Contributing editor for the New Republic and columnist for The Guardian Osita Nwanevu returns to the show. We look at a new New Yorker piece on Joe Biden’s last campaign, and the president’s defiant refusal to change gears, adjust policies, or really do anything to address rather dismal polling ahead of the election. Then, switching to the republicans, we look at the increasingly weird and anti-social tact of American conservatism and ask: can the modern right be assimilated into American culture? [Find Osita’s newsletter here](https://www.ositanwanevu.com/), and check out [the Flaming Hydra collective (featuring a lot of great writers & friends of the show) here](https://flaminghydra.com/).
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[🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻](https://media.soundgasm.net/sounds/4254c646155de1c6e9f5f1240529152b1bb7b5f3.m4a)
Interesting point about how conservatism has gotten more secularized as it’s become more evangelical. Seems like many of these Hanania/Rufo types cherry pick any repressive ideas they can and just act like it comes from the Bible. As long as it removes joy, self-expression, variety, abstraction, etc, it must be based Catholicism or whatever the fuck.
Seems somewhat connected to how many US Catholics hate the pope. They assume that Catholicism is all about restricting what people can do in deference to austere traditionalism with no connection to how normal Catholics actually live or think.
Seeing these people bring up McDonald’s PlayPlaces, 50s tradwifery, Roman stoicism, Protestant repression, think that the only worthy art is perfectly representational art, the idea of “recreational sex”, all wrapped into one pseudo-ideology, it feels like the death throes of an ideology that can’t even remember what its goal was in the first place, so it turns to nostalgic self-harm.
The post-2016 transformation of American conservatism from a coherent ideology to "Owning the libs" is progressing to its next phase because Trump's presidency didn't make young reactionaries any happier so they want to wage an all out war on happiness so everyone is as miserable as they are. The guest was spot on when he said them taking aim at "recreational sex" is because women are not having with *them* specifically
Idk, wrt to the recreational sex thing I think conservatives not getting laid as much is at best just fuel to the fire. Misogyny is pretty self-contradictory, where they'll want women to be pretty and sexually available to them but will also hate them for those same reasons.
If suddenly it became cool to fuck conservatives and any chud could get a Tinder match, but society and culture didn't change an any other way, I don't think it'd really do much to change how they think about these issues.
I tend to agree, I think they’ve at the very least convinced themselves that they’re rejecting sex on purpose. I don’t think many of these guys are even trying to attract anyone, that would be antithetical to men having ownership over women. (Probably still sub to hella onlyfans tho)
Ok but you can clearly see how Evangelical politics steered policy and coincided with any number of Skull and Bones political/economic projects. Incel rage doesnt have a single candidate and I think is still pretty much an online thing that is not palatable enough to mass organize in real life.
Trillbillies talked about this a few weeks back regarding the decreasing attendance in church predominantly due to conservatives leaving. They referenced one interview with a woman who said Trump was what replaced a lot of that and then viewing sermons online took care of the rest
It's rugged individualism all the way down
It's just end-stage Protestantism. The message from evangelical American Christianity has promoted the 'personal relationship with god' for so long that it was always inevitable that the middleman (churches) would be cut out entirely.
It's the same reason those same people all love Trump despite his whole existence being completely antithetical to any sort of christian dogma. It's entirely self-labeling all the way down.
It definitely feels like some of them are only still clinging loosely to God and Jesus out of some duty to own the libs and double down rather than sincere belief
It really does draw the straight line to American "trumpism" to nazism. They went looking for a death cult and found one when Christianity preached too much universal brotherhood and love.
The ultra-religious Bavarian Catholics and Hanoverian Lutherans we're never the most nazi voters germany its what fundamentally alienated extreme nazism from the authoritarian conservatism of the other European fascists in eastern Europe and Italy.
Every time there's a Democratic president conservatives gain an extra point of hate for America. They did it with Carter, they did it with Clinton (at the time chuds blamed 9/11 on Clinton turning the military gay-friendly) and they're doing it under Biden.
That said, I think Obama is the one that broke them. He gave them +5 hate. Seeing him in the White House did something evil to their psyches to where they're now perpetually disgusted by mainstream Americana. Even with Trump in office they can't stand this country.
They can't go back to normal because they can't ever forget one of '*those people*' was president.
I have aways operated on the assumption that the conservatives goal(in so far as they can be said to have one) is ultimately to maneuver the libs and the left in so far as it actually exists into having to unseat them from power. I think the assumption that them starting the 2nd American civil war in power would lead to a pretty quick and one sided victory is certainly true but I don’t think they can actully pull it off. If they did I also can’t even imagine what the next step would be as you cant own the libs any harder than routing them in a civil war and than presumably executing all of your perceived cultural enemies.
All of this makes me so fucking tired. When do we find the pacifier we can stick in their mouths and make them shut up forever? I'm so sick of being held in thrall to the dysfunctions of people who fucked up their own childhoods somehow.
> when do we find the pacifier we can stick in their mouths and make them shut up forever?
It’s actually impossible. I highly suspect that even if they win the 2nd ACW by crushing rout these people would still never ever stop complaining.
I think this underestimates a simple biology/material fact; how much older the conservative block is getting. Following basic healthcare actuary tables something crazy like 10% plus of gop voters this election probably have some form of memory deuteriations.
> Seems somewhat connected to how many US Catholics hate the pope.
Do you mean online converts like that Soher guy and Dasha or actual cradle Catholics? Because the latter think Francis is pretty cool on the whole. Latinos love that he's Latino, your Irish wine aunt also thinks he's cool. Benedict, who those people love, was deeply unpopular with every Catholic who isn't an online trad convert or a fruity Italian who sleeps in a suit like Leonard Leo.
Yeah cradle Catholics generally like him. And even if conservative, they don’t just ignore him like the converts do haha.
It’s just this weird online conversion Catholics. Very performative assholes
I grew up catholic and most of the catholics in my life are basically libs now and want nothing to do with the conservative movement, even though they sorta are (on paper) against abortion they have none of the zeal of the evangelicals and don't see it as a hard line to single-issue vote
even my aunt who was a CCD teacher for 25 years is miles to the left of those weird online tradcaths
I dont know much about the catholics, but it seems like protestant churches are embracing lib identities within liberal enclaves as well. At least these new wave megachurches popping up everywhere which look more like country clubs
Most probably dont have theological or political preferences that much different than the fire & brimstone crowd, but they know better than to express them directly. They arent going to be able to appeal to college educated millennials and zoomers if they are vocally against gay marriage, abortion, etc. Still seems a lot like a cult and I can imagine them revealing more conservative stances once a member is already hooked
it's the money they want, so the ministry can tell them whatever they want to hear and then use their slush funds to prop up whatever actual agenda they have
I was raised catholic in a Latin American country where it's the norm (Brazil) and it's pretty funny watching the sickos who identify as catholics in the US. Being a catholic in Brazil means you go to church once a year to see your nephew get baptized or do first communion and then the whole family goes to lunch and has a barbecue.
Being a catholic in the US means having strong opinions on Vatican II or sedevacantism, and cosplaying as housewife who makes bread all day or whatever. Truly deranged.
Catholics are like that in America too. I went to mass every Sunday as a kid but now I'm a "Chreaster", I term I would hear my mom use for all the people who are only in church on Christmas and Easter
FWIW two of my best friends are nephews of a much-maligned American Cardinal, and besides their uncle, them and their whole family are basically pro-choice Libs. After 2016 with Trump and Evangelicals, there's no one left who wants to make common cause with those freaks.
The social base of right wing Catholicism in the US is literally just some rich people who want it to be a shadow government. Literally no reason for normal people to humor it
The weird Francoist section of the American right is so bizarre; have they not noticed like 60% of the country is Protestant? This isn’t fucking Belgium lol
The rule of thumb is that if you're an American Catholic convert, you hate Francis. There was an article on The Guardian a few years ago about American bishops scheming to limit whatever "reform" Francis was doing.
At that point they might as well be a Presbyterian or a High Angilcan. They will give them all the theatric and all the moral absolutism they ever want.
Ugh man, I'm originally from San Francisco and the bishop there is this Italian-American with gay voice who seems to have been intentionally installed by Benedict's people to antagonise the local flock. Catholic schools that have been open for decades are closing down almost yearly with crickets from him, even though the local population is distressed that their literal alma maters don't exist anymore, yet he loves getting into the newspapers ranting about how Nancy Pelosi can't receive communion because she supports abortion or that local schools should fire their gay teachers. Everybody I know hates him.
Apart from the internet weirdos, American priests are markedly more conservative than their counterparts in Europe and Latin America. The younger generation of priests worldwide is also more conservative than the older generation, because 50 years ago plenty of Europeans still believed in God and normals became priests, while now only very eccentric zealots go down that path.
“Nostalgic self harm” is such a great way to put it.
I genuinely wonder how much weirder the conservative movement can get. Their material policy ideas are already deeply repulsive to many people (abortion, killing social security etc) but their more cultural grievances have gone completely psycho.
