If you think this US election is bad times for FYM you should check out
Crooked Timber, one of the bigger blogs I keep an eye on. There are some vicious faultlines opening up. And it's not like I can't see where different people are coming from. Oh yes, I knew all the talking points long before (most) anyone at FYM cottoned on to them.
Worryingly, one of my take-homes from what I keep half an eye on is that the support for Hillary Clinton is extremely flakey. There are the zealots, and then there's everybody else. And everybody else could easily stay home. It's a turnout question at this point, nothing else.
To be honest, I think the flakiness of Clinton's support and suggestions of her widespread unlikeability/unpopularity is exaggerated. Now, admittedly, neither of us are in America, but if you move beyond the feelpinions and anecdotes that seem to drive FYM and a lot of online commentary, the data indicates Clinton has a fantastic ground game.
What's the narrative of the Democrat primaries? That Sanders had an active and enthusiastic base who turned out in droves, while Clinton could get barely a single person to give two shits about her. What do the numbers say? She not only beat him, but beat him convincingly - in a competition largely restricted to the true believers who are more likely than the average voter to support a fringe candidate (I use "fringe" loosely, in that Sanders sits outside the post-WWII to War on Terror mainstream). I mean, this is why Tea Partiers keep winning primaries and losing elections: because primaries favour ideologues who can mobilise a base but not a whole electorate. An ideologue mobilised his base and still couldn't get close to Clinton.
Always come back to the numbers. This is why so much of my research these days is tending towards economic history, much as everybody thinks it's boring. Often my reaction can be boiled down to "fuck you, show me the numbers", and that's been very true of arguments about this political cycle.
So, OK, Clinton outflanked her internal rival. But there's the oompa loompa. What we also know is that she's got a well-oiled, cashed-up machine with a heavy presence in marginal states, while Trump can hardly be fucked to fund his campaign properly, is relying on free media from shithouse journalists who aren't properly trained in their profession or who do know better but like the dollarydoos, and has a mediocre presence on the ground anywhere, let alone where it is most needed. Perhaps the narrative about Clinton
is true and more Democrats than usual will stay home - but because her ground game is well targeted, the people who stay home will mostly be in states where it doesn't matter anyway. In the Floridas, Ohios, Pennsylvanias, etc. of this world, she will turn out the vote.
Geez, sorry, that's tl;dr.
I dunno, locally, politics could go any which way. It could put us all to sleep, or it could get really ugly. Or both. I just can't get past the fact that this corpse of a government somehow crawled back in on the skin of their heels. They are truly the fag-end of an epoch. Their answers are the same old answers that have been bandied about since the Reagan revolution. They're dead but they don't know it yet. The trouble is, we're all still alive.
The one thing I don't expect is to be sleepy, to be honest. But maybe that's because I'm a political junkie. I suppose I see your broader point - that there is a good likelihood of widespread disengagement. And that's not mutually exclusive from ugliness - in fact, I think they need each other. The more people become disengaged, the more of a void there is for the loud ugly opinions to fill.
