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Today, we’re talking about how the Democrats love overthinking stuff and wasting money, while Trump did extremely obvious stuff aka asking his son what the good podcasts were. It is inspired by the latest episode of The Culture Journalist, a podcast by Andrea Domanick and my gff Emilie Friedlander, in which they talk to supreme genius Catherine Liu about how the Dems are a bunch of screwups.

Make sure to read all the way to the end for the Media Events Signature Content Module™, “A Song Recommendation So Good It’s Worth a Dollar.”

The problem with the Democratic party, or at least one problem, is that it operates much in the same way that its highest-powered donors and voters do: within a closed, circular economy, where companies hire consulting firms to subcontract to other consulting firms, who then come up with initiatives that, if effective, will appear to most people as if they are not actually happening, but will make the people in the business of hiring and/or being consultants deeply satisfied. 

It’s a system that works in a very specific context (no coconut): If you’re say, Wrangler Jeans, and you want to appeal to consumers with a more haute/couture sensibility, you can hire some consultants who will help you create a high-end line of jeans, designed by some icon in the world of pants, manufactured using traditional methods in high-end American facilities, with cotton sourced from fancy farms. Then you can hire some other consultants, who will help you create a campaign revolving around ads and events and vague “activations” where the talent/venues/aesthetics/people involved will help tell a story about Wrangler’s heritage that foregrounds yee-haw authenticity and time-tested utility in a way that resonates with trendy youths who would like to spend several hundred dollars on high-quality selvedge denim. Then, when they can’t afford the fancy Wrangler jeans, they’ll buy the regular-ass Wrangler jeans, and the sales won’t jump too much, but they’ll be the “right” sales, and as a result a trend cycle will start spiraling upward and then one day we all wake up and notice that Wrangler’s kinda cool.

This is a great way to make money, and as someone who has been lucky enough to do consulting a few times, I would recommend it to anyone. However, this is a complicated process that takes a lot of time and might not actually work, and also, the point of it working at all is that only a few people are going to notice. 

It seems that the dumbest possible version of Consultant Brain, characterized by excess, self-dealing, and wearing multiple pairs of Bad Idea Jeans at once, drove the Harris campaign’s decision-making. The below video, which was posted in the Discord of the excellent Culture Journalist podcast, is illustrative of what I’m talking about.

This party looks like what would happen if you gave a deeply uncool Millennial who had never met a young person an unlimited event budget and a mood board that was just the cover of brat. Why are there reproductive rights-themed Jenga sets everywhere??? What ideological message could they possibly be trying to communicate with that? The only one I can think of is, “If the Democrats win, we will meticulously avoid all of our obligations to the voters who put us in power while attempting to leave reproductive rights untouched, but then someone will make a mistake and reproductive rights will come crashing down.” 

Beyond that, what purpose could this party possibly serve when it comes to reaching out to new voters? Was a farmer in Nebraska supposed to see people posting about it on social media and be like, “Ah, yes, the Democrats are deeply in tune with my concerns about high interest rates and mitigating the risk of drought, and I know this because they have represented themselves with a Wall of Hotties and represented the Republicans with a Wall of Weirdos!”? I assume not, but on the outside chance that this is what the Dems were going for, they were gravely mistaken. Instead, if they saw “social content” from this party at all, they probably thought, “This video was filmed in Hell.” 

Another thing I’d like to point out is that the Harris campaign’s Twitter team was made up of a bunch of Zoomers who, per Axios, “dominated social media with an influx of viral memes and taunts of the opposition [by] embracing ‘brat summer,’ ‘femininomenon,’ celebrity endorsements and coconut tree memes.” It is telling that Axios chose to use the word “dominated” here, because it speaks to the Professional Managerial Class’s insistence upon defining terms in ways that flatter its own sensibilities rather than in ways that reflect the world as it exists. Being “Online” is not the same thing as using the internet.

