I think a real dive into the weeds on the finances/messaging of “the groups” or one in particular would be interested. I am particularly curious how post Obergefell, the gay rights advocacy groups pivoted to trans rights, rather than declaring victory and going home.
Well they had a lot of money banked for what they expected to be a long, expensive fight for marriage equality and then they unexpectedly just won a few years earlier than hoped.
Sure, and if you work for one of them, you literally are out of a job without taking up something else. And you probably viewed the “fight” as a personally defining characteristic. Not much choice but to find the next available target.
The whole mission creep thing has really infiltrated so many non-profit spaces (including colleges.) It just seems to be a whole edifice of rent seeking.
What does a trans rights win on the federal level look like? It feels more like a social acceptance movement than anything that ends with new federal policy.
The push into kids transition and the institutional support from schools and governments. It went too far with too little science to support it. It attacked parental rights and compromised children’s physical and mental health. A backlash was inevitable.
And sports of course. This made it highly visible and was contrary to a majority of people’s base intuitions on the differences between boys and girls and women and men. Again, backlash was inevitable. The left tried to shout the backlash down by calling everyone bigots. It worked on the center left. But the heterodox people and the conservatives were mostly immune to those tactics.
We now have a lot less of that than we did in 2015. Should have accepted the win on getting the “bathroom bills” overturned and stuck to ensuring transpeople could get jobs. Healthcare should have come under the umbrella of medical privacy (as with abortion) rather than hormone treatments on demand.
A major difference between abortion and trans healthcare is that, while abortion is cheaper than 9 months of prenatal care, gender-affirming care has high complication rates, especially but not exclusively when it comes to surgeries. So it's going to affect an insurance pool in a way that abortion generally does not. That makes the invocation of medical privacy a heavier lift. (I'm saying all of this descriptively, not normatively.)
All these issues are tricky and filled with tons of nuance. Is there some widely held consensus on when a person has transitioned from one gender to another? Is it amount of time lived in a certain gender, appearance, hormones, etc? All the issues you listed should be decided more at the state and local levels until a consensus appears. National politicians aren't putting anything on the table to consider.
"Is there some widely held consensus on when a person has transitioned from one gender to another?"
There isn't. That's why basically all discussion in this area either acknowledges that and goes with full self-ID or obfuscates what the discussion is about.
At the time, proponents of marriage equality argued they weren't seeking social acceptance from the public of their lifestyle choices. Rather, they were seeking equal rights with the non-gay population in terms of their ability to marry whomever they want. This is very much in the American tradition.
With trans issues, its advocates are very much seeking broad social acceptance because there isn't a rational case trans rights are being denied.
Worth noting that part of the reasoning (though not the official, legal reasoning) for the marriage equality decision coming down when it did was that the justices saw things had gotten to the point where a majority of people were OK with it. Marriage equality never would have happened without social acceptance (of course it wasn’t universal, but hardly anything is). The problem with the trans rights movement is that they seemed to skip over seeking social acceptance and went straight to demanding recognition, and also rewriting the rules for everyone’s gender while they were at it.
Yes, you made the point I was trying to make more eloquently. Very much the approach the far Left takes these days on all sorts of issues. We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas so just do what we say because we are right.
There are multiple bills passed and being promoted that deny trans rights:
1. Bills that withdraw Federal funding from hospitals that (incidentally) provide trans healthcare to minors *even if the parents and minors consent to treatment.*
2. Bills that make it impossible for trans people to list their adopted gender on passports or identity documents.
3. Bills that require prisons to disallow providing hormones to people who are transitioned and transitioning (even when prisoners can experience serious health effects from discontinuing hormones.)
You can say "yeah, this stuff isn't discrimination because I think you have no right to any of that stuff..." Which is exactly the same argument people used to use for same-sex marriage.
The military stuff is the absolute worst of this... I don't do pronouns and have been known to hang out with GCs but that particular EO fills me with boiling rage.
I strongly suspect a pro-trans movement focused on opposing 1-3 would get a different result. (Even add "you can't fire someone just for being trans" to the list.)
I think you can set aside gender entirely. Why would you have any right to change your government documents to things you want it to say? That's not how anything works.
That wasn't the argument used at the time. Opponents said gay marraige will undermine the sanctity of traditonal marriage. The examples you cite don't strike me as universal.
Absolutely it was one of the arguments used at the time. Opponents had many arguments, a lot of them bad, many centering around how the right to marry the person you loved wasn’t actually a “right.” We’ve just chosen to memory hole that stuff because it embarrasses us.
These aren’t mutually exclusive. Activists will always want to advocate for something, even when it’s outside the scope of what people originally signed up for.
I reject that narrative framing on gay marriage then trans rights. The problem seems to be that actually trans people had all the rights of changing their gender markers on legal documents, getting surgery, having access to gendered facilities in all 50 states. Then the woke weenies broke it by putting Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of a magazine and making her woman of the year during their ultra virtue signaling phase. Then the next year you had the bathroom laws in North Carolina and Republican strategists learned this was a wedge issue and so then you had everyone have to spin up a fight for Trans rights. Throw some sports in there and you have the perfect tabloid ready moral panic that Americans have loved since the Salem witch trials.
But remember, NC backtracked on the bathroom law! In 2018, DeSantis in Florida said it wasn't worth discussing. We can debate why it reversed again a few years later. I personally think it's because activists kept pushing the envelope, and the sports issue is what finally caused it to break through with the average voter.
It doesn't matter. The point is trans people had everything and activist lefties screwed it up for them. Under the guide of visibility and whatever crap that they lost their brains on for the last 15 years.
Yes, I've noted here before that there's a very, VERY strong argument that rights for trans individuals actually reached a near maximum parity on *legal* status in 2020 with the SCOTUS ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) and that only a bit of mopping up relating to residual state law issues was needed, but TRAs have subsequently proceeded to run the entire thing into the ground.
Idk if Trans rights will ever reach the near unanimity of support interracial marriage now enjoys, but fundamentally you are correct. After Bostock, Legal equity was basically enshrined federally, but activists wanted *social* equity which may never come.
Acceptance in the "It's fine (maybe!) if my kid does it" sense took a while. Loving v. Virginia though was about the LEGALITY of interracial marriage and that was more popular than having it in one's own family or doing it personally. There was no backlash to this decision.
The issue mostly was that transgender activists thought the path to societal acceptance was a legal one because they simply couldn’t process that gay rights were socially accepted before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. It’s a big reason sports took such an outsized role-the fight to them was literally a fight about society viewing a transgender woman being just a “woman” in all respects, so any deviation from that ideal couldn’t be tolerated.
Knowing that that's what the right does come on. It's child's Play to develop a better strategy, but drumming up right-wing resistance helps you drum up left-wing funding as well. I get sick of this crap of look. We're blameless. Our techniques and bedside manner were correct if it wasn't for those rascally rabbits the Republicans it's their fault really. I can think a few examples where you have full rights and visibility. Screws it up for you and yet that was the left's plan visibility equality yada yada yada God I really dislike those people.
So to simplify: people had these rights and then they got taken away. And most likely we’ll spend a decade getting those rights back and having society completely changed into the bargain, because the kids absolutely fucking hate us for the way our generation reacted.
Well I don't know about kids hating us or a societal change bargain... But a certain amount of humility between factions with purity tests of hey, even if they were given carte blanche they would all fight about what right looks like. Should give them pause before they go tell somebody with a questioning or contrary Worldview what supposedly right looks like... Seems reasonable to me
Post Obergefell, there was a real temporary debate about shifting the focus to homeless gay youth, which is a real problem of gay kids being thrown out of their home or running away because they don't feel accepted. It was a major internal concern for a lot of gay rights groups that had been sidelined a bit for strategic reasons to focus on gay marriage, but then fell off the radar.
These groups depend on donors, that's their real customer. They don't want to "win" and then disestablish. No one wants to dismantle an organization they've built, especially one that has money and influence. Adjusting the project to keep donors on board makes perfect sense in that context.
I feel like the natural life cycle of a "group" is: problem is recognized and group is established >> people give money to the group the fight said problem >> problem is solved (???) >> people stop giving money because problem is solved >> group quietly disbands without funding.
Is there something compelling people to keep funding these groups? Is it because of social media outrage that no problem every really feels solved?
I think groups just evolve to try to stay relevant. And not just "the groups" but also businesses and other organizations. And to me, it's understandable. Most people don't want to disband something they worked hard to build and grow because circumstances change.
I don't want to overgeneralize because there are a lot of exceptions, but many gay people feel part of a larger queer community that includes trans people. They also understand what it's like to be discriminated against and hated for aspects that are fundamental to who you are. So the pivot makes sense.
Given the vicious attacks of the Trump administration on trans people, I think it's smart for gay groups to join them in solidarity.* They might have an honest fear that they'll be next. I mean, any chance that Hegseth wouldn't want to kick gay members out of the military next?
* Not on *everything* duh. Don't die on the hill of women's sports. Do die on the hill of letting transpeople who have served honorably stay in the military.
The problem on trans military service is that it's a pure social acceptance issue. In fact, to the best of my ability to determine, no SCOTUS ruling has *ever* held that a statute or constitutional provision protects people's ability to serve in the U.S. military notwithstanding any protected classification. All changes concerning having non-white, non-male, non-LGB, non-cis individuals serve has come through executive action, AFAICT. Whether that makes protesting by other groups on any given persecuted group's behalf more or less valuable, I don't know.
I myself don't care if what Hegseth did was legal; it was disgusting and un-American. It was deeply unfair.
This informs how I think Democrats should approach trans issues: it's all a question of fairness. Having transwomen who went through puberty as males play against cis women is unfair; they shouldn't be allowed to do it. Throwing people who served honorably and often courageously out of the military is unfair; that should never happen.* Taking away the most personal decisions parents can make about their children's future, with the advice of their personal doctors, is unfair and deeply un-American.
It's about fairness all the way down.
* Denying transpeople the chance to join the military is also unfair but at a much reduced level than kicking current service members out.
You can get discharged for depression and anxiety, it seems reasonable that dysphoria is disqualifying. Ditto being dependant on hormones in regards to military readiness. All that seems in line.
If you think their reasoning is not based on blind, ugly hatred of these folks but rather on concern for the good order of the forces there is not a goddam thing I can tell you to convince you otherwise.
I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there’s nothing “Queer” about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to other guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and (as my parents raised me) I’m proud to be — as an individual, simply and uniquely — myself.
I never signed up to “smash cisheteropatriarchy” in the name of some Brave New World.
Yes, “trans” people exist (oh, excuse me, it’s always trans “folk”) — but they’re not necessarily what they crack themselves up to be.
A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a disability. In such instances, dysphoria isn't a "queer" issue; it's a disability issue.
Beyond that limited purview, however, “gender” (as distinct from biological sex) is a social fiction — a performance, a matter of method acting — i.e., it's cosplay. Indeed, among gay males, drag is about REPUDIATING and RIDICULING the very concept of “gender” — not “affirming” it.
FWIW, I experience stereotypically “feminine” emotions -- but (in light of those feelings) I'm not about to cut off my dick to spite my crotch. Those feelings don’t make me a woman. In fact, reconciling such feelings with respect for my male body has been absolutely crucial to my self-acceptance as a gay male.
Have we forgotten what an insult it is to ask a gay male, "Are you the 'man' or the 'woman' in bed"
Meanwhile, the implicitly adversarial notion of “Queer” dilutes and jeopardizes the hard-won, widespread acceptance (and self-confidence, as individuals) that gay people have otherwise already gained.
This isn’t about “assimilation”; if anything, it’s about refusing to define one’s identity as an individual by assimilating to a collective identity as “queer.”
I'd love to see a "deep dive" on right leaning "groups" as well given I suspect a lot of the same dynamics are at play. The cult of personality around Trump has sort of scrambled a lot of normal political dynamics but I would have to believe a lot of the same dynamics ("mission creep", need to spend a war chest, finding that "new" cause so to continue to get donors to give you money) have to be at play.
Abortion is to me the big example here. Matt has noted that one consequence of the cult of personality around Trump is that he personally can just diffuse this issue and make it go away as a problem for the GOP. But those "pro life" groups are well funded and didn't just go away. I wonder for example how much their influence is at play with these draconian abortion bans in places like Texas and other red states. I know the "dream" of Texas going blue is maybe farther away than I even thought in 2024, but it's clearly not as right leaning as it was 20-25 years ago. Which means I feel pretty confident in saying that Texas' abortion restrictions are well to the right of the median voter and how much "pro life" groups ensure this dynamic holds in the state.
