What was the moment…
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I thought it was over when he was landing at
at 48% against Biden in the polls. He has never polled that highly except for in the elections themselves. I kept trying to convince myself that the polls might have overcorrected, but I didn’t really think so.When they switched to Kamala and such, I didn’t really think it would change much because that 48% (and the 2-3% that I thought was hidden) weren’t likely to change their mind.
I was more convinced when I checked out my hometown during the whole Haitian thing. That area was 65-35 Democrat when I lived there. It had clearly switched entirely. I figured that was representative of the Mon Valley and Pittsburgh surrounding areas and was right.
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If you mean on election night, it was when the Florida numbers came in and Trump was waaayyy over projected. That told where the polling error was and it removed any doubt over the Puerto Rican joke. It was also confirmed when I saw that Kamala was under 60% in Allegheny County.
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@Mik said in What was the moment…:
I’m not a wide eyed fanboy, TG.
I know. Your head is very level. It is unfortunate that most of the voting public does not study both sides of the issue as well as you do.
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@taiwan_girl said in What was the moment…:
(PS. that barbershop video was edited.
)How much did he pay them?
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@Aqua-Letifer said in What was the moment…:
@Mik said in What was the moment…:
When you really became convinced Trump would win.
For me, it was the barbershop piece. He was so comfortable, in his element, and so natural. It was then I really saw the attraction.
What bumped him over the edge had nothing to do with him. The deciding votes in my opinion came from people who saw the other party ignore the working class and double down on identity politics. Their vote wasn't for Trump but "not that."
The tagline “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you” was very powerful. But it was only a tipping point. I still don’t think it had anything to do with the campaigns so much as it was the last 3-4 years of incompetence in leadership.
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Tyler Cowen wrote about the vibe shift back in July 2024, and was maligned for it. He reminded his readers of it, after the election. This is how actual thinkers diagnose politics, rather than educated white cultural conservatives who begin and end with "stupid evil magats".
The changes in vibes — why did they happen?
by Tyler Cowen July 17, 2024 at 12:49 am in Current Affairs Political Science
Clearly it has happened, and it has been accelerated and publicized by the Biden failings and the attempted Trump assassination. But it was already underway. If you need a single, unambiguous sign of it, I would cite MSNBC pulling off Morning Joe for a morning, for fear they would say something nasty about Trump.Another way to put it is that Trump was a highly vulnerable, defeated President, facing numerous legal charges and indeed an actual felony conviction. Yet he now stands as a clear favorite in the next election. In conceptual terms, how exactly did that happen?
I had been thinking it would be a good cognitive test to ask people why they think the vibes have changed, and then to grade their answers for intelligence, insight, and intellectual honesty.
For instance, I used to read people arguing “Trump is popular because of racism,” but now that view is pretty clearly refuted, even if you think (as I do) that racism has some marginal impact on his support. Or other people have attributed the development to “polarization.” Whether or not you agree with the polarization thesis, it begs the question here, as we could be polarized with Trump as a big underdog.
In any case, thought I should start this process by offering my answers. Here they are, in a series of bullet points:
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Trump and his team understand that we now live in a world of social media. Only a modest part of the Democratic establishment has mastered the same.
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The “Trumpian Right,” whether you agree with it or not, has been more intellectually alive and vital than the Progressive Left, at least during the last five years, maybe more. Being fully on the outs, those people were more free to be creative, noting that I am not equating creative with being correct.
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The deindustrialization of America has mattered more than people expected at first, and has had longer legs, in terms of its impact on public opinion. I would say this one is squarely in the mainstream account of the matter.
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Many Trumpian and MAGA messages have been more in vibe with the negative contagion effects of our recent times.
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The Democrats made a big bet that trying to raise the status of blacks would be popular, but at best they had mixed results. Some part of this failing was due to racists, some part due to immigrants with their own concerns, and some part due simply to the unpopularity of the message.
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The ongoing feminization of society has driven more and more men, including black and Latino men, into the Republican camp. The Democratic Party became too much the party of unmarried women.
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The Obama administration brought, to some degree, both the reality and perception of being ruled by the intellectual class. People didn’t like that.