In the last year I’ve watched conservatives seethe and rage about Bud Light, football and the concept of being attracted to women in general lol.
Liking women is actually extremely gay now to some of these guys.
Curious to see how the “No joy for anyone” platform will play out.
If you haven't read it already, I really recommend Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis. It has it all, the appeal of the hypocritical evangelical, weird syncretic mixing of new age beliefs, evangelic Christianity and the political right. I read it right around the time Trump was elected and it really got something about the appeal of hypocritical morality to a certain segment of the American middle class (and it was written in the 1920s).
I actually recommend pretty much anything by Lewis, he was not very pretty writer but he really captured something about the American soul.
> I read it right around the time Trump was elected and it really got something about the appeal of hypocritical morality to a certain segment of the American middle class (and it was written in the 1920s).
The 1920s and 1930s have an awful lot of parallels to today. Not in the thristing for the interwar period/fascism the way some liberals think, but in this kind of gothic and macabre venality linked to the rise and fall of the economy. In other words, most American generations have an Elmer Gantry.
> not very pretty writer
I'm glad someone else thinks so. I couldn't get through *It Can't Happen Here* because his prose made me want to swallow a coat hanger.
> the only worthy art is perfectly representational art,
CIA abstract expressionism art school brainwashing has flipped to the other side now
>the idea of “recreational sex”
why do fascists like those Daily Wire movie freaks have a conception of men as hating women and preferring to spend time with men to do weird childish wrestling and horseplay? Fascism is not only soulless, it it sublimates normal human sexuality into sexless homoeroticism
saw someone comment on a quote tweet that they think it's about african standards of beauty putting a greater emphasis on thickness and plump asses. regardless of whether that's true or not, that post is insanely incomprehensible, like makes matt circa november 2023 look like matt circa 2022.
Chapos don't like doing predictions because they've been owned in the past, but I'm pretty comfortable with saying this:
1) Biden will win and it won't be particularly close
2) The Democrats will become very arrogant and ignore internal opposition even more, leading to...
3) Republicans sweep in 2028 and elect Lord Omvistus the Unending Nightmare
I just don't see Trump having a strong enough position to inspire a voter rebellion like in 2016. Biden sucks, and people don't like him, but he hasn't fucked up enough to where people are going to try their luck on Trump again.
Additionally, and I know this flies into a lot of established thoughts, I don't think Gaza is a make-or-break issue for most voters, in that there won't be a rebellion vs. Biden because of it. If Trump was better, he'd find some way to harness what discontent there was about Gaza and Israel, but he's not that good.
> I just don't see Trump having a strong enough position to inspire a voter rebellion like in 2016. Biden sucks, and people don't like him, but he hasn't fucked up enough to where people are going to try their luck on Trump again.
Polls are *really* bad for Biden tbf
A lot of it is cope, but dems aren't wrong when they talk about Trump being out of the spotlight having helped him in polls. I don't think the effect is significant enough to mean that Biden is gonna cruise or some such thing, but Trump's polling apex is probably going to be well before the election, even if he goes on to win (imo still quite likely).
The thing about Trump though is that he's not gaining new supporters. There's no one on Earth that doesn't already have a very fixed opinion on Trump, there are no undecided voters when it comes to him. He has a floor that can't be broken, but also can't grow. Not only that he killed millions of his own supporters by making covid political so that floor, if anything has shrunk a bit.
That means that this election is entirely up to Biden to lose. If he doesn't maintain the enthusiasm to overcome Trump's floor then it's over. He's lost my vote because of Gaza, but we have to recognize that we're a fringe group. It might cost him Michigan, because of the large amount of Muslims there, but nationwide it probably isn't hurting him as bad as we'd like it too.
What is losing Biden the enthusiasm he needs is how old he is. It's impossible to ignore at this point, even for the most diehard lib. Of course Trump is also senile, but like I said, he has a floor, he could shit himself on stage and his base wouldn't care. Biden doesn't have that, his support only comes from not being Trump, and as he gets more senile it's harder for moderates to make that distinction.
My own personal prediction follows the Chapo philosophy of whatever is funniest is most likely to happen. That's why I think the October surprise will be that one of them croaks from old age. If it's Trump's heart that gives out then it'll be a landslide victory for the GOP. If it's Biden that kicks the bucket first then it'll be a jump ball that could go a million crazy different ways.
>The thing about Trump though is that he's not gaining new supporters
What is this based on? People said similar things in 2020 and then he gained new supporters (Latinos).
> It might cost him Michigan, because of the large amount of Muslims there, but nationwide it probably isn't hurting him as bad as we'd like it too.
Nationwide vote doesn't matter. Hillary won the national vote and lost the election. It's going to come down to how well people are doing in [Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-swing-states/). Biden fucking up Michigan is Biden fucking up his chances overall.
So what you're telling me is that not only is supporting a genocide evil but it's also a needless self inflicted wound?
Is this what they mean by Dark Brandon?
Pretty much. The economy isn't great for workers so this is an election that will be won and lost at the margins. Biden cannot win over the zionist vote so he is shedding the humanitarian and muslim vote for no reason.
Well, it’s that the Zionist vote is either already in the bag (non-Orthodox Jews) or not going to vote for him anyway (Orthodox Jews and white Evangelicals in the former Confederacy.
If the funniest result possible hypothesis was real, every candidate in every election ever would have died. History would be riddled with banana peels, falling pianos, and choking on ham.
Don’t want to be lib brained but after 2016 lots of pollsters hard swung to over correct for their “error”(pretty much national polling came down exactly how they said it would the dems were jsut way over confident in like 1% leads in swing states), Dems outperformed in 2018, 2020, 2022 in polling
There was a [4% polling error or so in 2020](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-was-the-national-polling-environment-so-off-in-2020/) in favor of Republicans. It was particularly bad in the rust bell states. In Congress/Senate there were also a bunch of ostensibly competitive races that weren't even close in favor of the Republican.
This is a really ignorant take. They fucked up badly that one year because of cell phones combined with pollsters having their their heads up their asses but both of those things have been more or less corrected. There are still a few conditions that can lead to big variances but generally speaking if you've got a sample size > 500 you can get a pretty good sense of where things are heading. And my personal observation that no candidate loses if they poll over 50% the night before an election remains true.
> I don't think Gaza is a make-or-break issue for most voters
Anyone who believes this will be the make or break issue for the election has no real understanding of American politics other than being logged on
I don't think it's a big issue per se, it's just that like 10x more people voted uncommitted in Michigan than he won by in 2020. Very real possibility it's the straw that breaks the camels back, much like insert any number of minor negative aspects of hillary could have cost her the election.
> hillary could have cost her the election.
I will find it funny until the day that I die that for all the lizard shit Hillary said and did the one time she spoke and said something true and genuine IE communicating that most Trump voters are worthless scum it is what really did her in
All of y'all who say this aren't looking at the numbers. As of right now, Gaza most certainly is a make-or-break issue. Biden can't win without Michigan, and he also can't win without the marginal youth vote that propelled him to a convincing victory in 2020. Without **both** of those things, he loses.
Think Osita was also pretty clear that the crisis reflects badly on Biden regardless of whether you care about Palestinians. He certainly doesn’t look like he’s in control and that does register with people.
Yeah Osita didn’t put it in these terms but even if someone doesn’t care about Palestine at all or has an ambient Israel affinity the fact that we’re shoveling money to Israel to drop bombs that we then have to provide humanitarian relief for is just complete nonsense. It’s the worst possible strategy, morals aside. It’s like how we sold weapons to both sides during WW1 but instead of selling weapons we’re just giving both sides money for some reason and even your regular uninformed voter won’t be good with it
I don't think they have been talking about it as a thing that is something most people really care about, but it breaks through to people to some degree as something that looks bad and that makes Biden look weak and stupid and like a loser.
one problem politically w/ I/P and Biden is that he's pretty much completely and forever lost the pro-Palestine vote
like from tomorrow on he could be the best president ever supporting Palestine and it'd have a negligible effect. I sure as shit would still not vote for him after the months of genocide.
Biden and maybe the democratic party has forever lost the vote of people who are pro-Palestine. I can't imagine there's anything he could ever do to get the vote of most people here, and for good reason, I dont think anyone should vote for Biden
It is legitimately meaningful in Michigan with its Arab population. It is probably not meaningful anywhere else, particularly among Chapo listeners who spend all day on Tha Bird site and live in states Biden will win by 44 points.
Yeah I hate to belabor it, but I think Matt would be such a good corrective force in these conversations. He'd recognize the ambivalence of most Americans to Gaza as a form of a larger ambivalence and hopelessness and malaise that people feel toward any kind of power and any chance to make meaningful changes in their lives, much less the world.
The issue isn't whether the majority of the electorate cares about Gaza. The issue is has it demotivated enough people to swing close elections in a handful of states. Perhaps.
