I think that, to some degree, Matthew's journey also reflects that he was and is highly focused on policy, while both left and right have increasingly downplayed policy in favor of culture war.
Also an important part of this is just sheer politics, as Matt mentioned in the article, the left has become increasingly divorced from political realities, and it’s hard to want to fight for the team that keeps shooting itself in the foot.
The whole "vote uncommitted" movement in the Democratic Primary is the perfect example of this - the Left would rather punish Joe Biden, who is inarguably better for Palestinians than help him defeat his opponent would doesn't care if Palestinians live or die. I can't comprehend this type of thinking.
I’m voting uncommitted in the NJ primary and for Biden in the general.
I don’t think it’s inarguable that voting uncommitted helps Palestinians, but, in general, indicating priorities and preferences to politicians who depend on your support is more likely to increase than to decrease the likelihood of those priorities/preferences being realized, don’t you think?
In theory, I agree but unfortunately we have two choices in this election under our system. Voting “uncommitted” just hurts the guy is inarguably more sympathetic to Palestinians (Biden).
I too disagree with Biden’s policy towards Israel, for entirely different and likely opposite reasons than you do and I won’t be voting “uncommitted” in the Florida Democratic Party because I don’t want to help generate bad news for Biden.
But i have to ask. Are there actually any voters who will choose not to vote for Biden in November because some people voted uncommitted in the primary? What kind of voters are they? Pro-Palestinians who are unsure about Biden and see the level of uncommitted support as confirmation that Biden is undeserving of their general election vote?
In a literal sense you’re right, nobody is going to vote for Trump bc some people in New Jersey voted uncommitted in the primary. But, by doing so you’re making an issue that is bad for Biden more salient by drawing more attention so it and are contributing to an overall negative media environment with respect to Biden. I’m fairly certain a constant negative stream of news about Biden doesn’t help push swing voters his way and can only hurt.
Personally, I’d rather push positive vibes towards Biden since I want him to win even though I disagree with him on this issue.
Most of the “pro-Palestine” left couldn’t care less about the Palestinians, and are instead interested only in feeling morally righteous. Realism about politics makes it harder to feel morally righteous.
There is no chance that October 7th would have happened under Trump. Hamas would simply understand that the entire tactic of gaining sympathy through the use of human shields is irrelevant with him. So perhaps Biden is indeed worse for the Palestinians.
The timing of October 7th had more to do with Israeli relations with its immediate Arab neighbors (improving to the detriment of Palestinians) than who happened to be the American president at that particular time.
If you want to engage in that kind of wish-casting, then you have to reckon with the fact that Hamas pretty clearly wanted to disrupt the process of Israeli-Saudi reconciliation that the Trump team put so much effort into supporting. So I guess it's Trump's fault?
Of course, Hamas is funded by a deal worked out by the Netanyahu government to channel money through the Arab states, since the Israelis didn't want to be seen managing Hamas funding with direct transfers of tax revenue, as they do with the Palestinian Authority. So I guess October 7 wouldn't have happened if not for Netanyahu.
Or something.
Or maybe it is simply the case that the world is complicated, and people do things for lots of reasons with the timing set by lots of factors.
Always worth noting she did actually receive the most votes. But the polling afterwards showing where she lost Obama voters to Trump was him being nominally less right than the Republican orthodoxy and her having moved culturally left compared to Obama, her husband, and even her own previous positions.
Hilary was unlikeable and didn’t believe in Democracy or free speech. She was profoundly un-American. I said so at the time, and the voters mostly agreed with me. She lost because she would have been a worse President, and after she lost suggested that her political opposition should be put in re-education camps.
I think Trump’s policies were mostly okay, his rambling speeches were cringeworthy and the reaction of the hideous Left has been to style, not substance.
It was a "cuckoo's nest" election between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy -- with Nurse Ratched's fan club characterizing McMurphy as the "authoritarian"!
Trump is to be despised for his lying and his gratuitous cruelty, but (in his willingness to flout decorum) one can still deeply understand the nature of his appeal.
As for Ms. Clinton, the final word goes to Barack Obama, with his wry observation (damning with faint praise): "You're likeable enough, Hillary."
The linked document indicates that GOP voters actually care about those issues more than material concerns, so it's hard to see how they're "distractions", which implies that the elites are trying to fool voters.
I think it's a feedback loop. The elites are responding to voters and also shaping voters' priorities. I don't think that rules out "trying to fool voters" as part of what's going on. If you're at a right-wing think tank or magazine, and you have any thoughts that say tax cuts won't benefit numerous Republican voters, but will benefit your wealthy donors, you might be very happy to talk about transgender athletes.
Republicans don't have a monopoly on using "culture war" issues as a distraction.
In the age of DEI, try asking for a raise (or a job), only to be told, "Check your privilege." We pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege" while the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
And (Take my word as a gay male!) the Democrats are happy to inflame these issues (i.e., by foregrounding "trans") to enhance the protection racket they're running.
We've solved the major material concerns for the wealthy people who dominate our discourse. Internet echo chambers make it possible to be a progressive & be totally oblivious to the suffering of the poor.
For example, if your hand gets mashed in an accident, or your eye gets poked out, you still can't get a good replacement, whether you're Bill Gates or homeless, any more than a king in centuries past could get penicillin. Even the richest of us are practically primitive peasants!
During 2009-2010 the polity was arguing over whether Obama was born in Kenya, and his comments that that cop in Cambridge acted stupidly, and we clearly hadn’t solved material problems then.
I think the most defensible form of "we've solved material problems" is that the statement applies to large majorities of voters rather than all citizens, in which case it conceivably covers the entire post-WW2 period of US history.
Yes, specifically the part of Leftist culture with bad epistemology. There's massive space between "partisan hackwork" and "ideological neutral," and I am confident that Ken and MY's definition of policy is more towards the neutral/objective end than the "average" academic or journalist's is (partly that's to flatter my own preferences, but mostly it's just to acknowledge the selection effects of people interested in this kind of content).
