2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[DGuller]

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.  I guess my ignorance of Taylor Swift is a reflection of the age of algorithms, where anyone can be almost perfectly focused on news stories of interest to them, and everyone getting their very personalized feed assumes that everyone else is getting the same feed. 

News stories about business impacts of travel itineraries of some celebrities have never interested me.  Or business stories in general, for that matter.  If I ever need to have surgery, I'll ask the doctors to use CNBC to put me under.

I assure you I have no algorithmic overlap with Taylor Swift fans, I have never in my life been recommended any content by, or concerning, Taylor Swift.

Yet I have been aware of her and have seen her repeatedly mentioned by various media I consume (including politics and even business podcasters/youtubers) for at least a decade, probably more.

Well, I haven't been aware, so it is what it is.  The name sounded familiar, but there are probably thousands of names that would sound familiar to me that I won't be able to associate with anything other than that I heard that name before somewhere.

[crazy canuck]

This is like one of those questions in a World War II movie that people get asked to see if they're actually Americans.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I do visit the BBC, Guardian and Daily Mail websites and peruse their contents....which makes one aware of people like Taylor Swift, some of the preoccupations of weird rightists, how the English football team are doing etc etc

If I left it to the algorithms I'd probably get obsessed with the Corn Laws and leave mainstream society totally 

[OttoVonBismarck]

 9/11 anniversary day, I hope people in the West use this day to reflect on the innate evil of Islam and its monstrous adherents.

Something to remember when considering a vote between a party that supports Israel in its defensive war against Muslim genocide and a party that increasingly embraces eliminationist ideology against Israel.

[Grey Fox]

It's true, the PPC is bad for the West.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, even the business pages have mentioned her due to that massive tour and its effects on local economies.

Not just the business pages but entire business studies - she's very, very savvy.

She did a big film of one of her concerts which was going to be released during the writers' strike. The studios had gone in for distribution and basically low-balled her, so her team did their own distribution deal with cinema chains directly and announced that it would be released on x week - the prices were references to Swift albums. The studios were entirely cut out and re-organised their fall schedules to avoid clashing with this film one of them had hoped to be distributing

Or her ex manager owning the rights to her albums so she re-recorded them all, re-released them all and somehow convinced her fans to boycott the ones owned by her manager and buy the ones that she'd earn money from. It is in its way amazing

There had been loads of weird right-wing stuff about her and her boyfriend being anti-Trump - which Trump squashed pretty quickly because if there's one thing he genuinely respects and understands, it's celebrity. I think he said that discovering she didn't like him made him "like her music maybe 25% less now".

Edit: And to be clear it's very much not just the right who goes weird about Swift. I've definitely seen plenty of online left musings about whether Taylor Swift is actually complicit in/somehow upholding white supremacy/genocide/climate emergency - take your pick.

[garbon]

It has been some time since I've subjected myself to that much Trump at once. He really did seem unhinged. Odd that his closing statement was mostly about Kamala.

[Josquius]

Oh she's absolutely an enemy of the climate. No conspiracy needed there.

[Valmy]

Oh she's absolutely an enemy of the climate. No conspiracy needed there.

Huh?

[The Minsky Moment]

Imagine a younger smarter fascist trying the same schtick for instance.... Imaginable a lot of working class people just wouldn't trust him.

We don't have to imagine, we have Ron DeSantis.  And you are right, people didn't trust him.

I suppose you could blame that on his specific personality.  But none the Trump lites - Hawley, Cotton, Cruz, New Coke Stefanik, etc. - have gained any traction either.

Even after a full Presidential term and almost a decade of continuous political campaigning, Trump still seems to benefit from a perception that he is some kind of anti-politician and that his confused ravings reflect underlying authenticity.  The Ivy League GOP types trying to channel Trumpian populism can't replicate it.  And when someone less slick tries to pull it off - like Herschel Walker or the Boebert/MTG Blunder Twins - they just come across as nuts.

[Josquius]

Oh she's absolutely an enemy of the climate. No conspiracy needed there.

Huh?

https://phys.org/news/2024-08-taylor-swift-private-jet-usage.html

[DGuller]

I agree that Trump seems to have a unique level of charisma that others would fail to match, and it's that charisma that enables this level of overt authoritarianism.  That said, Trump has been speed-running what other Republicans have been meticulously building up for several decades.  GOP has been hard at work Orbanizing American politics for a while, and eventually that would've strangled legitimate democracy even without charismatic politicians.

[The Minsky Moment]

Oh she's absolutely an enemy of the climate. No conspiracy needed there.

Huh?

The song titles give it away:

"We are Never Ever Getting CO2 Down Together"
"Blank Space in the Ozone"
"Look What You Made Me Do: Frack"

etc.

[Valmy]

Ah yes. But there was zero context both to who and what conspiracy you were talking about.

[Sheilbh]

I know I've mentioned it before but I think Trump's TV background is important in that. He was a mainstream mass-market celebrity who really cared about ratings.

He knows enough about celebrity to know not to pick a fight with Taylor Swift or, when faced with a six week abortion ban, to say it sounds a bit extreme.

The bright young things on the right are nerds deep on the internet imbibing Rod Dreher articles and tradwife content, which is why you end up with sonnenrads in an ad for the Governor of Florida's presidential campaign.

For all the stuff about the online side of Trump, I think a really important side of his success is that he's the guy who saw Evita five times on Broadway, had a prime time show and has the weirdest hits of the 80s playlist at his rallies. He's very mass market, TV watching, middlebrow not niche online subculture.

And when the weird subcultures (including "intellectual" conservatives) get too mouthy he disowns them because that's not his world (see Project 2025), while it absolutely is Vance's