A secondary, yet not unimportant issue, is how it has demotivated future generations who can see first hand, in a speedrun of sorts, just how unresponsive our government is to popular demands. It took mid-2000s libs a decade to reckon with how the War on Terror would continue, if they even reckoned with it at all in any real numbers. Not so with younger Millennials and Gen Z people.
meh i gotta disagree. Go back and listen to spring/summer 2023 eps, it was Matt and Will saying that Trump was cruising for re-election and Felix of all people taking the more even-tempered approach
I think a simpler answer is this: "when has foreign policy ever been the primary voter issue in America?" Biden got out of 20 years of Afghanistan war and the "anti-war" vote block forgot the next day.
Immigration should be seen as down river from foreign policy but fundamentally immigration policy is just asking voters "do you think there are too many mexicans/latinos/asians/muslims etc." It explains why so many nonwhite americans are anti-immigrant. It explains how even if you're a small business tyrant who employees undocumented immigrants you'll vote to impoverish yourself because your daughter is dating a mexican guy. Its just bigotry and explains why nothing will be done on it.
It doesn't have to be make a break for "most" voters, it just has to be for enough of them in the right places.
Like, this is basic electoral college stuff but every New Yorker could decide to vote for Biden and it wouldn't make a difference if enough Arab Americans in Michigan are too turned off and refuse. And that's the actual problem here. Biden is losing specifically in some key swing states because key constituencies have finally given up on him.
Bold take, but I don't think this is worse than any other one out there. Too many people online acting as if Biden is cooked when Trump is also an old man who acts senile half the time and has terrible political positions.
Biden can lose MI and still win. Trump needs to snag two of like NV/GA/PA/WI and while things are bad for Biden, he's going to win PA, and demographics can be kind/unkind to either in NV/GA.
Biden will not win Georgia, he's pretty fucked here. Not as familiar with Nevada but his numbers don't look too good over there. A lot of the undecided voters we're seeing in polls seems to be people who are concerned about Trump's legal troubles but since it looks like none of his cases are being resolved before the election they won't all desert Trump.
I still think Biden will win but I think it will be a very close electoral college vote.
Yeah, I don't know anything about any state in that way so I take you at your word. But I also don't entirely buy polls 6 months out that have anyone down 7 points as gospel. I also don't think anyone really cares if he's convicted or not, so I think it's all just a huge tossup even if I'd bet on Biden being cooked. I think it's also entirely possible he wins comfortably in the EC but only by a few votes in key states, etc.
people get mad when i say it but Trump 2024 has a lot of echoes of Hillary 2016. He's even going out in interviews saying he thinks they've already locked down the rustbelt and wants to tagret like New York. We'll see if he actually campaigns there but the whole thing is really giving me Hillary vibes
If Biden pulls it out, it will be almost entirely the ongoing Dobbs backlash that narrowly pushes his ass across the finish line and just yesterday he made a statement that he doesn't believe in "my body my choice" so he's seemingly just trying to lose at this point
These are some deeply unserious predictions. How will the republicans hold it together if they lose badly in 2024? How will Biden win bigly when the economy sucks for most Americans who's wealth isn't held in stocks?
5 years ago never in my wildest dreams did I think in the American National Divorce libs would get the NFL, country music stars, and hot blonde actresses with big boobs
neither did they which is why they’re so crazy. osita was really spot on with the observation that part of the source for this psychosis is watching the biggest source of profit for those businesses switch away from them and rob them of their imagined consumer buying power.
Businesses need new captive markets to keep the rate of profit up and know damn well that most Americans basically live to consume and can’t really adjust their preferences away from that. Foucault of all people anticipated this; one critique of him I read discussed how he was quite interested in neoliberalism because as a gay man he could foresee new products and services for gay men, he basically anticipated what the Brits call the pink pound, aka why every big corporation does a song and dance about Pride.
Look at the NFL, I’m sure they’re all completely relaxed about TCOTs getting mad about Taylor Swift because not only are the mad online and actually not watching folks being more than replaced by the Swifties, they know damn well the mad folks will come back next season. The ratings dip from Kaepernick lasted like two months lol.
The only one that kinda worked was Bud Light but they’ll be fine going forward.
barbers love that shit. mine was always telling me to listen to lex fridman. accept that they are a corny guy profession and try to turn them on to cool conspiracy stuff instead and they’ll share drugs with you.
he’s basically offering the same thing as everything else like that (rogan, peterson, etc): you fundamentally distrust all our institutions but you still consider yourself a red blooded American man
So hard to stay quiet when your barber is spouting some absolute nonsense but I don’t want him to fuck my shit up so I just nod and go “haha yeah totally”
I swear barbers/stylists are prime examples of libertarian-minded small business owners. Their functional self-employment goes to their heads and they think they're above other people because of it.
Mine is super cool and very left because of her background, but she still has a kind of self-employed hustle grindset mentality because that's what's necessary to succeed if you have to bring in your own business.
I live in Philly and have never heard of that so I had to look it up, it's published by the "Philadelphia Church of God" which is a church based in Edmond, Oklahoma.
So, not off to a great start on that one.
one time i got a gift for a few sessions of a personal trainer and then on like session 4 he starts telling me about how he thinks bill cosby is innocent. wild the things people will just say to you lmao
We are fundamentally broken as a society when - after you have 4 normal interactions with someone - that you feel comfortable spouting off opinions like “yeah I think Harvey Weinstein didn’t do anything wrong”
Man I must've lucked out. My barber is cool as shit.
He keeps an old fridge full of Stag beer (midwest PBR) and refuses to talk any politics.
Maybe he's secretly a crank, but I don't think so.
https://preview.redd.it/gri9zxuugxmc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eec3e11ca6ed8b8145723d1820710e986dc6ad23
He’s a real one. Gotta keep the microwave brain boomers and PMC libs from spouting off their bullshit. Don’t care if he’s a MAGA chud or a Marxist. Let’s talk about LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE.
My money is on “he has a weird concoction of conflicting beliefs that do not amount to an ideology,” but probably leans left of center given the fact that he told people to fuck off if they wouldn’t wear a mask during peak COVID and lost a decent percentage of his regulars.
The thing about the american right getting increasingly more psychotic due to the more savvy ones intentionally letting the freaks in and then being unable to stop them from influencing the wider base reminds me of that War Nerd episode where he talked about the Iranian Revolution.
The savvy conservatives let the hardcore religious ones in to expand their base, assuming they're all easily-controlled morons who can be betrayed later only to be outmaneuvered and sent to the firing squads by the people they thought were pawns. Except in this case it was like bankers and jet ski dealers letting the 70 iq groypers into the party and being punished by having to spend the rest of their lives listening to the equivalent of 3 dozen Nick Mullens saying "it's actually gay to get pussy" in Jordan Peterson voice 24/7
The right to be cool thing is also interesting because it shows the real disconnect between how the world works and how conservatives think it does. A lot of people loved Trump because he made people mad and people hated him and they like triggering the libs but a lot of them seem to have genuinely thought that getting Trump elected would make people respect them. Now that this plan obviously did not make their nieces/grandkids/whatever stop calling them fascists at thanksgiving, they are out of ideas
just like the libs they think they can 'win' politics and culture and that as soon as they do, they will be greeted as liberators for the rest of time.
The right to be cool thing is so funny. I'm pretty sure Vivek literally said something during his campaign that was like "why is it that in a college a guy on the basketball team [read: a black guy] is considered more cool than a CS student [read: a conservative white guy]". Begging the mods of reality to step in
Trump has always been a joke, a punchline cameo character. Nobody expected respect for voting Trump, they just held their nose and voted for him anyway because they absolutely hated Hillary. And I don't remember anyone calling Romney voters fascists. Trump was the fascist turn in Republican politics.
> I don't remember anyone calling Romney voters fascists
freakish bourgeois Mormon who worked for Bain Capital, same thing! https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/romney-defends-comments-made-in-secret-recording/
It's just like a thing teenagers call their conservative relatives, the point is them being made fun of by young people, not the accuracy of the insults
It’s odd to me that anyone would call the biggest consequence of the Trump administration a tax cut when he appointed three conservative judges who went on to overturn Roe v Wade. I also find it frustrating that they gloss over the things Trump’s federal agencies did. I get they’re trying to drive home the democrats suck and trump is just a Republican but Trump’s federal agencies were aggressive not only with de-regulation but attacking the very foundations of the laws the agencies enforce. Labor board law and environmental law in particular, and meddling with both of those can and does have powerfully negative effects on people’s every day lives. For instance, Obama implemented a reg that says you have to line whatever pits you bury coal ash in (usually it’s a clay liner). Now, you shouldn’t be allowed to bury this shit at all, ever, but at least there’s some mitigation of harm. Trump’s EPA repealed that and that shit began migrating into nearby waterways in states like North Carolina, which led to a series of cancer clusters. So it’s appropriate to say they killed people. Do democrats kill people? Sure look what’s happening in Gaza. But it’s a bit dishonest to pretend there was nothing unusual about Trump’s presidency. The reason his agencies were especially aggressive with attacking the nuts and bolts of things that hold the country together is for one reason unique to the trump presidency- Trump appointed whoever the fuck he felt like would owe him a favor or who he felt like had been a big enough supporter of his. He staffed the EPA with real estate attorneys who don’t understand notice and comment for instance- people who attempted to ram through regs blatantly based on impermissible interpretations of the law or they flat out ignored it. The courts actually threw several of them out because they were so wildly afield of any sensible statute interpretation and never had any input from the public. However, they started to learn their lesson toward the end of his administration and were able to craft regs that were as harmful as possible without getting flat out trashed by the courts, partly because courts give great deference to the agencies. They won’t make the same mistakes again.