I think you know better than anyone how "Progressive's" poor epistemology on education has led to policies that are not only misguided but sometimes actively harmful.
Seems like the reverse is true. The most important change in 1st world politics post 2008 has been an elevation of a policy debate (over immigration) that had previously been suppressed by both parties
Except that the immigration "policy" debate is framed almost exclusively in culture war terms. Outside of Matt, only a handful of other commentators talk about immigration in actual policy terms.
That's an interesting idea, maybe even has some truth to it in that anti-immigration sentiment has been ignored at times. On other hand, Gallup data shows that percent of public wanting immigration to be lowered peaked in mid-1990s. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx
Yeah my (and Matt's) preferred immigration policy used to be legalize-heroin unpopular and was (partially) implemented through completely ignoring the voters. That was super awesome (and massively benefitted America) but unfortunately broke down across the developed world
The charge of epistemic inadequacy seems correct, but too vague. So they are getting things wrong. But why are they getting things wrong? Which mechanisms are failing? Is it flawed fact-finding, inept statistical analysis, confirmation bias, what?
I feel like you’re pulling your punches here, in a way that you did not do when you attacked Kendi and the DEI industry.
So, identify the particular epistemic methods that are to blame: Kantian rationalism? Affirming the consequent? Frequentist probability theory? Name names!
“Progressive epistemology “ is right there in your subhed, but you never say what it is or what is distinctive about it.
I’m not sure if I’m reading into Matt’s words or not, but I think it’s left vague because the errors are just… really dumb. Like what principled philosophical headline does the error “believe that you can get to a Nordic welfare state without raising middle class taxes” fall under? Certainly not Kantian rationalism. More like “refusal to consider that 2+2≠5”.
I agree with this. I guess to diagnose the problem in general terms it’s that there is a rising premium of coalitional solidarity and avoiding infighting among Democratic Party elites that leads to all kinds of ideas just being under-scrutinized
There is a lack of rigorous analysis on the Left currently. They fail to look at the mechanisms of policy and government with the eye of a watchmaker, to identify cause and effect and determine the best (or perhaps merely least bad) option and proceed rationally.
In short, they have abandoned technocratic thinking - I suspect because they disliked the incrementalism and overall stability of technocratic thinking.
Radicalism and idealism are currently in the driver's seat for the Left. "What do we want in our dreams?" holds more rhetorical power than "what is possible at this time?"
For me this is the fundamental frustration with them. I'm the same age as Matt, and in our formative years the right were ideological (and specifically religious) purists who ignored data and rational thinking. But now the left has joined them, leaving the rest of us scrambling for an island in a rising tide of stupid.
I’m older, and the Carter years were filled with wildly irrational and ungrounded political ideas from Democrats so that the racists who were the core of the blue-dog Democrats could sit in coalition with the AFL-CIO folks who fundamentally wanted to earn economic rents for just existing. Carter talked about malaise; Reagan appointed Paul Volker, we got our medicine, had a rough three years and ended up much better off for it.
Democrats have subsequently always looked like a coalition of thieves, racists and racketeers, with short term decision making driving bad ideas - and I feel like I’ve come to the center because Republicans have started to join them.
But I think that’s a function of starting point bias. If I’d started thinking when Nixon was President, I might have a different view.
Carter appointed Volker. The three rough years started on his watch and helped tank his reelection. They ended on Reagan's watch and he got credit for morning in America. Carter also did most of the deregulation.
LOL he literally just wrote: "there is a rising premium of coalitional solidarity and avoiding infighting among Democratic Party elites that leads to all kinds of ideas just being under-scrutinized" which is something totally different (and goes a long way to explain why so many smart people jumped on the "defund the police bandwagon", they wanted to be Good Allies at what seems like a moment of crisis and so went along and didn't ask any questions).
I admit that I chuckled at this, but let me try a defense:
If someone does an analysis that reaches different conclusions from my own, I try to consider their work and determine if my analysis needs to be revised.
But we are having that discussion in terms of rational analysis. I guess I am a bit stubborn that this is the only correct way to engage with policy.
It's really not. You can tell if someone has thought things through because you can follow their argument and see if there a big logical leaps or internal contradictions. If you're having an actual discussion you can then ask them about these things and see if they respond.
E.g. if someone says "We can get rid of crime by getting rid of police" it's quite simple to identify the flaws. The same for "We can deport all illegal immigrants and that will not lead to inflation".
Well, I think having a coherent model of why policy/position X will have beneficial effect Y should be considered the bare minimum for any position taking. If someone disagrees with that, then yes, I think they're dumb. I suspect both of you would agree this is currently a much bigger problem on the Right than the Left anyway.
But I suspect "rigorous" is the load-bearing word between Miles' conceptions and your critique. Nobody can accuse the Left of paying too little attention to Academia, but if you think the average epistemic standards of entire fields are so poor that most studies/statistics/theories they generate are worthless...then it becomes incredibly difficult to even have productive disagreement. The idea of tradeoffs in particular is hugely neglected on both sides, and I do basically agree that people who don't acknowledge that are "dumb."
Specific policy decisions would help. Yglesias pushed back against Biden's Natural Gas policy, but does he think ARPA was a good spending bill? Is Biden's DHS, or Dept. of Education, or HHS, or EPA, or so on making good policies on net? Perhaps on net; but which parts are below GOP replacement? What about the IRA's spending on upper-middle class EV car consumption as Dem politicians conspire in broad daylight to make used cars unaffordable in a few years? What about the party's 2020 platform; is this going to change a lot in August? Probably not. But if you could strike three sentences, which would they be?