The Harris campaign seemed to view social media as simply a battleground in a larger war of coolness, as if making obscure references and mocking the other side were somehow a winning strategy in a contest of appealing to the largest possible number of people. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, remembered that while it’s fun to fuck around online, the internet is also a great to way to reach a shitload of people, very quickly and cheaply. 

Enter Barron Trump. 

In general, I feel bad for Barron Trump. It feels like there’s an alternate reality in which his dad never ran for president and Barron, who is six foot seven, spent all of middle and high school getting really into basketball, developing his jump shot and footwork, killing it on the AAU circuit, and eventually got recruited to Kansas or whatever and was a perfectly serviceable 3-and-D wing who was a fan favorite because his dad was the guy from The Apprentice.

But this was not Barron Trump’s fate. Instead, his dad became the president, and Barron seemingly spent a lot of time inside some remote room in the White House, playing video games and using the internet. I guess he still could have gotten really into basketball but it would have probably been harder because of all the Secret Service people around, plus there are greater social penalties when your dad is a divisive politician than there are when your dad’s an apolitical goofy rich guy. For whatever reason, though, Barron Trump does not play basketball and instead attends NYU, where he is the King of Zyn Rizz or whatever. 

In his capacity as King of Zyn Rizz, though, Barron Trump ended up being wildly useful to the Trump campaign: When Don’s people gave him a list of “bro podcasts” they thought he should go on, he told them to run the names by Barron. When Trump went on the podcasts themselves, a lot of the time he’d be like “I don’t know who the hell you are, but my son, he loves you!” Then, Trump would fucking kick ass at being on the bro podcast, because he is a bro and loves rambling at people who think he’s cool. 

It is likely that Barron Trump was not doing deep research into, say, the Nelk Boys. Instead, this stuff is just the logical thing that a college-aged kid who spent years sequestered in the computer/video game room would be into. These are popular things, and it doesn’t take a genius to tell a politician, “Hey, you’re missing out on the potentially transformative Total Dipshit Vote, here are some podcasts that millions of them listen to.” But, crucially, the Democrats did not think to do this. Trump did, and Barron knew about the podcasts. 

I am in no way happy that Trump won, but it is objectively funny that the Democrats wasted unfathomable amounts of money and lost, and Trump was just like “uhhhh, let’s ask Barron about the popular podcasts” and won. 

A Song Recommendation So Good It’s Worth a Dollar

Yak Ballz — “Tweak Season”

I have a grand theory that hip-hop is in a constant state of reaction against whatever’s currently hot, and if you think about what’s popping in the underground while AutoTune hyperpop-rap dominates the popular imaginary, I think it’s safe to say that REAL RAP IS ABOUT TO BE BACK, BABY!!! If this happens, then my knowledge of Stretch and Bobbito freestyles will finally be of use. 

Speaking of REAL RAP BEING BACK, the homie Yak Ballz just dropped a new EP titled Young Yashar with the producer Mondee, and you should listen to it or else. If you’re not familiar with Yak, he’s a legendary NYC rapper from the Def Jux era who was in the group Weathermen with Cage, El-P, Aesop Rock, Vast Aire, and a bunch of people whose names you might recognize if you check the features list on albums like The Cold Vein or whatever. (He just so happens to now be one of the best publicists in the game, and the next time I write a book I will be seeking his counsel, but that’s neither here nor there.)

The entire EP is fire, but if you have a weird thing where you can only listen to one song a day, then I guess go with the first track off the project, “Tweak Season.” Yak starts out doing a Slick Rick-type flow over a Clipse-type beat and proceeds to drop some of the purest gems you will hear uttered from a human mouth. Listening to it made a stolen North Face and jauntily angled, curved-rim-style baseball cap appear upon my visage. I’m glad to see that my favorite type of rap, which is about saying extremely fly shit while making it clear that you trust no one under any circumstances whatsoever, is getting another notch in the W column thanks to Yak Ballz.