The Vibe Gap, or Why the Election’s So Close

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I’m gonna try and keep this short and sweet. Well, maybe not so sweet.

They say the race is tightening. For the Presidency. That’s not really true.

The Democrats are losing.

The polls are tightening. But that reflects the lead Kamala enjoyed over Trump just a few weeks ago shrinking, in place after place, with group after group. With a few notable exceptions, which we’ll come to.

So. It’s not that “the race is tight.” Rather, it’s that Kamala’s losing her lead.

Why is that?

Before we go on, please let me say: I hate having to write stuff like this. It’s ugly, it’s critical, it’s a lot to swallow and maybe gag on in what are already difficult enough times. I wish from the bottom of my heart that I didn’t have to, but I feel that someone has to. So thank you for putting up with me. I love you guys.

Why The Democrats Are Beginning to Lose

The moment of euphoria’s passed. It wasn’t enough.

And right now, I wonder: are the Democrats even trying to win this?

I know they’d say they are. But are they, really?

Because this isn’t how you’d approach an election you actually wanted to win. Any competitive situation that you wanted to be victorious in.

Kamala’s losing her lead for a very simple reason, and we’ve discussed it before.

People don’t trust the Dems on the economy, and that loses them credibility in a bigger sense. Because of course if you don’t trust a party on the economy, what can you trust it on? Trump, meanwhile, gets away with people who don’t believe him, because they trust him…on the economy. (That isn't to say he should be trusted on the economy – I am making a point about what people perceive, not what is true.)

So there is an issue of credibility here, and it’s not just about the economy in a kind of sterile sense, but about whom you can trust, why, and for what reason, and in what way.

Do I trust these guys to make my life better? Too many people are pretty unenthusiastic, because they feel that neither party is really interested very much in that question. (And yes – at least the Democrats are not the Project 2025 democracy-ending fascists, but that can only sustain so much excitement.)

So let me go a little deeper.

Kamala’s lead is shrinking. This should alarm the Democrats. Hell, it alarms me. It should worry everyone who’s a die-hard supporter, too. Every advisor, strategist, and so on—they are getting it wrong.

That much should be said.

The Vibe Gap (Is Beginning to Implode)

They are telling Kamala and Tim to dance around the elephant in the room, and go on ignoring it.

And so a kind of growing vibe gap has emerged.

There’s Kamala, doing her joyful, happy thing. And that’s nice and honestly I like it and I’m not against it.

But that’s not how people feel.

People don’t feel joyful these days. About much of anything. The rent is too high. The prices have skyrocketed. Jobs are nigh on impossible to get. Having a family’s increasingly difficult, never mind affording a home, retiring, or so on. All of this shows up very, very clearly in the statistics, which we’ve discussed ad infinitum too.

People don’t feel the way the Dems want them to feel.

And so I suspect that many people are beginning to feel a little bit gaslit.

Hey, there are the Dems, dancing around, being happy and joyful. But things…things kind of suck.

I don’t feel good about much these days, people must think. Certainly not the election, the future, the state of the country, let alone my life. I feel anxious, afraid, worried, sometimes, panicked.

I don’t feel the way they feel.

That is the vibe gap that’s emerging, and it’s why Kamala’s lead is shrinking.

“The economy” is sort of shorthand for this, for me, but maybe it shouldn’t be—I think of it as the sum of human welfare, but in the more simplistic way of pundits, to many people it just means profits or GDP or what have you (it’s not.) Either way, the problem remains the same, which is that people don’t feel good.

They feel bad, remarkably bad, in fact, historically so.

And so the Dems pitch isn’t working.

One aspect of it is, which is the protection racket: at least we’re not the fascists. Hey, we’re not going to let them take away your rights. Any more of your rights, we mean, having failed to protect Roe, and many, many other fundamentals. We’re the lesser evil, and you’d better vote for us if you don’t want total chaos—isn’t that good enough?

On that score, American women are flocking to Kamala, and that’s a good thing, insofar as the GOP continues to say crazy stuff like women should basically be baby-carriers in a Handmaid’s Tale level society, which even alienates its base. So the protection racket is working with American women, and I don’t mean that in a mean way, I mean it in a sympathetic one: nobody should be in such a position to begin with, faced with the loss of basic rights.

But for many other social groups, the Dems pitch isn’t working.

And it isn’t working because of the vibe gap that’s emerged, this sort of weird, head-spinning chasm between the way people feel, which is miserable and anxious, and the way the Dems want them to feel, which is happy and carefree.

Warnings Aren’t Enough, or Authenticity, Credibility, and the Vibe Gap

It’s nice to want people to feel that way, but you have to be authentic about it. You can’t just gaslight people and say all is well, when it’s not.

You can’t say that economy’s booming, but Trump’s also a fascist, but vote for us, because of course, then, why is fascism even rising? If times are so wonderful and amazing?

None of it feels authentic, feels true, feels right. By right I mean appropriate, and that’s the vibe gap.

Warning Isn’t Enough

Leaders have to start from a place of authenticity.

Just warning isn’t enough.

If it was, LOL, I’d be President. I’m not, because warnings only go so far. They don’t have moral force, emotional weight, soul-connection, unless you meet people where they're at first.

Meeting people where they are means really seeing them.

How many people feel seen by the Democrats?

I know that a lot of people feel exploited, including a lot of women, who note that Roe could have been codified under the Dems but never was, and was instead used as a carrot on a stick. I know that a lot of people feel invisible, like the working class, and a lot of people just feel tired, like the middle class.

So this is why Kamala’s lead is shrinking.

This vibe gap is real, and it’s made of this disjuncture, which I’ll repeat, because it matters: if things are so awesome, if the economy’s so good, if life’s so excellent, then why do we need the warnings? What are they for? Surely we should all see the problem here, which leads to in a feeling of a lack of authenticity, which ends up in a lack of credibility.

Right now? If you really wanted to win—not just this election, but any situation like this—you wouldn’t do this.

How to Lose an Election, a Country, a Brand, a Relationship

Look. I helped run one of the world’s biggest companies. Ad agencies. We had massive global clients. And if we gaslit our customers? If we told them that people thought that their products were great, when in fact nobody much did?

What would happen is exactly what is happening to the Dems right now. Nobody would believe the messages, no matter how many ads we threw at them, no matter how many influencers we hired to bombard them, no matter how hard we tried, tried, tried. The vibe gap would just be too great. In the end, their sales would plummet, and they’d lost that battle for that market, category, customer.

Gaslighting people doesn’t work. Unless you’re a demagogue, in which case of course it works all too well, but that’s because that’s what demagogues do. How they prey on people. For those who want to actually lead, whether societies, companies, or just people, it’s a bad idea. The people you want to appeal to see through the BS. It's ham-fisted strategy, communications, branding…human relationships.

The Dems need better thinking in the room, and I say that despite the insanely awesome job that, for example, the Zoomer comms team has done on social media—even that hasn’t helped keep the needle in the right direction.

So the Dems are beginning to lose the lead they enjoyed in those euphoric moments a few weeks ago, and worse, it's completely avoidable. To win you have to be humble, hungry, open, ready to sacrifice something for it. At least a battle this tough.

That’s what makes all the difference, in life, in politics, in love, everything.

You have to want it, to the point you’re willing to endure some pain for it. Even the indignity of admitting your mistakes and coming clean and rebuilding your relationships and mending those broken fences.

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