Wanting to avoid infighting is a great goal. I would like Republicans to nominate better candidates, such as for the presidency, which I believe they'll narrowly lose the 2024 race for. But I need a specific theory of the case if I wanted a better option in 2024. Trump appears to have solved a couple coalition problems Republicans worried about, and so they decided to not rock the boat and go with their own Hillary Clinton the party can agree on. He aggressively sets the party's media agenda at a time when the party feels deeply alienated from non-right media sources.
Similarly, I think if you want to critically hit the Left or the non-profits, "the groups", etc, you have to name the reasons it remains more influential in the Democratic party and which coalition problems it is solving for people. Saying, "they have abandoned technocratic thinking" makes little sense when I meet left-wingers with enormous ideas about what government should do. Technocracy is not the same as stability; it means rule of technical experts. If said technical experts believe large changes are in order, they will pursue them.
Perhaps the Left is trying to appeal to the majority of voters that respond to populism and no-tradeoffs rhetoric. It's worked quite well for the Right. One could argue that it may even be immoral to be more honest and technocratic and give up these votes to the populist Right, considering what's at stake.
There’s a difference between how you talk to the public and how you reason about what means will help with reaching your ends. You don’t want to talk about tradeoffs too publicly all the time, but you do need to think about them.
The main narrative we get from the left is that they're simply frustrated with the lack of progress. OK, that checks, because yeah, Congress is basically paralyzed by the filibuster and it took Joe Biden's deep Senate knowledge to temporarily laxate the first spate of major bipartisan turds out of the goose in my entire adult life.
However, I think some of the left's dysfunction is indeed a reaction to Fox News. It's the sense that, "THEY get away with lying to the voters' faces, why the heck can't WE?".
But why is this happening? One theory is large parts of the Democratic Party still want to see and think of it as the scrappy populist party of the masses rather than an establishment party of the comfortable and the elite, when in fact there's another party that is becoming the populist party of the masses. And that's creating tension and an impulse to paper over these tensions by more forced solidarity and avoidance of examining whose views and interests the Democratic Party really represents anymore.
I am indeed shocked by how how many on the far Left hold a Marxist class-based view that predicts the workers will align with their socialist agenda, despite the overwhelming evidence that those workers prefer something that at least winks toward white nationalist fascism.
This leads to some very bad thinking about toppling the elites. The elites hold this ragtag band of misfits together! They should study how the Iranian liberals supported the Ayatollahs to overthrow the Shah, and were then surprised they did not get a liberal paradise. Common problem.
"I am indeed shocked by how how many on the far Left hold a Marxist class-based view that predicts the workers will align with their socialist agenda,"
But, the world would be better if workers believed in Social Democracy instead of Fascism and politicians of the left believed in Social Democracy and New New Dealism and succeeded at it better than a combo of neoliberal economics and identitarian politcs.
This is a case of the electeds and New Deal or labor liberal nostalgics, with whom Matt Yglesias shares some features in common, unfortunately being a better set of human being than the freaking electorate, especially the online parts that keep bucking from their goddamn proper lanes.
For all peoples complaints about problems with leadership over the last several decades I think we've seen about as great a crisis in political followership and grassroots political stupidship and triviaship.
I think it's fundamentally different. There was a period where there genuinely were $20 bills lying around on the ground to be picked up and that makes fiscal policy easy: you can raise spending without raising taxes and without having to worry about competing with other spending priorities because the underlying economic problem is just a shortage of demand.
And then came inflation.
I think a lot of the left analysts are people who grew up in a world where "pay-fors" were completely unnecessary and the correct political argument was "how do we spend the billions we should be spending to restimulate the post-GFC economy?", because the money could be borrowed without paying an economic price.
And they just are having trouble adapting to the world where there are real economic constraints. MMT is a classic example: it's not nonsense, but if you follow its formal prescriptions they are to increase taxes to restrain inflation - not quite the same thing as a "pay-for", but, in political (as opposed to technical) terms, it amounts to the same thing. But for 15 years, MMT's prescription was "spend, spend, spend" without worrying about where the money is coming from.
If you're 25-35, then you don't really have the memory of the pre-2008 world where fiscal constraints really mattered, and it's not surprising that a lot of people of that age (which is the age-group of a lot of the analysts working for The Groups) are struggling to adapt and are essentially stamping their feet and demanding that the world stops changing under them.
The advantage of this way of thinking is that instead of saying "people who agree with me are smart, people who disagree with me are stupid", it's saying that analysts are fighting the last war. The centrists who were concerned about fiscal constraints and deficits in 2008-2010 were just as wrong and had missed fundamental changes to the fiscal/monetary policy regime in exactly the same way as the current progressive analysts.
It's worth saying that for many of the causes that these analysts work for, there are solutions that are fiscally tight and ones that are fiscally loose - you can work on carbon by subsidising investments or by a carbon tax. Both work, the choice of the appropriate one is a question of the fiscal/monetary environment, not a question of how effective they are at achieving environmental goals (because the answer there is that either will work).
Plus that word "solidarity" has a long Left pedigree.
Think of how unions view scabs. Indeed just think of the word "scab", or the famous Jack London caricature of one, and think about who a scab is and whether he was actually responsible for the situation. But scabs were often held in even lower esteem than capitalists, because scabs broke "solidarity". The proletariat must always have solidarity.
I think as Lefty thought has permeated Democrats and The Groups, this concept of "solidarity", which ALWAYS had some problems, has gotten worse. It has become "nobody oppose or criticize or even identify the trade-offs of anything anyone in the coalition is doing". Which just destroys any commitment to the truth.
