While I've honestly been trying to tune out the election shit, I was streaming the world series feed (through completely legal means I can assure you) from a Fox station in Florida. Much to my dismay, I was completely bombarded by these ads saying Trump supports amendement 3 which would legalize weed in the state. I scroll on social media for like 5 mins later on and I see this fucker on Joe Rogan.
Its a pretty clear attempt at targeting independent socially moderate/liberalish fiscally conservative independent bros that, honestly exist and could decide the election if its close. All while Kamala is really leaning into winning over "dick cheney democrats" that dont exist outside of focus groups in the beltway.
Im calling it now. Trumps winning again.
I think it's simpler than that: their consultant class principally comes from the exact same class as the GOP base, with the exact same material interests and cultural biases, they just think themselves smarter and more elite than the baying hogs they share 99% of their interests and beliefs with. Democrats triangulate as their advisors tell them to, while remaining entirely subservient to Capital.
They have no beliefs or principles other than that managerial technocratic devotion to the status quo and American hegemony, but even there they're so vapid and uninspired they just get led about by grifters and fall into this doublethink of "it's bad for political leadership to lead and try to influence political opinion, so we won't ever do that at all, except it's good to influence political opinion in favor of American capitalist hegemony and the police state and all the atrocity that supports this so we will furiously cleave to that party line and purge any and all dissent."
They have fully rotted away into this entirely hollow shell of managerial technocrats in the past decades as some advancement of gerontocracy and the further maturation of the lobbyist grift complex, to the point that they're not even competent at their cynical hegemony maintenance role anymore.
I fully agree with this in the way that American politics works in reality.
I just think that many democrats genuinely see themselves as the good guys trying to be as far "left" as possible within the bounds of what's politically reasonable. And when you have those in that mindset, and the people choosing to vote, what I was describing is how that phenomenon internally works.