actually has the crisis at his fingertips to become one of the great American historical figures. Instead he'll take the flak for the war and Rubio I guess will be the GOP nominee.

My prediction is Marco Rubio will eat Vance alive in a primary. I know he previously said he wouldn't run against Vance. That's not some enforceable oath or promise.

Crazy talk here, I know, but what do you think of a possible deal where Vance runs for president and picks Rubio as his VP, positioning him for a run at the big job himself later?

Marco Rubio will be in his sixties after an eight year Vance presidency, and he's already been waiting a while. Americans like to complain about how old their politicians are and he likely knows this, plus he's almost certainly more popular among the broader public than Vance. He doesn't have a lot of reason to take that deal.

I suppose it depends if he thinks he can win the next election as the Republican candidate, or if Vance has a better chance.

Worst of all worlds would be to go on his own, win the nomination, then get creamed in the election. Vance would be young enough still to try again in 2032 and run on "you tried Rubio and he fell on his face at the polls".

The presidency tends to flip flop because Americans periodically vote for change.

I wouldn’t accept a later run if I were him.

Oswald Mosley had a rousing speech about standing at the precipice of history. Which for the most optimistic of us might be where we imagine JD Vance is standing. I took the liberty of slightly editing it to fit America. Though it sounds a lot better after being edited by what appears to be some Polish nationalist living in the UK.

You're living in a historical hour. Do remember that always, live in that sense, I beg of you, of history and of destiny.

When that period comes to be written and men look back at it, if we did right, if we stood firm, if we stood greatly, it will be a matter of honour and veneration for generations to come. I could not ask to live at any other moment of history than this, because never has mankind, never has the human species been confronted with such possibilities, with such choices of disaster, or of greater heights and greater glories.

My friends, do live in that sense that you are American, that you come from people who have faced tremendous odds again and again. That much is against you, but you've got within you that will, that spirit above all, that faith and that belief which will lead the generations to come to look back at you in the pages of history with the proud words to America, to Europe, to the world, they were true!

Sadly, if one thinks back to Mosley's day, none then could even imagine just how much worse things could and would get. In that sense JD Vance has not demonstrated any characteristic that would lead one to think he is anything other than a less charismatic Trump. And things might get a lot worse than we think.

I would withhold any positivity until he proclaims he will personally start executing the worst violent criminals in the US right on the White House front lawn with a gold plated 1911. Or maybe I've been seeing to many rage baits here and on X about criminals with mile long records getting released again and again for some mystical reason. In any case, he has to do something. Being as he is, I can't see it as being enough.

Vance's chances are high, but the most important thing I think is Republicans to have real primaries. It is best if they learn from the other party's mistakes.

He can be, from time to time, a captivating speaker from prepared notes. But in other situations he comes off as really, really unlikeable, which is a death sentence for a politician seeking the presidency in this age. That's as rational as women who say a guy gave them the "ick", but that's how most operate.

Vance just isn’t personally charismatic. Yes, he beat that stupid oaf moron Walz, but so could almost anyone. Absent an upset Newsom will win if he wins the nomination, probably even against Tucker (who I doubt will run).

Newsom has a profound liability in needing to run against his record as chief exec of a state renowned for mismanagement, however. I agree that the GOP could screw the pooch enough to lose to him, but he's not a particularly strong candidate.

What exactly is Newsom's selling point? If you want some charismatic Obama stand-in surely the party is full of many such pretenders who don't have absolutely awful records* and don't come across as a slimy cyberpunk mayor? They're all trying to be that guy now.

The Democratic party is still unpopular now despite Trump rampaging. People don't like what it stands for. Newsom is slick, but he can't actually change the past and what he did.

If it's just that Trump will have sunk the GOP's chances then charisma shouldn't factor into it (and presumably Democrats will pick someone they think the general public will vote for, like they did with Biden)

* Note that Obama himself had a thin resume and that was a good thing.

Have to admit, I do like Newsom's brass neck in rewriting his personal history to try and present himself as relatable (or maybe simply to get some distance given the Democratic party's current 'eat the rich' stance) to we ordinary little people, talking about how he was/is dyslexic and had a hardscrabble upbringing due to his divorced mom having to work two jobs.

Yeah, that's because your dad was a deadbeat, Gavin, and we don't all get to hang out with the Gettys because our dad - who is too mean to pay proper child support - instead introduces us to useful contacts among the mega-rich to make up for that.

I don't trust the guy, but the audacity there is nearly admirable. "I was pretty much broke growing up, I only got to visit the homes of billionaires and hang out with them instead of living in one such of our own".

Yes, he beat that stupid oaf moron Walz, but so could almost anyone.

Possibly, but Kamala is so funny in her memoir because she is so salty over the lapdog she picked, because he would be a lapdog, not being able to win against that rascally scoundrel cad Vance:

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.”

There was not supposed to be any on-air fact-checking in this debate, as there had been in mine. But the moderators did correct Vance twice, on the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change and on the legal immigration status of Haitians in Springfield.

“The rules were you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance complained petulantly, in a flash of his more familiar persona.

Tim fell into a pattern of defending his record as a governor. Then he fumbled his answer when the moderator, predictably, questioned why he had claimed to be in Hong Kong during the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. Tim had been on his way to teach in China that summer but hadn’t yet left the United States on the date of the massacre. Instead of simply stating that he’d gotten his dates mixed up, but that being in China during a period of human rights oppression had profoundly influenced him, he talked about biking in Nebraska.