Matt (I think) is making a version of Ezra's now famous "Everything Bagel" opinion piece; there's an attempt to see all problems as interrelated which means bills or policy ends up trying to solve 10 different problems at once and ends up solving..none. So something like congestion pricing can't just be about reducing traffic and increasing public transit use. It has to also find away of being "equitable" and designed in a way that benefits various POC. Which also means, you create a lot more veto points that lead to policies being delayed or never enacted. So in the congestion pricing example, various politicians can oppose congestion pricing by saying it hasn't properly been studied for its racial impact when the real banal reason is the particular politician is getting pressure from people who like driving to work (or himself likes driving to work). Think the most famous example of this is abuse of CEQA in California. It's basically a cudgel for mostly wealthier property owners to block development and not some deep seated belief about the environment.
Think in non-profit world, it leads to stuff like the Sunrise Movement putting out statements on Israel/Palestine or abortion rights. Like lets say your statements are right on the merits. You're an environmental non-profit. Why are you putting out these statements? All that time and energy is just a waste considering the mission statement of your organization.
Interestingly enough, I think Harvard's statement yesterday may be a "canary in the coal mine" here for basically the reasons laid out; there's just no way to please everyone and putting out statements that don't relate to core functions of the University end up becoming a fool's errand.. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/5/28/harvard-institutional-neutrality-report/
I think this is just the principal agent problem. The Sunrise staffer putting out the statement on Palestine isn’t advancing Sunrise’s objectives, but is advancing hers- because she can put that on her resume and use it when interviewing at her next job at a Palestinian advocacy non profit. It doesn’t even have to be that mercenary - the staffer probably genuinely does care about Palestine, and just wants to “do something” and sees that she can take advantage of Sunrise’s platform. Problem is it doesn’t help Sunrise and probably actively hurts it to the extent the pro-Palestinian message alienates potential climate allies who don’t agree with your Palestine view.
Yes, "solidarity" or "being a good ally" in today's parlance means not rocking the boat, asking questions, pushing back on ideas you think are questionable which isn't a great way to conduct politics in the real world.
I think it's bad those tax cuts passed. I'm not sure that the hyper-partisanship and party purity that would prevent it today is a good tradeoff. People wanted what Reagan was selling. I think it was mostly snake oil but that's a different discussion. Today's win it all or die election atmosphere has made actual governing nearly impossible. A time where you could cobble together bipartisan legislation seems better, because even when it does a dumb thing like those tax cuts there exists the possibility that you can correct course with a slightly different but still bipartisan collection of votes.
It’s hard to say exactly - are we better off with a Democratic faction that can win southern seats and often collaborates with conservatives, or without such a faction?
Take your central issue housing. There is a real tension between zero-growth advocates who carry a lot of weight in CA/NYC/other liberal hotbeds and people interested in housing affordability.
Democrats try to solve the issue by vacancy control/airbnb bans but at the end of the day you can't provide housing for everyone if there aren't enough housing units.
I think it boils down to laziness and a desire to feel validated. “We support good thing, therefore we are good. Those bad people oppose good thing and are bad.”
Adherents don’t need to consider the implications of their beliefs or how they are implemented because material change is not the end goal of those beliefs.
And it constantly shows how "bad" the other side is. If the people most against a policy happen to "all" be odious people, you're going to assume the policy must be Good.
We could, indeed, fund a nordic welfare state without major tax increases if we 1) were ruthlessly efficient and 2) were willing to tolerate 5-6% inflation. None of the nordics piss away money on health care like we do.
People forget how much stimulus it took to generate the 2022 inflation.
You keep saying that it would only require inflation of 5-6%, but remain wildly shortsighted on what costs that would impose on government. Once again, if inflation hit 6%, government bonds are probably over 8% and could potentially hit 10% again. That would melt the most government budgets in the US (federal, state and local).
Every 1% increase in interest rates cost 320 billion dollars A YEAR!
Inflation decreases the real value of the debt, but increases the real costs of maintaining the debt because debt holders are NOT just going to buy more debt and suffer real losses. If the US wasn't issuing new debt or was planning on paying most it off, then inflation would be great. But the US is adding large amounts of new debt (1+ trillion a year) and needs to rollover the bulk of existing debt every couple of years. Increasing interest rates from current rates to 5% would likely cost over 700 billion dollars more in interest A YEAR. Take interest rates up to 10% and we're spending more money on interest than the entire discretionary budget.
I think that, to some degree, Matthew's journey also reflects that he was and is highly focused on policy, while both left and right have increasingly downplayed policy in favor of culture war.
Also an important part of this is just sheer politics, as Matt mentioned in the article, the left has become increasingly divorced from political realities, and it’s hard to want to fight for the team that keeps shooting itself in the foot.
The whole "vote uncommitted" movement in the Democratic Primary is the perfect example of this - the Left would rather punish Joe Biden, who is inarguably better for Palestinians than help him defeat his opponent would doesn't care if Palestinians live or die. I can't comprehend this type of thinking.
I’m voting uncommitted in the NJ primary and for Biden in the general.
I don’t think it’s inarguable that voting uncommitted helps Palestinians, but, in general, indicating priorities and preferences to politicians who depend on your support is more likely to increase than to decrease the likelihood of those priorities/preferences being realized, don’t you think?
In theory, I agree but unfortunately we have two choices in this election under our system. Voting “uncommitted” just hurts the guy is inarguably more sympathetic to Palestinians (Biden).
I too disagree with Biden’s policy towards Israel, for entirely different and likely opposite reasons than you do and I won’t be voting “uncommitted” in the Florida Democratic Party because I don’t want to help generate bad news for Biden.
Fair enough.
But i have to ask. Are there actually any voters who will choose not to vote for Biden in November because some people voted uncommitted in the primary? What kind of voters are they? Pro-Palestinians who are unsure about Biden and see the level of uncommitted support as confirmation that Biden is undeserving of their general election vote?
In a literal sense you’re right, nobody is going to vote for Trump bc some people in New Jersey voted uncommitted in the primary. But, by doing so you’re making an issue that is bad for Biden more salient by drawing more attention so it and are contributing to an overall negative media environment with respect to Biden. I’m fairly certain a constant negative stream of news about Biden doesn’t help push swing voters his way and can only hurt.
