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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26041 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.

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.

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