I've noticed that any cluster where progressive opinions are the norm--high education tends to be a common trait. This is true of everything from my hometown of Cambridge, MA to the U.S. information technology sector or high-brow media.
Perhaps having more ideological diversity on American campuses would help...
This is one of the many reasons that college educated democrats need to avoid being jerks when talking to or about people without college degrees. Eventually the people you insult will vote elsewhere. Not every non-college educated person disagrees with progressives with college degrees because they’re ignorant or uneducated or malevolent or a victim of misinformation. It’s certainly emotionally satisfy to tell yourself that, but it doesn’t mean it’s true.
To be honest I am still surprised by how few people with strong political opinions have so little knowledge of politics. Did anybody else watch Scott Walker not get recalled? I mean you could have just tuned into those big protests. Which consisted almost entirely of people whose iron rice bowl was government. You had teachers and college professors and professionals of all types. Not the cops though. Walker had already given them a good deal. And all those people were essentially demanding a more progressive leadership and higher taxes.
But you have to kind of notice who wasn't there. Those were people who actually had to work. Small business people, unionized employees, farmers and such. And all of those people knew that if the protesters dreams came true they wouldn't get a sniff of the benefits of higher taxes. But they would have to pay them. The net result was the results of the recall was essentially zero change in the election results.
Trust me. No one who hopes to send their child to college, maybe the first ever in their family, thinks the first step is to make college more expensive by steering all the increased taxes into more goodies for college professors and such.
At its root politics is pretty simple. You have to bribe enough people to get elected with programs and policies that help everyone.
here's some unsolicited advice. If Americans really want universal health care then they have to address their union problem. Which is that about half of union employees are in public sector unions. And these unions have access to public sector funds that give them benefits like health care and decent wages and pretty good pensions. And these people see no reason why they should pay more taxes to cover such benefits for anyone else who isn't in their unions. In fact it is one of their key demand. They're all in favor of universal health care. But only as long as it doesn't cost them anything in terms of benefits, preferential access and most emphatically higher taxes.
Really what you need is to allow the Republicans to gut them and put them back in the same boat as everyone else. Then they will support universal health care regardless of cost.
Those abortion numbers are really worrisome - my fear is that after Roe goes the salience of the issue shoots up and we wind up having a bunch of state referenda on late term abortions in which the Democratic position is i) "experts say the term partial-birth abortion is misinformation," ii) if you support any restrictions on abortion you are an extremist who has no place in the Democratic party.
And the media debate will be about things like: is it racist and an act of violence against women to publish pro-life newspaper columns in the Times? Roe has sidetracked this issue into a debate about the power of the Supreme Court so I don't think the "political elites" from your poll have any idea how unpopular their position on abortion is, or any desire to persuade people who don't agree with them.
I think the definition of "coalition building" has changed, at least on the left. Previously it meant attempting to minimize disagreement by narrowing the scope of discussion to areas that were generally most agreeable. This would sometimes lead to coalitions being rather vague or pointless but kind of kept the focus on winning the larger half.
For the past decade or so, coalition building does really seem to be about trying to logroll coalition partners into uniformly left/liberal positions across the board. This serves to give the activists and people who run the organizations peace of mind, but I don't think it really causes them to reflect what their members want at it definitely makes the coalition less electorally solid since the actual population is generally conflicted.
"Something that’s worth calling out here is the declining influence of labor unions in American politics. A lot of left-wing people see this as an important problem, and I tend to agree with them."
I disagree so strongly it gives me a headache.
Democrats like to make the case that the combination of corporate greed and automation are the primary sources for the lack of good paying jobs, yet then fail to connect the dots for what greater unionization would do to help spur more investment in workforce automation. Probably because few Democrats work in the private sector that makes things, they don't understand how the financial feasibility for acquisition of workforce automation happens. (As and aside, given the dropping quality of journalism, I expect robots to do the job within 10 years... and maybe better since robots can be programmed to leave out the bias.)