Matt's connections are within the Democratic party so he's going to have more "insider" knowledge than GOP. Unfortunately, a lot of the more honest right wingers are not really tied into the interior dynamics of GOP "groups" anymore (their honestly is basically why they are not part of the Trump camp), but there has to be someone Matt can maybe interview about this topic on the right (given Ross Douthat is BFF with JD, maybe Ross is a candidate?)
The only right-wing Group equivalents I can think of are pro-life groups and the NRA (and its various splinters). There certainly are other advocacy groups, but I think their influence is more through think tanks and direct donations rather than by skewing primary outcomes. Does anyone on the right think "gee, Grover Norquist likes this guy, I'd better vote for him?"
What happens then to pro-life activism when Trump leaves the scene? How long are they going to be satisfied with no action on a national ban when it's clear that the current "states rights" policy does very little to reduce abortions, given the large number of states where it is legal and the abortion pill?
Based on polling and the way the issue has played out even on pretty favorable ground for them, I'd say probably lose the Republican party some winnable elections.
An actual data based version of this argument would be great, because Matt keeps finding obscure "groups" he says are the deep state of the democratic party, but not showing how they're any different than other groups he'd prefer around abundance, market policies, education, or abortion. I personally don't see the connection between gay rights groups pivoted to advancing trans rights in any meaningful way, except that it became a novelty in the culture industry that gave way to being a boogieman in right-wing media.
LCV is hardly an "obscure group". They go back to 1970 and their scorecards rating Members of Congress are very well-known, are mentioned in ads, as were endorsements going back decades.
I did. I doubt specific endorsements even matter that much in primaries. Like we already know who the progressive is and who the blue dog is, losing one group endorsement is pretty marginal at best
I think you overrate the average voter’s familiarity with candidates’ stances. (Though i think you’re right that few care about “endorsed by Group ABC.”)
I agree that more reporting in needed to supplement some of Matt's writing. One of my frustrations is that there seems to be less coverage of the inner works of the dem party and leftist advocacy groups. So everyone is left guessing.
Agree that its not Matt's job, but it probably should be someones. But I agree with what your implication that conflicting professional interests between journalists and other left leaning professions is part of why things are kept secret.
I agree, a deeper dive into the groups, trying to untangle them and figure out how they're related, would be very worthwhile. It's research that doesn't exist anywhere outside of maybe some political operative private files. Would love to see Matt tackle it to provide as public research. (Or at least public for anyone willing to pay his substack fee, LOL.)
You won't like the account name, but DataRepublican on X has a very detailed site showing exactly where all the various threads go (for *both* parties). You can enter any entity or individual name, and her algorithms trace who is connected to whom, and where the money goes. The information is all verifiable from outside sources once you know what to look for.
The problem as I see it is that while there are democratic leaders in the house, senate, and statehouses, there isn’t a leader of the Democratic Party writ large. As a result, collective action to define the party is very difficult….maybe impossible. We ‘could’ have something like national primaries on who our choice to be speaker would be if we take back the house, as a forcing mechanism for party discipline. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not but absent something like it I don’t see a way to herd the cats.
If you look at the LCV Victory Fund's donors from 2024, the biggest individual donor was none other than Michael Bloomberg at $2.75M. Of course, most of the money for the Victory Fund comes from LCV proper ($48M total), and I guess LCV doesn't have to disclose its donors.
Part of the issue is that "Groups" don't think it's their job to prioritize electability. They view politics as a sort of free market (or alternatively, an adversarial system like our legal system) where the right outcome will emerge from all the actors pursuing their own self-interest. In LCV's mind, it's LCV's job to push maximally for conservation-related goals, and it's candidates' job to balance LCV's demands with other political goals including electability.
So, I tend to think that if you confronted LCV and said "this isn't good for electability," they might well respond, "of course it isn't." They just think the "system" will take care of it. So if you want to get them to change their behavior, it isn't enough to talk about electability. You have to get to the root of the matter and persuade them that the system they envision doesn't exist, and that unless every Group acts responsibly, takes electability into account, and pulls its own punches, everyone's going to go down in flames together.
"Part of the issue is that "Groups" don't think it's their job to prioritize electability. They view politics as a sort of free market (or alternatively, an adversarial system like our legal system) where the right outcome will emerge from all the actors pursuing their own self-interest"
Or as we call it in the vernacular, the Ta-Nehisi Coates.
TNC is advocating for what he believes (popular or not), but he isn’t pressuring elected officials to adopt his positions. He explicitly argued against that on Ezra’s podcast. That’s a pretty big difference!
His advocating for it de facto is pressuring elected officials. One of the good push backs from Ezra was telling him "I know you don't like to admit this, but you have a lot of influence". His, "I'm just a writer, it's just my job to write truth" is the same as the Groups saying, we're activists, it's just our job to advocate not to worry about electing"
I say that as a big fan of THC. I think it is his biggest flaw.
Sure everyone has influence, but I don’t think that means that no one should express an unpopular or electorally harmful option. (coughonebillionamericanscough)
In any case, I think TNC is pretty far from the canonical example of a groups influencer, as the person I was responding to seems to think.
What you're saying is true, but no matter how much influence a writer has, if they're not directly weighing in on elections then they're still at a much greater remove from the political arena than groups that explicitly weigh in and indicate that they view candidate A as better/worse than candidate B.
I think people should be allowed to say what they think and keep whatever political consultant hat they own in the closet.
I disagree with a lot of what TNC says but he sure has every right to say it. Democratic candidates have every right to either not address what he is saying or to oppose it as they see fit for their electoral prospects.
It's not about allowed or rights. It's about an honest reckoning with the consequences of his actions.
He disavows his own agency and any responsibility for the affect of his own actions.
Again, I'm a fan. But he speaks as if he has no control over what he writes nor does he acknowledge that there are consequences to it. He stops after "well I'm just a writer I write my truth" if he followed that up with "and if that means there are bad downstream consequences to people I claim to be concerned with, I don't give a crap even if I did help bring about those bad consequences" that would be a more choate statement.
But the point of this thread is that these advocacy groups take a similar position, "it's not my job to worry about elections, I'm compelled to advocate" and disavow any negative consequences, even to their own cause, for their failure to think or act beyond their own compulsions. As Smokey the Bear says "Only YOU can prevent wildfires."
I think that it's a writer's job to tell what they see as the truth. If they start self-censoring, that leads to worse arguments, and they are not as convincing.
This seems to not understand how people work. If TNC is yelling at you, an elected official, that you are doing something bad (or less than good), there will be a bunch of people who yell with him because of his influence.
That's pressure you will feel!
edit - Pressure you will feel if you align with TNC. Republican's won't care, because they don't care about TNC or his supporters. But Democrats do, so they feel pressure.
One mystery that Matt has pointed out is that the republican groups are much more chill and focused on electability, with exhibit A being their not freaking out when trump backed off of abortion maximalism during the campaign. I am sympathetic to this argument, but I wonder if anyone has studied this more systematically. It would be interesting to see if Rs groups questions were different, if R members responded to fewer questionnaires, etc.
I think it mainly has to do with the fact that conservatism is at root hierarchical, while progressivism is at root egalitarian. The Groups have a bias toward public rabble-rousing because that's in their DNA. When you're doing your advocacy in public, it's hard to be strategic in a way that could be interpreted as not fully representing your followers. Conservatives are not like that. They have much more of a natural tendency to defer to leadership decisions because that's in *their* DNA.
IT has been observed by others, I think Silver a few weeks or month ago? I forget, that online the MAGA right is much much more chill about ideological consistency and orthodoxy than the online Left relative to overall adherence - their orientations being I think (Silver?) characterized as more style and feeling oriented than ideology in a heavily intellecutalized manner.
The one exception is tax cuts. The only time they hold Republican’s feet to the fire is if there’s any hint on raising taxes on wealthy people or corporations. It’s the #1 dogma in the Republican Party.
Honestly, I think it’s that winning is an important *value* for Republicans. Look at Trump: his popularity in the GOP was very much tied to both winning the primary and then sealed by winning the 2016 election. The whole cult of personality was maybe 20-30% of Republicans until he won.
Winning is important to Republicans in a way it’s simply not to Democrats.
The Republicans are organized into a much more centralized, top-down party structure where the boundaries were clearer (before Trumpism) between the Party and the para-party of Groups.
But they aren’t. If they wanted to say their job is to maximally push for conservation goals and actually did that they’d abandon the everything bagel elements of their program. They have explicitly decided their way to a majority is in coalition and “solidarity” with unions and racial justice groups and the rest of the progressive ecosystem and thus they are targeting their program to that and not simply pushing for conservation goals.
I wish I could remember the show or specific person’s name, but on my local NPR station I remember an interview with a guy who got really invested in addressing climate and discovered “the groups” have all these positions that are fully counter-productive. Namely opposing carbon capture research, but MattY listed them all in this post.
Well sure. But then they can't make those strategic choices and then complain that people who point out that it isn't working are too focused on electoral strategy and that all they're doing is prioritizing conservation. Which is Matt's point. Their strategy failed and they've learned nothing
I do not understand why this is supposed to be a counterpoint to anything I've said. All I've said is that the Groups think the right way for them to do politics is to be maximalist, and that the fact that they sometimes team up with other Groups is in no way inconsistent with that. I obviously do not think their approach is wise.
I kind of wonder if across the board there's a staffing problem where other potential employers end up employing what would be the optimal employee of a lot of these groups: increasingly the private sector for people focused on renewable energy; public defender officers, Big Law, and (until recently) DOJ for people focused on civil rights issues, etc. The people who are left for a lot of NGOs, particularly second-tier NGOs, are these days people who used to have Tumblr accounts circa 2014.
Broadly agree, but IMO the "groups" don't prioritize electability or intellectual/policy coherence because their job is to prioritize the interests of their primary "customer" - donors. The groups are also in competition with each other for those donor dollars, and this is especially true in the environmental space, where numerous groups vie for funding. Compromising with reality or logic, rather than adhering to absolutism, will cause those dollars to be allocated to a different group.
I looked up LCV's numbers, and this strategy has worked well for them. They've gone from ~$38 million in donations in the 2016 election year to ~$68 million in 2023. Unfortunately, 2024 numbers aren't available because the 990 isn't published.
Yea I think that's a decent way to describe them doing a version of completely normal politics but they've optimized on being adversarial/escalation of conflict and less on strategically thinking about where their push can help the most if they're explicitly delving into electoral politics.
Partially this is because everyone in the conservation/environmental nonprofit space has been swallowed up by the borg of ur-leftist jargon and racial justice intersectional frameworks that have also taken over virtually every other area of progressive advocacy.
It’s been this way ever since Dave Foreman lost the internal battle within Earth First! and David Brower became left-pilled in the ‘80s.
how is it that people cannot simply do the (seemingly obvious) next logical/rhetorical step ... and point out the chasm between the goal (maximal intersectional fairness) and the status quo ... and then propose that famous first step that's so integral to every fucking journey?
sure, sure, emotionally shunted social weirdos might fall into the "ends only, no means" game. (and then we can debate whether it's better or worse than the "utopistic mythical never-was end, any means" crowd.)
I would like to read a better takedown of the groups, while also addressing the public/private sector aspect of liberalism that allows them to have such influence. When being in government isn't exactly a glamorous job, but using connections made in government to become a lobbyist is a rather lucrative lifestyle, how does one square the circle? When you have weak political parties and candidates don't have unified fronts or positions on these issues, there's inherent incentive to have NGOs that coordinate with politicians in multiple states, or multiple terms, or if you're something like AIPAC or the NRA or Corn Refiners Association, you want to have relationships with whoever in which ever party will pick up the phone.
Probably need more politicians being petty and punishing groups for not backing them. For example, elevating a competitor in the space who was willing to endorse them.
Kind of a reverse endorsement of a group by a politician.
Do they actually believe it isn't good for electability? With the advent of hyper-specific issue polling and the ability of anyone with an internet connection to do "statistical analysis," it's almost impossible to not make an argument, convincing or not, that your position is the winning electability one.
While I feel like LGBTQ+ and racial justice groups are probably the least helpful electorally, it seems like labor groups are on the wrong side of like every single issue.
(Some may say they’re good on housing but northeastern social conservatives are like the NIMBYist people on planet earth so I’m skeptical.)
“Labor” in many areas is just shorthand for teachers, nurses, and state workers.
