Too much power

Every election cycle, there’s a great Vonnegut quip from A Man Without a Country that inevitably makes the rounds. Today, it seems more timely than ever.

Vonnegut’s (f)law of course extends far beyond the presidency into corporate America, where a small handful of tech CEOs now bear the responsibility of operating quasi nation states. And to put it simply, you have to be flatly outside your mind to want any part of the power and responsibility that comes with any of this.

Throughout his presidency, I always wondered if 46 possessed the requisite level of sociopathy needed to play quarterback of the free world. Only when he stubbornly refused to face his own mortality did it become clear that he was probably crazy enough to do this all along.

In the end, some semblance of sanity won out over Biden’s raw lust for power. Facing a 38/56 approval vs. disapproval split, mass donor revolt and desperate pleas from across the party to step aside, the President finally gave way. For what it’s worth—-and that is absolutely nothing in the context on needing to win in an election in November— I believe history will remember President Biden far more fondly than the prevailing sentiment does. Noah Smith has already declared Biden the best president of his lifetime.

Assuming it is Kamala Harris who receives the nomination, it’s a helpful reminder that the class presidents are ultimately just a front. In America, it’s the PTA wine moms who hold all the real power.

Jokes aside, Harris has been dealt a tough hand—for starters, the Secret Service shouldn’t have let her anywhere near Drew Barrymore whose interview was bad to the point of national security threat. Structurally, the Vice Presidency is an utterly bizarre job where the second most powerful person on the planet has minimal discernible impact on policy. But even in this context, Harris has been a uniquely enigmatic and invisible vice president. As the sun rises this morning, outlets from Politico to the New York Times are scrambling to tell the American public what Harris’s policy stances are and doing a pretty uncompelling job. Hell, at least we know Gavin Newsom is tough on China.

What Harris needs most is time to fundamentally reintroduce herself to the American public to run on something other than not being Donald Trump. So far, kamalaharris.com has a nice little redirect to ask for your money without any semblance of a policy platform.

What Harris actually has are three months to convince roughly 100,000 so-called “moderate” voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada who will decide the election— most of whom hold an eclectic and paradoxical hodgepodge of far left and far right views— that she offers a vision for America that best aligns with their values. If she wins, she’ll have the most demanding job in the world and the weight of being the first woman to hold the presidential office— all while facing an opposition that at some level will question the fundamental legitimacy of her election.

Kurt’s right. You’ve got to be clearly disturbed to want that job.

Amazonia 

My quick take on the current thing in the Amazon ecosystem

A Cacophony of Capitalism: The numbers are in for Amazon Prime Day and this year’s soiree drove an estimated $14.2B according to Adobe Analytics.

There’s been shockingly little chest thumping from Amazon on this so my bet is that this actually fell short of their internal projections but it is a gargantuan and impressive number nonetheless. It’s also maybe a kinda bullshit statistic?

Amazon doesn’t disclose the first party data here so Adobe has become the trusted source for Prime Day (and other major events like Black Friday/ Cyber Monday) for more nearly a decade. But their methodology is….confusing to say the least.

This makes a lot of sense for being a reliable way to report key eCommerce benchmarks like conversion rate & AOV and make statistically significant assumptions about DTC volume based on a representative sample but…..there’s a couple of layers of obfuscation between this and Amazon volume.

In any event, the same narrative has swirled around Prime Day for years now. Media figures, analysts and everyday consumers say there are “no good deals this year” and then proceed to spend record breaking amounts of money on the platform. Make no mistake about it— Amazon continues to be stunningly effective, even if more for demand capture than demand creation. Of course, brands have to be mindful of what this means though—a customer using Prime Day to finally buy the Bissell Little Green steam cleaner (pro tip—buy one if you haven’t already) they’ve had in the cart for months isn’t the same as a customer deciding to buy Bissell over competing products. Increasingly, Amazon is a tougher channel for driving the latter outcome and a better one for the former.

Cocktail of the Week: The Watermelon Negroni

It’s been a historically heavy week so to counter that, I’m giving you something specifically light and crushable. This week’s cocktail comes from Alex, whiskey king and proprietor of the Fort Hamilton distillery in Brooklyn.

I’m generally a negroni purist and a Dorothy Parker diehard so I came in about as skeptical to this cocktail as you could imagine. But you know what, it just kinda self-evidently slaps. So here ya go:

• 1.5 oz. Fort Hamilton Gin

• 1 oz. fresh watermelon juice

• .5 oz. sweet vermouth

• .5 oz. Faccia Brutto (I’d use Campari here but NY distilleries have to use NY products in their tasting rooms)

As Anthony Bourdain would say, have two.

Thanks as always for reading. Back in two weeks with a more traditional US of Amazon essay and updates on two other writing projects.

P.S. I know it’s passe for any blog writers to admit their mistakes. Packy McCormick, arguably the best of us thinkbois going, wrote three years ago that crypto Pokemon was going to become the economic engine of the developing world……and then just never said a word when it obviously didn’t.

But I feel compelled to mention that my election prediction was wrong. Biden will in fact, not win the election with 279 electoral votes. Another L for Mikey.

P.P.S. I wonder how many times that “San Fran Chronicle” article was shared in degenerate group chats and email threads. No link but…..IYKYK