Personally, I’d rather push positive vibes towards Biden since I want him to win even though I disagree with him on this issue.
Most of the “pro-Palestine” left couldn’t care less about the Palestinians, and are instead interested only in feeling morally righteous. Realism about politics makes it harder to feel morally righteous.
There is no chance that October 7th would have happened under Trump. Hamas would simply understand that the entire tactic of gaining sympathy through the use of human shields is irrelevant with him. So perhaps Biden is indeed worse for the Palestinians.
The timing of October 7th had more to do with Israeli relations with its immediate Arab neighbors (improving to the detriment of Palestinians) than who happened to be the American president at that particular time.
This is a deeply ridiculous claim.
If you want to engage in that kind of wish-casting, then you have to reckon with the fact that Hamas pretty clearly wanted to disrupt the process of Israeli-Saudi reconciliation that the Trump team put so much effort into supporting. So I guess it's Trump's fault?
Of course, Hamas is funded by a deal worked out by the Netanyahu government to channel money through the Arab states, since the Israelis didn't want to be seen managing Hamas funding with direct transfers of tax revenue, as they do with the Palestinian Authority. So I guess October 7 wouldn't have happened if not for Netanyahu.
Or something.
Or maybe it is simply the case that the world is complicated, and people do things for lots of reasons with the timing set by lots of factors.
They also want to shoot anyone in the foot who they see as a traitor to the cause too.
Synthesis: they're trying to a shoot traitors, but hitting their own feet instead.
Yes, that's why Hilary Clinton cruised to an easy victory in 2016 - the center-right politics she exemplified were so effective
If you think Hillary Clinton exemplified "center-right" politics, you perspective of left and right is wildly out of sync with the American public.
First time meeting Freddie?
I'm late, but the comment you're responding to is a perfect example of 'degraded epistemics' mentioned in the article.
I do not know of a clear-eyed political analysis that gets you 'Hillary Clinton is center-right.'
And European.
Or any existing political system.
I mean, yes?
Always worth noting she did actually receive the most votes. But the polling afterwards showing where she lost Obama voters to Trump was him being nominally less right than the Republican orthodoxy and her having moved culturally left compared to Obama, her husband, and even her own previous positions.
How can anyone take you seriously when you debase yourself with such Overton Window silliness.
Hilary was unlikeable and didn’t believe in Democracy or free speech. She was profoundly un-American. I said so at the time, and the voters mostly agreed with me. She lost because she would have been a worse President, and after she lost suggested that her political opposition should be put in re-education camps.
I think Trump’s policies were mostly okay, his rambling speeches were cringeworthy and the reaction of the hideous Left has been to style, not substance.
It was a "cuckoo's nest" election between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy -- with Nurse Ratched's fan club characterizing McMurphy as the "authoritarian"!
Trump is to be despised for his lying and his gratuitous cruelty, but (in his willingness to flout decorum) one can still deeply understand the nature of his appeal.
As for Ms. Clinton, the final word goes to Barack Obama, with his wry observation (damning with faint praise): "You're likeable enough, Hillary."
When they first came on to the scene, they looked very much like they were setting up a foot-gun factory.
Which, while not a good thing in and of itself, is indicative of good things.
If your polity is arguing about a handful of transwomen playing sports, then clearly solved the major material concerns.
I suspect these nonmaterial issues are sometimes deployed as distractions from material ones.
That's a silly conspiracy
Not a conspiracy. It's something Republican strategists perceive and exploit: they can get more votes through cultural issue than by emphasizing their longtime (less popular than in prior decades) economic policies. https://americancompass.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/GOP-Voter-Survey_Sept-2023_Final.pdf
The linked document indicates that GOP voters actually care about those issues more than material concerns, so it's hard to see how they're "distractions", which implies that the elites are trying to fool voters.
I think it's a feedback loop. The elites are responding to voters and also shaping voters' priorities. I don't think that rules out "trying to fool voters" as part of what's going on. If you're at a right-wing think tank or magazine, and you have any thoughts that say tax cuts won't benefit numerous Republican voters, but will benefit your wealthy donors, you might be very happy to talk about transgender athletes.
Republicans don't have a monopoly on using "culture war" issues as a distraction.
In the age of DEI, try asking for a raise (or a job), only to be told, "Check your privilege." We pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege" while the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
And (Take my word as a gay male!) the Democrats are happy to inflame these issues (i.e., by foregrounding "trans") to enhance the protection racket they're running.
We've solved the major material concerns for the wealthy people who dominate our discourse. Internet echo chambers make it possible to be a progressive & be totally oblivious to the suffering of the poor.
I actually do not think we've solved all major material concerns.
For example, if your hand gets mashed in an accident, or your eye gets poked out, you still can't get a good replacement, whether you're Bill Gates or homeless, any more than a king in centuries past could get penicillin. Even the richest of us are practically primitive peasants!
During 2009-2010 the polity was arguing over whether Obama was born in Kenya, and his comments that that cop in Cambridge acted stupidly, and we clearly hadn’t solved material problems then.
I think the most defensible form of "we've solved material problems" is that the statement applies to large majorities of voters rather than all citizens, in which case it conceivably covers the entire post-WW2 period of US history.
This whole post is culture war AGAINST THE LEFT!
Do you honestly think your definition of "policy" is ideologically neutral?
It’s pretty wild how much you hate Matt tbh. Maybe you should write a response in post form because your comments are not leaving a good impression.
The paywall is supposed to keep the haters away, but I guess it doesn't work on professionals.
Yes, specifically the part of Leftist culture with bad epistemology. There's massive space between "partisan hackwork" and "ideological neutral," and I am confident that Ken and MY's definition of policy is more towards the neutral/objective end than the "average" academic or journalist's is (partly that's to flatter my own preferences, but mostly it's just to acknowledge the selection effects of people interested in this kind of content).