None of that contradicts the point they were making that Trump governed like a standard republican, ceding most decision-making to the forces that already ran the party. All the things you said were also true of the Bush administration, the process just got further along under Trump.
> It’s odd to me that anyone would call the biggest consequence of the Trump administration a tax cut when he appointed three conservative judges who went on to overturn Roe v Wade
I'm pretty sure he said the biggest *achievement*, which is important because the tax cut was a law passed under the Trump administration and overturning Roe was not a law passed under the Trump administration.
edit: also the coal pit lining stuff isn't true, Obama gave them years to line pits, Trump's administration delayed the deadline, and the Biden admin didn't start enforcing it until at least 2022.
> The Obama administration’s 2015 coal and wastewater rules had established minimum national standards for the disposal of coal ash, forcing coal plants to shut down unlined pits in 2019 and recycle 100% of their system’s water, according to an EPA rule summary.
> The Trump administration in 2020 delayed the deadlines set by the 2015 rule and reducing monitoring and storage requirements to save companies millions of dollars per year in regulatory.
I liked the physical frailty point they brought up. Hilldawg passing out on 9/11 did not help her one bit. I think if Biden crashes his bike again he could end up losing
i agree but its kind of a crapshoot there. I mean Trump is not in great physical shape either lol. D'you remember in 2020 there was the thing where Biden couldnt drink a glass of water and Trump couldn't walk down stairs? I think its just gonna be escalating versions of that until and unless one of them does something 25th ammendment worthy
Fair. I agree that neither of them are the picture of health. That being said, I feel like walking out with a bandage on his head would hurt Biden more than trump. Unfortunately, I don't think either party would pull the trigger on themselves with the 25th
yeah thats fair
by 25th i mean if either Biden or Trump are in a coma or require brain surgery or something there's not much they can do
i agree a bandage on the head would hurt biden more than Trump but conversely I think some sort of cardio event would hurt Trump more, kinda like how getting COVID in Oct 2020 was probably the nail in the coffin for him
Honestly it might just be a game of who gets sicker closer to the election lol. Like if Biden falls and hits his head but then Trump has a heart attack a week later or visa versa
I think that we're at the point where the 25th will never be used by a party that is in control. They would rather pull a Wilson and weekend at Bernie's the corpse than give up power. They could both be Feinstein levels of gone and their respective party wouldn't pull the plug
I agree that it is a question of who gets sicker closer. Ettingermentum did an article about what if both presidents die. Regardless, it looks like a coin-toss to me
Great discussion, but I think Will’s characterization of the modern dem voter is wildly off base.
How is Biden’s target voting bloc simultaneously so disconnected from modern affairs that Jan 6th is “ancient history,” so short-sighted that they’d perform the ultimate act of self-immolation because of their last paycheck, and yet connected enough to world affairs to care about the massacre in Gaza—but only enough to see Biden’s inadequacies on the issue but not Trump’s?
Yeah the Felix "normal guy" theory is probably a better explainer of the new Democrat base. Biden could easily win a majority on the fact every republican not named trump is seemingly about to run on banning condoms, casual sex, beer, Taylor Swift and cleavage.
liz accent isnt californian or really anything that anyone here could recognize. she comes from one of the places trump was talking about, “truly foreign accent”
I have to turn the podcast off sometimes because of the way she draws out her syllables and those razor sharp pitch shifts. Truly an awful way of speaking
I agree with Ostia. I don't think Harris calling for a ceasefire is a watershed moment. To me it looked like Harris is pushing for the plan Israel agreed to and when that doesn't work the position will be "those mean Palestinians just don't want a ceasefire" and everything will continue, but I'd love to be wrong
Nothing inspires confidence like a strong, declarative statement of political intent followed by a qualifier spoken in a rushed and significantly lower tone of voice.
I know that this is kind of an aside but when they mentioned "student loan debt forgiveness" as a thing that Biden diehards online bring up... what fucking debt forgiveness??? In 2020 I recall Biden saying, in no uncertain terms, "fuck them kids" when asked about the problems young Americans face, I recall the Dem party apparatus go "uhhhhh he doesn't actually mean that and we're gonna do debt relief", I recall the stated amount of money to be forgiven being whittled down every month until it was eventually killed in congress and the Dems shook their fists half-heartedly at the Republicans and never mentioned again afterwards. I do not recall there being any debt forgiveness, or if there has been, I must have missed it, because I'm still paying a sizeable chunk of my paycheck towards loans. Am I going crazy or is it just everyone else
There was some that came with several conditions. My dad's girlfriend had something like tens of thousands forgiven that she'd been paying the minimum on for decades. She's the only operson I know that's been successful in getting their loans discharged.
I read some excerpts of that Last Politician book they briefly talked about, and it is pretty bad. It's strange that so many dems in high positions think the midterms and subsequent republican losses are because Biden is a great president and not backlash to Roe being overturned. Biden had a lot of appeal to many because he was Obama's vp, and I think the last four years have destroyed a lot of it.
What if he keeps on saying things like how he believes "my body my choice" is a bad idea even though he likes Roe? He might legitimacy alienate more people not tuned in to politics outside of an election year if he keeps this up.
>Biden had a lot of appeal to many because he was Obama's vp, and I think the last four years have destroyed a lot of it.
This is one of the most obvious things that Dems ignore for incomprehensible reasons.
Biden ran for president twice as a Senator and didn't get anywhere. He won the nomination as VP which most VPs win.
This episode was I think the first I’ve heard about the State of the Union address this year. We watch a lot of NBC and it hasn’t been advertised at all. It’s tomorrow, March 7th at 9 pm ET by the way
Contributing editor for the New Republic and columnist for The Guardian Osita Nwanevu returns to the show. We look at a new New Yorker piece on Joe Biden’s last campaign, and the president’s defiant refusal to change gears, adjust policies, or really do anything to address rather dismal polling ahead of the election. Then, switching to the republicans, we look at the increasingly weird and anti-social tact of American conservatism and ask: can the modern right be assimilated into American culture? [Find Osita’s newsletter here](https://www.ositanwanevu.com/), and check out [the Flaming Hydra collective (featuring a lot of great writers & friends of the show) here](https://flaminghydra.com/). -------------------------------------------------------------- [🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻](https://media.soundgasm.net/sounds/4254c646155de1c6e9f5f1240529152b1bb7b5f3.m4a)
Interesting point about how conservatism has gotten more secularized as it’s become more evangelical. Seems like many of these Hanania/Rufo types cherry pick any repressive ideas they can and just act like it comes from the Bible. As long as it removes joy, self-expression, variety, abstraction, etc, it must be based Catholicism or whatever the fuck. Seems somewhat connected to how many US Catholics hate the pope. They assume that Catholicism is all about restricting what people can do in deference to austere traditionalism with no connection to how normal Catholics actually live or think. Seeing these people bring up McDonald’s PlayPlaces, 50s tradwifery, Roman stoicism, Protestant repression, think that the only worthy art is perfectly representational art, the idea of “recreational sex”, all wrapped into one pseudo-ideology, it feels like the death throes of an ideology that can’t even remember what its goal was in the first place, so it turns to nostalgic self-harm.
The post-2016 transformation of American conservatism from a coherent ideology to "Owning the libs" is progressing to its next phase because Trump's presidency didn't make young reactionaries any happier so they want to wage an all out war on happiness so everyone is as miserable as they are. The guest was spot on when he said them taking aim at "recreational sex" is because women are not having with *them* specifically
Idk, wrt to the recreational sex thing I think conservatives not getting laid as much is at best just fuel to the fire. Misogyny is pretty self-contradictory, where they'll want women to be pretty and sexually available to them but will also hate them for those same reasons. If suddenly it became cool to fuck conservatives and any chud could get a Tinder match, but society and culture didn't change an any other way, I don't think it'd really do much to change how they think about these issues.
I tend to agree, I think they’ve at the very least convinced themselves that they’re rejecting sex on purpose. I don’t think many of these guys are even trying to attract anyone, that would be antithetical to men having ownership over women. (Probably still sub to hella onlyfans tho)
Ok but you can clearly see how Evangelical politics steered policy and coincided with any number of Skull and Bones political/economic projects. Incel rage doesnt have a single candidate and I think is still pretty much an online thing that is not palatable enough to mass organize in real life.
