I have compared Trump to McCarthy on more than one occasion, and all but one listener even knew who I was talking about. This includes people who lived through that era! I did not, I just had a fairly rigorous high school history curriculum (shout out, ETHS).
This is a huge problem.
1) Republicans don't recognize this is a losing strategy. The "he fights" argument is so prevalent with them. It's played out predictably by losing them the suburbs, some friendly southern states, and The National Association of Manufacturers. The situation will be similar to McCarthy. Disgrace and a bad record in the history books.
2) Democrats don't understand that we actually have precedent for this. It's harder to convince them that it's not helpful to be conspiratorial and chug MSNBC for 4 years. Instead, they should support broadly popular ideas that bring the center of the country to them and fight wild conspiracies with effective governance.
History major here. Starting to think it was a better idea than I expected at the time.
This guy also accurately explains the right-wing association with resentful and neglected white males, to the benefit of capitalist billionaires and millionaires: https://notesfromdisgraceland.wordpress.com/
ok i did a half-assed job at due diligence trying to find out what the title of the blog meant and the photos. What does Chemtrails over the country club have to do, with anything, about the article?
Chemtrails are a thing crazy people believe in and country clubs are where the rich conservatives hang out. (Unless you’re in LA, then it’s where Adam Sandler hangs out.)
I think we have to think in terms of splitting up the country. Maybe start with constitutional amendments specifying how states can secede. That's something that might release some of the pressure that the right wing nutcases are feeling. And in 2 or 4 years it might be democrats who want to secede. Or maybe have a sort of partial secession where the United States becomes more like the European Union, where individual states or groups of states act as separate countries but with open borders and free trade. Or if there are not open borders there could be a period of time when people could freely move within the country to regions where they are more in align with the political system.
I think it would solve a number of intractable problems. The current system greatly favors republicans. They aren't doing to want to change it because no one ever wants to change a system that favors them. If solidly republican states don't have democrats to offset the crazies, then they will have to deal with them themselves. But if they want to have a North Korean style regime led by the Trump family that's ok with me, I just don't want to live there.
The system of government, as pointed out in the post the other day, is not functioning. It's like you can't drive a car with two people struggling to control the steering wheel. Checks and balances was nice in theory and even worked for quite a long time but isn't working now. A parliamentary system would be better - where the party that is in power has control. But, again, why would the Republicans relinquish power to move to this type of system?
The main problem is that the political differences seem to be more urban vs rural than state vs state. But not all urban voters are democrats and not all rural voters are republicans. It might make sense to let states split up into mostly rural and mostly urban areas. Then over time people could migrate. I think without the focus on demonizing each other both republicans and democrats would be forced to govern better.
I think the conservative schtick, like many aspects of America, played better against a Soviet system that the vast majority of Americans (and most Soviets for that matter) agreed was worse than whatever flavor of American Capitalist-Democracy then prevailed.
The "common enemy" pushed Americans together, of course, but because the Cold War was very much a 'war' of reputation, it also encouraged some civility of rhetoric and at least adherence to at the appearance of decency in public policy.
Other things were happening too--lack of polarization, scarcity of media outlets, etc. But I think the Reagan->BushW->trump progression does show a kind of devolution, if not of principles and rationality, than at least of presentation, which is tightly bound to the turn from a (now defuct) external enemy toward demonization of fellow citizens.
I think there's an argument to be made that the stuff the right wing crazies believe has gotten even crazier in the age of social media. It was crazy to think Eisenhower was a secret communist, or that Obama was born in Kenya, but communism and Kenya are at least both real things.
There are now two members of congress who have openly expressed belief in QAnon. Lauren Boebert is the harder of the two to get a read on, and she may just be a cynical creep who saw that there was a political opportunity in embracing this stuff, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is an honest-to-god true believer.
She is *on video* talking about some of the very craziest parts of the QAnon mythology, like the belief that members of the satanist cabal (i.e. many of her new coworkers!) torture and kill children in order to extract adrenochrome from their blood, which in QAnon lore is both a psychoactive drug and some kind of youth serum.