The following weekend, Saturday Night Live did a sketch in which actors posed as Doug and me, sitting on our couch, watching the debate. While I did not in fact spit out wine, it was otherwise uncanny in its portrait of our evening.

Tim felt bad that he hadn’t done better. I reassured him that the election would not be won or lost on account of that debate, and in fact it had a negligible effect on our polling.

In choosing Tim, I thought that as a second-term governor and twelve-year congressman he would know what he was getting into. In hindsight, how could anyone?

Thanks for the excerpt. This is amazing. JD Vance is so wicked, so vile as to sink to an even lower and more debased level as to be reasonable, agreeable and pleasant.

Imagine the level of depravity in his low, cunning, mind to debase himself so as to be polite and reasonable in a debate! Is there no iniquity too foul and black that the GOP will not sink to?

Newsom has consistently underperformed a generic Democrat in California. Not nearly as bad as Kamala, but still trailing other Democrats.

The issue is that (recent) California politics rewards different traits than more partisan-competitive states. It is incredibly cutthroat and involves genuine skill, but it is much more cloak and dagger and focused on managing the groups and building alliances with other politicians. These have some carryover to national elections, but it would be much smarter for Democrats to select someone whose skill set involves winning competitive elections.

Then again, he's tall and has a good head of hair, and that may well be enough if the economy or the war go south.

I think when we have posts like this where a poster calls a series of broadly successful politicians uncharismatic and/or stupid, we should make it an expectation that the poster cites some examples of politicians they do think are charismatic. Somebody has to have charisma and intelligence to have reached the top in a cutthroat hierarchical game filled with competitors. They didn't all luck into becoming senators and governors and vice presidential candidates.

This place is feeling like one of those barbershops where every modern athlete sucks and couldn't carry the jockstrap of [guy from when the barber was a kid].

where a poster calls a series of broadly successful politicians uncharismatic and/or stupid

Let me be clearer. I don’t think Walz came across as intelligent in the debate and in interviews generally. Vance is very intelligent (Yale Law, the Thiel thing, with his background, I don’t think that’s deniable) but has an off-putting personality, smarmy (even now when defending the president) and is not particularly attractive.

There are plenty of successful politicians who are either uncharismatic or unintelligent. Plenty of European and Asian countries (democracies) have uncharismatic but smart leaders. And there have been charismatic but dumb leaders, too. Boris Johnson probably isn’t stupid but was academically poor (graduating with the lowest passing grade in the British college system); JFK wasn’t particularly smart.

I always thought Obama sounded exactly like a mediocre adjunct law professor and could never see any charisma, but given his successes, I'm obviously the wrong one.

You wouldn’t want to be friends with college law professor Obama because he would be the most annoying “um akshually” midwit at the table. That said, he could read a speech well and had good speechwriters throughout, stuck to the script, and could practice the tone shift needed to speak to both black and white audiences in a plausible and mostly likeable way. The arrogance was and is there under the surface (and seeps through the page in the texts he semi or largely writes himself), but he lacks the overt greasiness of Vance in my opinion.

I hate to dig into your personal life, but what sort of academic qualifications do you have that you can describe an Ivy League law school professor as a "midwit"?

I made the same conclusion, and based it off a series of article from 15 years ago, written by his professors, ostensibly as a tribute.

Do you know how he got that job? According to the guy who recruited him (note the recruited), the process began at a meeting where someone said "Hey, we're a law school in Chicago, a super black city, and we have basically no black faculty. Maybe we should do something about that?" And someone else said "I hear the kid running the Harvard Law review this year is black." "Great, go hire him."

I had heard for years that he was the only editor of the HLR to never write an article. One of his own spokesmen confirmed that, as referenced in this bizarre time-traveling Politico article that claims to have found a "lost" Obama article, without ever getting around to mentioning how it was found.

Anyway, Chicago hired him without actually having a real spot, so they paid him for a few years to take a sabbatical (before ever actually doing any law professor work) so he could write a book on constitutional law. At the end of that time period, what he purportedly handed in was his autobiography, Dreams from my Father. And UChicago just... took that.

That was a recurring theme in those retrospectives written when he was still new and fresh. The man never found a room he couldn't walk into and instantly have every irresponsible white progressive go "Wow, he's so handsome and articulate and black! That guy's getting an A!"

And the kicker is, I think Obama is actually a smart guy. The few ideas he bothered to have were actually pretty good. But the way his professors and mentors talked about him, no one ever felt the need to push or challenge him. Even just make him do the standard work. He's kind of the epitome of what Vivek crashed out about the Christmas before last, the Zack from Saved by the Bell guy who skated through on raw charisma, and could have probably benefited from some more serious study time. Maybe then he wouldn't have had to resort to regurgitating bong-circle Marxism on the rare occasions where he was pressed for a real answer.

Worse ones, of course.

He was never a professor. He was a lecturer at University of Chicago. This may seem like splitting hairs, but there is a gulf between lecturers and professors.

Even worse, he was a rising activist/politician using the lecturing position as a cushy gig that gave him 1) time and free interns/research assistants to write his first memoir; and 2) a captive audience of students he could recruit into the Chicago Democratic political machine.