Rhode Island passed an asinine assault weapons ban earlier this year that was shoved down voters throats via bullying from Democratic state party leaders and out-of-state activists from Bloomberg funded groups.
Activists commissioned a poll of local AFL-CIO workers that showed ~50-60% approval of the AWB among its members as a way of giving it some kind of blue collar endorsement, but failed to mention that like half of the AFL CIO in RI represents teachers and nurses who were already “captured” by the activist messaging anyway.
Regardless, they never consider that barely passing a controversial measure with a 50-60% approval is not really a big picture “win” when it mobilizes your opponents to such an extent.
There were over 2,000 people who stayed up until 2 am to speak out against this ban - a significant chunk of them surely were registered Democrats. This matters in a state that just had its lowest D+ margin win since 1988 and where 50,000 swing votes can turn the state red.
A pro-growth agenda would likely be skeptical of excessive government spending (kinda bad for school teachers) and would be all-in on automation (very bad for teamsters)
I don't think that's right on school teachers, exactly. Pro-growth would probably privilege education spending over say income transfers to the elderly. And if pro-growth works, government spending can grow without growing or somewhat trailing growth of the economy.
It seems to me, just from my anacedotal experience talking with teachers is that a lot of them oppose a pro-growth agenda on moral grounds. I don’t think it’s a deeply held position, but instead just a surface level vibe. Mines are bad, farms are bad, logging is bad, etc. GMOs also bad, so like if not for negative partisanship they might be pretty on board with a lot of MAHA too.
I would guess teachers differences compared with the general population could be attributed to that they have masters degrees and an unbelievable exposure to families and children who “slip through the cracks” and get pretty abused by “the system.” I don’t have much exposure to nurses or non-college union members, so no comment there.
Brown's "Fuck Off" only gets better when you read the tantrum of a response given by the Ratepayers alliance. I think jamming your finger in the groups eye (figuratively of course) could be a good signalling mechanism to coordinate the Democratic reform movement. Adherence only to the Common Sense Democratic Manifesto, no pledges to groups.
Heh my first thought on this line of thought (after reading Matts article and prior to clicking into the comments) was unless the groups are really not savvy, disagreement with them doesn't really get you much and could just give them publicity as defenders of justice telling truth to power (if reporters bite on that). But maybe the issue is something the politician wants to raise saliance of but probably not?
I think the case we'd like to make is that the groups have the situation backwards. They need to be useful to politicians to get things they need. They think politicians need to be useful to them (often in dogmatic and unproductive ways that brook no tradeoffs) to earn their support. In a multiparty system that would work fine, but in a two party system you know who is better for you and who isn't. Obama (really Rahm Emmanuel) did a good job of this. I think there's a SB Post about it calling the veal pen. We need to retvrn to the veal pen.
The LCV are poor coalition partners because they don’t recognize tradeoffs. Their agenda excites 25–30 percent of voters and offends more than it attracts, yet they behave as if ideological purity can substitute for majorities. As between groups that understand the importance of prosperity and the inevitability of tradeoffs, and those that don’t, I prefer the former. That’s why Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans—whatever their flaws—make better partners than green groups whose politics are indifferent to cost, practicality, or the durability of public consent.
Well they WOULD make better coalition partners if they didn't tend to in fact support anti-growth policies like trade and immigration restrictions and damn-the deficits- tax reduction.
Given that you need a majority to govern, you need either the chamber of commerce or the greens. Very hard to please both. I share more values with the chamber of commerce.
I sort of have the green aesthetic. I like the outdoors and smallish houses, and I dislike big trucks. I’m totally ok avoiding material excess. However, my idea of simplicity is still a ridiculously high material standard in historical terms and I want more working stiffs to enjoy something close to what I do.
Sure thing. I think we have very similar views on abundance, urbanism, and Democratic Party policy. I’m a moderate with an economics degree, so most of what Matt says (and what you espouse) is right up my alley.
But moderates typically hold heterogenous policy positions, and I am no exception. I hold extremely strong environmentalist views on public lands and wilderness protections. I’m practically Ed Abbey when it comes to conservation.
Where my deep and abiding frustration with modern green orgs comes from is their insistence on intersectional leftism and their inability to be pragmatic. If the Wilderness Society wants to minimize the amount of land area that is impacted by human development, that’s their prerogative (and that’s something I agree with! It’s a strongly held preference of mine), but they refuse to acknowledge that the logical implications of that preference should be to advocate for nuclear power and increased urban housing density. Instead, they (and other environmental groups) push for a package of mutually inharmonious policies without any analysis of tradeoffs.
As for the intersectional leftism point, the everything-bagel homogenization of left-nonprofit culture has been a massive detriment to these orgs, because it also means they end up framing all of their activism in maximally weird and unpopular ways. You’re never going to reach the huge constituency of pro-public-lands moderates by harping on gas vehicle bans, degrowth, and “environmental justice.”
Maybe their stated values but not as instantiated in willy-nilly trade restrictions, high deficits, and restrictions of immigration of high income potential immigrants and disinterest in land use regulation and building code reforms.
1. To what extent do Green Left Groups lead to new votes in electoral geographies that are needed (or to what extent do you pile up excess votes in restricted geographies, e.g. urbane urban-to-suburban while missing votes on the margin in areas where the added vote on the margin tips result)
2. To what extent do the Groups drive Everything Bagelism that leads again to lost votes on the margins in key geographies wehre the marginal vote makes the difference between Win or Lose.
The thing is these sorts of questionnaires have always existing it’s just the politicians were much better at just ignoring the questions they didn’t want to answer or just saying no. And Democrats on the Hill still do ignore the groups all the time on things when they don’t agree with them (as they should). What we really need is elected officials to have a bit more courage/leadership on these sorts of these things. If you look at the infamous ACLU questionnaire for instance, as opposed to Kamala Harris, Joe Biden just never filled it out. What we need is candidates and elected officials to look at these things both from the perspective of what’s good for their state/district but also just to consider overall which of these policy ideas is good/bad. Because it wasn’t always the culture you just said yes to everything on such a questionnaire (and nor were you expected).
Yes, Biden refused to fill it out. It's not clear that doing so helped him. He was way down in the polls until the existential threat of a Bernie victory led forces in the party to pull him to the top.
And meanwhile recall that the Sunrise Movement gave his climate platform an F-minus. Moderation and centrism just weren't a winning ticket in 2020 until the cold-bath-omg-it's-Bernie caused enough people to wake up.
If moderation and centrism weren't a winning ticket in 2020, there never would've been a "cold-bath-omg-it's-Bernie" moment because Bernie would have had enough support to win despite moderates/centrists rallying around a candidate.
This was going to be my question, is what’s changed? Are the questionnaires new, are the questions different, or is the level of “yes”-ing greater than before? Or some combination?
My suspicions are that it's mostly a combination of: (1) topics are much more diverse than they used to be (e.g., probably very few, if any, environmental groups were asking about Palestine or LGBTQ issues in the 1990s) due to intersectionality/omnicause, and (2) the decline in the ability of American political parties in the last 15 years so to protect incumbents from primary challengers.
IMO, point #1 also explains why this appears to be a MUCH bigger problem for Democrats than for Republicans -- conservative advocacy groups seem to be far more content to just push their own specific topics. Like, I'm still a registered Republican myself, so I get carpetbombed each election cycle by mailings from pro-life groups, anti-gun control groups, pro-Israel groups, etc., but none of them do "omnicause" messaging. (E.g., As far as I can recall, Gun Owners of America, unofficial motto: "The NRA is a bunch of limp-wristed, panty-waisted, bleeding-heart liberals," has only ever sent anything ranting about gun rights. They don't mention drag queen story hour or partial birth abortion, let alone anything that might genuinely be controversial among conservatives at large like support for/opposition to Ukrainian defense spending.)
My sense is that the groups have pushed further left in their demands but its also the case that groups have always asked for unrealistic or politically risky things. I think the level of candidates and elected officials is also yes though by a good amount and there's alot more of the sense of people not wanting people to mad at them. Whereas before there was this. And I think there's also an element that the 2016 and 2020 primaries were a big part of that shift as has been the election of Trump (because there's a certain mentality of if Trump can get away with what we gets away with why can't we). Groups like LCV still should think through how best to effective and what not but you need more elected officials and candidates just being willing to say no and live with people being mad at them (because they'll get over it).
Either they say it's not their role to be political consultants but instead argue for their principals or they truly believe that signing onto their agenda is the way to popularity.
I think more people voting in primaries is a big factor. I don't have the numbers but my impression is that went way way up with the Bernie-Hillary slap fight & then never came down (I caucused for Dean in 2004 and there were like 9 of us for the whole urban precinct; fast forward to 2016 and it's 200 packed in a gym). And a lot of these newcomers are not well informed and/or think pragmatism is for suckers. That's what gives The Groups their power.
Upstream of that is probably news media incentives to sensationalize primary campaigns, which used to be seen as arcane and boring and only interesting to nerds & other obsessives.
I know it's just an aside at the end, but every time the mercury restrictions come up, I have to push back. I actually read the EPA report from a few years ago justifying the rule and found the causal chain of evidence very weak. Essentially it was that a tiny additional amount of mercury was going to get into the soil, leach into the freshwater, be taken up by fish, be eaten by mostly poor pregnant women who catch their own, and cause a decrease in the IQ of their babies by a few thousandths of a point. These infinitesimally lower-IQ kids would grow up and be worse at their jobs, thus lowering their economic value. It was only by aggregating these otherwise imperceptible effects over thousands of people that they could claim with a straight face that the economic cost of the rule was less than the impact of the pollution. Now maybe you say "we're a rich country and we shouldn't have to deal with any mercury getting into the environment, even if the risk is practically nil", and I would consider that argument. But if this is the logic used for one rule imposed, how many others are on shaky foundations?
Kudos to Matt for finding a way to substantiate his critique of the groups! David Shor observes that politics is locked in a dynamic between change-averse, not-well-informed (older) voters and crusading, hyper-attentive (younger) political activists. The Groups look like a variant of this system:
- 25 y.o. with a degree in critical studies and very left-wing perspectives gets a staff job at LCV to pursue degrowth, free Palestine, etc.
- 75 y.o. with a daily NPR habit writes LCV a check "for the environment" and feels good about it
- per today's column, 60 y.o. Congressperson eying the 82 y.o. Senator in their state who might retire knows that giving the "right" answers on the LCV questionnaire is the way to keep both the 25 y.o. and 75 y.o. happy
No one is in charge. Everyone is more committed to their narrow goals that to the whole.
I don't think this is true. 18-25 y.o. non-college educated men are not at all like the block you describe, and they are not a tiny block.
I suspect that over the last 3-5 years even the college educated men have started leaning a lot more republican. The tech bros of 2016 may have been democrats, but the ones in 2026 are not.
The demographic phenomenon you describe is real and important to modern politics, but it is distinct from the demographic phenomenon I describe. In other words, the 25 year-old staffer for LCV is not the 25-year-old Maga tech bro
We only get President Vance if he inherits the seat. It’s very likely 2028 will be another back swing. The only thing a Democratic Party in control needs to do is curtail the excesses of progressives again and actually get shit built.
Dems are behaving more sanely now than we were in 2017 I think. And in 2018 we really got our shit together and ran pragmatic candidates and won bigly.
No guarantee that the same thing occurs next year of course, but it's not like we're definitely screwed
After the 2010 midterms that’s exactly the same bet I’d have made for Republicans. They didn’t learn their lesson, went all in with entitlement reform, and here we are. I am much more pessimistic.
I strongly suspect Vance has no chance unless he inherits the seat... This is unrelated to a Republican winning. When all else fails you can just try to steal the election since there doesn't seem to be any reason not to.
I honestly don't get this kind of comment, and I see such sentiments frequently. I believe people are letting their dislike of Vance get in the way of reasoning.
No sitting Republican Vice President has ever lost a nomination bid. It's never happened. And on the Dem side it hasn't happened in 75 years.
At some point the streak will be broken. Maybe even in 2028! I absolutely am NOT saying Vance has a guarantee. But he's probably a fairly heavy early favorite for the 2028 nomination, and if he wins, he surely has a non-trivial shot at winning the general election.
