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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18348 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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The rest notwithstanding, I'm a bit confused at the prospect of voting for someone who will implement much worse policies on the basis that their opponent engaged in some ugly campaigning. Like yeah, presumably we used to have standards along those lines, but we're also pretty clearly past them at this point.

I think it really depends on the circumstances and what's at stake. Vivek is different from Paxton. Both in the actual distance from thier opponent, and in what 'poor character' reveals about their actual political incentives.

Vivek is an opportunist who has staked out some very anti-MAGA anti-American opinions, and he's rightly or wrongly constantly accused of untrustworthy insincerity. So character reveals can tell quite a bit about where his real focus lies. Paxton on the other hand is a crass ideologue. If you like his ideology more than Talcarino's you should vote for Paxton just about no matter what he says or does.

I think character matters in politics. So do the people of Ohio -- if nobody cared about the candidates beyond their policies nobody would have produced an ad with the words 'pathological liar' in them.

If your politicians do whatever will benefit them personally, then you can not depend on them being honest about their preferred policy either. The way I see it, character is a prerequisite. Policy differences would have to be very large to overcome this. I would probably vote for Trump over Stalin reborn running on a credible campaign of turning the US into the USSR.

The other thing is civility. While it might seem that we have rock bottom on civil behavior in the culture war, I can assure you we are still a long way off. "Yes, my candidate obviously hired hitmen to kill his opponents, but his tax policy is much more sound than theirs" is not a thing you will hear me utter.

The third thing is that even if you only care about getting results no matter the cost and the commons burned, he seems not to be very good at getting the results, because his campaign ad backfired spectacularly. There is no place in politics for Stupid Evil.

So do the people of Ohio

not, infamously, the people of virginia

That "someone" is a former appointee of the incumbent Republican Governor of Ohio.

Given that the Ohio GOP is almost certainly going to retain the legislature and the limitations of what a Governor actually does (Maybe I'm missing something and Ohio has a uniquely strong executive, but I doubt it.) I'm not convinced there's some major policy outcome at stake here. Ramaswamy can't seem to find one worth campaigning on, anyway, and there's nothing in his record to suggest to me that he's some kind of right wing dream candidate.

There's almost certainly an election with high enough stakes to make me hold my nose and vote for the scumbag I agree with, but I don't think this is one of them. I don't think that anyone would care that much about this election if not for the fact that the GOP losing in Ohio of all places is an embarrassing reflection of how they are presently viewed at the national level.

Most of the Midwest seems like it can governed fine by either a Dem or Republican. My guess is this occurs for three reasons:

  1. Dems party more strongly comes out of the working class manufacturing union Dem. Not a progressive teachers union Dem.

  2. No hedge funds or tech. These two industries are the drivers of wealth inequality and Cali/NYC level wealth inequality develops are more radical progressive left.

  3. Midwest is much less multicultural and more generic white.

Campaigns reveal character, and character affects how people govern - particularly in the US system where governors and presidents have increasingly become de facto elective kings.

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