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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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More ignorant uninformed questions about the American presidential election!

So - Gaza? Palestine? Palestinians? Israel? Will this affect the Democratic vote, or is this just more journalists trying to spin straw into gold?:

In Michigan, home to a large Arab-American constituency, Democratic voters had been urged to mark their primary ballots as "uncommitted" in protest at Mr Biden's Gaza policy.

With almost half of Democratic votes counted, the number of "uncommitted" voters was more than 58,000, according to Edison Research, far exceeding the target of 10,000 that protest organisers had hoped for.

Many in Michigan's Arab-American community who backed Mr Biden in 2020 are angry, as are some progressive Democrats, over Mr Biden's support for Israel's offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.

...Campaign organisers vowed to take what they called their anti-war agenda to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

... With nearly half the estimated Democratic vote counted, Mr Biden had 80% support, with "uncommitted" getting 13%.

...When former president Barack Obama, a Democrat, ran for re-election in 2012, he faced about 21,000 "uncommitted" voters in Michigan's primary that year. Mr Biden faced substantially more.

Michigan is expected to play a decisive role in the head-to-head 5 November US presidential election, a likely rematch between Mr Biden and Mr Trump.

Whatever about Michigan, on a national level is there a bunch of undecided/uncommitted voters who won't vote for Biden in the election (not going to vote for Trump or third party, but not voting as a protest on this one issue)?

If there are, are there enough to make a difference?

Or is it that it doesn't matter, the usual Democrat voters will turn out in enough numbers for a drop off in voting by a single-issue minority not to matter?

Will Gaza even be a live issue by the time the real election finally rolls round?

I think the Gaza effect is real in terms of driving down Biden's poll numbers currently.

By the time the election rolls around? Probably not. Arabs might remain resolutely anti-Biden but there's not that many of them and the white lefties who also hate his support for Israel will come back home once the dust settles. And I'll be surprised if the war continues for more than another month or so.

The big problem with peeling off parts of the Democratic base is Trump himself. He's going to shoot himself in the dick before then. He was born with a golden foot in his mouth. If Trump could maintain message discipline, it would be easy. But that statement already made me laugh.

I think Trump has handled the Gaza issue about as well as possible from a political perspective, by shutting the hell up about it and not reminding angry leftists that the Republican party supports Israel even harder.

I don’t know. Being quiet helps the chance that voters stay home. Being loud and angering leftist would make them more aggressive and twist the knife into the Democrats between Hamas and Israel supporters.

A Jewish realignment to the GOP seems in the cards now as the risks from the left to them seem a lot more more serious than a handful of actual Nazis. Trump coming out loud would force this a lot more.

Yes, but I highly doubt we'll get to November without a planned revival of the Muslim Ban, or some similar project, which will drive Arab turnout to the left.

After seeing what’s happening at protest I am 100% in favor of Muslim ban. It just seems more and more our society and their society are not compatible outside of some elite worldly people interacting.

The big problem with peeling off parts of the Republican base is Biden himself. He's going to shoot himself in the dick before then. He was born with a golden foot in his mouth. If Biden could maintain message discipline, it would be easy. But that statement already made me laugh.

I'm not sure what point you're making here. Both sides-ism doesn't really matter for examination of the dynamics of one side.

Biden is great at message discipline. His issue is that he needs to keep the Democratic coalition together (or believes he does) and that impedes his ability to go after the swing voters he needs to win.

Joe Biden is a politican infamous for speaking off-the-cuff and putting his foot in his mouth. It's one of his best-known qualities. I would even call it charming. Obama was a politician known for reading from the script. Hillary Clinton was a politician known for reading from the script. Joe Biden is not. I presume, then, that "message discipline" just means he reads off a teleprompter sometimes and has his aides run his twitter.

Really, it's actually a charming quality. Nobody actually cares that Biden challenged a fat man to do pushups, or gaffed a senator in a wheelchair to stand up. And while Trump has said many controversial things, nobody's vote is really going to be changed anymore because he said something else off-color. These are actually qualities people want. It's one thing that separates Trump and Biden from their many competitors: they aren't going to stand up and give you a tired hackneyed cliche speech about, "The will of the American People," "principles and values," "our democracy," etc. etc.

"Message discipline" doesn't mean you don't put your foot in your mouth. It means you consistently emphasize your strong issues, de-emphasize your weak issues, and present a consistent framing and position on the issues.

When Trump says "covfefe", that's a funny typo, but not a lack of message discipline. When he proposes the death penalty for criminals like the ones that he pardoned, that's a lack of message discipline.