Turning Points
By We’ve seen two remarkable turnarounds in the past few weeks: Kamala Harris’s becoming the Democratic Party candidate for the presidency, and Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
Both have gone against the conventional wisdom. Neither has fully played out, so large conclusions are unwarranted. I just want to consider some aspects of these apparent turning points.
A boring presidential race between two old dudes that underneath was a fight for democracy and against dictatorship rapidly morphed into a lively campaign for the people by two photogenic patriots against a boring old party of doom and gloom. The polls are following along.
Donald Trump and his campaign are flummoxed. Their campaign and the Republican Party are all about Trump’s ego needs. On the policy side, they are trying to hide the 900-page Project 2025 plan for destroying the government. This week will bring the Democratic Convention and Harris’s and Tim Walz’s bus trip across Pennsylvania. That will dominate the news, while Trump and J.D. Vance play to white supremacists.
CNN reported that Harris’s people met with older-line focus groupers who didn’t like “we’re not going back” and “weird.” Harris expressed her disinterest in what they were saying, given the way those phrases were in fact being received.
[S]he told them she wasn’t going to listen to the pollsters herself and would instead trust the instincts she had buried under self-doubt for so long.
Most women can identify with a history of self-doubt induced by lack of support by others and being passed over for the good stuff. BTW, “we’re not going back” has been a feminist chant for a long time.
Polls are rapidly moving toward Harris. She and Walz are greeted by enthusiastic crowds. Trump and Vance look old, tired, and hateful. Even the media may be turning away from the Trump circus as they realize that the emperor has no clothes.
On the other side of the world, Ukraine has apparently given the same TYVM but no to US advice on conduct of the war and is continuing to move into larger spaces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Ukraine has not announced its objectives in this operation, but so far it looks like they have broken Russian supply lines, have acquired land and POWs to use in negotiations, and have improved troop and national morale. Like the Trump campaign, Russia is on its back foot and is forcibly conscripting young men in the region and bringing in troops from other border areas with Europe. The message to ordinary Russians is that the war can come to them.
There’s less reliable information about Ukraine than the US presidential campaign, so I can’t say much more.
In both cases, people decided to trash the conventional wisdom for bolder strokes, and in both cases, that seems to be working. It’s remarkable how quickly things can turn, as we are seeing in the Harris campaign. But there’s still time before we can declare either operation a success.
What produces a turnaround or tipping point? People have said for years that this or that event will surely topple Donald Trump. It’s beginning to look like we may have that event, although it isn’t instantaneous. For years, the Democrats could have taken the fight to him. Why now? On the other side of things, why do some stick with methods that have been losing? That’s a little easier to answer between the sunk cost fallacy and ego.
I’m not complaining, just curious about how things change.