Both the Rand and Lime tickets posted their platforms last Saturday (for the purpose of this post, Saturday is 12AM - 11:59PM EST), but the Lime/Turb platform has not received nearly as much traffic, raking in ~50% as many views and ~40% as many replies as Rand/Gleg. Compared to Europeia's previous election cycle, engagement with both platforms is down significantly. Given the stakes that are at play in this election, and the power players that represent both (and now, all three) tickets, I find this a bit disappointing.
This coupled with low satisfaction with the Presidential field appears to have set the stage for McEntire's last minute success.
Speaking of being 100% responsible for low satisfaction with the Presidential field, let's turn to current President
@Lloenflys , who announced that he was not going to run for reelection at the midterms. Lloen, I feel like 35 days is plenty of time to set the stage for candidates. You even said as much - Hey, it's time to start thinking about running. Are you surprised by the enthusiasm levels and engagement this election cycle?
I also wanted to ask you about the UPC nomination. You're not stranger to controversial nominations, as the Hezekon Culture nomination ran into some challenges at the start of your term. You made some parallels between UPC and Hez, and the obstacles they faced in getting confirmed. Looking back at the UPC nomination now that it has failed, what is your reaction?
HEYYYYOOOOOOOO <hiccup> PhDre you're looking ... is that a kimono? <hiccup>
Well. Welllllll well well here we are. Here I am. Here Europeia is. BREAK OUT THE SCOTCH FRIENDS (that's for you
@Darcness ) It is the LAST DAY OF EUROPEIA! Or. Wait no. It is the last day of MY Europeia!!! DRINK UP!
Oh you had a question. Questions. <squints> yes questions. I HAVE ANSWERS PHDRE!
First, I'm not surprised by the lack of engagement. What was there to engage with? For most of this campaign you had one very energetic and viable campaign that was brimming with ideas and someone who seemed to be in a position to lead the region moving forward without much difficulty, and with an iconic Euro figure in his corner as VP. On the other hand, you had a former President whose term people don't remember fondly because of how it ended running with an extremely nice and polite VP who doesn't have nearly the FA background that the opposition has (That is not a knock on Turb - no one could possibly measure up to the FA legacy Gleg brings to his ticket, that's just a reality). The dynamics of the race made this a boring race - and the polling showed that. And since I'm drunk, I'll say this - Lime needed to do something, anything, to differentiate his ticket *significantly* from Rand. He needed arguments and discussion that set him apart. Platform differences weren't going to do it unless they were *really* big, swing for the fences ideas that would lead to structural change and get people talking. Instead, virtually every chance he had to distinguish himself from Rand (the UPC nomination, the Bar Association idea) Lime followed Rand's position. That is not how you change the structural view of the race. Lime, I put you on blast a little bit here and I'm sorry for that, I like you as a person, but I'm saying what I genuinely think about how this race played out.
The UPC nomination frustrated me because of how it was handled. I don't want to pile on. UPC has had a chance to say his piece, Rand has commented in his campaign thread, it's been discussed heavily in discord. I will just repeat that the Senate had a job to do and it did it, and while I disagree with the decision I understand the basis of their concerns and don't even necessarily disagree with making the decision on the basis of activity and "sticking power" in the role. However, and I think this is what has hurt Rand, too many of the comments have been refuted by people who are very familiar with the F/S Update and the way gameplay is likely to be structured, and it seemed like Rand was casting about for reasons to justify denying UPC's nomination when he probably should have just stuck with "he's not active enough" and left it there. Now, he got into a situation where he's making comments like "the RSC is like 24/7 warfare" (that's a paraphrase) which has a lot of people scratching their heads. The whole thing opened the door for McEntire to swoop in. This was an unforced error on Rand's part because he could have accomplished the same goal without opening up lines of attack, and possibly without even causing McEntire and Sky to choose to run.
A couple quick other thoughts - Gleg is a huge value to this campaign, but I haven't seen him comment a lot during the campaign itself (I may have just missed it, I apologize if that's the case), and either way does anyone really think Gleg isn't going to help if asked to help in the next term in some way? He might not have a formal role in a potential McEntire administration (maybe he would, I have no idea), but he's not going to just walk away if he thinks he's needed. I think that could hurt Rand because a lot of people may very well think "well Gleg will be around to give expertise no matter what" and I'm guessing that's accurate. That may minimize his value as a candidate, or at least mitigate it to some degree.
Second, I'll be curious to see how people react to McEntire's strong (possibly winning) performance in a last minute campaign. How much of that is McEntire being seen as the best choice to lead, and how much of that is Rand either over-reaching or being seen as a little off base with some of his comments, causing people to look elsewhere? Eurologists (teehee see what I did there??) will be asking that question for years.
