2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[DGuller]

Sure, I'm okay winning the minimum with the aces, if you deal me aces every hand. Problem is that I won't always get aces.  If every time Republicans get dealt aces they rig the system even more to their benefit, and every time the Democrats get dealt aces they just put that rigging on pause, who's exactly winning over the long run?

Come on, seriously, don't pretend you don't get my point.  Do you really think this advances the conversation?

Your insistence that politics is the same as poker doesn't advance the conversation, either.  Calling a win a loss because it wasn't a big win misses the entire point of politics, which is to get power.  Even limiter power.

Defining a loss as underperforming expectation where dynamics are cyclical is often a very useful definition of a loss.  I can come up with other analogies.  Winning 60% of your games in tennis when you have a serve isn't really winning.  Yes, if you want to be literal to the point of being misleading, you did win those games, but from the point of view of winning the match, you're not getting the job done, because you're supposed to win most game when you have a serve if you want to win the match.

[The Minsky Moment]

Trump was the first incumbent President to lose re-election since Carter, who faced far more brutal economic conditions. By the book, he should have won that election handily.

[DGuller]

"Woke" is not hiding behind every tree.  In fact, please define for me "woke" in a way that people you think are "woke" would agree with.

I already tried doing that once, then everyone derailed the conversation with some stupid nonsense about ChatGPT.  I'm not going there again.

If you tried and failed to define "woke," will you accept that it is a nonsense word to anyone but you?  Language is about communication, and even you admit that "woke" doesn't communicate anything that you can articulate.

You can't communicate anything to people who don't want to be communicated to.  The ChatGPT fiasco proved to me that the one constant in discussions about wokedom is that those defending it don't want to discuss it.  The endless demands to define it are just at attempt to head off conversations at the very start.

[Barrister]

It seems like the conclusion is that identity politics no longer works on any category of voters other than white males . . .

Do you think that the left played no part in putting them on the defensive?  Do you think the white males shouldn't feel unwelcome when a Democratic president publicly declares that he won't make one them his veep or his SC nominee?

Well I guess I took it that he was trying to balance the ticket. Got to make sure other groups are on board. Like Obama had to pick a white man and so did Kamala. When JFK picked LBJ because he wanted a Southerner I don't think all the Midwesterners were outraged. It was all done for electoral reasons. To get out the black and female vote, not to exclude anybody.

But anyway he won. Kamala picked a white male for her VP and she lost. So...how about that?

Besides she was literally the first VP in history who wasn't a white male. And now a white male will be VP again. I guess I didn't feel threatened by that.

What bugged me about the Kamala Harris VP pick was how open they were about it being for identity politics.

You're supposed to at least pretend that you went out and found your ideal running mate - who just so happens to bring "balance" to the ticket, either geographically, religiously, race, gender, whatever.

[The Minsky Moment]

You guys are digging and digging. Maybe the answer is that a majority of your countrymen are just stupid.

That may be true but badly under-explanatory.  The same stupid Americans voted Obama in twice with safe margins.

[Valmy]

You can't communicate anything to people who don't want to be communicated to.  The ChatGPT fiasco proved to me that the one constant in discussions about wokedom is that those defending it don't want to discuss it.  The endless demands to define it are just at attempt to head off conversations at the very start.

I am not even defending it. It could be something worth defending, or it might not. I don't know. When  you say it what comes to mind to me is those fanatics on twitter who do things like cancel some poor bastard when they mispoke or said something off-color. And yeah I hate those people.

My only point is I am not interested in stabbing in the back any group in our coalition just to win votes. So if going against wokedom is throwing trans people under the bus I am not interested.

But in any case, as I said, the Democrats ability to dictate to their supporters how they should act is rather limited anyway. I guess the better question is how best the Democrats could mitigate the damage cause by wokedom. That might be something worth talking about. Any thoughts on that? That might be more productive.

[Valmy]

You guys are digging and digging. Maybe the answer is that a majority of your countrymen are just stupid.

That may be true but badly under-explanatory.  The same stupid Americans voted Obama in twice with safe margins.

And then did 2010. Truly baffling.

[Valmy]

One thing that I do find rather disconcerting DGuller is that at certain points the online fanatics will decide that somebody sucks. Like Musk or Rogan. And the I will spend a considerable amount of time defending these people only to eventually discover that, actually they do suck and they fanatics were right.

That bugs me a lot.

[The Minsky Moment]

What bugged me about the Kamala Harris VP pick was how open they were about it being for identity politics.

What puzzles me is:
1) the lack of similar outrage over the Harris campaign targeting a white midwestern man for her VP
2) why the supposed outrage over the identity politics of Biden's 2020 VP pick didn't hurt his campaign at all but four years later somehow hurt the Harris campaign.

[Valmy]

What bugged me about the Kamala Harris VP pick was how open they were about it being for identity politics.

