(2020-10-27) Hunt Oh No Here It Comes Again That Funny Feeling

Ben Hunt: Oh No, Here It Comes Again, That Funny Feeling. Three weeks ago, I didn’t see a narrative path for Donald Trump to win a turnout-based election hinging on four or five swing states. Today I do.

The twist is that I think the greater Dem team genuinely likes Joe Biden. I think that they are genuinely prepared to “sell out” for Joe Biden (using the term in the sports lingo, as a good thing) in a way that they were never willing to sell out for Hillary Clinton. I don’t think that stated Democratic apparatchik support for Joe Biden is virtue signaling, not in the least. I think it’s completely real.

The twist is that I think there are only two nationally prominent politicians in the United States today who instinctively understand social media and its ability to drive the common knowledge game to win a turnout election, and neither of them is named Joe Biden.

You may think that it is yet another example of political betrayal, yet another example of unconscionable sociopathy to hold large, non-socially distanced and mostly non-masked political rallies in the very middle of some of the hardest Covid-hit areas of the country. Certainly I do.

But if you do not also recognize that the human animal is hardwired to respond positively to crowds of other human animals responding positively

Donald Trump gets this.

Half a million people watched a live stream of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez playing a video game with a small group of friends the other night. Sorry, maybe you didn’t hear me .. HALF A MILLION PEOPLE WATCHED AOC PLAY A VIDEO GAME THE OTHER NIGHT. AOC gets this.

*It’s not the rally crowd itself that is politically effective for Trump.

It’s the larger audience of Trump-sympathetic voters watching these rally crowds that is politically effective for Trump.*

this election – just like the 2016 election – will be decided by motivating more of YOUR people to get up off their asses and get to the polls than the other guy does with HIS people. And nothing motivates your people more than seeing and hearing a good-looking crowd of people that calls them to action by example.

Could Biden counter this narrative path with a crowd-watching-the-crowd effort of his own?

Of course he could

you don’t need to hold physical in-person rallies to create a “crowd” that can inspire the larger crowd of PA, FL and OH voters. What you need is imagination, like AOC showed with her Twitch livestream. What you need is creativity, like the NBA showed with their “crowds”. Go give an “impromptu” pep talk to a dozen “brave Americans” standing in a long, properly socially-distanced line for early voting (just be sure you’re not violating any electioneering laws!). Hell, do a series of those scripted town hall events in Florida. Just do that.

The problem is that Joe Biden believes that polls are themselves an effective crowd signaling device.

Joe Biden loves to use polls as a signal to the crowd that the crowd is supporting Joe Biden. Just like Hillary Clinton.