Democrats like to make the case that we should open the borders and allow more immigrants into the country, yet they then fail to connect the dots for what a greater supply of low wage workers does to depress wages and make job opportunities for citizens more scarce.
Democrats virtue signal alarms about climate change and demand taxes, regulations and bans on traditional energy production and use before affordable alternatives are available, this results in fewer business starts, less business growth and changes to the economy that all result in fewer jobs.
Democrats call for the Great Reset Liberal Global New World Order (Obama was quoted saying it was the only way forward) and (disingenuously I think given the labor union love) skewered Trump for going after China to negotiate a stronger trade deal, and for renegotiating NAFTA... both with the intent of increasing productive economic activity in the US... yet giving up US economic sovereignty has seen hundreds of whole industries disappear from the US economy to be taken up by other countries.
Lastly, Democrats push policies to make private businesses comply with their wokeist insanity in labor regulations... thereby convincing business owners that operating with as few employees as possible is in their best interests.
Then Democrats advocate for labor unions primarily because of all of the harm done to the labor economy by Democrat policies.
For the Democrats... everything is a circular firing squad... primarily because the elites run the show and the elites are stupid about everything real.
I've loved Elizabeth Warren since she arrived on the scene, but I think she was a more noteworthy public figure when she was laser-focused on consumer protection. The hedgehogs are interesting; the foxes all blend together.
I think the grandest point Matt makes is that if the party moves toward the center the policies of the country will move to the left, NOT toward the center. I think that is true and the reason why people have to learn to hold strong to their views in principle but look a little more cold heartedly at the politicians. They are not there to pander to you and your allies, they are there to win and push policies that shape the country in the direction you would like. They are not your spirit animals. Move to the center to move to the left I love it.
This was an interesting post but, honestly, nothing in it surprised or informed me all that much. Pretty much what I would have expected.
What *would* be possibly more interesting is the same analysis for the Republican party. Just like with the Dems, the vast majority of Republicans in government and (I suspect) activists are college educated. How much do they differ, and in what ways, from the non-college part of the coalition?
I suspect there's a lot more convergence in the Republican coalition, but since it's such a black box to me, I could be way off.
"Joe’s listenership is 71% male and evenly split between high school and post-secondary graduates. Fifty seven percent of his audience reports earning over $50k per year, with 19% making over $100k. The average age of his listeners was 24. The most likely additional podcast responses from his listeners were “Serial,” “The Daily,” “This American Life,” and “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von.”"
Given the average age of his listeners is 24, I would imagine that his base isn't the non-college educated median voter, but is actually a young man who is either in college or just out of college. I know it was a throwaway line, but I think the Rogan phenomenon highlights a different issue for Democrats, which is how to (or should we) reach out to the disaffected early-20s male voters who kinda like Bernie Sanders, like that Trump pisses off the nerds, and otherwise don't care about politics.
Any of them planning to get rid of universal health care or any other major social welfare program? Canadian conservatives are not American conservatives even though they seem to be, currently, in favor of following that path. In which case they will be annihilated. As an elderly Canadian I feel I have a pretty good grasp of Canadian politics. And I just watched those same conservative provincial governments you cite end trucking blockades when last week they were characterizing these protesters as heroes and patriots. Politically this is called stomping on your own dick.
What evidence shows that a more moderate stance on abortions by the democrats would have changed the balance of power? For example you said the democrats may have picked up more seats. Which seats might otherwise have flipped if the candidate's abortion stance was different?
The left’s predictable using of race as a political cudgel is wearing thin. Trudeau calling working class people racists was so transparent about leftist’s instincts. You are a working class white person who disagrees with me…you must be a racists, or a transphobe, or xenophobic. I’m over it. Or to use a technical social justice term. I’m exhausted 🥱.
I've noticed that any cluster where progressive opinions are the norm--high education tends to be a common trait. This is true of everything from my hometown of Cambridge, MA to the U.S. information technology sector or high-brow media.
Perhaps having more ideological diversity on American campuses would help...
While I obviously acknowledge that immigration is a "social" issue, I sincerely wish that Progressives would work at making it into an economic issue.
