Who’s Going to Win the Election? Or, Politics in an Age of Collapse

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Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome new readers, welcome back old friends, and a big tiny puppy Snowy hug to all.

So: who’s going to win the election?

Let me try and break it down for you.

This election has made everyone’s head spin. First, Trump was poised to win in a landslide, until Biden dropped out. Then it appeared, for a while, that it’d be a cakewalk for Kamala. And yet here we are all over again.

The race is neck-and-neck. Only that’s not really true. Kamala’s lead has slipped, and…

If that trend continues, hey presto, you know who’s going to win the election.

History, Politics, and Collapse

Now.

Let me put that in context.

What have I been saying for many moons now? In this election, America’s not just really seeing two political sides face off. Rather, it’s repeating history, and it’s up against the laws of history.

Those laws suggest that when societies and economies stagnate for long enough, waves of destabilization ensue, ultimately resulting in some form of authoritarian collapse. That’s an Iron Law, from Rome to Weimar Germany.

And I’ve also said that history can be changed. That laws, even like these, can be rewritten.

This is what’s really happening in this election. Can America rewrite history, and not be one of the long, long list of societies, which, facing long-run stagnation, gives up on democracy?

It’s that big, that deep, and that meaningful.

Sadly, you won’t hear this interpretation in mainstream media, which is obsessed with covering the election like a horse-race, but it’s not. It’s not really Trump against Kamala at all, in this sense. Its history versus possibility.

And right now? History is winning.

(Why) Moments of Collapse Need Grown Ups in the Room

At this moment in elections, everything’s about the feeling, the message, the movement, the momentum. Kamala’s is slipping.

The youngsters on her team have done a remarkable—amazing—job. On social media. That end of her team is genius-level, funny, wicked, smart, defiant, and we’ve all seen the magic they’ve unleashed on social media, poking fun at Trump, making us all laugh, delighting us.

But it's not been enough. The youngsters did their job, awesomely well, which was creating a lightning bolt on Twitter and TikTok etc. But that wasn’t enough. It’s never enough to win. Anything from elections to competitive contests for products or positions or brands or whatever.

You need grown ups in the room, to hone your message, and make sure it matters, resonates, means something, in deep and powerful ways, that changes a society, culture, people, hits them in the soul.

Kamala’s momentum is slipping because the feeling of euphoria’s faded, and behind it, people are sort of confused, bewildered, and even uneasy. Maybe not you, but let’s just say the middle-of-the-road average kind of person who’s not a die-hard supporter of either side.

The messaging isn’t clear. It doesn’t even make sense. We discussed that in the last little essay. It goes like this. Things are amazing! The economy’s wonderful! Life is great. Never mind the fact that people can’t pay the bills, find jobs, retire, feed their kids, start families, just basic stuff. Everything’s…awesome! But hold on, we have to warn you about the Big Bad Wolf around the corner.

It isn't cohesive messaging.

People just want a decent life. The average person thinks, I don’t need all this garbled convoluted stuff that doesn’t even make sense. Just tell me how you’re going to help me. In times that suck. And stop gaslighting me all the time, it’s disrespectful and makes me roll my eyes at you.

This is what people are thinking, feeling, even if they’re not saying it out loud so much yet.

The Message and the Moment

This message is not a good one. It’s not even just sort of powerless. It’s kind of absurd and ridiculous in that it doesn’t make any sense, and the longer you actually think about it, the more convoluted and bizarre and tangled it gets. It ends up being meaningless, and feeling off-kilter, wrong, strange, odd, and it leaves people uneasy, being gaslit this way, feeling ignored and unseen, yet asked to accept that up is down, and watch out, hey, the monster’s going to get you, when their lives already suck.

The Democrats need people who understand all this. People who have experience at serious levels at global institutions running big things, which is putting this stuff—strategy, vision, message, proposition, ideas—together. And so can hone and shape a better message than this jumbled mess which isn’t making sense to anyone, and that’s not my opinion, you can see the lead slipping and momentum fading.

What kind of message would work? Something that speaks to what people care about. Hey, we’re going to give you decent lives again. Hey, we’re not going to let them send your jobs overseas. We’re going to actually protect your rights, this time, for good. We’re not just going to do the least possible. We are going to fix things.

I know some die-hards will think that is the message, but it’s not. Not even close. Maybe this is what you hear if you really, really love the Dems and Kamala, but of course it’s not remotely what the average person hears, and that’s because it’s not what they’re saying.

So people are understandably confused, reluctant, hesitant, and sort of…bewildered. What are they even talking about? How are they going to help me? Why should I care?

People are tuning the Dems out.

The Dems needed grown ups in the room—heavy hitters with experience, say, I don’t know, doing everything from running major global brands to executing global strategies for big institutions. But they aren’t open or wise or clever enough to get that, and so here we are, the message failing and failing badly.

And the message isn’t just “this ad says Trump is bad!” We all know that. A message in this sense is the larger vision, the bigger idea, the sense of character and credibility, the feeling that this person sees you, gets you, values you, and Americans just don’t feel that way about the Dems, at least enough of them to make this election…closer and closer…to authoritarianism.

The Lethal Skew of an Age of Collapse

The numbers. This is where things start to get…worrying.

What do we know about elections in this day and age?

There’s usually a surprise upside for the anti-democratic side. I used to call this the secret hate vote. The surprise upside isn’t reflected in polls, and so on election days, usually, the right gets a sudden gain to the tune of anywhere from 2 to 5 percent.

Now think again about how close the election is.

So why this surprise effect? It doesn’t really matter. All kind of explanations are valid. People don’t want to tell pollsters how they really feel, some people switch at the last second, there’s a social effect and we say stuff online to please our friends, on and on they go.

The point is the effect exists, and if it rears its head in this election, even to a very, very small degree…not even 5 percent…not even 2…

Guess who wins?

Who’s Going to Win the Election

So.

Who’s going to win the election?

I don’t do warnings anymore.

I don’t even do predictions often, and so this isn’t one.

But I will say that I wouldn’t bet on the Democrats right about now.

Their message is failing. People aren’t buying their vision. The jumbled mess of trying to force people who feel pretty terrible to accept that everything’s wonderful and amazing has led to a growing vibe gap, and that’s how you lose.

Now, maybe, it’s true, like I said, America will be the one society that rewrites history. Hopefully people will reject Trump, for all the obvious reasons.

But unfortunately, that outcome is looking less likely that it once did.

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