So, George HW Bush won the presidency after winning the nomination. But it's actually incredibly rare for a vice president to win the presidency right after the president they serve terms out. Most vice presidents who served immediately after the president they served got there because their president died, so they ran for re-election rather than succession. Biden and Nixon both had gaps between their vice-presidential terms and their presidencies. I'd also note that a lot of vice presidents that wouldn't have won the nomination haven't bothered to run. Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle come to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
>But it's actually incredibly rare for a vice president to win the presidency right after the president they serve terms out.<
I don't know about "incredibly" rare. The sample size of sitting vice presidents who have attempted to run for the presidency isn't that large. And again, they virtually always succeed in the nomination quest.
So we're mostly talking about failure to win the general election, BUT most of those attempts (Nixon 1960, Humphrey 1968, etc) have been after two term administrations, and that won't be a factor in 2028. IOW, structurally, the 2028 GOP nominee will have it a bit easier (all else equal) than otherwise. And, let's face it, the razor-sharp margins we've been seeing in recent cycles suggest, that, as long as this dynamic *persists, EITHER the Democratic or Republican nominee has a pretty fair chance of winning the general election. Their vote share floors are high!
*Provided we continue to have free and fair elections, at some point we'll surely exit this dynamic and have a blowout. And perhaps public disgust at MAGA/GOP will do it 2028. Maybe! But we really can't count on that.
And let's put it this way: which individual in the country has the single greatest odds of taking the oath of office in January, 2029? Even taking away the possibility he succeeds the current POTUS if the latter dies in office, that person is surely J.D. Vance. I give him about 35% odds of becoming POTUS because he's got about a 70% chance of taking the nomination, and the eventual nominee (until we get closer to the election and can feel confident otherwise) has about a 50% chance of winning the general election. There's no other person in either party we can say that about.
For the people who deploy advocacy groups on issues they care about. Obviously that’s not going to work for abundance centrists because they have no such groups.
It should be standard practice to share these questionnaires, and candidates’ responses to them, publicly. The groups should own their policy commitments, and the candidates should own their answers. If they can’t, then there’s a problem with the questions.
Reading candidates' short paragraph answers to a questionnaire is my favorite way to get informed before a primary election, since there are so many candidates to sift through. But yes/no checklist questions are reductive, and yes/no endorsements are even more reductive still.
I expect it's not that answers aren't public, it's that most voters will only every see
1. (if left-leaning) the group's endorsement or non-endorsement of a candidate
2. (if right-leaning) the group's stupidest proposals juxtaposed with an endorsement (either the group's endorsement of the candidate, or the candidate's endorsement of said stupid proposals)
(because the way I see it, "leaning" left or right is usually a consequence of which media a voter consumes.)
A number of years ago, almost a decade now, while I was working on the Hill LCV was issuing its scorecard and a number of stalwart safe seat Democrats were dinged, one vote away from a perfect score, because of a vote on delaying reforms to the nationwide flood insurance program. Members were angry, convinced that LCV had failed to properly communicate to offices that the vote would be on the scorecard. Some also argued that LCV was straying into issue space that was outside conservation. Honestly it was probably a byproduct of House offices being so siloed between issue areas that the financial services staffer in an office wasn't realizing that actually the federal subsidy to developing in flood prone areas had a conservation side.
But the end result was LCV staff were yelled at and the process was modified to be super explicit when a potential key vote was coming up.
I think it's interesting to contrast this episode, where LCV was engaged on something that while not core to environmentalism had clear environmental impacts but didn't have a strong way to push back when yelled, versus more recent episodes over the years were LCV has key voted more broadly liberal issue area votes, like campaign finance reform. LCV is part of the everything bagel coalition backing up other liberal causes, covering its ass as much as possible. Nowadays when LCV key votes something outside of the core environmental space, they are doing so to be good partners with other groups.
I superlike™️ this comment. My (even longer!) experience is the same wrt this evolution. Groups used to compete with each other for Top Group, now they’re just a blob
One of the big problems is that in local races, endorsements are often the only data available on a local candidate's issue positions. When local news doesn't cover a position that is actually on the ballot, a candidate sending back a questionnaire is the only thing you can find after a quick Google search, which is what voters will be doing in the voting booth when they find they have to vote for somebody for a local position they've never heard of.
This is why I love the League of Women Voters. The vote411.org website is where I get almost all my information about local candidates. But almost no one knows about this kind of resource.
One technique that is underutilized, even after Eddie Murphy demonstrated it in "The Distinguished Gentleman", is running a candidate with a name that can be confused for a previously well known politician.
Also, the Randall Munroe (xkcd) book, "How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems," has a chapter titled, "How to Win an Election," which specifically mentions that as a strategy using the real-world example of "Bob Casey" in Pennsylvania.
Not sure how well that would have worked in that specific case considering that Bob Casey lost reelection last year and was one of the most underperforming dem candidates on the ballot then 😬
The book was written pre-2024. :-P The author's point, in any event, is not rebutted by that result. As he documents in the book, at least five different individuals all named "Bob Casey" have run for public office in Pennsylvania since the 1970s and there's a decent argument that at least a couple of those individuals have substantially overperformed what would have been expected from (1) their own individual prior accomplishments and/or (2) what they spent on their campaign.
It's an interesting piece for sure, but that two-dimensional plot doesn't leave a lot of room for the nuance of individual issues, which is the drum Matt's been banging over the last year or more. Yes, most D voters want to see action on climate change and if you ask them, they'll tell you that. But what specific action? And what are you willing to sacrifice? That's where the consensus breaks down.
I agree, I found that argument to be unpersuasive. Sure, 50% of Democrats might say they want M4All or a Green New Deal, but those poll questions are never asking voters about the trade offs. There's a reason why Vermont doesn't have Medicare For All. There's a reason why Washington doesn't have a 100% green economy.
And I think a lot of elected officials do not know this! They're trying to read the temperature of the public, a nice organization with a nice cause comes in their office with a good poll. And they're very liberal staffers tell them to believe.
The more I read about the inner workings of the political world, the less I understand why anyone would willingly choose to make their career in that ecosystem. It seems so very ... depressing.
Now you know why it's so screwed up, it's because most sane people think the same as you do.
There was a while back when I was hearing a bit about the idea of doing democracy by using a random sample of the population to come up with legislation instead of electing people, and one of the benefits that I saw to that system is that it would take the inputs of people who would never want to run for elected office. Most of the population is like this, so the act of elections is inherently a bit unrepresentative.
These sorts of polls aren't designed to accurately assess public opinion, they're designed to prove that X is popular regardless of whether X is actually popular.
Yes, this is my drumbeat of the Tony Blair video about why single issue polling is unreliable, the 5 second, 30 second and 3 minute conversation about the same issue may change the results you would get from the poll.
Never mind that your candidate's positions may poll well, but everything put together the candidate doesn't do that well.
He’s probably oversimplifying, it depends on the issue. On immigration sure Democratic primary voters are further left than Republican primary voters are right. Different dynamic on healthcare.
I think actually immigration and healthcare crystallize Mailman’s point perfectly. On Ds best issue (healthcare), R voters are closer to the centrist position compared to how far D voters are to the centrist position on Rs best issue (immigration).
Wait so do you think R voters are more right wing on healthcare than Ds are left on healthcare? IMO it is more like even R voters are more in the center on healthcare but R electeds are more right wing, which is what gives Rs space to move to the center since their own voters are closer to the center than them, especially on healthcare.
First of all the only Japanese shitboxes on the market are Nissan Sentras and Mitsubishi Mirages. Stellantis pulled their European shitboxes from the market and trying to sell Fiats under the Dodge or Jeep label.
While the comment has an odor of 1975 about it, if you leave aside the phrasing, it does correctly capture reaction
As in abstractly for X but if X is perceived as either costing you OR making you have to "settle" for something you perceive negatively, not supported.
What precisely is the problem with Japanese trucks? I'm genuinely curious. I've never owned a truck (they are expensive and require large parking spaces), so I don't have a lot of experience telling the difference between the various models. What's wrong with them? Genuinely curious.
He's presumably talking about small cars that Americans don't like and American companies don't build, rather than large Japanese trucks built for the US market which compete quite well in their segments.
People who actually have to use their pickup trucks as pickup trucks love Japanese trucks, they're very functional. But Americans mostly use trucks as giant sedans with decorative trucks beds, and so they want Ford F150s or Chevy Silvarados.
I’ve come to think that poll questions on these issues aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
Even if they perfectly captured voters attitudes on a particular issue, they are one dimensional and don’t capture intensity or prioritization.
Gift link to a relevant NYT piece about gun control: when actual issues were put on state referendums, they performed much worse than the polling would suggest.
I consider issue-based polls to be mostly worthless because it's too easy for the polltaker to intentionally word the question to produce whatever result they want.
The only reason I say "mostly" rather than "completely" is that issue polls, when used properly, can still be used to measure trends, since, when the same question is repeated, whatever bias exists in the wording will be exactly the same each time. But, that's about it.
I can only speak to my area of focus (gun policy). The polling is atrocious.
Gallup poll still asks people whether or not they would favor a ban on all handguns. I have no clue why. They’ve been asking that question since the 70s (which was probably the last time that idea was ever seriously considered).
At its core policy-level, most major gun control debate is about quibbling over statutory definitions and the power vested to bureaucracies.
But all gun control polls gauge the favorability of shorthand buzzwords like “do you support ‘universal background checks?’” That is a clever activist shorthand that has a clear positive bias (background checks are good, more background checks are better).
Most people don’t know how background checks work in their current form, or what’s at stake when we talk about “universal background checks.”
Or entirely unintentionally from pollster staff blindspots.
MEasuring trends against a standard set of phrasing is useful in having sense of Like-to-Like comparison of change of attitude but getting real sense pulling-vote-lever [or push vote buttom] support, quite dubious.
Yes, this is my drumbeat of the Tony Blair video about why single issue polling is unreliable, the 5 second, 30 second and 3 minute conversation about the same issue may change the results you would get from the poll.
Never mind that your candidate's positions may poll well, but everything put together the candidate doesn't do that well.
But do you doubt the main point that in order capture the swing voters they need, Ds have to reach further from their own center than Rs do? And that D voters have more liberal and ideologically cohesive than the R voters are conservative?
Nate Cohn in his piece about Zohran made a similar point about how liberal the Dem base has become even since 2016, which opens an opportunity for left insurgencies but creates problems in generals and swing states.
Washington has the highest gas prices of the lower 48 states and I think that's intentional; the government wants carbon pricing to make the lives of exurban people in WA more expensive so they will change. Today's piece by Yglesias is waiting for a powerful politician to successfully subordinate these ideological activists, similar to what happened in the GOP circa 2015. It might work!
The cap and trade bill was only responsible for a small portion of the overall gas price. Even if it were repealed, gas prices would still be among the highest in the country, anyway. Repealing it would have also blown a hole in numerous state and local budgets, as funding for all of the projects financed by the cap and trade bill would have suddenly disappeared.
There probably are people who would rather you trade in your Mastercraft boat and F250 for a Subaru Crosstrek and a sea kayak. That said, I used to live in Seattle and volunteered for ST3. IMO the animosity towards exurban people stems from a very loud and overrepresented group of bicycle urbanists who are extremely unpleasant and aggressive online. They’re their own cause’s worst enemy IMO.
While there are fewer of us every day, I lived through Tim Eyman era austerity in WA and it was bad IMO. The freeway between Woodinville and Monroe got stopped and still isn’t finished due to those tax cuts. The higher gas taxes, higher sales taxes, more tolls, more parking fees, 3x in state tuition, 3x ferry fares, etc. backfill only some of the loses of MVET and property tax revenue.
Isn’t the reason Vermont doesn’t have M4A more (lack of) federalism rather than ideology? Like, doing M4A by increasing taxes balanced out by your employer not having to pay your premiums is reasonable enough, but doing that within a framework where most health funding is federal and presumes employer health care as the default is hard.
Step (1): influential centrists bloggers learn a lot more about climate change and energy transition issues than they currently do.
Step (2): some of these folks form actual advocacy groups (or get involved with them) that have a targeted plan for speeding up the energy transition in an affordability-friendly way.
I have yet to see any details other than “just get rid of some laws” that really fit the bill for either of these steps. “Abundance” is incredibly vague on the details, particularly the details of how you remove environmental restrictions specifically for new energy construction. What’s the Greenpeace/MoveOn-style pro-growth environmental advocacy group I can look into for these issues after reading one of Matt’s posts? Does it even exist?
As a general matter what the Abundance talk has been about is regulatory simplification, streamlining and general making things easier - getting into gory details on permits etc is likely a loser, talking "cutting red-tape, rationalising regulation to be small business friendly, help get things Done, make America Build Again" is good sloganeering counter to MAGA type slogans
Over definition and over-explaining is very much a professional class disease.