Obama never published anything academic beyond co-authoring a couple mediocre law review articles no one has ever cited. And despite being a world famous celebrity who taught at U Chicago Law School for twelve years, I've never once heard of an attorney praising him as a professor. I know people who were at U Chicago during that span of time, and my impression is that he was a complete non-entity. Liked by students because he was a "cool" young professor who smoked cigarettes and talked about lefty politics and taught an easy, blow-off class. But not a meaningful contributor to the academic community.

About what I expect from a lecturer. Not an academic or a researcher. Only responsibilities are to teach a class.

The lecturers I'm familiar with are rather wretched. They couldn't get into a research position as a professor and this is a bad second option. They are paid little and lack stable employment. Maybe Obama was a very well off lecturer with student assistants and a decent wage. Or he wisely married another lawyer who stayed working at a law firm.

And while the University of Chicago is Ivy-tier academically, and covered with physical ivy, it is not an Ivy League university - that's purely restricted to the Northeastern US.

Ditto that when People magazine called Bill Clinton the sexiest man alive back in the day, though I'm a straight dude so that probably has a lot to do with it.

Bill Clinton is incontrovertible evidence of the sheer power of charisma. The man looks like a corrupt cartoon mayor character named Potato McDrunkie, yet the near universal consensus of people who've met him personally is that he's almost superhumanly charming.

a cartoon corrupt mayor character named Potato McDrunkie

Should I be offended at racial stereotyping there? 🤣

I agree, Bill has charisma by the shedload, and it's part of why Hillary failed in her endeavours, she comes across as even more robotic and schoolmarmish when it's Bill's effortless charm standing beside her. I never trusted him an inch, but it's no wonder he went into politics, he could indeed charm the birds out of the trees.

Hand to god, I only realized how anti-Irish it looks after posting. Typically, I try to keep my Irish bigotry nice and subtle. I was really just commenting on the fact that Bill Clinton looks like an alcoholic and also looks like a human potato.

Bill Clinton looks like an alcoholic and also looks like a human potato.

Not helping, given that Bill:

(1) claimed Irish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (though that is probably more Ulster Irish, given the tenuous roots in Co. Fermanagh)

(2) William Cobbett had strong opinions on the Irish and spuds, and how if the English rural labourers were brought to live on potatoes then they too would be degraded to the level of the Irish:

Little time need be spent in dwelling on the necessity of this article to all families; though, on account of the modern custom of using potatoes to supply the place of bread, it seems necessary to say a few words here on the subject, which, in another work I have so amply, and, I think, so triumphantly discussed. I am the more disposed to revive the subject for a moment, in this place, from having read, in the evidence recently given before the Agricultural Committee, that many labourers, especially in the West of England, use potatoes instead of bread to a very great extent. And I find, from the same evidence, that it is the custom to allot to labourers “a potatoe ground” in part payment of their wages! This has a tendency to bring English labourers down to the state of the Irish, whose mode of living, as to food, is but one remove from that of the pig, and of the ill-fed pig too.

I was, in reading the above-mentioned Evidence, glad to find, that Mr. Edward Wakefield, the best informed and most candid of all the witnesses, gave it as his opinion, that the increase which had taken place in the cultivation of potatoes was “injurious to the country;” an opinion which must, I think, be adopted by every one who takes the trouble to reflect a little upon the subject. For leaving out of the question the slovenly and beastly habits engendered amongst the labouring classes by constantly lifting their principal food at once out of the earth to their mouths, by eating without the necessity of any implements other than the hands and the teeth, and by dispensing with everything requiring skill in the preparation of the food, and requiring cleanliness in its consumption or preservation; leaving these out of the question, though they are all matters of great moment, when we consider their effects in the rearing of a family, we shall find, that, in mere quantity of food, that is to say of nourishment, bread is the preferable diet.

...Then comes the expense of cooking. The thirty-two bushels of wheat, supposing a bushel to be baked at a time, (which would be the case in a large family,) would demand thirty-two heatings of the oven. Suppose a bushel of potatoes to be cooked every day in order to supply the place of this bread, then we have nine hundred boilings of the pot, unless cold potatoes be eaten at some of the meals; and, in that case, the diet must be cheering indeed! Think of the labour; think of the time; think of all the peelings and scrapings and washings and messings attending these nine hundred boilings of the pot! For it must be a considerable time before English people can be brought to eat potatoes in the Irish style; that is to say, scratch them out of the earth with their paws, toss them into a pot without washing, and when boiled, turn them out upon a dirty board, and then sit round that board, peel the skin and dirt from one at a time and eat the inside. Mr. Curwen was delighted with “Irish hospitality,” because the people there receive no parish relief; upon which I can only say, that I wish him the exclusive benefit of such hospitality.

...[This was written in 1821. Now (1823) we have had the experience of 1822, when, for the first time, the world saw a considerable part of a people, plunged into all the horrors of famine, at a moment when the government of that nation declared food to be abundant! Yes, the year 1822 saw Ireland in this state; saw the people of whole parishes receiving the extreme unction preparatory to yielding up their breath for want of food; and this while large exports of meat and flour were taking place in that country! But horrible as this was, disgraceful as it was to the name of Ireland, it was attended with this good effect: it brought out, from many members of Parliament (in their places,) and from the public in general, the acknowledgment, that the misery and degradation of the Irish were chiefly owing to the use of the potatoe as the almost sole food of the people.]

