What I don't understand is why this would be a new problem. There seems to be a consensus that young staffers and people who work at NGOs are ideologically committed to the same set of progressive ideals and are significantly further to the left of the average Democrat. But why wouldn't that have been true twenty years ago?
I feel this is missing something. You're highlighting times that Biden did the 'moderate' thing but then didn't fully push that message -- your sources suggest that the 'moderate' message would actually do better, potentially even with Democrats!
Is this the real question though? I think it's more about whether Biden should even *do* the thing in the first place. If you're going to build the border wall, sure, take the credit for it, but isn't there an argument that he shouldn't do that in the first place?
"Some of it is intellectual error....My guess, though, is that the bigger issue is just that the groups have larger and more stable budgets than political campaigns"
Yep. Politics is mostly just a bunch of narrow special interests. It's a mistake to believe this stuff is persuasive. And it's a mistake to think it leads to especially good cost-benefit, due to errors in emphasis and gaping holes in the agenda
“And obviously pro-choice donors and staffers and volunteers are very unlikely to be personally opposed to abortion or they would find something [else] to do with their money and time.”
This is a blind spot that continues to surprise me when people write about moderates. As a leader in the church, I find faithful individuals and communities everywhere who absolutely show-up for things that they are not 100% on board with. They wish only medically necessary abortions were desired, and are genuinely dismayed and troubled by the actions of Trump – for whom they voted. They hunt, carry fire arms, and enjoy rifle ranges. They admit to being confused by things like polyamorists and gender-fucking. But they also care about the rights and safety of the whole. So they are pro-choice, pro-gun-safety, volunteer at clinics and polling places, and financially support their local queer center. But it is not easy, and not without serious soul searching. They say their prayers, organize rallies, serve on food lines, hold vigil with the dying, and vote for the good of society. They do this even when it breaks church rules, even when it distances them from close friends and family, and even when it makes them personally uncomfortable. Our stories remind us that yesterday’s heretics are today’s saints, and this “group” lives in the hope that risking something of their own preferences - on behalf of the whole community - will matter, on whatever eternal balance sheet they imagine is waiting for them when the time comes.
The fact that the knuckleheads fighting in the primary aren’t shouting their antiabortion slogans from the rooftops or bragging how they will make tax cuts for the wealthy are great examples of a weird discipline on that side of the aisle, they are able to do this bc the activist elements are like yeah just appoint the judges the federalist society tells u to appoint and just slip a tax cut or ten into some legislation. Don’t pander to us just bring us the bacon. Johnson is not a moderate and he’s an absolute turd but he says “next question” when they ask him about his terrible record. That’s how they do.
Yes, the moderate positions are more popular overall. But committed partisans hate them.
If we had a proportional system of representation there could be more 'sorting'... but nobody would ever have a real majority, and everything would be done by corrupt backstage bargaining between professional pols.
There's a whiff of "If the Tsar only knew!" to these arguments. In other words, I think a good bit of this messaging comes from the fact that Biden himself believes the messaging and surrounds himself with people who agree with it.
Biden has been unusually blunt around things like America's defense commitments to Taiwan and his disdain for the far-right. He's repeatedly called climate change one of the largest threats facing mankind. He seemingly hopes and believes that his administration's biggest legacy will be fighting climate change. The clean energy parts of the IRA are to paraphrase a certain someone, "A big fucking deal."
So while Matt might be right that the ultimate approach to our energy transition is and should be a bit nuanced, there isn't a great way of bringing that up in general messaging without undercutting one of Biden's main policy goals.
I don't have much to say about the actual polling here, but I am excited to see SB commissioning its own polls. There have been several occasions where I've thought, "I wish someone would poll people about, 'X'," where "X" is some oddball topic that normal polling outfits don't look at. Hopefully we can see further innovative polling from SB in the future.
>The White House claims to believe that one of their political problems is young people not being sufficiently aware of how much Biden has done to address the climate crisis. I don’t understand what information they have received makes them think that.