That’s why I don’t take abundance that seriously. Doing things in politics means getting into details. If you can’t get down to brass tacks because the argument becomes a turkey at that level, then you don’t want to put a lot of structural load onto that movement because it’s screwed.
I would add as both personally and as my professional role I see quite the good opportunity for the broad approach. Regulatory streamlining and simplication (rather than branding it as deregulation), red-tape cutting are outside of Lefty-Left administrative class broadly popular concepts, while at same time real needs as demonstrated by the failures of past four years in physical assets build outs. A pitch that has an orientation to the Ordinary Joes, ordinary business - not engaging in Marxist coded and inflected anti-oligarchs speech - for federal level code reform is at least something national party has reasonable chances on. And could be sold to “normies” - non-Dems overall, as like myself who has never been a D and while I do stratetically vote D it’s often with great reluctance and distrust (as in e.g. I liked Biden at start but soured as the Lefty Wokey side become prevalent and I saw no effectifve action on issues clearly piling up on IRA etc
?? - So Trump won on his greatly detailed campaign plan?
Or the Republicans have been multiply successful with Small Government rhetoric via campaigning on gory details of what they are intending to cut?
No - quite the contrary
Doing things in governance certainly but Democrats seem to have some bizarre mistake in their brains to confuse politics with governance as synonyms.
A successfuly governance, once one has won, certainly getting things done can very well mean having a good command of the relevant details under your control - although as Trump is showing, that's not per se needed either albeit I would prefer that.
Abundance promoting itself right now I think is doing quite the right thing - not engaging in the typical Democrat error of going into tedious wonkery before they are even there.
If you can get the backing of a tremendously cult-of-personality candidate who makes people create fan art and forgive him for any sin, then I suppose Abundance will also have the opportunity to stumble around failing to achieve beneficial goals, just like Trump’s policies.
"I have yet to see any details other than “just get rid of some laws” that really fit the bill for either of these steps"
Ok sure, but have you, like.... *tried* to "just get rid of some laws"? It seems like no one is ever willing to try that, but super willing to tell us all about how it won't work, and happy to stick with the status quo that we know does not work.
Yes I have and it’s literally the hardest thing on earth, even at the small-city level. You have no idea what a fight this will be, particularly with that level of reconnaissance.
i don't find this data very convincing. the scatterplot is difficult to interpret: the distances on it represent differences in answers to poll questions, which means the structure of the plot is highly sensitive to the choice of questions. if you were to ask only about issues that unite democrats and divide republicans (and in 2016 there were plenty of these) you'd get a similar shape with a tight blue ball and a diffuse red cloud.
more importantly, a preference for left wing policy does not mean primary voters cannot vote strategically. but i cant find anything in this piece (maybe i missed something) connecting cohesive liberal beliefs to unstrategic primary behavior
Sure they can vote strategically but do you take the point that Dem voters are more liberal and ideologically cohesive than the R voters are conservative? Imo the story Matt is trying to paint about how it’s all bc of annoying activists just seems too easy an explanation of what’s happened here in left of center politics.
This is quite an interesting article and a very useful point about the challenge that an ideologically-cohesive liberal base poses for outreach-oriented Dems
The evidence that President Vance will be real just keeps piling up! Get ready for the guy who will make Donald Trump look like he’s in touch with reality.
Lol, as Millman writes: “What stands in the way of the Democrats seizing it? Only that the people who fund, staff and lead the party are all out of touch with what ordinary Americans believe and want. That, in itself, is kind of an extraordinary admission—if you take away the donors, the staff and the leadership, who’s left to reform the party? Mounk’s answer, presumably, would be: the voters. Which voters, though?”
The article you linked to is focused on a left vs right spectrum (economically and socially). But what Matt is talking about in this article is primarily a third axis, which I call up versus down or north vs south[1]. He's saying: yes, let's stop global warming, but in a *smart* way where it will *actually* stop rather than a *dumb* way that will get more Republicans elected.
Note: after making the chart I became convinced that Matt's actual position on the left-right spectrum is closer to the center ― but it took me some time to figure that out because smart left-wing policy looks very similar to smart center-left policy.
(A steelman of your argument: Democrats fundamentally aren't smart. I would agree, but respond that they're smarter and easier to persuade than Trumpists so I'm attaching my life raft to the Dems and rowing in the right direction)
“The Groups” vs. “centrist” pundits (e.g. The Argument, which consists of a couple Effective Altruists and a socialist) seems a little like the Coates-Klein debate.
Both sides of the debate share similar values. It’s like a debate between Catholic priests who take Scripture very seriously and ordinary devout Catholics who are constrained by the practicalities of life while admiring the purity of priests’ faith.
The Coates prescription for electoral strategy is terrible, and it’s good that this faction is no longer able to bully the “centrists.” Nevertheless, I’m not sure that the Klein side has a winning formula: to the extent that voters disagree with Democrats on values, I’m not sure the Kleins of the world will fool anyone by simply downplaying their beliefs.
I think Democratic thought leaders may need to be more introspective about their values before they can return to a position of strength. This is going to require more than simple tactical adjustments.
But like, the groups are often wrong on the merits. I don't dislike labor groups (for example) because I think they hurt us in elections, I dislike them because they make our country and economy weaker to benefit a small special interest.
My point is that I don’t think these intra-party disagreements have *that* much to do with Democrats’ weakness.
If the Klein/Yglesias types were understood to be fully in charge, would Dems start trouncing Republicans? I’m not sure voters really think of them as centrists either.
Neither of them, or claim to be, centrists. But they are both pragmatists that would welcome centrists into the party. They would be happy to have Joe Manchin, and not constantly raking him over the coals.
No one really thinks Trump is a centrist, but he got some centrist votes because he made sure to get everyone to just STFU about abortion and other unpopular right-wing talking points.
There will always be people in the middle willing to swing back and forth with thermostatic opinion. Pissing them off with really unpopular left wing (or right wing) views just is not going to win elections. Especially if, after pissing them off with your view point, you tell them to "go away, we didn't want your vote anyway, deplorable guy"
Do they really share similar values? I would consider the Groups and Effective Altruists to go on one pole of substantive values and a socialist on a different pole.
Somehow becoming *more* pessimistic about the future of our governance is not the way I wanted to start my work week…at least the post is strategically unpaywalled.
Anakin, over Zoom call: Indeed, to the extent that the environmental community has any real ideas on affordability, it’s the too-cute-by-half argument that banning exports is affordability policy, because it depresses the price of domestic natural gas.
Padme, on vacation in Puerto Rico: Great, so they're on board with repealing the Jones Act, right?
Anakin: They say that 100 percent clean energy by 2035 should be achieved "in a manner that creates family-supporting, union jobs."
Padme, waiting on an LNG export tanker from Spain: ...they're on board with repealing the Jones Act, right?
...more seriously, is there any reason reasonable candidates can't run campaign ads leaking these full-of-shit full questionnaires, and banging on a bit about Well, I'm a moderate and I love [group's focus area], but acktually...? If primary voters become aware of how the endorsement sausage is made, perhaps getting one from these special interest bakeries would become more of a millstone for polling than a rise.
($150m is also just, I don't know, chump change? We're happy to spend billions a year on datacenters, but can get a bare fraction of that scraped together in loose change to "defend democracy"? People are saying we need to get money out of politics, but to me it sure sounds like there isn't nearly *enough*.)
AFAICT, the only restriction would be copyright, and I think it might be a bad look for questionnaire-promulgators to sue on that basis. Alternatively, nothing stops anyone from making public-domain questionnaires.
I would be inclined to say that there are compelling fair use arguments in this context but as an affirmative defense it’s always dicey to go whole hog on it if there are reasonable alrernative options.
It's a fair use. It's transformative and doesn't affect the market for the original. Any copyright owner stupid enough to bring this case would end up paying the other side's attorney's fees.
For the same reason that if you dig up a person's racist tweets from 10 years ago and comment on them, you aren't infringing the copyright by quoting the tweets.
A use is transformative if it is used for a different purpose of the original, such as comment or criticism.
I think a real dive into the weeds on the finances/messaging of “the groups” or one in particular would be interested. I am particularly curious how post Obergefell, the gay rights advocacy groups pivoted to trans rights, rather than declaring victory and going home.
Well they had a lot of money banked for what they expected to be a long, expensive fight for marriage equality and then they unexpectedly just won a few years earlier than hoped.
They could have just given every willing Americans some nice rainbow socks and little American flags.
“Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgSTjzrmRg
Sure, and if you work for one of them, you literally are out of a job without taking up something else. And you probably viewed the “fight” as a personally defining characteristic. Not much choice but to find the next available target.
The whole mission creep thing has really infiltrated so many non-profit spaces (including colleges.) It just seems to be a whole edifice of rent seeking.
I think an “advocacy industrial complex” has been mentioned before?
Yes.
Maybe they just… thought defending trans people was the right thing to do?
What does a trans rights win on the federal level look like? It feels more like a social acceptance movement than anything that ends with new federal policy.
Two mistakes were made.
The push into kids transition and the institutional support from schools and governments. It went too far with too little science to support it. It attacked parental rights and compromised children’s physical and mental health. A backlash was inevitable.
And sports of course. This made it highly visible and was contrary to a majority of people’s base intuitions on the differences between boys and girls and women and men. Again, backlash was inevitable. The left tried to shout the backlash down by calling everyone bigots. It worked on the center left. But the heterodox people and the conservatives were mostly immune to those tactics.
It took some time but here we are.
Guaranteed coverage of trans related medical care. No opt outs. Hate speech regulations?
Yep I would oppose all of that
We now have a lot less of that than we did in 2015. Should have accepted the win on getting the “bathroom bills” overturned and stuck to ensuring transpeople could get jobs. Healthcare should have come under the umbrella of medical privacy (as with abortion) rather than hormone treatments on demand.
A major difference between abortion and trans healthcare is that, while abortion is cheaper than 9 months of prenatal care, gender-affirming care has high complication rates, especially but not exclusively when it comes to surgeries. So it's going to affect an insurance pool in a way that abortion generally does not. That makes the invocation of medical privacy a heavier lift. (I'm saying all of this descriptively, not normatively.)
Aren't there tons of state level fights? Bathroom bills, banning child transition care, drivers license gender markers, trans females in sports.
All these issues are tricky and filled with tons of nuance. Is there some widely held consensus on when a person has transitioned from one gender to another? Is it amount of time lived in a certain gender, appearance, hormones, etc? All the issues you listed should be decided more at the state and local levels until a consensus appears. National politicians aren't putting anything on the table to consider.
"Is there some widely held consensus on when a person has transitioned from one gender to another?"
There isn't. That's why basically all discussion in this area either acknowledges that and goes with full self-ID or obfuscates what the discussion is about.
I thought ENDA was a reasonable goal, but it didn't make it.
Fighting blatantly discriminatory laws has historically proven to be one of the fastest routes to social acceptance.
National Self-Identification law like Scotland had.
At the time, proponents of marriage equality argued they weren't seeking social acceptance from the public of their lifestyle choices. Rather, they were seeking equal rights with the non-gay population in terms of their ability to marry whomever they want. This is very much in the American tradition.
With trans issues, its advocates are very much seeking broad social acceptance because there isn't a rational case trans rights are being denied.
Worth noting that part of the reasoning (though not the official, legal reasoning) for the marriage equality decision coming down when it did was that the justices saw things had gotten to the point where a majority of people were OK with it. Marriage equality never would have happened without social acceptance (of course it wasn’t universal, but hardly anything is). The problem with the trans rights movement is that they seemed to skip over seeking social acceptance and went straight to demanding recognition, and also rewriting the rules for everyone’s gender while they were at it.
Yes, you made the point I was trying to make more eloquently. Very much the approach the far Left takes these days on all sorts of issues. We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas so just do what we say because we are right.
There are multiple bills passed and being promoted that deny trans rights:
1. Bills that withdraw Federal funding from hospitals that (incidentally) provide trans healthcare to minors *even if the parents and minors consent to treatment.*
2. Bills that make it impossible for trans people to list their adopted gender on passports or identity documents.
3. Bills that require prisons to disallow providing hormones to people who are transitioned and transitioning (even when prisoners can experience serious health effects from discontinuing hormones.)
You can say "yeah, this stuff isn't discrimination because I think you have no right to any of that stuff..." Which is exactly the same argument people used to use for same-sex marriage.
Not to mention getting kicked out of the military for entirely bogus reasons.