Fear not, I do not accuse you of anything more than stating the obvious! 🤣

"With all due respect, sir, you are no Jack Kennedy."

I don't think Newsom is personally charismatic either, aside from having the looks of a stereotypical US president from a movie, which Vance doesn't (although unlike Rubio, Vance at 6'2" at least has a height that is within the normal range for a modern US president).

So if it comes down to Newsom vs Vance, their middling levels of personal charisma might cancel each other out and the election will be decided by other factors.

To be fair, I haven't seen much footage of Newsom speaking, so it's possible that I'm missing some clips where he displays significant personal charisma.

Vance's only shot at being president is if Trump dies. That's not particularly far fetched- Trump doesn't show many signs of ill health, but he is in his eighties. But Vance doesn't have a lane in the GOP primary.

I think people here are underestimating 25A possibility if Republicans lose Congress, which is looking increasingly likely. Existing Democrat hatred of Trump + impeding Iran war disaster + global economic crisis + some wildcard (blackmail/allegations etc.) it's not as crazy as it sounds especially if Vance is willing to throw his weight behind it.

25A section four has never been invoked, and I'm skeptical that Vance has the personal political machine to be the first. Diadochos style taking the throne by assassination feels plausible but is probably no more likely, but everyone would agree it would be legitimate.

I think that's the thing getting left out. Legitimacy. It matters. And the US has an assumption that removing a president for incompetence/incapacity is illegitimate. Why would Vance want to be an illegitimate successor taking ownership of a very difficult situation?

Why would the Democrats replace Trump with Vance? They know the latter is more reactionary in practice, has a longer attention span, will avoid some of Trump’s worst policies for the economy (by limiting tariffs and seeking a quick resolution in Iran), is invested in staying in power for a second term, and will replace cabinet ministers chosen because Trump liked them on Fox with seasoned conservative operatives who have spent decades wargaming coming to power. That seems like a bad trade.

You misinterpret what the democrat politicians are about. Openly centrist Dems + moderate dems (about 65% of the party) would happily endorse 80% of MAGA's policy goals, including deportation and certain tarifs, if they were carried out competently with a less jackbooted aesthetic.

Remember: if they had to choose between Bernie and Trump, the congress criters would rather have Trump.

25A isn't likely. It's actually a lot harder than impeachment, by design. You can do the initial removal quickly but the President just has to send a letter to congress stating he's not disabled to return to power. The VP & cabinet have 4 days to dispute that and if they do then congress needs a 2/3 vote in both houses within 48 hours to make the removal permanent.

Trump picked his cabinet based on loyalty more than competence. If Trump is out of office most of them would be standing on highway onramps with "Will Work for Food" signs. They may be incompetent, but they aren't so stupid as to realize that replacing a guy who won't fire them with a guy who might isn't going to be good for business. If Vance decides to end the war, then Rubio and Hesgeth at least are dead men walking, and Bondi and Kennedy are probably gone as well. If the tide actually turns against Trump to the degree that this is even a possibility, I'd expect impeachment and removal from office before any 25th Amendment shenanigans.

Trump picked his cabinet based on loyalty more than competence.

Repeating the leftoid talking point endlessly doesnt make it true.

Hegseth is clearly vastly more competent than Austin (to be fair, a low bar as Austin wasnt even present for large chunks of his tenure), Bessent runs circles around Yellen, Rubio mogs Blinken, and really the only sorta tie is Bondi vs Garland. You may not like the agenda, but Trump 2.0's cabinet is actually capable of doing things, unlike 1.0 or Biden.

Basically nothing has happened but the commentariat has decided that Vance is a failure and doomed to lose. I don't know why. I think everyone must be bored.

Realistically, Vance is the heir-apparent to MAGA. Vance is popular, well-spoken, and ties together the different factions that make up MAGA. The only alternative at this time is Rubio and there's no indication that Vance and Rubio are even a little at odds.

Vance just has to defeat whoever the Democrats put up. Is the second rise of Kamala that threatening?

The fantasy you lay out is neither a credible path for Vance to take the Presidency, nor even to rank as a great figure of American history, but more likely to lead in him getting jailed or worse. "Sue for peace with Iran"? I think you should stop scrolling the timeline and pick up a book or something.

Vance just has to defeat whoever the Democrats put up. Is the second rise of Kamala that threatening?

I'd be surprised if the Democrats were that dumb. Not extremely surprised, but surprised.

But in general I agree. It's 2026. Election's in 2028. We've got a war to get through, plus midterms. Lots of things can happen, it's way too soon to count Vance out.

I think Kamala will have a lot of power because she presents a fantasy. If a Kamala wins 2028, it’s a mulligan, Trump was just a fluke after all, we’re back to the original timeline. She won after all it just took a while. Anybody else is an explicit acknowledgement that Trump won and we’re living in his shadow.

Kamala was never that popular without a coronation there's no way she gets the nomination.

She lost the popular vote to Trump. The stink of failure is too great this time. I predict an early flame out in the primary for her.

The dem primaries for the midterms have, so far, pushed towards conventional wisdom white male candidates. Not the same thing as moderates, but not diversity hires or people who can't string a sentence together.