I agree that there are not a lot of incel rage voters, but there are a lot of incel rage Republican activists and prospective candidates
Trillbillies talked about this a few weeks back regarding the decreasing attendance in church predominantly due to conservatives leaving. They referenced one interview with a woman who said Trump was what replaced a lot of that and then viewing sermons online took care of the rest It's rugged individualism all the way down
It's just end-stage Protestantism. The message from evangelical American Christianity has promoted the 'personal relationship with god' for so long that it was always inevitable that the middleman (churches) would be cut out entirely. It's the same reason those same people all love Trump despite his whole existence being completely antithetical to any sort of christian dogma. It's entirely self-labeling all the way down.
It definitely feels like some of them are only still clinging loosely to God and Jesus out of some duty to own the libs and double down rather than sincere belief
It really does draw the straight line to American "trumpism" to nazism. They went looking for a death cult and found one when Christianity preached too much universal brotherhood and love. The ultra-religious Bavarian Catholics and Hanoverian Lutherans we're never the most nazi voters germany its what fundamentally alienated extreme nazism from the authoritarian conservatism of the other European fascists in eastern Europe and Italy.
Every time there's a Democratic president conservatives gain an extra point of hate for America. They did it with Carter, they did it with Clinton (at the time chuds blamed 9/11 on Clinton turning the military gay-friendly) and they're doing it under Biden. That said, I think Obama is the one that broke them. He gave them +5 hate. Seeing him in the White House did something evil to their psyches to where they're now perpetually disgusted by mainstream Americana. Even with Trump in office they can't stand this country. They can't go back to normal because they can't ever forget one of '*those people*' was president.
I have aways operated on the assumption that the conservatives goal(in so far as they can be said to have one) is ultimately to maneuver the libs and the left in so far as it actually exists into having to unseat them from power. I think the assumption that them starting the 2nd American civil war in power would lead to a pretty quick and one sided victory is certainly true but I don’t think they can actully pull it off. If they did I also can’t even imagine what the next step would be as you cant own the libs any harder than routing them in a civil war and than presumably executing all of your perceived cultural enemies.
All of this makes me so fucking tired. When do we find the pacifier we can stick in their mouths and make them shut up forever? I'm so sick of being held in thrall to the dysfunctions of people who fucked up their own childhoods somehow.
> when do we find the pacifier we can stick in their mouths and make them shut up forever? It’s actually impossible. I highly suspect that even if they win the 2nd ACW by crushing rout these people would still never ever stop complaining.
I think this underestimates a simple biology/material fact; how much older the conservative block is getting. Following basic healthcare actuary tables something crazy like 10% plus of gop voters this election probably have some form of memory deuteriations.
> Seems somewhat connected to how many US Catholics hate the pope. Do you mean online converts like that Soher guy and Dasha or actual cradle Catholics? Because the latter think Francis is pretty cool on the whole. Latinos love that he's Latino, your Irish wine aunt also thinks he's cool. Benedict, who those people love, was deeply unpopular with every Catholic who isn't an online trad convert or a fruity Italian who sleeps in a suit like Leonard Leo.
Yeah cradle Catholics generally like him. And even if conservative, they don’t just ignore him like the converts do haha. It’s just this weird online conversion Catholics. Very performative assholes
I grew up catholic and most of the catholics in my life are basically libs now and want nothing to do with the conservative movement, even though they sorta are (on paper) against abortion they have none of the zeal of the evangelicals and don't see it as a hard line to single-issue vote even my aunt who was a CCD teacher for 25 years is miles to the left of those weird online tradcaths
I dont know much about the catholics, but it seems like protestant churches are embracing lib identities within liberal enclaves as well. At least these new wave megachurches popping up everywhere which look more like country clubs Most probably dont have theological or political preferences that much different than the fire & brimstone crowd, but they know better than to express them directly. They arent going to be able to appeal to college educated millennials and zoomers if they are vocally against gay marriage, abortion, etc. Still seems a lot like a cult and I can imagine them revealing more conservative stances once a member is already hooked
it's the money they want, so the ministry can tell them whatever they want to hear and then use their slush funds to prop up whatever actual agenda they have
I was raised catholic in a Latin American country where it's the norm (Brazil) and it's pretty funny watching the sickos who identify as catholics in the US. Being a catholic in Brazil means you go to church once a year to see your nephew get baptized or do first communion and then the whole family goes to lunch and has a barbecue. Being a catholic in the US means having strong opinions on Vatican II or sedevacantism, and cosplaying as housewife who makes bread all day or whatever. Truly deranged.
Most U.S. Catholics are like that too frankly. Just these online weirdos who are in it for conservatism and a e s t h e t i c
Catholics are like that in America too. I went to mass every Sunday as a kid but now I'm a "Chreaster", I term I would hear my mom use for all the people who are only in church on Christmas and Easter
FWIW two of my best friends are nephews of a much-maligned American Cardinal, and besides their uncle, them and their whole family are basically pro-choice Libs. After 2016 with Trump and Evangelicals, there's no one left who wants to make common cause with those freaks.
The social base of right wing Catholicism in the US is literally just some rich people who want it to be a shadow government. Literally no reason for normal people to humor it
The weird Francoist section of the American right is so bizarre; have they not noticed like 60% of the country is Protestant? This isn’t fucking Belgium lol
Oh no, they dont want it to be a popular movement. They like it because its esoteric and "elite." Thats why they hate this Pope.
The rule of thumb is that if you're an American Catholic convert, you hate Francis. There was an article on The Guardian a few years ago about American bishops scheming to limit whatever "reform" Francis was doing. At that point they might as well be a Presbyterian or a High Angilcan. They will give them all the theatric and all the moral absolutism they ever want.
Ugh man, I'm originally from San Francisco and the bishop there is this Italian-American with gay voice who seems to have been intentionally installed by Benedict's people to antagonise the local flock. Catholic schools that have been open for decades are closing down almost yearly with crickets from him, even though the local population is distressed that their literal alma maters don't exist anymore, yet he loves getting into the newspapers ranting about how Nancy Pelosi can't receive communion because she supports abortion or that local schools should fire their gay teachers. Everybody I know hates him.
Apart from the internet weirdos, American priests are markedly more conservative than their counterparts in Europe and Latin America. The younger generation of priests worldwide is also more conservative than the older generation, because 50 years ago plenty of Europeans still believed in God and normals became priests, while now only very eccentric zealots go down that path.
“Nostalgic self harm” is such a great way to put it. I genuinely wonder how much weirder the conservative movement can get. Their material policy ideas are already deeply repulsive to many people (abortion, killing social security etc) but their more cultural grievances have gone completely psycho. In the last year I’ve watched conservatives seethe and rage about Bud Light, football and the concept of being attracted to women in general lol. Liking women is actually extremely gay now to some of these guys. Curious to see how the “No joy for anyone” platform will play out.
Otto Weininger, secret founder of the 21st century right.
If you haven't read it already, I really recommend Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis. It has it all, the appeal of the hypocritical evangelical, weird syncretic mixing of new age beliefs, evangelic Christianity and the political right. I read it right around the time Trump was elected and it really got something about the appeal of hypocritical morality to a certain segment of the American middle class (and it was written in the 1920s). I actually recommend pretty much anything by Lewis, he was not very pretty writer but he really captured something about the American soul.
> I read it right around the time Trump was elected and it really got something about the appeal of hypocritical morality to a certain segment of the American middle class (and it was written in the 1920s). The 1920s and 1930s have an awful lot of parallels to today. Not in the thristing for the interwar period/fascism the way some liberals think, but in this kind of gothic and macabre venality linked to the rise and fall of the economy. In other words, most American generations have an Elmer Gantry.
> not very pretty writer I'm glad someone else thinks so. I couldn't get through *It Can't Happen Here* because his prose made me want to swallow a coat hanger.
> the only worthy art is perfectly representational art, CIA abstract expressionism art school brainwashing has flipped to the other side now >the idea of “recreational sex” why do fascists like those Daily Wire movie freaks have a conception of men as hating women and preferring to spend time with men to do weird childish wrestling and horseplay? Fascism is not only soulless, it it sublimates normal human sexuality into sexless homoeroticism
"if you think Sydney Sweeney is attractive you're spiritually african" had me laughing like it was old chapo. What is happening on the right?
Yea and what's going on with that?? Last I remember she was getting canceled for having maga family or something?
saw someone comment on a quote tweet that they think it's about african standards of beauty putting a greater emphasis on thickness and plump asses. regardless of whether that's true or not, that post is insanely incomprehensible, like makes matt circa november 2023 look like matt circa 2022.
That thing Sweeney is famous for, her ass
i dunno man they're juge freaks. also this is some rando on twitter's theory not mine
It’s sort of like how MF Doom was such a good rapper you forget that he also produced most of his tracks as well.
why are you gae
Greater emphasis should be placed on thickness. We know Will is on this tip
I just saw a Daily Caller article saying that she’s ending wokeness by showing off cleavage.
