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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Interesting data point against the recently debated idea that Americans actually do think that the economy is doing well when it comes to themselves.

Anyway, I still don't know why I'm supposed to care so much which one of these two candidates wins. Biden would do some things to hurt democracy, would support Ukraine a bit more, would support Israel a bit less, and would yell at Russia more. Trump would do some things to hurt democracy, would support Ukraine a bit less, would support Israel a bit more, and would yell at China more. The economy would muddle along without either one being able to do much more than just cheerlead when it's good and shift blame when it's bad. Biden would make certain kinds of mouth noises about immigration through the southern border, Trump would make a different kind of noises. At the end of the day probably not much would change because the president has limited power over the issue and Americans like cheap burritos and construction work, and companies like to hire the people who make it possible.

Neither candidate is someone I could imagine ever voting for. Both parties deeply, fundamentally disgust me in different ways. Biden would make one group of annoying people online scream that the world is ending, Trump would make a different group of annoying people online scream that the world is ending. As before, the Internet outrage would overrepresent the kind of person who spends a lot of time online writing about politics and would fail to capture the fact that in the "real world", most Americans don't really care that much about politics.

The only way I can think of that either candidate could truly screw things up as president is by getting into a major war with Russia and/or China. And, while Trump's legacy in office is more peaceful than Biden's, the combination of Biden's restraint from actually directly intervening in Iran, Israel, or Ukraine and Trump's volatile chest-pounding, boomercon love of Israel / hate of Iran, and anti-China rhetoric leaves me not entirely convinced that Trump would actually be less likely to go to war. I do think Trump is probably a bit less likely to go to war, but it's not enough to make me want to go vote for him.

If Trump is somehow actually significantly leading in polls with the election a month away, despite the usual rioting and screaming about fascism from Dem-aligned news outlets that we'll probably see next year, we will be in for an interesting outcome though if Biden wins anyway. I doubt that it would be enough to make the True Trump Patriots (tm) actually get up off their couches and do anything with their gun collections other than post pictures of them online, but who knows.

I don't much bother with polls, since there's little to no way you can find out what questions they asked, how they asked them, and who they asked them; what matters is the result on the day when people go out to vote (or mail in their votes).

They can certainly give an indication of which way the wind is blowing, but I think if you pin your hopes on "polls say we're ten points ahead, it's in the bag!" then Hillary Clinton has an unused inaugural address she can give you for nothing.