This is one of the many reasons that college educated democrats need to avoid being jerks when talking to or about people without college degrees. Eventually the people you insult will vote elsewhere. Not every non-college educated person disagrees with progressives with college degrees because they’re ignorant or uneducated or malevolent or a victim of misinformation. It’s certainly emotionally satisfy to tell yourself that, but it doesn’t mean it’s true.
To be honest I am still surprised by how few people with strong political opinions have so little knowledge of politics. Did anybody else watch Scott Walker not get recalled? I mean you could have just tuned into those big protests. Which consisted almost entirely of people whose iron rice bowl was government. You had teachers and college professors and professionals of all types. Not the cops though. Walker had already given them a good deal. And all those people were essentially demanding a more progressive leadership and higher taxes.
But you have to kind of notice who wasn't there. Those were people who actually had to work. Small business people, unionized employees, farmers and such. And all of those people knew that if the protesters dreams came true they wouldn't get a sniff of the benefits of higher taxes. But they would have to pay them. The net result was the results of the recall was essentially zero change in the election results.
Trust me. No one who hopes to send their child to college, maybe the first ever in their family, thinks the first step is to make college more expensive by steering all the increased taxes into more goodies for college professors and such.
At its root politics is pretty simple. You have to bribe enough people to get elected with programs and policies that help everyone.
here's some unsolicited advice. If Americans really want universal health care then they have to address their union problem. Which is that about half of union employees are in public sector unions. And these unions have access to public sector funds that give them benefits like health care and decent wages and pretty good pensions. And these people see no reason why they should pay more taxes to cover such benefits for anyone else who isn't in their unions. In fact it is one of their key demand. They're all in favor of universal health care. But only as long as it doesn't cost them anything in terms of benefits, preferential access and most emphatically higher taxes.
Really what you need is to allow the Republicans to gut them and put them back in the same boat as everyone else. Then they will support universal health care regardless of cost.
Those abortion numbers are really worrisome - my fear is that after Roe goes the salience of the issue shoots up and we wind up having a bunch of state referenda on late term abortions in which the Democratic position is i) "experts say the term partial-birth abortion is misinformation," ii) if you support any restrictions on abortion you are an extremist who has no place in the Democratic party.
And the media debate will be about things like: is it racist and an act of violence against women to publish pro-life newspaper columns in the Times? Roe has sidetracked this issue into a debate about the power of the Supreme Court so I don't think the "political elites" from your poll have any idea how unpopular their position on abortion is, or any desire to persuade people who don't agree with them.
I think the definition of "coalition building" has changed, at least on the left. Previously it meant attempting to minimize disagreement by narrowing the scope of discussion to areas that were generally most agreeable. This would sometimes lead to coalitions being rather vague or pointless but kind of kept the focus on winning the larger half.
For the past decade or so, coalition building does really seem to be about trying to logroll coalition partners into uniformly left/liberal positions across the board. This serves to give the activists and people who run the organizations peace of mind, but I don't think it really causes them to reflect what their members want at it definitely makes the coalition less electorally solid since the actual population is generally conflicted.
"Something that’s worth calling out here is the declining influence of labor unions in American politics. A lot of left-wing people see this as an important problem, and I tend to agree with them."
I disagree so strongly it gives me a headache.
Democrats like to make the case that the combination of corporate greed and automation are the primary sources for the lack of good paying jobs, yet then fail to connect the dots for what greater unionization would do to help spur more investment in workforce automation. Probably because few Democrats work in the private sector that makes things, they don't understand how the financial feasibility for acquisition of workforce automation happens. (As and aside, given the dropping quality of journalism, I expect robots to do the job within 10 years... and maybe better since robots can be programmed to leave out the bias.)
Democrats like to make the case that we should open the borders and allow more immigrants into the country, yet they then fail to connect the dots for what a greater supply of low wage workers does to depress wages and make job opportunities for citizens more scarce.
