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Tim Healys Chutney Spoon

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Dumb question, but if Biden beat Trump then from a neutral start Harris should also beat Trump shouldn’t she? Surely not that many Americans will decide not to vote or will have switched to Trump?
Plus all the MAGA boomers now dead from Covid and these splinter “Republican for Harris” groups since the last election will dwindle Trump’s numbers too. 

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19 minutes ago, FLips said:

Dumb question, but if Biden beat Trump then from a neutral start Harris should also beat Trump shouldn’t she? Surely not that many Americans will decide not to vote or will have switched to Trump?
Plus all the MAGA boomers now dead from Covid and these splinter “Republican for Harris” groups since the last election will dwindle Trump’s numbers too. 

Biden was a unique Democrat in that he really spoke to middle America.

He has that homespun charm that connects with working class America in a way that a lot of Democrats don't.

Harris is seen as a West Coast liberal, a toxic term in much of the middle States, and has inherited a legacy that isn't popular.

Incumbency is usually an advantage in American politics, but Biden won quite a close election and has become less popular ever since. If you add to that Harris doesn't have the same electoral advantages Biden does in the swing states, and I'd say she probably comes into this on paper as a slight underdog.

Add that to the fact that her campaign has stuttered a bit, and she's refused a lot of big opportunities to present her views.

I think a lot of excitement about Biden stepping away masked her flaws, but slowly the enthusiasm has seeped away and hasn't quite carried them to the election. They've already played the Obama card and that didn't really sparkle. They've pulled the Springsteen and Swift rabbits out of the hat and they didn't really move the dial. I reckon they'll be trying to get Beyonce out before election day.

Edited by d-d-d-dAz
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1 hour ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

In that article he says he hasn’t decided who to vote for, the comment is because he pardoned one of his friends. 

Yeah, I know.

I think "Fuck Donald Trump" to "I have nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump" warranted enough of an about turn to highlight it, regardless of D-O-double-G's voting proclivities. 

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I think it needs to be faced as well though that with the candidates they have and this close to election time, undecided voters are just Trump voters who don’t have the guts to admit it. 

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I wrote a blog back in July about how I think relating Donald Trump to wrestling is lazy journalism, and doesn't really hold up to scrutiny - I don't think anything I've written has ever aged so badly, given that maybe a week later the Republican National Convention was attended by at least three people who have taken Stone Cold Stunners, and that Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, Kane and Batista have all been part of the conversation.

I do think that it's all a bit nonsensical, though, and that Riesman's book really overstates the extent to which wrestling is a part of Donald Trump's brand or backstory, or somehow the key to understanding him. But fair play to her, she's managed to channel that thesis and a fairly mediocre book into being the media's go-to expert on all things about Vince McMahon or Donald Trump's connection to wrestling.

I just don't buy that he learned anything from wrestling that he couldn't have picked up anywhere else. There's this narrative that's floated around since 2016 about how he somehow came from the world of wrestling, and that's where he learned to rile up crowds and play the villain. Except he doesn't play a villain, he's a narcissist who melts down if he receives anything but unqualified praise, and lashes out at anyone who says anything negative about him, and he never played a villain when he was on WWE TV, he was hopelessly miscast as a babyface. And lest we forget that when Vince McMahon's limo exploded, he phoned to check he was okay - that's not someone intuitively understanding the inner workings of kayfabe, that's a toddler-brain who, despite having performed at Wrestlemania, understands wrestling less than 99% of its fanbase do. 

He was a public figure for decades before Wrestlemania 23, and had been a reality TV star for years. The idea that only wrestling could have taught him how to rile up a crowd was just snobbery from American journalists; pretending that his poor white trash supporters can only be reached through the methods of the poor white trash entertainment they consume. Rather than recognising that Donald Trump is an inevitable outcome of the direction of American culture and politics over decades.

 

There's a story in how connected Trump and the McMahons are, but it's an economic story, and that's not very well-suited to flashy headlines and photos of Trump in a wrestling ring. I don't think wrestling tells you a single thing about Donald Trump, and Trump being interviewed by The Undertaker just tells you that he's desperately running out of "safe" interviewers or media outlets to let him parrot his bullshit unchallenged. I doubt there's any grander strategy than that.