It's difficult to estimate the percentage of Republicans who believe in QAnon at this point, but it's a large minority. If you're familiar with their symbols and slogans you will start to see them everywhere. Now, some of that is just a frequency illusion, but some of the places where unambiguous QAnon stuff is showing up should be extremely concerning to people.
The head of the NYC Sergeants Benevolent Association appeared on TV repeatedly this summer with a QAnon mug behind him, carefully turned to be visible to the camera. And it wasn't even a big story! Largely because normal people just don't know how crazy this stuff is. We've had cases all over the country of cops being caught wearing QAnon swag on the job or expressing QAnon belief on social media, and departments mostly seem to treat these cases as relatively minor incidents of an officer being "too political" while on duty.
These are people who think there are tunnels full of "mole children" under Central Park! Who think Hillary Clinton *literally* eats babies! This stuff should be as disqualifying from any position of public responsibility as would belief in Islamic State-style jihadism.
The latest Economist/YouGov poll is showing ~10-20% with a favorable or very favorable view of QAnon across a variety of different demographic groups. Lowest is white women college grads with 6%, highest is 18-29 year olds with 26%.
Those are the numbers for the population at large. What do you think the numbers are among Republicans? Because it's going to be higher than that.
Personally, if I had to put my money where my mouth is I think I'd guess around a third.
It's absolutely true though that there are far-right milieus in which QAnon is anathema, white nationalists for example (at the extreme end) mostly think QAnon is a Jewish plot to distract people, and of course there's plenty of hardcore MAGA people who might think QAnon is stupid but who still probably believe the election was stolen.
If Matthew is correct here, and I believe he is, then there aren't a lot of votes to be harvested by either side from either side without an opportunity cost attached. Which rather implies that turning out voters will become increasingly important.
I will offer a brief prediction. The purity of small donation crowd and their brethren, the corporate money is evil crowd, are about to get a wake up call. If what I am watching bears out as a long term trend, corporate donors are going to shun the nuttier Trumpist Republicans and the Trumpists will dominate in small money donations. And won't that be interesting.
What’s currently happening is Bernie and Actblue are winning the donations and Rs are winning elections with less money, so this is already true but people get mad when you say it. Rich conservatives still fund rural media though, which might help them win
Good post as always, and I love reading your stuff.
But, I am not gonna lie to you Matt, the increasing number of disingenuous edgy "principled" conservatives in the comments section are killing my vibe. I am getting an internet circa 2010 vibe sometimes here, and not in a good way.
Looking at the comments (and vote patterns) below, I don't think that kind of conservative is dominating the space, I'd say they're a definite minority. Is the problem that there's any of them at all? Or do you have a different read on it?
From my view it's nice to have a place where people with a range of opinions can discuss together - if nothing else, it keeps your arguments sharp.
This was a very astute appraisal of the great ideological sorting that has taken place. And it invites the question of what you should do about it. From a two party perspective I would condense the argument a little. You are what you are willing to tolerate. Are all Republicans racist for example within some spectrum of racism? Probably not. Some are just very tolerant of racism. But that is just one division point. There are many possible issues where voters may feel cross pressure like abortion.
So, as you have pointed out so many times, if you want to win elections you have to bring over people from the other side. This extremely obvious point seems to escape the political fringes for some reason. Well then, who can you bring into the tent without sacrificing more voters than you get? And I would argue, given the lay of this land, there aren't ever going to be that many. And of those the most likely candidates are going to be the people least likely to be dogmatic about anything and probably least interested in politics period.
I’m a little late to this but it leaves me with two questions:
1. Why are people who believe in wacko theories more likely to vote for conservatives?
2. Is it possible to brand the Republican Party as straight-up irresponsible?
1. Both are correlated with being older, having lead poisoning and believing what you read on Facebook and TV.
1.5. The crazy left wing people are younger and probably don’t vote at all.
2. Would they care? That’s kind of aspirational.
A note here on history.
I have compared Trump to McCarthy on more than one occasion, and all but one listener even knew who I was talking about. This includes people who lived through that era! I did not, I just had a fairly rigorous high school history curriculum (shout out, ETHS).
This is a huge problem.
