It's insane how much of politics comes down to vibes. Yeah Biden was too old, but I still can't fathom how many were ready to let Trump win just because voting for a tired grandpa "didn't feel good".
The exasperating part is that the aesthetics of a hellscape running under the thumb of these radically right wing creeps and weirdoes will some of the very worst...
Yes, I'm partially referring to the dichotomy Kierkegaard lays out in Either/Or between an aesthetic life and an ethical one. It's clear to me that we discarded the possibility of ethics a few decades ago.
But then I'm also referring to what you're talking about and I totally agree that the fascist aesthetics are terrible as well.
However, they're also increasingly popular for some reason...cars that look like they'll be used exclusively for transport to a black site, hideous people deforming themselves with clownish cosmetic procedures, every iteration of an American flag except the regular one, the fucking cyber truck...there are more examples...fucking ick.
Most voters just always vote the same way because it's how their parents voted. Sad, but true. Then you have a band of voters that actually will vote based on the party platforms and the track record of who's running. But all of these voters are easy to predict, set the platform accordingly and you know how many votes to expect. And that's not a bad thing if an issue is important to voters and the politicians know this and can get those votes by promising to do something about it and have a fairly good track record on fulfilling their promises, everything goes smoothly.
But then you're left with a small percentage of people who will vote based on who they'd like to have a beer with, which one is more handsome, which one reminds them of one of their relatives or whatever.
It comes down to the margins, and the margins are random as fuck.
Yeah, the couch-fucking is a bogus story. You don't need to make up embarrassing shit about JD Vance. There's plenty of it that's true. And there will be more coming out as the campaign progresses.
She was on the left end of the Senate. If she is a moderate, so is the whole democratic Senate.
She could prove me wrong, but there is a lot of evidence that she is more progressive than Biden, who was already much more progressive than we thought when we all held our noses and voted against trump in 2020.
...her most-effective tactic will be to attack aggressively and mercilessly in a way the democratic establishment so far has avoided; popular sentiment loves a bully and incompetent fascists make ripe targets...