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Democrats and leftists are in fact less happy as people than conservatives are, on average. Americans noticed this, if only subconsciously.
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The relentlessly egalitarian message of Democrats is not so popular, and furthermore — since every claim must have messengers — it translates in lived practice into an “I am better than you all are” vibe. Americans noticed this, if only subconsciously.
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The Woke gambit has proven deeply unpopular.
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Trans support has not been a winning issue for Democrats, but it is hard for them to let it go.
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Immigration at the border has in fact spun out of control, and that has been a key Trump issue from the beginning of his campaign. And I write this as a person who is very pro-immigration. You can imagine how the immigration skeptics feel.
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Higher education has been a traditional Democratic stronghold, and it remains one. Yet its clout and credibility have fallen significantly in the last few years.
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The Democrats made a big mistake going after “Big Tech.” It didn’t cost them many votes, rather money and social capital. Big Tech (most of all Facebook) was the Girardian sacrifice for the Trump victory in 2016, and all the Democrats achieved from that was a hollowing out of their own elite base.
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Various developments in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Israel did not help the Democratic cause. Inflation was very high, and real borrowing rates went up sharply. This is true, whether or not you think it is the fault of Biden, or Trump would have done better. Crypto came under attack. The pandemic story is complicated, and its politics would require a post of its own, but I don’t think it helped the Democrats, most of all because they ended up “owning” many of the longer-lasting school closures.
And we haven’t even gotten to “Defund the police,” the recurring rise of anti-Semitism on the left, and at least a half dozen other matters.
- In very simple terms, you might say the Democrats have done a lot to make themselves unpopular, and not had much willingness to confront that. Their own messages make this hard to face up to, since they are supposed to be better people.
You might add to this:
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Trump is funny (he is one of the great American comics in fact), and
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Trump acts like a winner. Americans like this, and his response to the failed assassination attempt drove this point home.
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Biden’s recent troubles, and the realization that he and his team had been running a con at least as big as the Trump one. It has become a trust issue, not only an age or cognition issue.
On the other side of the ledger, you might argue, as do many intelligent people, that the Democrats are better at technocracy, and also that Democrats are more respectful of traditional political processes, especially transitions after elections. I’m not here to debate those issues! I know many MAGA supporters are not convinced, most of all on the latter. I’ll simply note that, in the minds of many Americans, those factors do not necessarily outweigh #1-19.
And there you go.
Addendum: Of course there was and is plenty wrong with Trump and the Trump administration. But the purpose here is not to compare Biden and Trump, rather it is to see why the Democrats are not doing better. If your response to that question is to cite reasons why the Democrats are better than Trump…well then you are exactly part of the problem.
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I think I can boil it down even further...Americans, whether they can live up to them or not, like to measure a successful country by a series of benchmark standards.
- The ideal nuclear family should be a married man and woman, with children.
- Hard work, whether blue collar or white collar, should deliver a certain standard of living.
- People should have freedom of speech.
- People should have freedom of religion.
- Merit trumps DEI.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in What was the moment…:
@Mik said in What was the moment…:
When you really became convinced Trump would win.
For me, it was the barbershop piece. He was so comfortable, in his element, and so natural. It was then I really saw the attraction.
What bumped him over the edge had nothing to do with him. The deciding votes in my opinion came from people who saw the other party ignore the working class and double down on identity politics. Their vote wasn't for Trump but "not that."
Agreed.
Like it or not, you know where Trump stands and what he'll do. He'll offend, but he'll lead. People in the ballot box (or on their way to vote) looking at the check box for Trump and the check box for Harris, probably saw Harris' name and thought "she's never been popular, she's associated with Biden, and now it seems she'll say whatever people want to hear which is not sincere"... or something along those lines. In other words, the vote was for "not that" (as you said) or they just didn't vote at all, given the choices.
BTW @Mik for me I had a thought after Trump was shot at that "there's no way he loses now" but admittedly later in the summer was still doubtful until I kept seeing @LuFins-Dad 's poll numbers in the It's Starting thread. Knowing Trump overperforms his poll numbers, once he was tied again or leading, it seemed that is when it was over for Harris.