The military stuff is the absolute worst of this... I don't do pronouns and have been known to hang out with GCs but that particular EO fills me with boiling rage.
I strongly suspect a pro-trans movement focused on opposing 1-3 would get a different result. (Even add "you can't fire someone just for being trans" to the list.)
It's already illegal to fire people for being trans, and I suspect none of the more extreme anti trans stuff would be happening but for the overreach.
What "rights" are those issues related to, exactly?
This has been the final argument of every losing social movement of the last three centuries.
Losing? Social and political support for gender woo has been declining for years, due to lack of evidence.
I can't even fathom why anybody would think they have a right to 2. Where does that right derive from exactly?
Why does anyone have any right to any gender marking on their government documents? That’s the part that seems weird to me.
I think you can set aside gender entirely. Why would you have any right to change your government documents to things you want it to say? That's not how anything works.
Sincere question: Were these bills all in place in 2015, or did they arise after Obergefell?
https://translegislation.com/
Thanks. Looks like a massive surge in activity over the past 3-4 years.
That seems to support the argument that this is a backlash to advocacy efforts.
That wasn't the argument used at the time. Opponents said gay marraige will undermine the sanctity of traditonal marriage. The examples you cite don't strike me as universal.
Absolutely it was one of the arguments used at the time. Opponents had many arguments, a lot of them bad, many centering around how the right to marry the person you loved wasn’t actually a “right.” We’ve just chosen to memory hole that stuff because it embarrasses us.
Maybe. But there are plenty of gay activists who are not willing to ignore science and evidence and don't want to be part of the radical agenda.
These aren’t mutually exclusive. Activists will always want to advocate for something, even when it’s outside the scope of what people originally signed up for.
Maybe!
I reject that narrative framing on gay marriage then trans rights. The problem seems to be that actually trans people had all the rights of changing their gender markers on legal documents, getting surgery, having access to gendered facilities in all 50 states. Then the woke weenies broke it by putting Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of a magazine and making her woman of the year during their ultra virtue signaling phase. Then the next year you had the bathroom laws in North Carolina and Republican strategists learned this was a wedge issue and so then you had everyone have to spin up a fight for Trans rights. Throw some sports in there and you have the perfect tabloid ready moral panic that Americans have loved since the Salem witch trials.
But remember, NC backtracked on the bathroom law! In 2018, DeSantis in Florida said it wasn't worth discussing. We can debate why it reversed again a few years later. I personally think it's because activists kept pushing the envelope, and the sports issue is what finally caused it to break through with the average voter.
It doesn't matter. The point is trans people had everything and activist lefties screwed it up for them. Under the guide of visibility and whatever crap that they lost their brains on for the last 15 years.
Yes, I've noted here before that there's a very, VERY strong argument that rights for trans individuals actually reached a near maximum parity on *legal* status in 2020 with the SCOTUS ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) and that only a bit of mopping up relating to residual state law issues was needed, but TRAs have subsequently proceeded to run the entire thing into the ground.
Something I think about often is that Loving v Virginia is decided in 1967 but bare majority acceptance for interracial marriage only happens in the second Clinton Term (https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-new-high.aspx).
Idk if Trans rights will ever reach the near unanimity of support interracial marriage now enjoys, but fundamentally you are correct. After Bostock, Legal equity was basically enshrined federally, but activists wanted *social* equity which may never come.
Acceptance in the "It's fine (maybe!) if my kid does it" sense took a while. Loving v. Virginia though was about the LEGALITY of interracial marriage and that was more popular than having it in one's own family or doing it personally. There was no backlash to this decision.
There were “impeach Earl Warren” billboards literally across the entire south.
The issue mostly was that transgender activists thought the path to societal acceptance was a legal one because they simply couldn’t process that gay rights were socially accepted before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. It’s a big reason sports took such an outsized role-the fight to them was literally a fight about society viewing a transgender woman being just a “woman” in all respects, so any deviation from that ideal couldn’t be tolerated.
Right?!?!
You’re blaming “activist lefties” while also saying that Republicans deliberately worked to normalize anti-trans sentiment.
Knowing that that's what the right does come on. It's child's Play to develop a better strategy, but drumming up right-wing resistance helps you drum up left-wing funding as well. I get sick of this crap of look. We're blameless. Our techniques and bedside manner were correct if it wasn't for those rascally rabbits the Republicans it's their fault really. I can think a few examples where you have full rights and visibility. Screws it up for you and yet that was the left's plan visibility equality yada yada yada God I really dislike those people.
So to simplify: people had these rights and then they got taken away. And most likely we’ll spend a decade getting those rights back and having society completely changed into the bargain, because the kids absolutely fucking hate us for the way our generation reacted.
Well I don't know about kids hating us or a societal change bargain... But a certain amount of humility between factions with purity tests of hey, even if they were given carte blanche they would all fight about what right looks like. Should give them pause before they go tell somebody with a questioning or contrary Worldview what supposedly right looks like... Seems reasonable to me
Post Obergefell, there was a real temporary debate about shifting the focus to homeless gay youth, which is a real problem of gay kids being thrown out of their home or running away because they don't feel accepted. It was a major internal concern for a lot of gay rights groups that had been sidelined a bit for strategic reasons to focus on gay marriage, but then fell off the radar.
These groups depend on donors, that's their real customer. They don't want to "win" and then disestablish. No one wants to dismantle an organization they've built, especially one that has money and influence. Adjusting the project to keep donors on board makes perfect sense in that context.
I feel like the natural life cycle of a "group" is: problem is recognized and group is established >> people give money to the group the fight said problem >> problem is solved (???) >> people stop giving money because problem is solved >> group quietly disbands without funding.
Is there something compelling people to keep funding these groups? Is it because of social media outrage that no problem every really feels solved?
I think groups just evolve to try to stay relevant. And not just "the groups" but also businesses and other organizations. And to me, it's understandable. Most people don't want to disband something they worked hard to build and grow because circumstances change.
I don't want to overgeneralize because there are a lot of exceptions, but many gay people feel part of a larger queer community that includes trans people. They also understand what it's like to be discriminated against and hated for aspects that are fundamental to who you are. So the pivot makes sense.
Given the vicious attacks of the Trump administration on trans people, I think it's smart for gay groups to join them in solidarity.* They might have an honest fear that they'll be next. I mean, any chance that Hegseth wouldn't want to kick gay members out of the military next?
* Not on *everything* duh. Don't die on the hill of women's sports. Do die on the hill of letting transpeople who have served honorably stay in the military.
The problem on trans military service is that it's a pure social acceptance issue. In fact, to the best of my ability to determine, no SCOTUS ruling has *ever* held that a statute or constitutional provision protects people's ability to serve in the U.S. military notwithstanding any protected classification. All changes concerning having non-white, non-male, non-LGB, non-cis individuals serve has come through executive action, AFAICT. Whether that makes protesting by other groups on any given persecuted group's behalf more or less valuable, I don't know.
I myself don't care if what Hegseth did was legal; it was disgusting and un-American. It was deeply unfair.
This informs how I think Democrats should approach trans issues: it's all a question of fairness. Having transwomen who went through puberty as males play against cis women is unfair; they shouldn't be allowed to do it. Throwing people who served honorably and often courageously out of the military is unfair; that should never happen.* Taking away the most personal decisions parents can make about their children's future, with the advice of their personal doctors, is unfair and deeply un-American.
It's about fairness all the way down.
* Denying transpeople the chance to join the military is also unfair but at a much reduced level than kicking current service members out.
You can get discharged for depression and anxiety, it seems reasonable that dysphoria is disqualifying. Ditto being dependant on hormones in regards to military readiness. All that seems in line.
If you think their reasoning is not based on blind, ugly hatred of these folks but rather on concern for the good order of the forces there is not a goddam thing I can tell you to convince you otherwise.
It’s a political choice that’s pretty despicable.
I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there’s nothing “Queer” about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to other guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and (as my parents raised me) I’m proud to be — as an individual, simply and uniquely — myself.
I never signed up to “smash cisheteropatriarchy” in the name of some Brave New World.
Yes, “trans” people exist (oh, excuse me, it’s always trans “folk”) — but they’re not necessarily what they crack themselves up to be.
A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a disability. In such instances, dysphoria isn't a "queer" issue; it's a disability issue.
Beyond that limited purview, however, “gender” (as distinct from biological sex) is a social fiction — a performance, a matter of method acting — i.e., it's cosplay. Indeed, among gay males, drag is about REPUDIATING and RIDICULING the very concept of “gender” — not “affirming” it.
FWIW, I experience stereotypically “feminine” emotions -- but (in light of those feelings) I'm not about to cut off my dick to spite my crotch. Those feelings don’t make me a woman. In fact, reconciling such feelings with respect for my male body has been absolutely crucial to my self-acceptance as a gay male.
Have we forgotten what an insult it is to ask a gay male, "Are you the 'man' or the 'woman' in bed"
Meanwhile, the implicitly adversarial notion of “Queer” dilutes and jeopardizes the hard-won, widespread acceptance (and self-confidence, as individuals) that gay people have otherwise already gained.
This isn’t about “assimilation”; if anything, it’s about refusing to define one’s identity as an individual by assimilating to a collective identity as “queer.”
And none of this is about “hate.”
I'd love to see a "deep dive" on right leaning "groups" as well given I suspect a lot of the same dynamics are at play. The cult of personality around Trump has sort of scrambled a lot of normal political dynamics but I would have to believe a lot of the same dynamics ("mission creep", need to spend a war chest, finding that "new" cause so to continue to get donors to give you money) have to be at play.
Abortion is to me the big example here. Matt has noted that one consequence of the cult of personality around Trump is that he personally can just diffuse this issue and make it go away as a problem for the GOP. But those "pro life" groups are well funded and didn't just go away. I wonder for example how much their influence is at play with these draconian abortion bans in places like Texas and other red states. I know the "dream" of Texas going blue is maybe farther away than I even thought in 2024, but it's clearly not as right leaning as it was 20-25 years ago. Which means I feel pretty confident in saying that Texas' abortion restrictions are well to the right of the median voter and how much "pro life" groups ensure this dynamic holds in the state.
Matt's connections are within the Democratic party so he's going to have more "insider" knowledge than GOP. Unfortunately, a lot of the more honest right wingers are not really tied into the interior dynamics of GOP "groups" anymore (their honestly is basically why they are not part of the Trump camp), but there has to be someone Matt can maybe interview about this topic on the right (given Ross Douthat is BFF with JD, maybe Ross is a candidate?)
The only right-wing Group equivalents I can think of are pro-life groups and the NRA (and its various splinters). There certainly are other advocacy groups, but I think their influence is more through think tanks and direct donations rather than by skewing primary outcomes. Does anyone on the right think "gee, Grover Norquist likes this guy, I'd better vote for him?"
What happens then to pro-life activism when Trump leaves the scene? How long are they going to be satisfied with no action on a national ban when it's clear that the current "states rights" policy does very little to reduce abortions, given the large number of states where it is legal and the abortion pill?
Based on polling and the way the issue has played out even on pretty favorable ground for them, I'd say probably lose the Republican party some winnable elections.
Or pivot to pro-growth? That is better for supporters of gay rights supporters than trans rights.
An actual data based version of this argument would be great, because Matt keeps finding obscure "groups" he says are the deep state of the democratic party, but not showing how they're any different than other groups he'd prefer around abundance, market policies, education, or abortion. I personally don't see the connection between gay rights groups pivoted to advancing trans rights in any meaningful way, except that it became a novelty in the culture industry that gave way to being a boogieman in right-wing media.
LCV is hardly an "obscure group". They go back to 1970 and their scorecards rating Members of Congress are very well-known, are mentioned in ads, as were endorsements going back decades.
I doubt they’re that important though. I only look at endorsements for local elections - for national elections, I know.
You should read the article. He addresses the importance of the LCV's endorsements in Congressional primaries.
I did. I doubt specific endorsements even matter that much in primaries. Like we already know who the progressive is and who the blue dog is, losing one group endorsement is pretty marginal at best
I think you overrate the average voter’s familiarity with candidates’ stances. (Though i think you’re right that few care about “endorsed by Group ABC.”)
lol. Try again. Nobody knows about them.
You're just projecting your ignorance onto others.
No, I think you can look at the following comment "Everyone who is an insider knows about them"
*THERE AREN'T THAT MANY INSIDERS*
So you really might want to reconsider yourself, before saying other people are ignorant.