Speaking of, what the heck is going on with Jasmine Crockett? First she gets beat by the white guy which clearly has to be down to racist misogynoir, right? and now there's some possible scandal over a former security guy of hers turning out to be a criminal impostor who just got shot by the cops?

I see she's another one touched by the guiding hand of Kamala:

When I became VP, I had a secret project—I called it the Stars Project—that only my senior team knew about. We’d brainstorm about the younger talents in the party and then, on Friday afternoons, I’d invite one or another to visit my office in the West Wing or the residence. As I’d offer a seat on the couch across from me, more than one nervously confessed: “I feel like I’ve been called into the principal’s office.” I would laugh and say, “No, I think you’re very talented. What are you working on, and how can I help you?”

Many of those on my list spoke at the convention: Lauren Underwood, Robert Garcia, Angela Alsobrooks, Lateefah Simon, Maxwell Frost, Joe Neguse, Lina Hidalgo, Jasmine Crockett.

I can’t speak for the others, but Lina Hildalgo is also crashing and burning, although she blames ‘mental health problems’ rather than racism and sexism.

Talarico is not a moderate; but he is a conventional seeming white guy… until you hear him talk(which during the primary, he didn’t do very much of). He won the primary due to black-Hispanic tensions and mismanaged elections in Crockett’s strongest county. This doesn’t make him a particularly strong general election candidate although he seems like it superficially.

Talarico is not a moderate

I don't have much exposure to him. Just some sound bites where he comes off as a decent and likeable Christian with down-to-earth, pragmatic ideas about politics. Though I see there's now a kerfuffle over a deep fake Talarico reading some of his old tweets and there's no hiding the fact he's debased himself at the altar of woke in the past. Is that what makes him immoderate? Or is there more to it?

Who have they got otherwise though? Newsome probably gets cancelled eventually for resembling a white male with initiative

Newsom at the moment looks like the front-runner, but his problem (same as with Kamala) is that the skills that won things in California aren't going to scale up to the national stage. Nate Silver had a run-down of "these are possible Democratic candidates who are doing better than Newsom" but none of those jumped off the page for me.

It can't be Kamala a second time, because she imploded so badly first time round that if they put her in a free primary there's no way she'll win (see her run for 2020 which planted the seeds of a lot of things that tripped her up in 2024, e.g. the infamous trans surgeries bit) and if they try and force her as the nominee as they did for 2024 there are no reasons for it this time round as there were last time, and unless someone has even fewer functioning brain cells than Tim Walz no way they would agree to be her VP (see Shapiro's little hissy-fit over why she rejected him).

Newsom is the obvious choice; it's possible the Democrats can keep their wokies under control long enough to elect him. There's also Shapiro, though with the anti-Israel (and anti-Semitic) turn in both parties, I find him unlikely. And AOC, who is probably more electable than Kamala (though not by much).

The wokies can't win a straight vote. They universally hated Biden but it didn't matter.

Yeah, but I think his problem is the same as Kamala's (and indeed, Pete Buttigieg's problem): great, you did fantastic in your home state, now what?

He was governor of California, what does that mean for the rest of the country? Is he going to try and turn the entire USA into California? Some might love that idea, some might not. I can see why he's trying to rewrite his personal history ("I had to take a job as a paper delivery boy because my single mom had to work multiple jobs! I'm dyslexic!") in order to get away from the billionaire connections, but that's not really going to work. The French Laundry incident, the Getty wedding where he and a rake of other Californian pols were all too happy to bow and scrape for their very good close friends - it's not everybody can have City Hall closed down to preside over their single wedding. That's not helping with "I can relate to you, ordinary people, because I too had a hard life" presentation:

It seems we finally know what California Gov. Gavin Newsom was up to for at least part of his prolonged public absence for the last week and a half.

Vogue reports that the governor — who has not held a public event since Oct. 26 and abruptly canceled a trip to a climate change conference in Scotland — attended the wedding of billionaire oil heiress Ivy Getty in San Francisco over the weekend. A photo from the event appears to show the masked governor watching Gordon Getty kiss his veiled granddaughter. The Getty family are longtime San Francisco residents.

...Newsom has always had close ties to the Getty family, though the wedding does not entirely explain why he canceled his trip to the climate conference. The Sacramento Bee's Hannah Wiley noted that Newsom was supposed to be in Scotland from Nov. 1-3, and seemingly could have made it back in time for the weekend wedding.

My impression of this forum is that it leans overwhelmingly anti-populist and technocratic. Some of the posters here may have supported Trump and Vance briefly as spoilers within their own intra-factional pissing matches, but they remained 'capital D' Democrats at their core. Now that they know that they may have handed 8 - 12 years of consecutive rule to the populist wing of the GOP the knives are coming out.

I expect many more posts here about Newsom's "inevitability" and how Vance, Rubio, Et Al. are dead in the water before November of 2028.

