Kitchen sinks, ladders, folding chairs and tables will not save Cruz & Rubio tomorrow.
Kitchen sinks, ladders, collapsing folding chairs, and tables will not save Cruz and Rubio tomorrow as the conflict among the GOP candidates has achieved the level of discourse common to WWE shows.
media concussions
Even in DK(?) the discourse has identified some portion of a potential millenial electorate that somehow makes Bernie versus Trump a viable voting choice for both lowbrow and highbrow millenials. This only affects open primaries with party crossover, leaving aside whether they are immune to GOTV efforts.
This is a difficult generalization best left for closer demographic analysis, but even as cartoon villains like David Duke on the radio calls for voting Trump because otherwise is “treason to heritage”, there is no doubt that these fringe appeals have resonance with fellow travelling bigots (see the reactionary response to #BLM especially among LEOs). The resemblance to WWE audiences and its hero-villains has become ever more remarkable.
But are these the millenials who watched WWE knowing full well it was never a sport but rather modern choreographic spectacle reproducible as Jackass stunt injuries.
Or are these millenials who would never admit they watched WWE but appreciate how that degree of participation has become the kind of quasi-scripted reality that Trump provided over a decade in television.
The Survivor-like apprenticeships and their quasi-scripted talent show were more focused on competitive capitalism which is no different than the GOP primary. Despite the increased media noise, the popular culture influences have become marginal issues with the approach of SuperTuesday’s approximately 1600 delegates at play for both parties.
The voters who might also be part of the WWE audience has remained proportional in the past decade. In 2012, “The current WWE audience by age looks like this – 22% is between the ages of 2-17, 23% is between the ages of 18-34, 26% is between the ages of 35-49 and 30% is age 50 or older. ”
My starting issue was, how alienated are they? Is it going to keep them from getting involved [in the 2016 campaign]? Are they paying attention to these big battles taking place within the parties? Or what’s happening to the party leaders? What’s happening in their lives? When will they pay attention to the madness taking place in the political world?
They (whether hipster or fratbro) will perhaps remain the difference between those who answer polls like they vote for American Idol and those who actually vote, proving that they are not the American idle. The difference is a mediated one, alienated at the level of political participation rather than a broader level of push polling where sizzle is not about sampling.
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