I worked in the CA State Legislature and this is hilariously false. Everyone who is an insider knows about them.
I agree that more reporting in needed to supplement some of Matt's writing. One of my frustrations is that there seems to be less coverage of the inner works of the dem party and leftist advocacy groups. So everyone is left guessing.
I don't blame him for that. He has a family.
Agree that its not Matt's job, but it probably should be someones. But I agree with what your implication that conflicting professional interests between journalists and other left leaning professions is part of why things are kept secret.
In his shoes, I would be more worried about the physical safety of himself and his family than about conflicting interests.
I agree, a deeper dive into the groups, trying to untangle them and figure out how they're related, would be very worthwhile. It's research that doesn't exist anywhere outside of maybe some political operative private files. Would love to see Matt tackle it to provide as public research. (Or at least public for anyone willing to pay his substack fee, LOL.)
You won't like the account name, but DataRepublican on X has a very detailed site showing exactly where all the various threads go (for *both* parties). You can enter any entity or individual name, and her algorithms trace who is connected to whom, and where the money goes. The information is all verifiable from outside sources once you know what to look for.
So, datarepublican.com?
The problem as I see it is that while there are democratic leaders in the house, senate, and statehouses, there isn’t a leader of the Democratic Party writ large. As a result, collective action to define the party is very difficult….maybe impossible. We ‘could’ have something like national primaries on who our choice to be speaker would be if we take back the house, as a forcing mechanism for party discipline. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not but absent something like it I don’t see a way to herd the cats.
If you look at the LCV Victory Fund's donors from 2024, the biggest individual donor was none other than Michael Bloomberg at $2.75M. Of course, most of the money for the Victory Fund comes from LCV proper ($48M total), and I guess LCV doesn't have to disclose its donors.
Is this what Andrew Sullivan has been blowing up about recently?
Part of the issue is that "Groups" don't think it's their job to prioritize electability. They view politics as a sort of free market (or alternatively, an adversarial system like our legal system) where the right outcome will emerge from all the actors pursuing their own self-interest. In LCV's mind, it's LCV's job to push maximally for conservation-related goals, and it's candidates' job to balance LCV's demands with other political goals including electability.
So, I tend to think that if you confronted LCV and said "this isn't good for electability," they might well respond, "of course it isn't." They just think the "system" will take care of it. So if you want to get them to change their behavior, it isn't enough to talk about electability. You have to get to the root of the matter and persuade them that the system they envision doesn't exist, and that unless every Group acts responsibly, takes electability into account, and pulls its own punches, everyone's going to go down in flames together.
"Part of the issue is that "Groups" don't think it's their job to prioritize electability. They view politics as a sort of free market (or alternatively, an adversarial system like our legal system) where the right outcome will emerge from all the actors pursuing their own self-interest"
Or as we call it in the vernacular, the Ta-Nehisi Coates.
TNC is advocating for what he believes (popular or not), but he isn’t pressuring elected officials to adopt his positions. He explicitly argued against that on Ezra’s podcast. That’s a pretty big difference!
His advocating for it de facto is pressuring elected officials. One of the good push backs from Ezra was telling him "I know you don't like to admit this, but you have a lot of influence". His, "I'm just a writer, it's just my job to write truth" is the same as the Groups saying, we're activists, it's just our job to advocate not to worry about electing"
I say that as a big fan of THC. I think it is his biggest flaw.
Sure everyone has influence, but I don’t think that means that no one should express an unpopular or electorally harmful option. (coughonebillionamericanscough)
In any case, I think TNC is pretty far from the canonical example of a groups influencer, as the person I was responding to seems to think.
What you're saying is true, but no matter how much influence a writer has, if they're not directly weighing in on elections then they're still at a much greater remove from the political arena than groups that explicitly weigh in and indicate that they view candidate A as better/worse than candidate B.
I think people should be allowed to say what they think and keep whatever political consultant hat they own in the closet.
I disagree with a lot of what TNC says but he sure has every right to say it. Democratic candidates have every right to either not address what he is saying or to oppose it as they see fit for their electoral prospects.
It's not about allowed or rights. It's about an honest reckoning with the consequences of his actions.
He disavows his own agency and any responsibility for the affect of his own actions.
Again, I'm a fan. But he speaks as if he has no control over what he writes nor does he acknowledge that there are consequences to it. He stops after "well I'm just a writer I write my truth" if he followed that up with "and if that means there are bad downstream consequences to people I claim to be concerned with, I don't give a crap even if I did help bring about those bad consequences" that would be a more choate statement.
But the point of this thread is that these advocacy groups take a similar position, "it's not my job to worry about elections, I'm compelled to advocate" and disavow any negative consequences, even to their own cause, for their failure to think or act beyond their own compulsions. As Smokey the Bear says "Only YOU can prevent wildfires."
Does TNC make formal endorsements of candidates?
These groups often do.
I think that it's a writer's job to tell what they see as the truth. If they start self-censoring, that leads to worse arguments, and they are not as convincing.
Definitely not his biggest flaw, but a big one
This seems to not understand how people work. If TNC is yelling at you, an elected official, that you are doing something bad (or less than good), there will be a bunch of people who yell with him because of his influence.
That's pressure you will feel!
edit - Pressure you will feel if you align with TNC. Republican's won't care, because they don't care about TNC or his supporters. But Democrats do, so they feel pressure.
Does TNC really yell at people? I’ve read him for decades and that’s not really his thing.
He "yelled" at Ezra Klein for writing the article about Charlie Kirk he didn't like!
He had a very friendly disagreement as a guest on his podcast?
What "group" does TNC have? How is that different than the abundance lobby, or the crypto lobby, or the NRA for that matter?
One mystery that Matt has pointed out is that the republican groups are much more chill and focused on electability, with exhibit A being their not freaking out when trump backed off of abortion maximalism during the campaign. I am sympathetic to this argument, but I wonder if anyone has studied this more systematically. It would be interesting to see if Rs groups questions were different, if R members responded to fewer questionnaires, etc.
Benefits of being a cult of personality. In 2016, they weren't so chill about Trump taking it easy on gay rights
I think it mainly has to do with the fact that conservatism is at root hierarchical, while progressivism is at root egalitarian. The Groups have a bias toward public rabble-rousing because that's in their DNA. When you're doing your advocacy in public, it's hard to be strategic in a way that could be interpreted as not fully representing your followers. Conservatives are not like that. They have much more of a natural tendency to defer to leadership decisions because that's in *their* DNA.
IT has been observed by others, I think Silver a few weeks or month ago? I forget, that online the MAGA right is much much more chill about ideological consistency and orthodoxy than the online Left relative to overall adherence - their orientations being I think (Silver?) characterized as more style and feeling oriented than ideology in a heavily intellecutalized manner.
The one exception is tax cuts. The only time they hold Republican’s feet to the fire is if there’s any hint on raising taxes on wealthy people or corporations. It’s the #1 dogma in the Republican Party.
Honestly, I think it’s that winning is an important *value* for Republicans. Look at Trump: his popularity in the GOP was very much tied to both winning the primary and then sealed by winning the 2016 election. The whole cult of personality was maybe 20-30% of Republicans until he won.
Winning is important to Republicans in a way it’s simply not to Democrats.
The republic mental makeup has much more of a “tote the line”, so easier to get them aligned…
The Republicans are organized into a much more centralized, top-down party structure where the boundaries were clearer (before Trumpism) between the Party and the para-party of Groups.
But they aren’t. If they wanted to say their job is to maximally push for conservation goals and actually did that they’d abandon the everything bagel elements of their program. They have explicitly decided their way to a majority is in coalition and “solidarity” with unions and racial justice groups and the rest of the progressive ecosystem and thus they are targeting their program to that and not simply pushing for conservation goals.
I wish I could remember the show or specific person’s name, but on my local NPR station I remember an interview with a guy who got really invested in addressing climate and discovered “the groups” have all these positions that are fully counter-productive. Namely opposing carbon capture research, but MattY listed them all in this post.
I do not agree with this analysis. A maximalist philosophy does not preclude strategic alliances or logrolling.
Well sure. But then they can't make those strategic choices and then complain that people who point out that it isn't working are too focused on electoral strategy and that all they're doing is prioritizing conservation. Which is Matt's point. Their strategy failed and they've learned nothing
I do not understand why this is supposed to be a counterpoint to anything I've said. All I've said is that the Groups think the right way for them to do politics is to be maximalist, and that the fact that they sometimes team up with other Groups is in no way inconsistent with that. I obviously do not think their approach is wise.
it seems like an incoherent philosophy/strategy. one that wants all the correct things but cannot implement it ever ... is vacuous at best, no?
it's scooby-doo level politics. damn it, we could have had utopia if not for these meddling palingenetic ultranationalists!
I kind of wonder if across the board there's a staffing problem where other potential employers end up employing what would be the optimal employee of a lot of these groups: increasingly the private sector for people focused on renewable energy; public defender officers, Big Law, and (until recently) DOJ for people focused on civil rights issues, etc. The people who are left for a lot of NGOs, particularly second-tier NGOs, are these days people who used to have Tumblr accounts circa 2014.
Broadly agree, but IMO the "groups" don't prioritize electability or intellectual/policy coherence because their job is to prioritize the interests of their primary "customer" - donors. The groups are also in competition with each other for those donor dollars, and this is especially true in the environmental space, where numerous groups vie for funding. Compromising with reality or logic, rather than adhering to absolutism, will cause those dollars to be allocated to a different group.
I looked up LCV's numbers, and this strategy has worked well for them. They've gone from ~$38 million in donations in the 2016 election year to ~$68 million in 2023. Unfortunately, 2024 numbers aren't available because the 990 isn't published.
Incentives....
I agree that that's part of the explanation.
Yea I think that's a decent way to describe them doing a version of completely normal politics but they've optimized on being adversarial/escalation of conflict and less on strategically thinking about where their push can help the most if they're explicitly delving into electoral politics.
Partially this is because everyone in the conservation/environmental nonprofit space has been swallowed up by the borg of ur-leftist jargon and racial justice intersectional frameworks that have also taken over virtually every other area of progressive advocacy.
It’s been this way ever since Dave Foreman lost the internal battle within Earth First! and David Brower became left-pilled in the ‘80s.
how is it that people cannot simply do the (seemingly obvious) next logical/rhetorical step ... and point out the chasm between the goal (maximal intersectional fairness) and the status quo ... and then propose that famous first step that's so integral to every fucking journey?
sure, sure, emotionally shunted social weirdos might fall into the "ends only, no means" game. (and then we can debate whether it's better or worse than the "utopistic mythical never-was end, any means" crowd.)
I agree with this 90%, but what about the random union and racial justice prithees from the LCV?
I would like to read a better takedown of the groups, while also addressing the public/private sector aspect of liberalism that allows them to have such influence. When being in government isn't exactly a glamorous job, but using connections made in government to become a lobbyist is a rather lucrative lifestyle, how does one square the circle? When you have weak political parties and candidates don't have unified fronts or positions on these issues, there's inherent incentive to have NGOs that coordinate with politicians in multiple states, or multiple terms, or if you're something like AIPAC or the NRA or Corn Refiners Association, you want to have relationships with whoever in which ever party will pick up the phone.
Probably need more politicians being petty and punishing groups for not backing them. For example, elevating a competitor in the space who was willing to endorse them.
Kind of a reverse endorsement of a group by a politician.
Absolutely right. Part of why I have stopped contributing to any environmental pressure groups. They do more harm than good.
I like your line on adversarial system. I think too many people in the groups are lawyers (or think like them)…
Do they actually believe it isn't good for electability? With the advent of hyper-specific issue polling and the ability of anyone with an internet connection to do "statistical analysis," it's almost impossible to not make an argument, convincing or not, that your position is the winning electability one.
While I feel like LGBTQ+ and racial justice groups are probably the least helpful electorally, it seems like labor groups are on the wrong side of like every single issue.
(Some may say they’re good on housing but northeastern social conservatives are like the NIMBYist people on planet earth so I’m skeptical.)
Labor groups want to increase labor inputs for every task and wages.
“Labor” in many areas is just shorthand for teachers, nurses, and state workers.
Rhode Island passed an asinine assault weapons ban earlier this year that was shoved down voters throats via bullying from Democratic state party leaders and out-of-state activists from Bloomberg funded groups.
Activists commissioned a poll of local AFL-CIO workers that showed ~50-60% approval of the AWB among its members as a way of giving it some kind of blue collar endorsement, but failed to mention that like half of the AFL CIO in RI represents teachers and nurses who were already “captured” by the activist messaging anyway.
