MAGA Sportsball - Another Preference Cascade Indicator

I've written several times about the concept of a preference cascade, which is defined as " the situation where people's private opinions reach a tipping point and become publicly expressed and accepted." There are any number of signs that we are seeing just such a phenomenon now in our ongoing presidential election. The latest? At an NFL football game, 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa photobombed a teammate's interview to show off a MAGA (Make American Great Again) cap.

My video is better pic.twitter.com/F63KeEcLWw
— Daniel Alfano (@alfano83581) October 28, 2024

Of course, the legacy media was all butthurt over the incident. But, honestly, scarcely a day goes by without the legacy media rushing for the smelling salts after anyone expresses support for Donald Trump, no matter who the person is or where they are speaking from. It's all becoming very tiresome.

This may well be another indicator, though, of a larger trend. I wrote about the possibility of a preference cascade in a VIP post last month, but the thumbnail? Showing support for Trump is not only becoming more acceptable, it's turning into the thing the cool kids are doing.

So why are things seemingly flipping this late in the game? Well, I can think of several reasons.

First: The Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign has run the worst presidential campaign I can remember, and I remember Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Mike Dukakis. They are not only utterly blind to what Americans are concerned about around this election, but they don't seem to care about figuring it out. They are going to get a hard lesson, in a little over a week, that "OMG OMG TRUMP IS HITLER" isn't a winning message.

Second: Trump has attracted some amazing - and some surprising - people to his campaign. We have seen the Republican Party and the Trump campaign trade Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, which is probably the best trade since Thomas Jefferson told Napoleon, "Hey, Napoleon old boy, we'll take that Louisiana Territory off your hands. How's $15 million grab you?" Trump has brought the real-world Tony Stark, Elon Musk, on board - and is talking about putting him in charge of cutting the fat off the federal government. I'll take both of those deals every day and twice on Sunday.

Third: Young men, who are in large part drivers of culture, are breaking towards conservatism in some pretty amazing numbers.

Fourth and finally: Politics may be downstream from culture, as the late, great Andrew Breitbart reminds us - but culture is downstream from economics, and by every indicator, the Harris/Biden administration has been an utter disaster on economic issues. What's more, all Kamala Harris has to offer on the topic is to whine about making "the wealthy pay their fair share," to which Americans are beginning to reply, "Yes, we've heard that before, and we still can't afford groceries."

Add to that Trump's masterpiece performance at none other than Madison Square Garden, which looked more like a rock concert than a political rally.

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It's beginning to look like the preference cascade is well and truly underway. Supporting Trump and the MAGA movement is becoming not only acceptable but cool. Yesterday I finally heeded the urging of a lot of you readers; my wife and I went to the early-voting station down in Wasilla and waited in line for 90 minutes to cast our votes. The conversation in the queue was brisk; everyone heeded the "No Electioneering" signs and was careful to talk in very general terms, but there was very little doubt about which way most of the voters were leaning.

I'm still cautiously optimistic - but every day, the optimistic side of the scale is overbalancing the cautious side.

Eight days to go! If you haven't yet - go vote.