I think you know better than anyone how "Progressive's" poor epistemology on education has led to policies that are not only misguided but sometimes actively harmful.
"This whole post is culture war against the left!" [emphasis removed]
So? Just because culture war is, in general, a waste of time, does not mean that a particular culture-war conclusion is incorrect.
Policy is, in fact, when the government does stuff!
Seems like the reverse is true. The most important change in 1st world politics post 2008 has been an elevation of a policy debate (over immigration) that had previously been suppressed by both parties
Except that the immigration "policy" debate is framed almost exclusively in culture war terms. Outside of Matt, only a handful of other commentators talk about immigration in actual policy terms.
That's an interesting idea, maybe even has some truth to it in that anti-immigration sentiment has been ignored at times. On other hand, Gallup data shows that percent of public wanting immigration to be lowered peaked in mid-1990s. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx
Yeah my (and Matt's) preferred immigration policy used to be legalize-heroin unpopular and was (partially) implemented through completely ignoring the voters. That was super awesome (and massively benefitted America) but unfortunately broke down across the developed world
The charge of epistemic inadequacy seems correct, but too vague. So they are getting things wrong. But why are they getting things wrong? Which mechanisms are failing? Is it flawed fact-finding, inept statistical analysis, confirmation bias, what?
I feel like you’re pulling your punches here, in a way that you did not do when you attacked Kendi and the DEI industry.
So, identify the particular epistemic methods that are to blame: Kantian rationalism? Affirming the consequent? Frequentist probability theory? Name names!
“Progressive epistemology “ is right there in your subhed, but you never say what it is or what is distinctive about it.
I’m not sure if I’m reading into Matt’s words or not, but I think it’s left vague because the errors are just… really dumb. Like what principled philosophical headline does the error “believe that you can get to a Nordic welfare state without raising middle class taxes” fall under? Certainly not Kantian rationalism. More like “refusal to consider that 2+2≠5”.
I agree with this. I guess to diagnose the problem in general terms it’s that there is a rising premium of coalitional solidarity and avoiding infighting among Democratic Party elites that leads to all kinds of ideas just being under-scrutinized
How about this?
There is a lack of rigorous analysis on the Left currently. They fail to look at the mechanisms of policy and government with the eye of a watchmaker, to identify cause and effect and determine the best (or perhaps merely least bad) option and proceed rationally.
In short, they have abandoned technocratic thinking - I suspect because they disliked the incrementalism and overall stability of technocratic thinking.
Radicalism and idealism are currently in the driver's seat for the Left. "What do we want in our dreams?" holds more rhetorical power than "what is possible at this time?"
For me this is the fundamental frustration with them. I'm the same age as Matt, and in our formative years the right were ideological (and specifically religious) purists who ignored data and rational thinking. But now the left has joined them, leaving the rest of us scrambling for an island in a rising tide of stupid.
I think age has a lot to do with it.
I’m older, and the Carter years were filled with wildly irrational and ungrounded political ideas from Democrats so that the racists who were the core of the blue-dog Democrats could sit in coalition with the AFL-CIO folks who fundamentally wanted to earn economic rents for just existing. Carter talked about malaise; Reagan appointed Paul Volker, we got our medicine, had a rough three years and ended up much better off for it.
Democrats have subsequently always looked like a coalition of thieves, racists and racketeers, with short term decision making driving bad ideas - and I feel like I’ve come to the center because Republicans have started to join them.
But I think that’s a function of starting point bias. If I’d started thinking when Nixon was President, I might have a different view.
Carter appointed Volker. The three rough years started on his watch and helped tank his reelection. They ended on Reagan's watch and he got credit for morning in America. Carter also did most of the deregulation.
Your entire analysis here is "people like me are smart, people who disagree with me are dumb"
LOL he literally just wrote: "there is a rising premium of coalitional solidarity and avoiding infighting among Democratic Party elites that leads to all kinds of ideas just being under-scrutinized" which is something totally different (and goes a long way to explain why so many smart people jumped on the "defund the police bandwagon", they wanted to be Good Allies at what seems like a moment of crisis and so went along and didn't ask any questions).
I admit that I chuckled at this, but let me try a defense:
If someone does an analysis that reaches different conclusions from my own, I try to consider their work and determine if my analysis needs to be revised.
But we are having that discussion in terms of rational analysis. I guess I am a bit stubborn that this is the only correct way to engage with policy.
It's really not. You can tell if someone has thought things through because you can follow their argument and see if there a big logical leaps or internal contradictions. If you're having an actual discussion you can then ask them about these things and see if they respond.
E.g. if someone says "We can get rid of crime by getting rid of police" it's quite simple to identify the flaws. The same for "We can deport all illegal immigrants and that will not lead to inflation".
Well, I think having a coherent model of why policy/position X will have beneficial effect Y should be considered the bare minimum for any position taking. If someone disagrees with that, then yes, I think they're dumb. I suspect both of you would agree this is currently a much bigger problem on the Right than the Left anyway.
But I suspect "rigorous" is the load-bearing word between Miles' conceptions and your critique. Nobody can accuse the Left of paying too little attention to Academia, but if you think the average epistemic standards of entire fields are so poor that most studies/statistics/theories they generate are worthless...then it becomes incredibly difficult to even have productive disagreement. The idea of tradeoffs in particular is hugely neglected on both sides, and I do basically agree that people who don't acknowledge that are "dumb."
Specific policy decisions would help. Yglesias pushed back against Biden's Natural Gas policy, but does he think ARPA was a good spending bill? Is Biden's DHS, or Dept. of Education, or HHS, or EPA, or so on making good policies on net? Perhaps on net; but which parts are below GOP replacement? What about the IRA's spending on upper-middle class EV car consumption as Dem politicians conspire in broad daylight to make used cars unaffordable in a few years? What about the party's 2020 platform; is this going to change a lot in August? Probably not. But if you could strike three sentences, which would they be?