1) Republicans don't recognize this is a losing strategy. The "he fights" argument is so prevalent with them. It's played out predictably by losing them the suburbs, some friendly southern states, and The National Association of Manufacturers. The situation will be similar to McCarthy. Disgrace and a bad record in the history books.
2) Democrats don't understand that we actually have precedent for this. It's harder to convince them that it's not helpful to be conspiratorial and chug MSNBC for 4 years. Instead, they should support broadly popular ideas that bring the center of the country to them and fight wild conspiracies with effective governance.
History major here. Starting to think it was a better idea than I expected at the time.
This guy also accurately explains the right-wing association with resentful and neglected white males, to the benefit of capitalist billionaires and millionaires: https://notesfromdisgraceland.wordpress.com/
I liked the post, but I thought some of the commenting was better than the actual post.
ok i did a half-assed job at due diligence trying to find out what the title of the blog meant and the photos. What does Chemtrails over the country club have to do, with anything, about the article?
Chemtrails are a thing crazy people believe in and country clubs are where the rich conservatives hang out. (Unless you’re in LA, then it’s where Adam Sandler hangs out.)
sorry photo, singular not plural
I think we have to think in terms of splitting up the country. Maybe start with constitutional amendments specifying how states can secede. That's something that might release some of the pressure that the right wing nutcases are feeling. And in 2 or 4 years it might be democrats who want to secede. Or maybe have a sort of partial secession where the United States becomes more like the European Union, where individual states or groups of states act as separate countries but with open borders and free trade. Or if there are not open borders there could be a period of time when people could freely move within the country to regions where they are more in align with the political system.
I think it would solve a number of intractable problems. The current system greatly favors republicans. They aren't doing to want to change it because no one ever wants to change a system that favors them. If solidly republican states don't have democrats to offset the crazies, then they will have to deal with them themselves. But if they want to have a North Korean style regime led by the Trump family that's ok with me, I just don't want to live there.
The system of government, as pointed out in the post the other day, is not functioning. It's like you can't drive a car with two people struggling to control the steering wheel. Checks and balances was nice in theory and even worked for quite a long time but isn't working now. A parliamentary system would be better - where the party that is in power has control. But, again, why would the Republicans relinquish power to move to this type of system?
The main problem is that the political differences seem to be more urban vs rural than state vs state. But not all urban voters are democrats and not all rural voters are republicans. It might make sense to let states split up into mostly rural and mostly urban areas. Then over time people could migrate. I think without the focus on demonizing each other both republicans and democrats would be forced to govern better.
I think the conservative schtick, like many aspects of America, played better against a Soviet system that the vast majority of Americans (and most Soviets for that matter) agreed was worse than whatever flavor of American Capitalist-Democracy then prevailed.
The "common enemy" pushed Americans together, of course, but because the Cold War was very much a 'war' of reputation, it also encouraged some civility of rhetoric and at least adherence to at the appearance of decency in public policy.
Other things were happening too--lack of polarization, scarcity of media outlets, etc. But I think the Reagan->BushW->trump progression does show a kind of devolution, if not of principles and rationality, than at least of presentation, which is tightly bound to the turn from a (now defuct) external enemy toward demonization of fellow citizens.
I’m not sure about the etiquette, but I think a lot of people here would enjoy this podcast talking about the possibility of an American Civil war.
Razib Khan. American Civil War? Richard Hanania thinks it unlikely
https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/94899/private/86f0a650-936c-46b6-ac5f-672795c2a8ba.rss
That Lana del Rey photo and the title are interesting but a little unmoored from the text ... or not?
I think there's an argument to be made that the stuff the right wing crazies believe has gotten even crazier in the age of social media. It was crazy to think Eisenhower was a secret communist, or that Obama was born in Kenya, but communism and Kenya are at least both real things.
There are now two members of congress who have openly expressed belief in QAnon. Lauren Boebert is the harder of the two to get a read on, and she may just be a cynical creep who saw that there was a political opportunity in embracing this stuff, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is an honest-to-god true believer.
She is *on video* talking about some of the very craziest parts of the QAnon mythology, like the belief that members of the satanist cabal (i.e. many of her new coworkers!) torture and kill children in order to extract adrenochrome from their blood, which in QAnon lore is both a psychoactive drug and some kind of youth serum.