You're supposed to at least pretend that you went out and found your ideal running mate - who just so happens to bring "balance" to the ticket, either geographically, religiously, race, gender, whatever.

True. That was probably a mistake on Joe's part.

[DGuller]

But in any case, as I said, the Democrats ability to dictate to their supporters how they should act is rather limited anyway. I guess the better question is how best the Democrats could mitigate the damage cause by wokedom. That might be something worth talking about. Any thoughts on that? That might be more productive.

As I already mentioned, a good start can be to not declare ahead of time that you're going to be sexist and/or racist when choosing people for important positions.  They should recognize that this kind of virtuous bias plays a lot worse than they think it does.

[Valmy]

But in any case, as I said, the Democrats ability to dictate to their supporters how they should act is rather limited anyway. I guess the better question is how best the Democrats could mitigate the damage cause by wokedom. That might be something worth talking about. Any thoughts on that? That might be more productive.

As I already mentioned, a good start can be to not declare ahead of time that you're going to be sexist and/or racist when choosing people for important positions.  They should recognize that this kind of virtuous bias plays a lot worse than they think it does.

Yeah I concede that. Biden should have said he was looking for the best person and just happened to decide that a black woman was best. That was a mistake. But he still won.

[Sheilbh]

This sounds like a trivial non-difference but it actually is a difference. "Wokeism" implies something new and radical that can be stopped. While in fact it is just the natural drift of cultural and political norms with age. You are not forced to agree with it but also it is not just a switch that you can just turn off and get back to the mid-90s version of liberalism that you and I spent our formative years in.

So, and this may shock you, I think there is an element of class to this.

I think with "wokeness" I don't think it's about the cultural or political trends so much as the language and I think it is distinctively rooted in academic discourse. I think activists in the past have worked to try and refine their message to meet the widest audience, while here (I think because there's been more cross-over from, especially full time, activists and the academic world) I sometimes feel that the language matters more than the message. And I think it is alienating - and, for want of a better word, smacks of privilege - to people who are not from or have not had access to that world. It's like opera or ballet - there's lots of red flags saying it's not for that type of person.

An example would be Latinx which is now in decline. But I remember in 2018 when there were warning signs about the Latino vote for Democrats, loads of people were saying we need to listen to people like Ruben Gallego - young, electorally successful progressive politician in a swing state. He did a big Twitter thread and his first point was "stop using Latinx - it's meaningless and alienating in the community you're trying to talk to and about." The response to that from the same people who'd called for his opinions was basically "absolutely not, here I stand". Now six years on, multiple electoral cycles of Latino voters drifting there is a move away from the term.

But even then, just last week two Harvard professors did a really interesting paper which shows that politicians who use "Latinx" lose 6 percentage points in vote share. It's about 16% among independent voters and more than 90% of Hispanic voters are less likely to vote for politicians who use "Latinx" (it is worth noting the paper also had a sample that was twice as college-educated as the population - so it's probably worse). Their take was basically that this was a "problem for Democrats" as "segments of the Latino community [...] are queerphobic and [who] would otherwise support them are less likely to do so if queerness is made salient through inclusive language". Their conclusion was that basically the solution is "political education meant to root out queerphobia in Latino communities".

As pointed out by John Burn-Murdoch, the FT data journalist, the paper is really interesting and very detailed, but it doesn't really show this. It shows that basically the Latino really dislikes the phrase "Latinx" - even people with very pro-LGBTQ+ views dislike the word and are less likely to vote for a politician to use it.

So six years, multiple electoral cycles and we now have really good research backing up what Gallego was saying in 2018 - and use of the word is declining. But in the meantime it is likely it has cost thousands of votes given that research who may have, in that time, got used to voting Republican. And I think that's the wider point - I actually think a majority support the substantive content of "wokeness" but the language is alienating. In part because I think it is from the academy - there are times and places for that language - but political activism and coalition building isn't it.

[Valmy]

What bugged me about the Kamala Harris VP pick was how open they were about it being for identity politics.

What puzzles me is:
1) the lack of similar outrage over the Harris campaign targeting a white midwestern man for her VP
2) why the supposed outrage over the identity politics of Biden's 2020 VP pick didn't hurt his campaign at all but four years later somehow hurt the Harris campaign.

While we all knew Kamala was going to pick a white man to be her VP, preferably from the former Blue Wall, I don't know if she ever said that.

Also if you specifically go out of your way to pick a white guy, nobody thinks you are being DEI because...you know...America.

[Zoupa]

But in any case, as I said, the Democrats ability to dictate to their supporters how they should act is rather limited anyway. I guess the better question is how best the Democrats could mitigate the damage cause by wokedom. That might be something worth talking about. Any thoughts on that? That might be more productive.

As I already mentioned, a good start can be to not declare ahead of time that you're going to be sexist and/or racist when choosing people for important positions.  They should recognize that this kind of virtuous bias plays a lot worse than they think it does.

It plays so bad that Biden got the most votes in history.