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20 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I just don't buy that he learned anything from wrestling that he couldn't have picked up anywhere else.

How to repeat a worked attendance figure ad nauseam? 

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I always figured that Trump's relationship with wrestling was like that of BJ's and Rees-Mogg's relationship with Have I Got News For You - it was to put him (and them) in an atmosphere of fun to soften the harsh reality that he and they are abject cunts.

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I think the culture that allowed wrestling to flourish is what allowed Trumpism to flourish. I think wrestling and Trump are both children of the same forces of American culture, but I think one exists without the other; Trump would still be Trump, with or without WWE.

But that heady mix of uniquely American showmanship, bravado, masculinity and confidence gave birth to both.

As for the strategy right now, I think it's probably as simple as wanting to reach young men who aren't engaged with politics and trying to fish where the fish are, as it were.

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12 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

I think the culture that allowed wrestling to flourish is what allowed Trumpism to flourish. I think wrestling and Trump are both children of the same forces of American culture, but I think one exists without the other; Trump would still be Trump, with or without WWE.

But that heady mix of uniquely American showmanship, bravado, masculinity and confidence gave birth to both.

As for the strategy right now, I think it's probably as simple as wanting to reach young men who aren't engaged with politics and trying to fish where the fish are, as it were.

I think the first point might be true, but there's also a million and one things you can point to that aren't wrestling that wouldn't really hold up - is Trump a product of American militarism, or of '80s action movies, or of the NFL, or any other expression of bravado and idealised masculinity in American culture? No, and nobody would try and make that argument, but wrestling is sufficiently "other" - and, I think, sufficiently stereotyped as low brow and working class - that people feel comfortably/smugly superior enough to both that they can make the comparison.

If Donald Trump is the product of anything, he's the product of decades of increasingly unrestricted capitalism, and of a right-wing movement that has increasingly closed ranks around the worst of the religious right, and around paranoid conspiracy. I think the only appropriate question isn't how to explain how Donald Trump became president of America, it's how America took so long to make someone like Donald Trump president.


The idea that this is about meeting young men were they are, though, is incredibly flawed. Young men aren't watching Tyrus on Fox News, a channel with a viewership mostly over 60. I don't know what the listener figures are like for The Undertaker's podcast, but, as much as I hate to say it, I doubt the 18-34 demographic are listening to stories about wrestling Yokozuna in 1994. 

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6 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I think the first point might be true, but there's also a million and one things you can point to that aren't wrestling that wouldn't really hold up - is Trump a product of American militarism, or of '80s action movies, or of the NFL, or any other expression of bravado and idealised masculinity in American culture? No, and nobody would try and make that argument, but wrestling is sufficiently "other" - and, I think, sufficiently stereotyped as low brow and working class - that people feel comfortably/smugly superior enough to both that they can make the comparison.

If Donald Trump is the product of anything, he's the product of decades of increasingly unrestricted capitalism, and of a right-wing movement that has increasingly closed ranks around the worst of the religious right, and around paranoid conspiracy. I think the only appropriate question isn't how to explain how Donald Trump became president of America, it's how America took so long to make someone like Donald Trump president.


The idea that this is about meeting young men were they are, though, is incredibly flawed. Young men aren't watching Tyrus on Fox News, a channel with a viewership mostly over 60. I don't know what the listener figures are like for The Undertaker's podcast, but, as much as I hate to say it, I doubt the 18-34 demographic are listening to stories about wrestling Yokozuna in 1994. 

First point, they do make that argument. A lot. Here's one example: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/15/donald-trump-macho-movie-action-hero-for-votes

Trump being part of a uniquely American culture is almost cliche at this point, but I think it's also largely true. Sports culture, wrestling, the travelling circus, American individualism or capitalism are all a part of the same mix.

Trump is an American phenomenon, in the same way WWE is. But I agree that he isn't spawned from WWE, they're both just a feature of American culture and born specifically from that culture.

On that strategy point, no idea the demographics but it is the strategy, going after men under 50 in the final days of the election. Whether they've picked their targets wisely I dont know, but That's where the biggest scramble is, and why Trump did the Logan Paul pod, the Theo Vonn pod, presumably why he did The Undertaker one and is doing Joe Rogan.

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