As an actual Democrat, I can tell you right now that Newsom is not inevitable; in fact, I'd be rather surprised if he wins the nomination. He does not have the support of any component of the Democratic base that I can think of. Black people don't like him. Older people don't like him. Progressive young people don't like him. Moderates don't care for him. Conservatives who dislike Trump don't like him. Try finding a forum online where people keep talking him up. You won't. Maybe people from California like him. He offers absolutely nothing. Okay, he's willing to stoop to Trump's level, and seeing a Democrat do that was entertaining for a while, but the schtick has grown tiresome. He's not going to turn out the base, or any subset of the base, and his crossover appeal is nonexistent. The only reason his name keeps coming up is because he's the governor of a large state and everyone knows who he is. The nominee is probably going to be someone like Shapiro or Beshear who has shown he can appeal to moderates and hasn't accumulated much political baggage.

I want to see Pritzker run on a left-leaning populist platform. It's possible he could pull it off because, as a billionaire, he doesn't need to kiss the feet of the democratic donor class.

Wasn't that part of Trump's argument, i.e. "I'm already rich so you can trust that I won't be corrupt"?

He does not have the support of any component of the Democratic base that I can think of.

What about unmarried middle-class white women? What about Hispanics?

Black people don't like him. Older people don't like him. Progressive young people don't like him. Moderates don't care for him.

How did Harris fair in that kind of estimation? I get the impression she also lacked a natural constituency, but she ended up a presidential candidate anyway.

She lost her primary. She was then appointed VP because she was nonthreatening and stumbled into a big girl presidential run.

Even she admits that:

Biden had won the nomination because Congressman Jim Clyburn, leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, had thrown his support behind him. The Black vote in the South Carolina primary—especially Black women’s vote—had thrust him to victory. The pressure was on him to pick a Black woman running mate.

The press knew I was on the short list, so they had our DC apartment building staked out. When Doug and I stepped out to go somewhere, they’d follow. Occasionally I’d save them the trouble. I’d wander over to their van and say, “Doug and I are just going for coffee, can I bring you something?”

Honestly, I didn't expect much from this memoir when I bought it, but it's solid gold for an inside look at why it all crashed.

The prose here is extremely clunky and betrays a cringe personality but this anecdote betrays charm and an ounce of charisma. (That’s why it was chosen for the book, which is what makes it cringe.)

Wait till you get to the "charming" anecdote about how her staff threw her an impromptu birthday party but some misfortunate made the mistake of getting one of those balloons with the age on it.

Kamala does not like reminders of her age.

So she crushed the balloon saying "60" beneath her heel while looking at her staff. To me, that reads more like "this could be your head and will be if you fail me again":

That afternoon, when I climbed the steps to the plane, I discovered it had been decorated in streamers. My team on board were wearing gold party hats and presented me with a deliciously rich German chocolate cake, my favorite birthday cake. They had red velvet cupcakes for the press. There was also a big helium balloon with fat numerals: 60. My team knew that I stopped counting birthdays a long time ago. So I looked at them with a big smile when I landed my stiletto heel in the middle of that balloon. Then I went to find my Uggs.

And then she regales us all how she laid into her hubby dearest for not making special enough effort to celebrate her birthday. Oh yeah, "charming" is not the word I'd use. Imagine working for her. After reading this book, I now believe all the stories about how she was a terrible boss and the turnover in the VP staff was rapid and high:

He hadn’t put any thought into where we’d stay that night, so staff had picked a place for us that they thought would be a bit more special than the usual campaign hotel. It turned out to be a bland establishment whose red-and-black decor looked like it hadn’t been redone since the ’70s. The only distinguishing feature of the room was its larger size, but the curtains were broken.

Storm, knowing how much I love good food, had picked two possible restaurants from which to order dinner. She thought it would be nice if the meal was a bit of a surprise for me. So, on the plane, she knocked on Doug’s door to ask him to choose the menu. He’d shrugged and told her to ask me. So she picked the menu herself. Ordered a cake. Dressed the table with candles. My girlfriends had sent flowers.

Doug at least had thought to get a gift for me. It was a necklace by a designer I admired from Ojai, California, Jes MaHarry, the same designer who’d made the piece he’d chosen for my anniversary gift. This one featured a set of baroque pearls nestled in a gold setting. When I turned it over, I saw that the pearls’ backing had been engraved with the date. How thoughtful, to commemorate the milestone of my big birthday. But then I looked closer.

The date was not my birthday. It was the date of our wedding anniversary. He’d obviously intended to give me both pieces on our anniversary, until it occurred to him that by repurposing one piece, he could kill two birds with one stone. He could practice thrift and also save himself the bother of shopping for a birthday gift.

...I noted earlier that Storm speaks bluntly but always with correct protocol. The next day she told Doug, “Mr. Second Gentleman, you have to fix this.” She handed him a set of note cards. She’d numbered them one through five, for the nights we’d be apart through the end of the campaign. She instructed him to write a note on each one.

From then till the election, no matter what city each of us had landed in, at the end of the day I would find a note on my pillow, in Doug’s chicken scratch, telling me how much he loved me.

Yeah, I bet he remembered to leave her a card telling her how much he loved her. God Almighty, that's dog training, not how you treat a spouse.

More comments

I think it goes without saying that she didn't take the traditional path. Her own candidacy in 2020 is an object lesson in this. Reasonably well-known, sort of hyped by the media, candidacy goes over like a lead balloon before any votes are cast.

With the reputation as Copmala, she over-corrected by swinging too hard to the progressive side, wasn't able to pull off the course correction subtly enough and so gave a lot of hostages to fortune, and to top it off was running in a primary that everyone pretty much knew would be Biden's version of "It's my turn now" after his previous failed attempts at a run, and the desperate hope that the aura of Obama would cling to him and bring success in the election.