Wanting to avoid infighting is a great goal. I would like Republicans to nominate better candidates, such as for the presidency, which I believe they'll narrowly lose the 2024 race for. But I need a specific theory of the case if I wanted a better option in 2024. Trump appears to have solved a couple coalition problems Republicans worried about, and so they decided to not rock the boat and go with their own Hillary Clinton the party can agree on. He aggressively sets the party's media agenda at a time when the party feels deeply alienated from non-right media sources.
Similarly, I think if you want to critically hit the Left or the non-profits, "the groups", etc, you have to name the reasons it remains more influential in the Democratic party and which coalition problems it is solving for people. Saying, "they have abandoned technocratic thinking" makes little sense when I meet left-wingers with enormous ideas about what government should do. Technocracy is not the same as stability; it means rule of technical experts. If said technical experts believe large changes are in order, they will pursue them.
Perhaps the Left is trying to appeal to the majority of voters that respond to populism and no-tradeoffs rhetoric. It's worked quite well for the Right. One could argue that it may even be immoral to be more honest and technocratic and give up these votes to the populist Right, considering what's at stake.
There’s a difference between how you talk to the public and how you reason about what means will help with reaching your ends. You don’t want to talk about tradeoffs too publicly all the time, but you do need to think about them.
I agree with this. I do hope the leaders on the Left are having these rational discussions internally.
Reminds me of the Hillary Clinton quote that you need a public and a private position (not that she is commonly seen as part of the Left).
I think there's something to this.
The main narrative we get from the left is that they're simply frustrated with the lack of progress. OK, that checks, because yeah, Congress is basically paralyzed by the filibuster and it took Joe Biden's deep Senate knowledge to temporarily laxate the first spate of major bipartisan turds out of the goose in my entire adult life.
However, I think some of the left's dysfunction is indeed a reaction to Fox News. It's the sense that, "THEY get away with lying to the voters' faces, why the heck can't WE?".
^ Comment of the day IMHO.
But why is this happening? One theory is large parts of the Democratic Party still want to see and think of it as the scrappy populist party of the masses rather than an establishment party of the comfortable and the elite, when in fact there's another party that is becoming the populist party of the masses. And that's creating tension and an impulse to paper over these tensions by more forced solidarity and avoidance of examining whose views and interests the Democratic Party really represents anymore.
I am indeed shocked by how how many on the far Left hold a Marxist class-based view that predicts the workers will align with their socialist agenda, despite the overwhelming evidence that those workers prefer something that at least winks toward white nationalist fascism.
This leads to some very bad thinking about toppling the elites. The elites hold this ragtag band of misfits together! They should study how the Iranian liberals supported the Ayatollahs to overthrow the Shah, and were then surprised they did not get a liberal paradise. Common problem.
"I am indeed shocked by how how many on the far Left hold a Marxist class-based view that predicts the workers will align with their socialist agenda,"
But, the world would be better if workers believed in Social Democracy instead of Fascism and politicians of the left believed in Social Democracy and New New Dealism and succeeded at it better than a combo of neoliberal economics and identitarian politcs.
This is a case of the electeds and New Deal or labor liberal nostalgics, with whom Matt Yglesias shares some features in common, unfortunately being a better set of human being than the freaking electorate, especially the online parts that keep bucking from their goddamn proper lanes.
For all peoples complaints about problems with leadership over the last several decades I think we've seen about as great a crisis in political followership and grassroots political stupidship and triviaship.
“…we've seen about as great a crisis in political followership…”
Hear, hear! We the People should listen to our betters!
Ryan Grim’s piece on turmoil in progressive organizations was validation for me that I can be a Democrat and not buy into the DEI industry
I think it's fundamentally different. There was a period where there genuinely were $20 bills lying around on the ground to be picked up and that makes fiscal policy easy: you can raise spending without raising taxes and without having to worry about competing with other spending priorities because the underlying economic problem is just a shortage of demand.
And then came inflation.
I think a lot of the left analysts are people who grew up in a world where "pay-fors" were completely unnecessary and the correct political argument was "how do we spend the billions we should be spending to restimulate the post-GFC economy?", because the money could be borrowed without paying an economic price.
And they just are having trouble adapting to the world where there are real economic constraints. MMT is a classic example: it's not nonsense, but if you follow its formal prescriptions they are to increase taxes to restrain inflation - not quite the same thing as a "pay-for", but, in political (as opposed to technical) terms, it amounts to the same thing. But for 15 years, MMT's prescription was "spend, spend, spend" without worrying about where the money is coming from.
If you're 25-35, then you don't really have the memory of the pre-2008 world where fiscal constraints really mattered, and it's not surprising that a lot of people of that age (which is the age-group of a lot of the analysts working for The Groups) are struggling to adapt and are essentially stamping their feet and demanding that the world stops changing under them.
The advantage of this way of thinking is that instead of saying "people who agree with me are smart, people who disagree with me are stupid", it's saying that analysts are fighting the last war. The centrists who were concerned about fiscal constraints and deficits in 2008-2010 were just as wrong and had missed fundamental changes to the fiscal/monetary policy regime in exactly the same way as the current progressive analysts.
It's worth saying that for many of the causes that these analysts work for, there are solutions that are fiscally tight and ones that are fiscally loose - you can work on carbon by subsidising investments or by a carbon tax. Both work, the choice of the appropriate one is a question of the fiscal/monetary environment, not a question of how effective they are at achieving environmental goals (because the answer there is that either will work).
Thanks, MY!
So, wishful thinking exacerbated by conflict-aversion, some of which in turn is exacerbated by the need to hold together a big coalition.
So, maybe not primarily a failure of epistemology per se?
Plus that word "solidarity" has a long Left pedigree.