Democrats virtue signal alarms about climate change and demand taxes, regulations and bans on traditional energy production and use before affordable alternatives are available, this results in fewer business starts, less business growth and changes to the economy that all result in fewer jobs.
Democrats call for the Great Reset Liberal Global New World Order (Obama was quoted saying it was the only way forward) and (disingenuously I think given the labor union love) skewered Trump for going after China to negotiate a stronger trade deal, and for renegotiating NAFTA... both with the intent of increasing productive economic activity in the US... yet giving up US economic sovereignty has seen hundreds of whole industries disappear from the US economy to be taken up by other countries.
Lastly, Democrats push policies to make private businesses comply with their wokeist insanity in labor regulations... thereby convincing business owners that operating with as few employees as possible is in their best interests.
Then Democrats advocate for labor unions primarily because of all of the harm done to the labor economy by Democrat policies.
For the Democrats... everything is a circular firing squad... primarily because the elites run the show and the elites are stupid about everything real.
I've loved Elizabeth Warren since she arrived on the scene, but I think she was a more noteworthy public figure when she was laser-focused on consumer protection. The hedgehogs are interesting; the foxes all blend together.
You can never go too wrong if you follow the advice of Major ______ de Coverley from Catch-22: Everybody Eat!
I think the grandest point Matt makes is that if the party moves toward the center the policies of the country will move to the left, NOT toward the center. I think that is true and the reason why people have to learn to hold strong to their views in principle but look a little more cold heartedly at the politicians. They are not there to pander to you and your allies, they are there to win and push policies that shape the country in the direction you would like. They are not your spirit animals. Move to the center to move to the left I love it.
This was an interesting post but, honestly, nothing in it surprised or informed me all that much. Pretty much what I would have expected.
What *would* be possibly more interesting is the same analysis for the Republican party. Just like with the Dems, the vast majority of Republicans in government and (I suspect) activists are college educated. How much do they differ, and in what ways, from the non-college part of the coalition?
I suspect there's a lot more convergence in the Republican coalition, but since it's such a black box to me, I could be way off.
"...media made for college graduates is considered prestigious and highbrow in a way that local TV news or the Joe Rogan Experience is not."
I wondered what the actual breakdown is of Rogan listeners and found this article: https://www.mediamonitors.com/audience-demographic-variations-specific-to-genre/
"Joe’s listenership is 71% male and evenly split between high school and post-secondary graduates. Fifty seven percent of his audience reports earning over $50k per year, with 19% making over $100k. The average age of his listeners was 24. The most likely additional podcast responses from his listeners were “Serial,” “The Daily,” “This American Life,” and “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von.”"
Given the average age of his listeners is 24, I would imagine that his base isn't the non-college educated median voter, but is actually a young man who is either in college or just out of college. I know it was a throwaway line, but I think the Rogan phenomenon highlights a different issue for Democrats, which is how to (or should we) reach out to the disaffected early-20s male voters who kinda like Bernie Sanders, like that Trump pisses off the nerds, and otherwise don't care about politics.
Need more college educated people. It really helped in Canada.
A conservative party not actually wanting to do much of anything that makes me angry is the ultimate long-term win, really.
Any of them planning to get rid of universal health care or any other major social welfare program? Canadian conservatives are not American conservatives even though they seem to be, currently, in favor of following that path. In which case they will be annihilated. As an elderly Canadian I feel I have a pretty good grasp of Canadian politics. And I just watched those same conservative provincial governments you cite end trucking blockades when last week they were characterizing these protesters as heroes and patriots. Politically this is called stomping on your own dick.
What evidence shows that a more moderate stance on abortions by the democrats would have changed the balance of power? For example you said the democrats may have picked up more seats. Which seats might otherwise have flipped if the candidate's abortion stance was different?
The left’s predictable using of race as a political cudgel is wearing thin. Trudeau calling working class people racists was so transparent about leftist’s instincts. You are a working class white person who disagrees with me…you must be a racists, or a transphobe, or xenophobic. I’m over it. Or to use a technical social justice term. I’m exhausted 🥱.