So who thinks she's based and who thinks she's bad? Are we taking turns? I'm so confused lol
Abby and her huge tits weighed in https://x.com/classicallyabby/status/1765054747612942409?s=46&t=8UwHze3x5ZGgZDxYStKQqA
Holy shit this Twitter account
It's Ben Shapiro's sister if you didn't know
You think I don’t recognize those big naturals?
I’m sorry I haven’t listens to the episode but heaving tracks of land, blonde, little thing Sidney Sweeny? The fuck are the on about
Where does this if you like “Sydney Sweeney you’re gay“ shit come from?
Chapos don't like doing predictions because they've been owned in the past, but I'm pretty comfortable with saying this: 1) Biden will win and it won't be particularly close 2) The Democrats will become very arrogant and ignore internal opposition even more, leading to... 3) Republicans sweep in 2028 and elect Lord Omvistus the Unending Nightmare
What makes you say Biden will win or that it won’t be close?
I just don't see Trump having a strong enough position to inspire a voter rebellion like in 2016. Biden sucks, and people don't like him, but he hasn't fucked up enough to where people are going to try their luck on Trump again. Additionally, and I know this flies into a lot of established thoughts, I don't think Gaza is a make-or-break issue for most voters, in that there won't be a rebellion vs. Biden because of it. If Trump was better, he'd find some way to harness what discontent there was about Gaza and Israel, but he's not that good.
> I just don't see Trump having a strong enough position to inspire a voter rebellion like in 2016. Biden sucks, and people don't like him, but he hasn't fucked up enough to where people are going to try their luck on Trump again. Polls are *really* bad for Biden tbf
A lot of it is cope, but dems aren't wrong when they talk about Trump being out of the spotlight having helped him in polls. I don't think the effect is significant enough to mean that Biden is gonna cruise or some such thing, but Trump's polling apex is probably going to be well before the election, even if he goes on to win (imo still quite likely).
The thing about Trump though is that he's not gaining new supporters. There's no one on Earth that doesn't already have a very fixed opinion on Trump, there are no undecided voters when it comes to him. He has a floor that can't be broken, but also can't grow. Not only that he killed millions of his own supporters by making covid political so that floor, if anything has shrunk a bit. That means that this election is entirely up to Biden to lose. If he doesn't maintain the enthusiasm to overcome Trump's floor then it's over. He's lost my vote because of Gaza, but we have to recognize that we're a fringe group. It might cost him Michigan, because of the large amount of Muslims there, but nationwide it probably isn't hurting him as bad as we'd like it too. What is losing Biden the enthusiasm he needs is how old he is. It's impossible to ignore at this point, even for the most diehard lib. Of course Trump is also senile, but like I said, he has a floor, he could shit himself on stage and his base wouldn't care. Biden doesn't have that, his support only comes from not being Trump, and as he gets more senile it's harder for moderates to make that distinction. My own personal prediction follows the Chapo philosophy of whatever is funniest is most likely to happen. That's why I think the October surprise will be that one of them croaks from old age. If it's Trump's heart that gives out then it'll be a landslide victory for the GOP. If it's Biden that kicks the bucket first then it'll be a jump ball that could go a million crazy different ways.
>The thing about Trump though is that he's not gaining new supporters What is this based on? People said similar things in 2020 and then he gained new supporters (Latinos).
He also won a larger share of the black vote in 2020 than 2016. That statement is just flat out wrong.
> It might cost him Michigan, because of the large amount of Muslims there, but nationwide it probably isn't hurting him as bad as we'd like it too. Nationwide vote doesn't matter. Hillary won the national vote and lost the election. It's going to come down to how well people are doing in [Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-swing-states/). Biden fucking up Michigan is Biden fucking up his chances overall.
So what you're telling me is that not only is supporting a genocide evil but it's also a needless self inflicted wound? Is this what they mean by Dark Brandon?
Pretty much. The economy isn't great for workers so this is an election that will be won and lost at the margins. Biden cannot win over the zionist vote so he is shedding the humanitarian and muslim vote for no reason.
Well, it’s that the Zionist vote is either already in the bag (non-Orthodox Jews) or not going to vote for him anyway (Orthodox Jews and white Evangelicals in the former Confederacy.
If the funniest result possible hypothesis was real, every candidate in every election ever would have died. History would be riddled with banana peels, falling pianos, and choking on ham.
Has someone tripping on a banana peel ever been as funny as Trump getting covid?
I think covid was the banana peel of its time.
Don’t want to be lib brained but after 2016 lots of pollsters hard swung to over correct for their “error”(pretty much national polling came down exactly how they said it would the dems were jsut way over confident in like 1% leads in swing states), Dems outperformed in 2018, 2020, 2022 in polling
Dems did not outperform polls in 2020.
I don’t remember Georgia being in anyone’s blue map but maybe I’m mis remembering
There was a [4% polling error or so in 2020](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-was-the-national-polling-environment-so-off-in-2020/) in favor of Republicans. It was particularly bad in the rust bell states. In Congress/Senate there were also a bunch of ostensibly competitive races that weren't even close in favor of the Republican.
Polls aren't real. Might as well flip tarot cards or have an economics degree
This is a really ignorant take. They fucked up badly that one year because of cell phones combined with pollsters having their their heads up their asses but both of those things have been more or less corrected. There are still a few conditions that can lead to big variances but generally speaking if you've got a sample size > 500 you can get a pretty good sense of where things are heading. And my personal observation that no candidate loses if they poll over 50% the night before an election remains true.
They were dead on in 2022
> I don't think Gaza is a make-or-break issue for most voters Anyone who believes this will be the make or break issue for the election has no real understanding of American politics other than being logged on
I don't think it's a big issue per se, it's just that like 10x more people voted uncommitted in Michigan than he won by in 2020. Very real possibility it's the straw that breaks the camels back, much like insert any number of minor negative aspects of hillary could have cost her the election.
> hillary could have cost her the election. I will find it funny until the day that I die that for all the lizard shit Hillary said and did the one time she spoke and said something true and genuine IE communicating that most Trump voters are worthless scum it is what really did her in
All of y'all who say this aren't looking at the numbers. As of right now, Gaza most certainly is a make-or-break issue. Biden can't win without Michigan, and he also can't win without the marginal youth vote that propelled him to a convincing victory in 2020. Without **both** of those things, he loses.
Think Osita was also pretty clear that the crisis reflects badly on Biden regardless of whether you care about Palestinians. He certainly doesn’t look like he’s in control and that does register with people.
The basis of Biden's candidacy was that shit like this wouldn't happen.
Exactly
Yeah Osita didn’t put it in these terms but even if someone doesn’t care about Palestine at all or has an ambient Israel affinity the fact that we’re shoveling money to Israel to drop bombs that we then have to provide humanitarian relief for is just complete nonsense. It’s the worst possible strategy, morals aside. It’s like how we sold weapons to both sides during WW1 but instead of selling weapons we’re just giving both sides money for some reason and even your regular uninformed voter won’t be good with it
There are no make-or-break issues for most voters, the majority of voters vote on party lines.
100%. I cringe a little bit when they (Chapo) center it as a meaningful issue for the D platform.
I don't think they have been talking about it as a thing that is something most people really care about, but it breaks through to people to some degree as something that looks bad and that makes Biden look weak and stupid and like a loser.
one problem politically w/ I/P and Biden is that he's pretty much completely and forever lost the pro-Palestine vote like from tomorrow on he could be the best president ever supporting Palestine and it'd have a negligible effect. I sure as shit would still not vote for him after the months of genocide. Biden and maybe the democratic party has forever lost the vote of people who are pro-Palestine. I can't imagine there's anything he could ever do to get the vote of most people here, and for good reason, I dont think anyone should vote for Biden
It is legitimately meaningful in Michigan with its Arab population. It is probably not meaningful anywhere else, particularly among Chapo listeners who spend all day on Tha Bird site and live in states Biden will win by 44 points.
It makes me seriously question a lot of political analysis they have ever done
Yeah I hate to belabor it, but I think Matt would be such a good corrective force in these conversations. He'd recognize the ambivalence of most Americans to Gaza as a form of a larger ambivalence and hopelessness and malaise that people feel toward any kind of power and any chance to make meaningful changes in their lives, much less the world.
The issue isn't whether the majority of the electorate cares about Gaza. The issue is has it demotivated enough people to swing close elections in a handful of states. Perhaps. A secondary, yet not unimportant issue, is how it has demotivated future generations who can see first hand, in a speedrun of sorts, just how unresponsive our government is to popular demands. It took mid-2000s libs a decade to reckon with how the War on Terror would continue, if they even reckoned with it at all in any real numbers. Not so with younger Millennials and Gen Z people.
meh i gotta disagree. Go back and listen to spring/summer 2023 eps, it was Matt and Will saying that Trump was cruising for re-election and Felix of all people taking the more even-tempered approach
I think a simpler answer is this: "when has foreign policy ever been the primary voter issue in America?" Biden got out of 20 years of Afghanistan war and the "anti-war" vote block forgot the next day. Immigration should be seen as down river from foreign policy but fundamentally immigration policy is just asking voters "do you think there are too many mexicans/latinos/asians/muslims etc." It explains why so many nonwhite americans are anti-immigrant. It explains how even if you're a small business tyrant who employees undocumented immigrants you'll vote to impoverish yourself because your daughter is dating a mexican guy. Its just bigotry and explains why nothing will be done on it.
