The fact that we’ve just totally forgotten how to perform the democracy ritual that traditionally kicks off our presidential elections is ominous
been realizing since Obama ‘08 that executive-aspirants should be evaluated first on what it would mean for their faction to win
this tumblr endorses Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination
this is a Trump hat
like not in some heighten-the-contradictions or horseshoe theory “when you really think about it” sense, as in it is for sale on the official Donald Trump merch site
haha there are for real Mike Bloomberg ads on TV, we’re really doing this, aren’t we?
they’re touting him as a “jobs creator”, British-style pluralization, like “drugs problem” or “maths class”
haha there are for real Mike Bloomberg ads on TV, we’re really doing this, aren’t we?
“You know that candidate you like for her positions? Well she’s got more sexual charisma than you expect” is the weirdest burn
Before WWII, the “Classic Six” apartment layout of Manhattan’s Upper West and Upper East Sides might consist of 20% low-income residents, with the maid’s room opening directly onto the workplace.
I suppose another take on Marianne Williamson and the neomystic turn generally is it’s a turn inward. It takes all the energy floating about that had been aimed at society and structure and turns it to self and sensibility. And that’s a thing that happens, and you’d kind of expect it to happen around now, and diverted into culture the energy can even get pretty golden-agey as the dialectic grinds towards synthesis.
That’s the social unrest of the 60s diverting into the “Me Decade” 70s and “Morning in America” 80s. That’s the revolutionary period of the 1910s being suppressed in the First Red Scare and yielding to the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance.
That’s second-wave feminism falling to an ‘80s pincer move between cultural conservatives and S&M postmodernists – falling as a sociopolitical project. And then its themes got turned inward and coopted and reemerged in the 90s as Wicca, as Lilith Fair, as lesbian chic, as riot grrl, as Xena and Scully and Buffy, as the music I think of as VH1core chick-rock – Shawn Colvin, Natalie Merchant, Meredith Brooks, Paula Cole. As a sensibility, a subculture, a product, an aesthetic (that could be digested into more products, into Target collections and remodeling TV about shiplap and healthy relationships)
When I say “notice how 90s issues we thought settled or even tabooed are suddenly live again”, tonight’s breakout US Presidential candidate is antidepressant-critical
That said. There’s total context collapse now, human followings are transferable from mass-appeal field to field: performing, acting, celebrity, spirituality, politics (which is why I have an eye on Taylor Swift).
And I said the 90s were back, and noticed women were witchy and zodiacal again, and how we were all post-rationalist and playing with Jewish and Christian myth now…
Of course this neomystic wave was going to hit politics eventually, but I wasn’t even thinking of that.
Maybe because I coded it, at least in her form as female and dismissible? Hm. I hear there are woman pastors and bloggers birthing paganisms out of the rotting shell of American Christianity recently, maybe I should pay that more attention. I bet Sister Aimee would have a shot today.
I don’t think she’s a threat to win it though, she’s got a bold new style and positioning but it doesn’t really align along obvious cleavages like how Trump offered a party realignment. If Ben Carson had had her talent, eventually the question would still have come up “what are we supposed to be getting out of this?”
Calling Buttigieg “Alfred E. Neuman” reminds us that Campaign Trump has a higher power (and fun) level than President Trump
Well, it’s probably good that the Democratic turn to wokeness gets litigated and not just assumed
Kamala Harris opening her presidential bid with a fairly Clintonite platform. I think it’s clear by now she’s not going to take the nom by outflanking to the left, but she’s got a chance at claiming black support as a bloc, and that + female-tinged middle-class centrism is an entirely viable D path these days.
I was gonna say that several years ago she started aiming herself at where politics “was gonna be” by extrapolating from early Obama, a Dem equivalent to how Kasich ‘16 was clearly a man who started plotting under Dubya for a world where Christian Democratic “compassionate conservatism” had established itself as the GOP ethos.
But thinking more I think it’s more like she started planning around ‘05 off the conventional wisdom of where a D candidate would have to be to beat Bushism.
Contrast with Gillibrand who opened a bit leftier, her internalized Clintonianism seems to be in opportunistically adapting to new constituencies though; I reliably trust that General Gillibrand would be further right than Primary Gillibrand and President Gillibrand more so still.
One thing I haven’t seen much appreciated about Harris and Gillibrand – as sitting Senators from the D-donor-rich states of New York/California, who will either become President or return to the chamber and become senior Senators when Schumer & DiFi retire, they have a big fundraising advantage – people will chip in to buy favor even before its clear they’re top-tier viable, and if they go the distance they’re tied into deep networks. That’s gonna be big in a crowded primary.