It worked, in fact it worked too well as he was only supposed to be a one-term placeholder to keep Trump out while the Democrats worked on their real pick for the next election, but he (and his inner circle of the family) convinced himself that he could run for the second term. And by the time it became painfully obvious that this was the wrong decision, there wasn't any real alternative but to run Kamala instead. And because of all those hostages to fortune from 2020 plus the indebtedness to Biden, her campaign swung wildly all over the place on the basis of "I'm not Trump!" plus "Time for the First Female Ever!" and not much else. Policy positions? Oh no no no, look I'm a black woman, vote for me or you're a racist sexist!

Jesus. I had forgotten that she even ran

But... but... but did you not listen to the "Call Her Daddy" podcast? Everyone listens to that instead of Joe Rogan! 🤣

It's okay, I think she forgot about that too.

Biden definitely forgot.

I get the impression she also lacked a natural constituency, but she ended up a presidential candidate anyway.

She didn't go through a primary in 2024 to get there. Her 2020 results speak for themselves.

Try finding a forum online where people keep talking him up. You won't.

You best start believing in ghost stories forums Ms @Rov_Scam, you're in one.

PotC memes aside, I actually agree with your assessment.

I must have missed all the Newsom fanposting on here.

If you want to shell out the ten bucks to Scott you can read his case for Gavin.

You'd have to pay me rather more than ten bucks to read more than a summary of any remotely modern Scott article. He's a prime example of a writer who spends 95% of the words on completely pointless waffling and even the remaining 5% only very occasionally contains something of value.

Someone would have to pay me $10 to have me read them making a case for Newsom.

Compared to other Democrats. Any candidate is hated by 70% of Democrats and loved by 30%. Even as a GOP I don’t see how you hate Newsome. He’s just mid. So maybe his route is no one loves him but only 50% of Democrats hate him.

Josh Shaprio is 5'8", which does matter I think. No US president since Carter has been under 5'11". He is also Jewish with a little bit of personal history in Israel, which could bad for him in the current political climate.

I know almost nothing about Andy Beshear, but at least he does seem to be within a typical height range for a US president in the modern era. He is also a gentile straight semi-Southern white man, which matters. Democrats have done well with that kind of combination in modern history and would almost certainly be served well electorally by trying to continue something like it rather than risking a black and/or gay and/or female candidate (Obama is commonly thought of as black and did great electorally, but he is also one of the most charismatic political figures in recent history, and people with that sort of charisma seem to be rare in both the Democratic and Republican parties).

Shapiro may be short and have a lot of baggage, but he is a tireless climber and a fairly smart, ruthless one at that. I wouldn't count him out.

I think the only thing that could legitimately knock him out of the running is if the Ellen Greenberg case actually gains some traction outside the Fox news info sphere.

he is a tireless climber and a fairly smart, ruthless one at that

Which seems to be the problem if the Atlantic story is any way accurate. Lot of enemies inside the party who will be all too happy to knife him in the back should he formally run:

The worst-kept secret in Pennsylvania politics is that the governor is disliked—in certain cases, loathed—by some of his fellow Democrats. The causes vary: policy disputes, personality clashes, accusations of meddling and sabotaging and ceaseless self-promoting. When Shapiro was being vetted for vice president in the summer of 2024, Erin McClelland, whom Democrats had recently nominated for Pennsylvania treasurer, stunned the state party by suggesting on social media that Shapiro would “undermine” Harris—adding other insults for good measure.

...The private commentary from Democrats is worse. In 30 years spent climbing the party ladder, Shapiro has acquired a long list of enemies. If he wasn’t already aware, the governor found out the hard way in 2024, when a not-small and not-subtle chorus of Democrats made their misgivings about him known to Harris and her team. (A Pennsylvania lawmaker told me that, at one point, a member of Harris’s vetting operation called him to say that in their decades working in party politics, they had never witnessed so many Democrats turning on one of their own.) If Shapiro chooses to run for president in 2028, Democrats in the state told me, the backlash will be far more visible.

Shapiro seems like their best candidate right now. But this isn’t the Supreme Court where you can place the Jew and nobody cares. What percent of Dems right now would never vote for a Jew?

Probably no higher than the percentage of Republicans who won't.

Never? Very few. There may be some Muslims or conspiracy-minded blacks that wouldn't vote for one, but they're at the fringes of the party. If you had garden-variety Free Palestine lefties in mind, these are the same people who probably already voted for a Jew twice.

I agree that the percent of registered Dems who would never hold their nose and vote for a Jew is well within Lizardman territory, but regarding which potential candidates receive the party’s blessing, I think you underestimate both how pervasive low-level antisemitism is among Blacks (perhaps it’s the lingering effects of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam?), as well as how much Democrats think the Black vote is worth, both for reasons of woke-progressive virtue signaling and, to be fair, political reality in the Deep South.

I could easily imagine, in a smokevape-filled room at DNC headquarters, the progressive vanguard of the party putting their heads (such as they are) together and deciding, for reasons ideological as well as practical, that the most electable coalition they can realistically hope to assemble must rally around the tentpole of anti-Zionism.

As for

If you had garden-variety Free Palestine lefties in mind, these are the same people who probably already voted for a Jew twice.