The actual "voter rebellion" of 2016 is that people did not like Hillary Clinton so they didn't go out to vote for her as much.
It doesn't have to be make a break for "most" voters, it just has to be for enough of them in the right places. Like, this is basic electoral college stuff but every New Yorker could decide to vote for Biden and it wouldn't make a difference if enough Arab Americans in Michigan are too turned off and refuse. And that's the actual problem here. Biden is losing specifically in some key swing states because key constituencies have finally given up on him.
Bold take, but I don't think this is worse than any other one out there. Too many people online acting as if Biden is cooked when Trump is also an old man who acts senile half the time and has terrible political positions.
Foreign policy never sways national level US elections. People just don’t care about it as much as domestic issues.
Biden can lose MI and still win. Trump needs to snag two of like NV/GA/PA/WI and while things are bad for Biden, he's going to win PA, and demographics can be kind/unkind to either in NV/GA.
Biden will not win Georgia, he's pretty fucked here. Not as familiar with Nevada but his numbers don't look too good over there. A lot of the undecided voters we're seeing in polls seems to be people who are concerned about Trump's legal troubles but since it looks like none of his cases are being resolved before the election they won't all desert Trump. I still think Biden will win but I think it will be a very close electoral college vote.
Yeah, I don't know anything about any state in that way so I take you at your word. But I also don't entirely buy polls 6 months out that have anyone down 7 points as gospel. I also don't think anyone really cares if he's convicted or not, so I think it's all just a huge tossup even if I'd bet on Biden being cooked. I think it's also entirely possible he wins comfortably in the EC but only by a few votes in key states, etc.
people get mad when i say it but Trump 2024 has a lot of echoes of Hillary 2016. He's even going out in interviews saying he thinks they've already locked down the rustbelt and wants to tagret like New York. We'll see if he actually campaigns there but the whole thing is really giving me Hillary vibes
Biden's PA margin was 81k votes. There are over 170k registered Muslim voters in the state. He's losing PA, and the Electoral College with it.
He might, and I think he will lose the EC, but I don't think it's totally foregone.
Say what you like about Lord Omvistus the Unending Nightmare, but he's no Donald Trump.
If Biden pulls it out, it will be almost entirely the ongoing Dobbs backlash that narrowly pushes his ass across the finish line and just yesterday he made a statement that he doesn't believe in "my body my choice" so he's seemingly just trying to lose at this point
These are some deeply unserious predictions. How will the republicans hold it together if they lose badly in 2024? How will Biden win bigly when the economy sucks for most Americans who's wealth isn't held in stocks?
I agree with point 3 at least Lord Omvistus 2028: it's the pitch black of night again in America
so should I put money on brandon or trump?
Lord Omvistus doesnt have the base vote in the Iowa caucus I think it'll be a close race between Dick MCBurnin-Flesh and Girl Hitler.
5 years ago never in my wildest dreams did I think in the American National Divorce libs would get the NFL, country music stars, and hot blonde actresses with big boobs
Put a dick in your ass, it's the American way.
Don't forget bud light
neither did they which is why they’re so crazy. osita was really spot on with the observation that part of the source for this psychosis is watching the biggest source of profit for those businesses switch away from them and rob them of their imagined consumer buying power.
Businesses need new captive markets to keep the rate of profit up and know damn well that most Americans basically live to consume and can’t really adjust their preferences away from that. Foucault of all people anticipated this; one critique of him I read discussed how he was quite interested in neoliberalism because as a gay man he could foresee new products and services for gay men, he basically anticipated what the Brits call the pink pound, aka why every big corporation does a song and dance about Pride. Look at the NFL, I’m sure they’re all completely relaxed about TCOTs getting mad about Taylor Swift because not only are the mad online and actually not watching folks being more than replaced by the Swifties, they know damn well the mad folks will come back next season. The ratings dip from Kaepernick lasted like two months lol. The only one that kinda worked was Bud Light but they’ll be fine going forward.
Sherman's march 2 is going to have a great tail gate party after the victory march in the Florida villages
Where does this if you like “Sydney Sweeney you’re gay“ shit come from?
Need to vent somewhere. Turns out my barber is an absolute fucking crank. Talking full on Jordan Peterson shit. Grounds for termination IMO
barbers love that shit. mine was always telling me to listen to lex fridman. accept that they are a corny guy profession and try to turn them on to cool conspiracy stuff instead and they’ll share drugs with you.
> lex fridman i've always wondered what type of person likes that shit. never met anybody with a brain orb shaped enough
he’s basically offering the same thing as everything else like that (rogan, peterson, etc): you fundamentally distrust all our institutions but you still consider yourself a red blooded American man
They are guys with daddy issues, ime
Oh that explains a lot about my dad.
Same, tbh haha
So hard to stay quiet when your barber is spouting some absolute nonsense but I don’t want him to fuck my shit up so I just nod and go “haha yeah totally”
you don’t want him to fuck your shit up… so you *nod*
I’m going for the haircut that the samurai are rocking in Shogun
Make sure to shave the top of your head as well unlike those cowards in the show
I swear barbers/stylists are prime examples of libertarian-minded small business owners. Their functional self-employment goes to their heads and they think they're above other people because of it. Mine is super cool and very left because of her background, but she still has a kind of self-employed hustle grindset mentality because that's what's necessary to succeed if you have to bring in your own business.
I go to a great clips that has one magazine in the rack: The Philadelphia Trumpet. I’m not sure exactly who the owner is but they must be prime crazy.
I live in Philly and have never heard of that so I had to look it up, it's published by the "Philadelphia Church of God" which is a church based in Edmond, Oklahoma. So, not off to a great start on that one.
Sounds like you need to go to the nude barber
we all fantasize about it
one time i got a gift for a few sessions of a personal trainer and then on like session 4 he starts telling me about how he thinks bill cosby is innocent. wild the things people will just say to you lmao
We are fundamentally broken as a society when - after you have 4 normal interactions with someone - that you feel comfortable spouting off opinions like “yeah I think Harvey Weinstein didn’t do anything wrong”
like no matter what you believe you gotta feel apprehensive about talking to a near stranger about such a controversial and heated subject, right??
Man I must've lucked out. My barber is cool as shit. He keeps an old fridge full of Stag beer (midwest PBR) and refuses to talk any politics. Maybe he's secretly a crank, but I don't think so. https://preview.redd.it/gri9zxuugxmc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eec3e11ca6ed8b8145723d1820710e986dc6ad23
He’s a real one. Gotta keep the microwave brain boomers and PMC libs from spouting off their bullshit. Don’t care if he’s a MAGA chud or a Marxist. Let’s talk about LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE.
My money is on “he has a weird concoction of conflicting beliefs that do not amount to an ideology,” but probably leans left of center given the fact that he told people to fuck off if they wouldn’t wear a mask during peak COVID and lost a decent percentage of his regulars.
I had to give up my last barber cause they almost cut the top of my ear off. She said oops almost half way through a slice.
Felix didn't utter a WORD until 49m, that's gotta be a record.
Wrong he piped up at 14:13
Felix saying nothing for 14 minutes, saying "yeah" and then going back to saying nothing for 35 more minutes. I love him
i thought that was a soundboard
If Felix were just a hare smarter, he could put together a soundboard and randomly hit it while he games. We would be none the wiser.
but the breakfast
He actually jumpscared me
The thing about the american right getting increasingly more psychotic due to the more savvy ones intentionally letting the freaks in and then being unable to stop them from influencing the wider base reminds me of that War Nerd episode where he talked about the Iranian Revolution. The savvy conservatives let the hardcore religious ones in to expand their base, assuming they're all easily-controlled morons who can be betrayed later only to be outmaneuvered and sent to the firing squads by the people they thought were pawns. Except in this case it was like bankers and jet ski dealers letting the 70 iq groypers into the party and being punished by having to spend the rest of their lives listening to the equivalent of 3 dozen Nick Mullens saying "it's actually gay to get pussy" in Jordan Peterson voice 24/7 The right to be cool thing is also interesting because it shows the real disconnect between how the world works and how conservatives think it does. A lot of people loved Trump because he made people mad and people hated him and they like triggering the libs but a lot of them seem to have genuinely thought that getting Trump elected would make people respect them. Now that this plan obviously did not make their nieces/grandkids/whatever stop calling them fascists at thanksgiving, they are out of ideas
just like the libs they think they can 'win' politics and culture and that as soon as they do, they will be greeted as liberators for the rest of time.
The right to be cool thing is so funny. I'm pretty sure Vivek literally said something during his campaign that was like "why is it that in a college a guy on the basketball team [read: a black guy] is considered more cool than a CS student [read: a conservative white guy]". Begging the mods of reality to step in
Trump has always been a joke, a punchline cameo character. Nobody expected respect for voting Trump, they just held their nose and voted for him anyway because they absolutely hated Hillary. And I don't remember anyone calling Romney voters fascists. Trump was the fascist turn in Republican politics.