Call it the groups, or as Nate Silver calls it the "Indigo Blob." There is decentralized left-apparatus that spews a firehose stream of lies on a continuous basis about these issues.
MY writes (regarding taking more moderate positions): "So what gives? Why don’t Democrats do this?"
Perhaps because, as this post and its polling results illustrate, the benefits from so doing are marginal to non-existent, so why piss off your core supporters without a solid promise that you'll do much better overall as a result?
I was surprised. I actually thought the moderate message would do *much* better than the actual one. If this polling did anything (which is questionable), it should make us question our assumption about how valuable such "moderate" positioning would be.
Do democratic elected officials want to moderate? It seems to me like most of them have personal convictions well to the left of the median voter. Their staffers are further left than they are and the activists are further left still. If those are the people you deal with day to day in the basic process of doing your job are we really surprised that those are the people being listened to?
On the Willow project polling, MY writes, "And notably, it performed better with Democrats."
Sure, maybe. With an N of 322 and so about 100 Democrats in the polls, you had about ten more people being more positive for the second prompt than the first, for an 11 percentage point improvement.
Without confidence intervals, this isn't telling us very much. I'd like to see those numbers.
I *assume* that Democrats would like the second message much better but the evidence from this small poll is that the advantage is much less than I would have thought (just an 11 point pickup) and, given a no doubt big confidence interval, there may have amazingly been *no* advantage among Democrats with the second version.
The second poll (on the Wall) has a higher N, which is good. It also shows that Democrats are slightly more negative towards Biden with the "preferred" moderate Biden statement. So the point is . . . ?
MAGA views politics as entertainment and the far-left views politics as religion. This leads them both to believe that winning the discourse and media coverage is more important than winning elections and policies.
What I don't understand is why this would be a new problem. There seems to be a consensus that young staffers and people who work at NGOs are ideologically committed to the same set of progressive ideals and are significantly further to the left of the average Democrat. But why wouldn't that have been true twenty years ago?
I didn't register as a dem or a repub last two times I moved. It's time politicians started working for my vote.
I'll let you know when they do :-)
I feel this is missing something. You're highlighting times that Biden did the 'moderate' thing but then didn't fully push that message -- your sources suggest that the 'moderate' message would actually do better, potentially even with Democrats!
Is this the real question though? I think it's more about whether Biden should even *do* the thing in the first place. If you're going to build the border wall, sure, take the credit for it, but isn't there an argument that he shouldn't do that in the first place?
This was covered in the article. He didn't really have a choice since the ball was already rolling from the Trump Administration.
I think Matt's interpretation of the wall message polling is wrong.
> This time the improvement is biggest with Republicans, but note again that Democrats also like the more moderate message more.
Democrats liked both messages about the same (45% vs. 43%), but disliked the moderate message more (45% vs. 34%).
"Some of it is intellectual error....My guess, though, is that the bigger issue is just that the groups have larger and more stable budgets than political campaigns"
Yep. Politics is mostly just a bunch of narrow special interests. It's a mistake to believe this stuff is persuasive. And it's a mistake to think it leads to especially good cost-benefit, due to errors in emphasis and gaping holes in the agenda
“And obviously pro-choice donors and staffers and volunteers are very unlikely to be personally opposed to abortion or they would find something [else] to do with their money and time.”
This is a blind spot that continues to surprise me when people write about moderates. As a leader in the church, I find faithful individuals and communities everywhere who absolutely show-up for things that they are not 100% on board with. They wish only medically necessary abortions were desired, and are genuinely dismayed and troubled by the actions of Trump – for whom they voted. They hunt, carry fire arms, and enjoy rifle ranges. They admit to being confused by things like polyamorists and gender-fucking. But they also care about the rights and safety of the whole. So they are pro-choice, pro-gun-safety, volunteer at clinics and polling places, and financially support their local queer center. But it is not easy, and not without serious soul searching. They say their prayers, organize rallies, serve on food lines, hold vigil with the dying, and vote for the good of society. They do this even when it breaks church rules, even when it distances them from close friends and family, and even when it makes them personally uncomfortable. Our stories remind us that yesterday’s heretics are today’s saints, and this “group” lives in the hope that risking something of their own preferences - on behalf of the whole community - will matter, on whatever eternal balance sheet they imagine is waiting for them when the time comes.