I assume you are referring to Bernie Sanders, who has done a decent job—for a man of his advanced age—of navigating between the Scylla of his old-school, class-first leftist ideology and the Charybdis of the woke-progressive party line since 2016. In particular he has never, to my knowledge, given any public indication that he is a committed Zionist, or even a practicing Jew at all, or that his Jewish heritage endears him to the State of Israel.

The same cannot be said of Shapiro, who has repeatedly commented on his Jewish faith in ways that, at the very least, reverse-dog-whistle “Zionist bootlicker” to the watermelon-emoji Free Palestine types. Say what you will about their ilk (and believe me, I have an earful of my own criticism), but in my experience they are perfectly willing to accept that an ethnic Jew is not secretly doing Israel’s bidding, provided that the Jew in question makes the right mouth-noises, and avoids making the wrong ones. Sanders has pretty well passed that litmus test; Shapiro, regrettably, has not.

I think the allegations of black antisemitism are overplayed. Yeah, it may exist on the fringes, but one only has to look at the 2020 Georgia Senate Democratic primary to see that it isn't a huge factor. Jon Ossoff, a Jew who made his heritage part of his campaign, won overwhelmingly. I can't find exit poll numbers, but he got near unanimous support from black politicians in the state, most notably from John Lewis. Josh Stein, a practicing Jew, got nearly 70% of the vote in the North Carolina Democratic primary, running against a black guy in a state where the black vote is more important in the Democratic primary than it is in a lot of other places. It's hard to do a similar analysis for Shapiro since he never ran in a competitive gubernatorial primary, but by my calculations he got about 223,000 black votes in the general election. When Wolf ran for the first time in 2014, he got about 177,000 black votes. While the latter election had higher turnout, there's nothing in the data to suggest that blacks were especially put off by Shapiro, since he performed about as well as one would expect him to. It should be noted that blacks made up about 10% of the electorate in 2014 compared with 8% in 2022, but more blacks total came to the polls, and 92% of them voted Democrat in both elections. I don't know that any conclusions can be drawn from this, but I wanted to bring it up.

You're right that Shapiro's specific political positions may come into play when it comes to certain demographics, but that's different then saying that they'll never vote for a Jew, because they probably wouldn't vote for a Gentile who said the same things, either. And with Shapiro, you'd have to be really far to the Free Palestine side of the aisle for his comments to matter. His stance on Israel is similar to that of most Democrats: He accused Israel's military of overreaching, denounced Netanyahu, called for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza, and called for an end to the war. What he refused to do was call for a unilateral cease fire without the hostages being returned, and refused to denounce Israel or Zionism altogether. The former position is now a moot point, and the latter position is likely to be held by whoever the nominee is. I agree that he's riskier on that front than a guy like Beshear, but he doesn't talk about it much and the perception of him could change when and if he's in a position where he has to talk about it more.

Vance is not popular, though. He's certainly well spoken and has a good shot at being a conservative intellectual or vizier. But it's difficult to say who he appeals to; the Romneycrats that like his speaking ability prefer Rubio(and have since it became apparent they weren't going to get their first choice, ever).

You wot, mate?

I'd say his chances for the nomination are lower than they were a few months ago. He has the same problem that Ron DeSantis did—he hasn't been very outspoken lately, suggesting that he wants to distance himself from Trump's policies somewhat, but he's unwilling to take a stand against him, despite being the one person in the administration that Trump can't fire. If he's not going to do that, then the least he could do is toady up to the administration to avoid being eclipsed. I'm guessing he thought that being VP would give him the inside track to the presidency; Suzie Wiles pretty much said he was a blatant opportunist. What he didn't take into consideration is that Trump likes being kingmaker as much as being king, even though his attempts at that thus far have been lacking. If the Republicans take a shellacking in the midterms, which is looking increasingly likely, then his chances of being president will be comparable to Dick Cheney's in 2008; even with the support of the president, it would be a tough row to hoe.

That’s all sci fi levels of far fetched.

He’s going to run for President after Trump and lose.

He’s he who he is. I’ll even give thought to the conspiracy that he’s a plant from … whatever. Big business or something.

No boat whacking.

He could’ve been great but he comes off like such a dork.

Rubio is 5'9". Which is about average male height in the US, but he would look small up on the debate stage next to the 6'3" Gavin Newsom. Newsom is also better-looking. I wonder if maybe that alone would be enough to sink Rubio's prospects if the Republicans do some basic electability research. Vance has many issues but from a pure electability point of view, at least he is 6'2". No US President under 5'11" has been elected since Jimmy Carter.

No US President under 5'11" has been elected since Jimmy Carter.

It's a trend, for sure. But I really doubt it's the one and only important characteristic of a candidate that predicts his likelihood of success or failure. Which is what several people in this thread seem to be suggesting.

Oh, I think those people might be me. I brought it up several times. Yes, it's definitely not the only characteristic. But recent Presidential elections have been so close in the swing states that I feel it would be dangerous for either party, when it comes to their chances of success, to run a candidate who is under about 5'11", unless that candidate is extremely attractive to voters in other ways.

25A Trump

I don't think Vance has enough control over the cabinet to push this through, much less Congress. If only he did, then he could finally be the Millennial Caudillo 4 Lyfe we've all dreamed of.

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