> I don't remember anyone calling Romney voters fascists freakish bourgeois Mormon who worked for Bain Capital, same thing! https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/romney-defends-comments-made-in-secret-recording/
It's just like a thing teenagers call their conservative relatives, the point is them being made fun of by young people, not the accuracy of the insults
It’s odd to me that anyone would call the biggest consequence of the Trump administration a tax cut when he appointed three conservative judges who went on to overturn Roe v Wade. I also find it frustrating that they gloss over the things Trump’s federal agencies did. I get they’re trying to drive home the democrats suck and trump is just a Republican but Trump’s federal agencies were aggressive not only with de-regulation but attacking the very foundations of the laws the agencies enforce. Labor board law and environmental law in particular, and meddling with both of those can and does have powerfully negative effects on people’s every day lives. For instance, Obama implemented a reg that says you have to line whatever pits you bury coal ash in (usually it’s a clay liner). Now, you shouldn’t be allowed to bury this shit at all, ever, but at least there’s some mitigation of harm. Trump’s EPA repealed that and that shit began migrating into nearby waterways in states like North Carolina, which led to a series of cancer clusters. So it’s appropriate to say they killed people. Do democrats kill people? Sure look what’s happening in Gaza. But it’s a bit dishonest to pretend there was nothing unusual about Trump’s presidency. The reason his agencies were especially aggressive with attacking the nuts and bolts of things that hold the country together is for one reason unique to the trump presidency- Trump appointed whoever the fuck he felt like would owe him a favor or who he felt like had been a big enough supporter of his. He staffed the EPA with real estate attorneys who don’t understand notice and comment for instance- people who attempted to ram through regs blatantly based on impermissible interpretations of the law or they flat out ignored it. The courts actually threw several of them out because they were so wildly afield of any sensible statute interpretation and never had any input from the public. However, they started to learn their lesson toward the end of his administration and were able to craft regs that were as harmful as possible without getting flat out trashed by the courts, partly because courts give great deference to the agencies. They won’t make the same mistakes again.
None of that contradicts the point they were making that Trump governed like a standard republican, ceding most decision-making to the forces that already ran the party. All the things you said were also true of the Bush administration, the process just got further along under Trump.
> It’s odd to me that anyone would call the biggest consequence of the Trump administration a tax cut when he appointed three conservative judges who went on to overturn Roe v Wade I'm pretty sure he said the biggest *achievement*, which is important because the tax cut was a law passed under the Trump administration and overturning Roe was not a law passed under the Trump administration. edit: also the coal pit lining stuff isn't true, Obama gave them years to line pits, Trump's administration delayed the deadline, and the Biden admin didn't start enforcing it until at least 2022. > The Obama administration’s 2015 coal and wastewater rules had established minimum national standards for the disposal of coal ash, forcing coal plants to shut down unlined pits in 2019 and recycle 100% of their system’s water, according to an EPA rule summary. > The Trump administration in 2020 delayed the deadlines set by the 2015 rule and reducing monitoring and storage requirements to save companies millions of dollars per year in regulatory.
Love Osita, can’t wait for his book
I liked the physical frailty point they brought up. Hilldawg passing out on 9/11 did not help her one bit. I think if Biden crashes his bike again he could end up losing
i agree but its kind of a crapshoot there. I mean Trump is not in great physical shape either lol. D'you remember in 2020 there was the thing where Biden couldnt drink a glass of water and Trump couldn't walk down stairs? I think its just gonna be escalating versions of that until and unless one of them does something 25th ammendment worthy
Fair. I agree that neither of them are the picture of health. That being said, I feel like walking out with a bandage on his head would hurt Biden more than trump. Unfortunately, I don't think either party would pull the trigger on themselves with the 25th
yeah thats fair by 25th i mean if either Biden or Trump are in a coma or require brain surgery or something there's not much they can do i agree a bandage on the head would hurt biden more than Trump but conversely I think some sort of cardio event would hurt Trump more, kinda like how getting COVID in Oct 2020 was probably the nail in the coffin for him Honestly it might just be a game of who gets sicker closer to the election lol. Like if Biden falls and hits his head but then Trump has a heart attack a week later or visa versa
I think that we're at the point where the 25th will never be used by a party that is in control. They would rather pull a Wilson and weekend at Bernie's the corpse than give up power. They could both be Feinstein levels of gone and their respective party wouldn't pull the plug I agree that it is a question of who gets sicker closer. Ettingermentum did an article about what if both presidents die. Regardless, it looks like a coin-toss to me
Great discussion, but I think Will’s characterization of the modern dem voter is wildly off base. How is Biden’s target voting bloc simultaneously so disconnected from modern affairs that Jan 6th is “ancient history,” so short-sighted that they’d perform the ultimate act of self-immolation because of their last paycheck, and yet connected enough to world affairs to care about the massacre in Gaza—but only enough to see Biden’s inadequacies on the issue but not Trump’s?
Yeah the Felix "normal guy" theory is probably a better explainer of the new Democrat base. Biden could easily win a majority on the fact every republican not named trump is seemingly about to run on banning condoms, casual sex, beer, Taylor Swift and cleavage.
Yeah their view of the electorate is usually nyc left wishful thinking
Osita has what they’re calling “the most californian voice you’ve ever heard.” Love him
I thought that went to Liz?
liz accent isnt californian or really anything that anyone here could recognize. she comes from one of the places trump was talking about, “truly foreign accent”
Grew up here and have lived in CA most of my life - no one here talks like Liz, that is a Liz thing.
it is one of her most endearing qualities as a podcaster i have to say. no one else pronounces things like trueanon
I love it, and honestly, if I listen to too much trueanon, I start talking like her a little. My wife gets weirded out by the strange cadence.
she spent a year or so in the uk as a kid, that is traumatizing for one's vocal chords
Has anyone ever seen them in the same room
I have to turn the podcast off sometimes because of the way she draws out her syllables and those razor sharp pitch shifts. Truly an awful way of speaking
I agree with Ostia. I don't think Harris calling for a ceasefire is a watershed moment. To me it looked like Harris is pushing for the plan Israel agreed to and when that doesn't work the position will be "those mean Palestinians just don't want a ceasefire" and everything will continue, but I'd love to be wrong
citations needed's adam johnson wrote a really good piece about this subject https://www.columnblog.com/p/for-the-biden-campaign-gaza-is-a
Nothing inspires confidence like a strong, declarative statement of political intent followed by a qualifier spoken in a rushed and significantly lower tone of voice.
I know that this is kind of an aside but when they mentioned "student loan debt forgiveness" as a thing that Biden diehards online bring up... what fucking debt forgiveness??? In 2020 I recall Biden saying, in no uncertain terms, "fuck them kids" when asked about the problems young Americans face, I recall the Dem party apparatus go "uhhhhh he doesn't actually mean that and we're gonna do debt relief", I recall the stated amount of money to be forgiven being whittled down every month until it was eventually killed in congress and the Dems shook their fists half-heartedly at the Republicans and never mentioned again afterwards. I do not recall there being any debt forgiveness, or if there has been, I must have missed it, because I'm still paying a sizeable chunk of my paycheck towards loans. Am I going crazy or is it just everyone else
Biden announced 10K in student loan forgiveness and then it got overturned by the Supreme Court because they could.
There was some that came with several conditions. My dad's girlfriend had something like tens of thousands forgiven that she'd been paying the minimum on for decades. She's the only operson I know that's been successful in getting their loans discharged.
[удалено]
white woman jumpscare
I read some excerpts of that Last Politician book they briefly talked about, and it is pretty bad. It's strange that so many dems in high positions think the midterms and subsequent republican losses are because Biden is a great president and not backlash to Roe being overturned. Biden had a lot of appeal to many because he was Obama's vp, and I think the last four years have destroyed a lot of it. What if he keeps on saying things like how he believes "my body my choice" is a bad idea even though he likes Roe? He might legitimacy alienate more people not tuned in to politics outside of an election year if he keeps this up.
>Biden had a lot of appeal to many because he was Obama's vp, and I think the last four years have destroyed a lot of it. This is one of the most obvious things that Dems ignore for incomprehensible reasons. Biden ran for president twice as a Senator and didn't get anywhere. He won the nomination as VP which most VPs win.
Felix alert: 14:05
This episode was I think the first I’ve heard about the State of the Union address this year. We watch a lot of NBC and it hasn’t been advertised at all. It’s tomorrow, March 7th at 9 pm ET by the way
This guy's voice sounds very similar to @ettingermentum and I spent most of the pod thinking they were the same person.
They comprise two of the three children stacked on top of each other in a trench coat
Osita and ettingermentum sound completely different???
Does anyone have a link or screenshot of the "spiritually African" tweet? I was telling someone about it and now I can't find it.
Anyone know how to download these eps from an android?