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Comment by JSR_FDED | Hacker News Reader

Weird contradiction in the article - it warns us not to complacently write off those who appear shameless… but also:

> any major politician sticking to a pre-2016 playbook today is almost certainly not going to win.

I'm not sure where you see a contradiction. Could you explain it to me? As I see it, the author claims that those who appear shameless are increasingly successful in today's day and age. The second statement is a prediction that basically follows from that and I feel like the prediction is holding up.

Shamelessly authentic might be what is causing the increasingly success now days.

Doubt that shamelessly corrupt will have the same effect.

Nigerian here.

> Shamelessly authentic might be what is causing the increasingly success now days.

I 100% agree with this. It's hard to pull off; I've just the one example[0]. Also this buttresses:

> Under open borders, sanctions will backfire, because they just serve as a signaling boost for the transgressor, attracting outsiders who resonate with that person’s message. What’s meant to be punishment instead becomes a flare shot straight into the night sky.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeryDarkMan

I mean, it seems to be working for MAGA so far

What I meant was that on the one hand the article says that we shouldn’t underestimate the shameless. On the other hand it says that the person who employed shamelessness in the first election likely won’t win again (thereby underestimating the shameless).

It says the opposite to me. It's saying shamelessness won. And if you don't be shameless but instead stick to pre-2016 techniques you'll lose. To win you have to be shameless.

What? He did win again.

Politics was in this weird stasis. The shameless showman broke the script where some evolution of 1960s Kennedy v. Nixon was displaced by whatever you call this era.

Vice President Quayle was mocked endlessly for spelling the word potato incorrectly. Now we have a dude who can barely string a sentence together.

Perhaps it wasn't really about the potato spelling after all. Or the emails.

Bad faith!? In _politics _!?

My read of "pre-2016 playbook" was referring to someone using a traditional campaign like Hillary (rather than Trump using his pre-2016 strategy), and that they were saying Trump changed the entire game in 2016 so that shameless strategies would be the winning strategy going forward. So I don't see a contradiction.

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