Repudiation

This summer, I volunteered to help a primary-election challenger to one of Delaware's two Democratic senators. 

The experience reminded me why I don't fit into the unworldly organizations run by progressives. The longer I had a view into the candidate's, the faster darkened my view of her chances of winning. 

No sucker for lost causes, four weeks out from the primary, I quit.

The trouble with the campaign, as I saw it, was two-fold:

• The candidate. Cast in the image of AOC, she was a bright, brassy outsider who championed progressive talk. But she had no strategy for getting elected and put most of her efforts into landing endorsements from disgruntled community organizers and sketchy, far-left websites.
  
  
• The staff. All twenty-somethings, the campaign staffers were sincere, but overbearing, and lacked all understanding of Delaware's centrist electorate. 

Neither the candidate's nor her staff's enthusiasm contributed much in the end. 

She captured only 27 percent of Democrats' votes in the primary—a measurably worse showing than that of the progressive candidate for the Senate in the 2018 primary. Her campaign was deemed by the media to be a flop and a death toll for the progressive movement in Delaware.

Democrats everywhere should heed the lesson: lean center.

Despite Biden's victory, last week's election was another consummate flop, failing to capture the US Senate for Democrats and dramatically thinning the party's majority in the US House of Representatives. It also left statehouses around the country in GOP hands.

Prudently, House leaders are warning fellow Democrats to shun leftist messages. “If we are going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, and socialized medicine, we’re not going to win,” Rep. Jim Clyburn said on a phone call Thursday.

And so are pundits. "This election for the most part was an absolute repudiation of the Democratic Party as a brand," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough told Fox News yesterday.

How Can They Believe This Crap? Episode V

Fifth in a series wondering why Trump still has adherents

In Episode I, I suggested Trump's supporters have been brainwashed by their betters; in Episode II, that they simply find him entertaining; in Episode III, that they sympathize with him; in Episode IV, that they believe he's a useful idiot.

I have one more theory.

The 70 million Americans who voted for Trump this week don't believe in Trump, because they don't believe in anything.

Like Trump, they're narcissistic solipsists. They believe nothing exists outside their own minds.

NOTE: It's tempting to ask. "What's wrong with America?" But realize only 2 in 10 Americans voted for Trump. The rest of the population—80% of Americans—did not. 

You Cannot Download Experience

 

We event dinosaurs—who've witnessed and dealt with the long- and short-term effects on face-to-face marketing of recessions, travel-bans, terrorism, pandemics and the web—are frustrated by the industry's vivid demonstration of inaction and incompetence in reacting to Covid-19.

Experience stems from bad judgments. 

But in a youth-oriented, know-it-all society like ours, the lessons learned from bad judgments made in the past are considered trivial; and the dinosaurs who made them, annoying.

It's too bad you cannot download experience with a click.

Wierdo

An artist must regulate his life.

— Erik Satie

Fin-de-siècle composer Erik Satie, best known for his "Gymnopédies Suite of 1888," was, to be blunt, a wierdo. To wit:

• Satie carried a hammer with him wherever he went, a lifetime habit he acquired while living in Montmartre as a young bohemian. He also slept with one eye open.

• He wore only a grey velvet suit and kept over 100 umbrellas in his apartment.

• He detested the sun and only ventured outside on cloudy days.
  
  
• He washed only with a pumice stone, never using soap. 

• He ate only white food: eggs, sugar, salt, rice, cheese (white varieties only), fish, chicken, veal, animal fat and ground bones, turnips, pastries, and coconut.

• He regulated his daily life to the minute. Every day, Satie awoke at 7:18 am; composed from 10:23 to 11:47 am; ate lunch at 12:11 pm; rode a horse from 1:19 to 2:53 pm; composed again from 3:12 to 4:07 pm; relaxed from 4:27 to 6:47 pm; ate dinner at 7:16 pm; read aloud from 8:09 to 9:59 pm; and went to bed at 10:37 pm.
  
  
• He founded an occult religion with one follower—himself. He named it the "Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor."
  
  
• He composed a surreal ballet that caused riots outside the concert hall during the premiere. The ballet landed Satie in a Parisian jail cell for eight days. The charge: "cultural anarchy."

• He had only one girlfriend his entire life, Suzanne Valadon, a beautiful painter of portraits who lived in the apartment next door to his for six months. Satie's penury and compulsive nature drove her nuts and she left him and married a stockbroker. 

Satie barely graduated music school and throughout his life suffered rebuke from critics, who labelled him a "clown" and called his music "worthless." 

Satie called his compositions "furniture music"—what today we'd call "Muzak"—and would scatter his ensemble throughout the room during performances, commingled with the listening audience.

The public liked what it heard—and still does.

You can hear Satie's greatest hits here.

Gamifying Masks

Event producers who want to encourage mask-wearing at conferences and trade shows should consider what won't work.

Behavioral scientists at the University of London analyzed 65 studies of "failed interventions"—failed attempts to influence behavior—conducted over the past decade.

The researchers found:

• 40% of failed interventions relied on attempted "social norming"—on encouragements to adopt a behavior simply because it's "expected"
  
  
• 24% of failed interventions relied on messaging that was delivered on printed flyers and texts
  
  
• 15% of failed interventions relied on simple "defaults"—opt-in or opt-out
  
  
• 12% of failed interventions relied on product labelling

The findings suggest incentives may be required to persuade attendees to wear masks.

Gamifying mask-wearing—randomly rewarding attendees for wearing their masks—might do the trick.

And sponsors would love to underwrite it.