It's difficult to estimate the percentage of Republicans who believe in QAnon at this point, but it's a large minority. If you're familiar with their symbols and slogans you will start to see them everywhere. Now, some of that is just a frequency illusion, but some of the places where unambiguous QAnon stuff is showing up should be extremely concerning to people.
The head of the NYC Sergeants Benevolent Association appeared on TV repeatedly this summer with a QAnon mug behind him, carefully turned to be visible to the camera. And it wasn't even a big story! Largely because normal people just don't know how crazy this stuff is. We've had cases all over the country of cops being caught wearing QAnon swag on the job or expressing QAnon belief on social media, and departments mostly seem to treat these cases as relatively minor incidents of an officer being "too political" while on duty.
These are people who think there are tunnels full of "mole children" under Central Park! Who think Hillary Clinton *literally* eats babies! This stuff should be as disqualifying from any position of public responsibility as would belief in Islamic State-style jihadism.
There's already two believers in congress! I'd say that's a sign it's pretty significant movement.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/4yijjbkc2z/econTabReport.pdf
The latest Economist/YouGov poll is showing ~10-20% with a favorable or very favorable view of QAnon across a variety of different demographic groups. Lowest is white women college grads with 6%, highest is 18-29 year olds with 26%.
Those are the numbers for the population at large. What do you think the numbers are among Republicans? Because it's going to be higher than that.
Personally, if I had to put my money where my mouth is I think I'd guess around a third.
It's absolutely true though that there are far-right milieus in which QAnon is anathema, white nationalists for example (at the extreme end) mostly think QAnon is a Jewish plot to distract people, and of course there's plenty of hardcore MAGA people who might think QAnon is stupid but who still probably believe the election was stolen.
If Matthew is correct here, and I believe he is, then there aren't a lot of votes to be harvested by either side from either side without an opportunity cost attached. Which rather implies that turning out voters will become increasingly important.
So is everybody's comment going to post twice now. Let's see.
Apparently so. Illuminati confirmed!
I will offer a brief prediction. The purity of small donation crowd and their brethren, the corporate money is evil crowd, are about to get a wake up call. If what I am watching bears out as a long term trend, corporate donors are going to shun the nuttier Trumpist Republicans and the Trumpists will dominate in small money donations. And won't that be interesting.
What’s currently happening is Bernie and Actblue are winning the donations and Rs are winning elections with less money, so this is already true but people get mad when you say it. Rich conservatives still fund rural media though, which might help them win
I was surprised to learn, on looking up 'mau-mauing,' that the term is now considered offensive. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mau-mau
Good post as always, and I love reading your stuff.
But, I am not gonna lie to you Matt, the increasing number of disingenuous edgy "principled" conservatives in the comments section are killing my vibe. I am getting an internet circa 2010 vibe sometimes here, and not in a good way.
Second. The prevalence of a defensive "both sides are bad!" is so so tired
Looking at the comments (and vote patterns) below, I don't think that kind of conservative is dominating the space, I'd say they're a definite minority. Is the problem that there's any of them at all? Or do you have a different read on it?
From my view it's nice to have a place where people with a range of opinions can discuss together - if nothing else, it keeps your arguments sharp.
Definitely feeling more and more like a Facebook comments sections
Could you break that down for people who don't spend anytime on FB?
This was a very astute appraisal of the great ideological sorting that has taken place. And it invites the question of what you should do about it. From a two party perspective I would condense the argument a little. You are what you are willing to tolerate. Are all Republicans racist for example within some spectrum of racism? Probably not. Some are just very tolerant of racism. But that is just one division point. There are many possible issues where voters may feel cross pressure like abortion.
So, as you have pointed out so many times, if you want to win elections you have to bring over people from the other side. This extremely obvious point seems to escape the political fringes for some reason. Well then, who can you bring into the tent without sacrificing more voters than you get? And I would argue, given the lay of this land, there aren't ever going to be that many. And of those the most likely candidates are going to be the people least likely to be dogmatic about anything and probably least interested in politics period.