Think of how unions view scabs. Indeed just think of the word "scab", or the famous Jack London caricature of one, and think about who a scab is and whether he was actually responsible for the situation. But scabs were often held in even lower esteem than capitalists, because scabs broke "solidarity". The proletariat must always have solidarity.
I think as Lefty thought has permeated Democrats and The Groups, this concept of "solidarity", which ALWAYS had some problems, has gotten worse. It has become "nobody oppose or criticize or even identify the trade-offs of anything anyone in the coalition is doing". Which just destroys any commitment to the truth.
Matt (I think) is making a version of Ezra's now famous "Everything Bagel" opinion piece; there's an attempt to see all problems as interrelated which means bills or policy ends up trying to solve 10 different problems at once and ends up solving..none. So something like congestion pricing can't just be about reducing traffic and increasing public transit use. It has to also find away of being "equitable" and designed in a way that benefits various POC. Which also means, you create a lot more veto points that lead to policies being delayed or never enacted. So in the congestion pricing example, various politicians can oppose congestion pricing by saying it hasn't properly been studied for its racial impact when the real banal reason is the particular politician is getting pressure from people who like driving to work (or himself likes driving to work). Think the most famous example of this is abuse of CEQA in California. It's basically a cudgel for mostly wealthier property owners to block development and not some deep seated belief about the environment.
Think in non-profit world, it leads to stuff like the Sunrise Movement putting out statements on Israel/Palestine or abortion rights. Like lets say your statements are right on the merits. You're an environmental non-profit. Why are you putting out these statements? All that time and energy is just a waste considering the mission statement of your organization.
Interestingly enough, I think Harvard's statement yesterday may be a "canary in the coal mine" here for basically the reasons laid out; there's just no way to please everyone and putting out statements that don't relate to core functions of the University end up becoming a fool's errand.. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/5/28/harvard-institutional-neutrality-report/
I think this is just the principal agent problem. The Sunrise staffer putting out the statement on Palestine isn’t advancing Sunrise’s objectives, but is advancing hers- because she can put that on her resume and use it when interviewing at her next job at a Palestinian advocacy non profit. It doesn’t even have to be that mercenary - the staffer probably genuinely does care about Palestine, and just wants to “do something” and sees that she can take advantage of Sunrise’s platform. Problem is it doesn’t help Sunrise and probably actively hurts it to the extent the pro-Palestinian message alienates potential climate allies who don’t agree with your Palestine view.
I was thinking of the same EK article. Democrats need to focus on fewer concrete policies that will materially help most people and be sustainable.
Yes, "solidarity" or "being a good ally" in today's parlance means not rocking the boat, asking questions, pushing back on ideas you think are questionable which isn't a great way to conduct politics in the real world.
Why not both?
Otoh, the reagan tax cuts passed with a lot of Democratic votes. Isn’t it good that couldn’t happen any more?
Those Dems stayed in control of the House for 4 decades and helped pass a ton of liberal programs.
Indexing tax brackets to inflation is good.
I think it's bad those tax cuts passed. I'm not sure that the hyper-partisanship and party purity that would prevent it today is a good tradeoff. People wanted what Reagan was selling. I think it was mostly snake oil but that's a different discussion. Today's win it all or die election atmosphere has made actual governing nearly impossible. A time where you could cobble together bipartisan legislation seems better, because even when it does a dumb thing like those tax cuts there exists the possibility that you can correct course with a slightly different but still bipartisan collection of votes.
It’s hard to say exactly - are we better off with a Democratic faction that can win southern seats and often collaborates with conservatives, or without such a faction?
I would say definitely better off *with*. Some stuff you want > less stuff you want but more ideological uniformity. Bigger tents are better!
Take your central issue housing. There is a real tension between zero-growth advocates who carry a lot of weight in CA/NYC/other liberal hotbeds and people interested in housing affordability.
Democrats try to solve the issue by vacancy control/airbnb bans but at the end of the day you can't provide housing for everyone if there aren't enough housing units.
I think it boils down to laziness and a desire to feel validated. “We support good thing, therefore we are good. Those bad people oppose good thing and are bad.”
Adherents don’t need to consider the implications of their beliefs or how they are implemented because material change is not the end goal of those beliefs.
Social media has probably drastically incentivized this dynamic.
And it constantly shows how "bad" the other side is. If the people most against a policy happen to "all" be odious people, you're going to assume the policy must be Good.
We could, indeed, fund a nordic welfare state without major tax increases if we 1) were ruthlessly efficient and 2) were willing to tolerate 5-6% inflation. None of the nordics piss away money on health care like we do.
People forget how much stimulus it took to generate the 2022 inflation.
“ 1) were ruthlessly efficient and 2) were willing to tolerate 5-6% inflation.”
You’re forgetting
3) surprise, and
4) fear.
Surprise, fear, ruthless efficiency, and a fanatical devotion to the Nordic model.
You keep saying that it would only require inflation of 5-6%, but remain wildly shortsighted on what costs that would impose on government. Once again, if inflation hit 6%, government bonds are probably over 8% and could potentially hit 10% again. That would melt the most government budgets in the US (federal, state and local).
every 1% of inflation knocks $320 billion off the real value of the debt.
Every 1% increase in interest rates cost 320 billion dollars A YEAR!
Inflation decreases the real value of the debt, but increases the real costs of maintaining the debt because debt holders are NOT just going to buy more debt and suffer real losses. If the US wasn't issuing new debt or was planning on paying most it off, then inflation would be great. But the US is adding large amounts of new debt (1+ trillion a year) and needs to rollover the bulk of existing debt every couple of years. Increasing interest rates from current rates to 5% would likely cost over 700 billion dollars more in interest A YEAR. Take interest rates up to 10% and we're spending more money on interest than the entire discretionary budget.
Which really makes it tragic that we didn't issue more long-term debt when we could have.