From Semafor: Kamala Harris’ digital chief on Democrats ‘losing hold of culture’
Soon after Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty turned his attention to sports.
The campaign needed to introduce Harris quickly to people who aren’t obsessed with politics. Sports is perhaps America’s last remaining monoculture, and Flaherty and the Harris team decided to book her on sports shows and podcasts.
But one by one, the biggest personalities and shows politely turned them down.
“Sports and culture have sort of merged together, and as sports and culture became more publicly and sort of natively associated with this Trump-conservative set of values, it got more complicated for athletes to come out in favor of us,” Flaherty, 33, told me in an interview last week. “It got more complicated for sports personalities to take us on their shows because they didn’t want to ‘do politics.’”
“That’s not to say Steph Curry and Steve Kerr and LeBron [James] and all them coming out wasn’t impactful or important,” he said. “It was more impactful because it had gotten so much harder. But certainly the culture that has been associated with heavy sports-watching has become associated with right-wing culture in a way that makes it harder for us to reach people.”
The signs were there, if we knew how to look for them.Report
Meh. Let a thousand think pieces flow because just admitting “it was inflation” just like inflation took down almost every single government in power in 2021 in post-2021 elections means we don’t have copy to produce and that means I don’t get paid. Or I don’t get to stroke my chin pompously.
And by just a coincidence, all these think pieces happen to fit the prejudices of thin-skinned middle aged or approaching middle-aged white guys who have their fee fees hurt when not being the center of the universe.Report
Yeah, there’s no reason to change. There’s no reason to believe that anything could have been done differently.
It was inflation. People hate inflation.
It couldn’t be helped.
And by just a coincidence, all these think pieces happen to fit the prejudices of thin-skinned middle aged or approaching middle-aged white guys who have their fee fees hurt when not being the center of the universe.
It’s even worse when those thin-skinned middle aged white guys have spreadsheets.Report
And you hate Occam’s Razor.
Inflation is more than people voting for Trump it is also people staying home.
Harris won about 500K more votes in California than HRC did in 2016. She received about 1.9 million votes less than Biden did in 2020. Meanwhile Trump’s vote totals in CA in 2020 and 2024 were basically static. His big gain was between 2016 (4.4 million) and 2020 (6 million). Democrats flipped three CA house seats in 2024 despite GOP getting a bit of an increase in its vote share.Report
What happened to California’s population in that time?Report
A look at how inflation has worked on elections across the globe in 2024: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/12/11/global-elections-in-2024-what-we-learned-in-a-year-of-political-disruption/
“Inflation was an especially important issue in this year’s elections, although economic concerns were prevalent in many countries before the post-pandemic wave of global price increases. The past two decades have seen financial crises, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 economic downturn, inflation and ongoing economic inequality, all of which may have shaped the mood in nations around the globe.”
But the problem is all the incentives of American political and media culture, both professionally and among armchair pundits, is to avoid Occam’s Razor by all means necessary because how does that get you in the news or with a chance to get on the news. It ends up being a 30 second to 2-minute segment. Writing something about how Democrats have a sports or culture problem allows for endless pontificating and airtime or press.Report
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/11/14/incumbents-are-losing-around-the-world-not-just-the-u-s/Report
It is also interesting as an example of American exceptionalism.
1. Here is a chart of incumbent governments losing power across the globe in 2024 and inflation being a key reason;
2. Americans: Wait, that can’t be correct for us.Report