The fact that the knuckleheads fighting in the primary aren’t shouting their antiabortion slogans from the rooftops or bragging how they will make tax cuts for the wealthy are great examples of a weird discipline on that side of the aisle, they are able to do this bc the activist elements are like yeah just appoint the judges the federalist society tells u to appoint and just slip a tax cut or ten into some legislation. Don’t pander to us just bring us the bacon. Johnson is not a moderate and he’s an absolute turd but he says “next question” when they ask him about his terrible record. That’s how they do.
True. And it's competent. Not sure why Dems are such klutzes when it comes to the all-important political skills.
Yes, the moderate positions are more popular overall. But committed partisans hate them.
If we had a proportional system of representation there could be more 'sorting'... but nobody would ever have a real majority, and everything would be done by corrupt backstage bargaining between professional pols.
My own position on abortion is that a) a fetus is, logically, a human being, and b) abortion on demand should be available.
Because basically, I don't give a damn about innocent human lives.
This position makes everybody love me... 8-).
There's a whiff of "If the Tsar only knew!" to these arguments. In other words, I think a good bit of this messaging comes from the fact that Biden himself believes the messaging and surrounds himself with people who agree with it.
Biden has been unusually blunt around things like America's defense commitments to Taiwan and his disdain for the far-right. He's repeatedly called climate change one of the largest threats facing mankind. He seemingly hopes and believes that his administration's biggest legacy will be fighting climate change. The clean energy parts of the IRA are to paraphrase a certain someone, "A big fucking deal."
So while Matt might be right that the ultimate approach to our energy transition is and should be a bit nuanced, there isn't a great way of bringing that up in general messaging without undercutting one of Biden's main policy goals.
I don't have much to say about the actual polling here, but I am excited to see SB commissioning its own polls. There have been several occasions where I've thought, "I wish someone would poll people about, 'X'," where "X" is some oddball topic that normal polling outfits don't look at. Hopefully we can see further innovative polling from SB in the future.
>The White House claims to believe that one of their political problems is young people not being sufficiently aware of how much Biden has done to address the climate crisis. I don’t understand what information they have received makes them think that.
Call it the groups, or as Nate Silver calls it the "Indigo Blob." There is decentralized left-apparatus that spews a firehose stream of lies on a continuous basis about these issues.
MY writes (regarding taking more moderate positions): "So what gives? Why don’t Democrats do this?"
Perhaps because, as this post and its polling results illustrate, the benefits from so doing are marginal to non-existent, so why piss off your core supporters without a solid promise that you'll do much better overall as a result?
I was surprised. I actually thought the moderate message would do *much* better than the actual one. If this polling did anything (which is questionable), it should make us question our assumption about how valuable such "moderate" positioning would be.
Do democratic elected officials want to moderate? It seems to me like most of them have personal convictions well to the left of the median voter. Their staffers are further left than they are and the activists are further left still. If those are the people you deal with day to day in the basic process of doing your job are we really surprised that those are the people being listened to?
On the Willow project polling, MY writes, "And notably, it performed better with Democrats."
Sure, maybe. With an N of 322 and so about 100 Democrats in the polls, you had about ten more people being more positive for the second prompt than the first, for an 11 percentage point improvement.
Without confidence intervals, this isn't telling us very much. I'd like to see those numbers.
I *assume* that Democrats would like the second message much better but the evidence from this small poll is that the advantage is much less than I would have thought (just an 11 point pickup) and, given a no doubt big confidence interval, there may have amazingly been *no* advantage among Democrats with the second version.
The second poll (on the Wall) has a higher N, which is good. It also shows that Democrats are slightly more negative towards Biden with the "preferred" moderate Biden statement. So the point is . . . ?
MAGA views politics as entertainment and the far-left views politics as religion. This leads them both to believe that winning the discourse and media coverage is more important than winning elections and policies.