Regardless, they never consider that barely passing a controversial measure with a 50-60% approval is not really a big picture “win” when it mobilizes your opponents to such an extent.
There were over 2,000 people who stayed up until 2 am to speak out against this ban - a significant chunk of them surely were registered Democrats. This matters in a state that just had its lowest D+ margin win since 1988 and where 50,000 swing votes can turn the state red.
There is no reason for a school teacher or a Teamster to oppose a pro-growth agenda. It's the leaders that are the problem.
A pro-growth agenda would likely be skeptical of excessive government spending (kinda bad for school teachers) and would be all-in on automation (very bad for teamsters)
I don't think that's right on school teachers, exactly. Pro-growth would probably privilege education spending over say income transfers to the elderly. And if pro-growth works, government spending can grow without growing or somewhat trailing growth of the economy.
yeah it's tenuous. teachers' concerns are pretty orthogonal to growth concerns
Good comment!
It would be skeptical of deficits > public investment. It is shifts from investment to consumption that is the problem for growth.
Automation is not a policy.
It seems to me, just from my anacedotal experience talking with teachers is that a lot of them oppose a pro-growth agenda on moral grounds. I don’t think it’s a deeply held position, but instead just a surface level vibe. Mines are bad, farms are bad, logging is bad, etc. GMOs also bad, so like if not for negative partisanship they might be pretty on board with a lot of MAHA too.
I can see that, but how different are teacher/nurses/other union members from the general populace?
I would guess teachers differences compared with the general population could be attributed to that they have masters degrees and an unbelievable exposure to families and children who “slip through the cracks” and get pretty abused by “the system.” I don’t have much exposure to nurses or non-college union members, so no comment there.
In my home town of Auckland, New Zealand, the incumbent mayor currently campaigning for re-election, Wayne Brown, has a unique solution for The Groups: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/574806/f-off-auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-tells-auckland-ratepayers-alliance
Brown's "Fuck Off" only gets better when you read the tantrum of a response given by the Ratepayers alliance. I think jamming your finger in the groups eye (figuratively of course) could be a good signalling mechanism to coordinate the Democratic reform movement. Adherence only to the Common Sense Democratic Manifesto, no pledges to groups.
Heh my first thought on this line of thought (after reading Matts article and prior to clicking into the comments) was unless the groups are really not savvy, disagreement with them doesn't really get you much and could just give them publicity as defenders of justice telling truth to power (if reporters bite on that). But maybe the issue is something the politician wants to raise saliance of but probably not?
I think the case we'd like to make is that the groups have the situation backwards. They need to be useful to politicians to get things they need. They think politicians need to be useful to them (often in dogmatic and unproductive ways that brook no tradeoffs) to earn their support. In a multiparty system that would work fine, but in a two party system you know who is better for you and who isn't. Obama (really Rahm Emmanuel) did a good job of this. I think there's a SB Post about it calling the veal pen. We need to retvrn to the veal pen.
Yes, interesting suggeston, pratical.
The LCV are poor coalition partners because they don’t recognize tradeoffs. Their agenda excites 25–30 percent of voters and offends more than it attracts, yet they behave as if ideological purity can substitute for majorities. As between groups that understand the importance of prosperity and the inevitability of tradeoffs, and those that don’t, I prefer the former. That’s why Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans—whatever their flaws—make better partners than green groups whose politics are indifferent to cost, practicality, or the durability of public consent.
Well they WOULD make better coalition partners if they didn't tend to in fact support anti-growth policies like trade and immigration restrictions and damn-the deficits- tax reduction.
Given that you need a majority to govern, you need either the chamber of commerce or the greens. Very hard to please both. I share more values with the chamber of commerce.
Interesting. We share a lot of our political leanings, but I have more in common with the greens.
I sort of have the green aesthetic. I like the outdoors and smallish houses, and I dislike big trucks. I’m totally ok avoiding material excess. However, my idea of simplicity is still a ridiculously high material standard in historical terms and I want more working stiffs to enjoy something close to what I do.
Sure thing. I think we have very similar views on abundance, urbanism, and Democratic Party policy. I’m a moderate with an economics degree, so most of what Matt says (and what you espouse) is right up my alley.
But moderates typically hold heterogenous policy positions, and I am no exception. I hold extremely strong environmentalist views on public lands and wilderness protections. I’m practically Ed Abbey when it comes to conservation.
Where my deep and abiding frustration with modern green orgs comes from is their insistence on intersectional leftism and their inability to be pragmatic. If the Wilderness Society wants to minimize the amount of land area that is impacted by human development, that’s their prerogative (and that’s something I agree with! It’s a strongly held preference of mine), but they refuse to acknowledge that the logical implications of that preference should be to advocate for nuclear power and increased urban housing density. Instead, they (and other environmental groups) push for a package of mutually inharmonious policies without any analysis of tradeoffs.
As for the intersectional leftism point, the everything-bagel homogenization of left-nonprofit culture has been a massive detriment to these orgs, because it also means they end up framing all of their activism in maximally weird and unpopular ways. You’re never going to reach the huge constituency of pro-public-lands moderates by harping on gas vehicle bans, degrowth, and “environmental justice.”
Are you pro conservation to the point you would block new solar installations? Or is nuclear power your work around for that
Maybe their stated values but not as instantiated in willy-nilly trade restrictions, high deficits, and restrictions of immigration of high income potential immigrants and disinterest in land use regulation and building code reforms.
Well I think analytically
1. To what extent do Green Left Groups lead to new votes in electoral geographies that are needed (or to what extent do you pile up excess votes in restricted geographies, e.g. urbane urban-to-suburban while missing votes on the margin in areas where the added vote on the margin tips result)
2. To what extent do the Groups drive Everything Bagelism that leads again to lost votes on the margins in key geographies wehre the marginal vote makes the difference between Win or Lose.
The thing is these sorts of questionnaires have always existing it’s just the politicians were much better at just ignoring the questions they didn’t want to answer or just saying no. And Democrats on the Hill still do ignore the groups all the time on things when they don’t agree with them (as they should). What we really need is elected officials to have a bit more courage/leadership on these sorts of these things. If you look at the infamous ACLU questionnaire for instance, as opposed to Kamala Harris, Joe Biden just never filled it out. What we need is candidates and elected officials to look at these things both from the perspective of what’s good for their state/district but also just to consider overall which of these policy ideas is good/bad. Because it wasn’t always the culture you just said yes to everything on such a questionnaire (and nor were you expected).
Yes, Biden refused to fill it out. It's not clear that doing so helped him. He was way down in the polls until the existential threat of a Bernie victory led forces in the party to pull him to the top.
And meanwhile recall that the Sunrise Movement gave his climate platform an F-minus. Moderation and centrism just weren't a winning ticket in 2020 until the cold-bath-omg-it's-Bernie caused enough people to wake up.
An "F-minus"?? That should be reserved for nuclear winters.
If moderation and centrism weren't a winning ticket in 2020, there never would've been a "cold-bath-omg-it's-Bernie" moment because Bernie would have had enough support to win despite moderates/centrists rallying around a candidate.
This was going to be my question, is what’s changed? Are the questionnaires new, are the questions different, or is the level of “yes”-ing greater than before? Or some combination?
My suspicions are that it's mostly a combination of: (1) topics are much more diverse than they used to be (e.g., probably very few, if any, environmental groups were asking about Palestine or LGBTQ issues in the 1990s) due to intersectionality/omnicause, and (2) the decline in the ability of American political parties in the last 15 years so to protect incumbents from primary challengers.
IMO, point #1 also explains why this appears to be a MUCH bigger problem for Democrats than for Republicans -- conservative advocacy groups seem to be far more content to just push their own specific topics. Like, I'm still a registered Republican myself, so I get carpetbombed each election cycle by mailings from pro-life groups, anti-gun control groups, pro-Israel groups, etc., but none of them do "omnicause" messaging. (E.g., As far as I can recall, Gun Owners of America, unofficial motto: "The NRA is a bunch of limp-wristed, panty-waisted, bleeding-heart liberals," has only ever sent anything ranting about gun rights. They don't mention drag queen story hour or partial birth abortion, let alone anything that might genuinely be controversial among conservatives at large like support for/opposition to Ukrainian defense spending.)
Probably social media. I think so much of the dysfunction of the dems is downstream of getting yelled at on twitter for years.
My sense is that the groups have pushed further left in their demands but its also the case that groups have always asked for unrealistic or politically risky things. I think the level of candidates and elected officials is also yes though by a good amount and there's alot more of the sense of people not wanting people to mad at them. Whereas before there was this. And I think there's also an element that the 2016 and 2020 primaries were a big part of that shift as has been the election of Trump (because there's a certain mentality of if Trump can get away with what we gets away with why can't we). Groups like LCV still should think through how best to effective and what not but you need more elected officials and candidates just being willing to say no and live with people being mad at them (because they'll get over it).
Either they say it's not their role to be political consultants but instead argue for their principals or they truly believe that signing onto their agenda is the way to popularity.
I think more people voting in primaries is a big factor. I don't have the numbers but my impression is that went way way up with the Bernie-Hillary slap fight & then never came down (I caucused for Dean in 2004 and there were like 9 of us for the whole urban precinct; fast forward to 2016 and it's 200 packed in a gym). And a lot of these newcomers are not well informed and/or think pragmatism is for suckers. That's what gives The Groups their power.
Upstream of that is probably news media incentives to sensationalize primary campaigns, which used to be seen as arcane and boring and only interesting to nerds & other obsessives.
Half the time when they are filled out, they are filled out by a staffer who is already overworked on other things. Why not just ignore a lot of them?
Cause they often come with a PAC check when you do get a group endorsement. And not every questionnaire is necessarily problematic.
I know it's just an aside at the end, but every time the mercury restrictions come up, I have to push back. I actually read the EPA report from a few years ago justifying the rule and found the causal chain of evidence very weak. Essentially it was that a tiny additional amount of mercury was going to get into the soil, leach into the freshwater, be taken up by fish, be eaten by mostly poor pregnant women who catch their own, and cause a decrease in the IQ of their babies by a few thousandths of a point. These infinitesimally lower-IQ kids would grow up and be worse at their jobs, thus lowering their economic value. It was only by aggregating these otherwise imperceptible effects over thousands of people that they could claim with a straight face that the economic cost of the rule was less than the impact of the pollution. Now maybe you say "we're a rich country and we shouldn't have to deal with any mercury getting into the environment, even if the risk is practically nil", and I would consider that argument. But if this is the logic used for one rule imposed, how many others are on shaky foundations?
Kudos to Matt for finding a way to substantiate his critique of the groups! David Shor observes that politics is locked in a dynamic between change-averse, not-well-informed (older) voters and crusading, hyper-attentive (younger) political activists. The Groups look like a variant of this system:
- 25 y.o. with a degree in critical studies and very left-wing perspectives gets a staff job at LCV to pursue degrowth, free Palestine, etc.
- 75 y.o. with a daily NPR habit writes LCV a check "for the environment" and feels good about it
- per today's column, 60 y.o. Congressperson eying the 82 y.o. Senator in their state who might retire knows that giving the "right" answers on the LCV questionnaire is the way to keep both the 25 y.o. and 75 y.o. happy
No one is in charge. Everyone is more committed to their narrow goals that to the whole.
I don't think this is true. 18-25 y.o. non-college educated men are not at all like the block you describe, and they are not a tiny block.
I suspect that over the last 3-5 years even the college educated men have started leaning a lot more republican. The tech bros of 2016 may have been democrats, but the ones in 2026 are not.
The demographic phenomenon you describe is real and important to modern politics, but it is distinct from the demographic phenomenon I describe. In other words, the 25 year-old staffer for LCV is not the 25-year-old Maga tech bro
I think the 25 y.o. critical studies major in this example is much more likely to be a woman than a man.
Err yes, but the 25 y.o. *Republican* staffer is the right-wing version of the listed 25 y.o.
This is just a long-winded way of saying get ready for President Vance, because Democrats and their supporters are going to get greedy again.
We only get President Vance if he inherits the seat. It’s very likely 2028 will be another back swing. The only thing a Democratic Party in control needs to do is curtail the excesses of progressives again and actually get shit built.
Dems are behaving more sanely now than we were in 2017 I think. And in 2018 we really got our shit together and ran pragmatic candidates and won bigly.
No guarantee that the same thing occurs next year of course, but it's not like we're definitely screwed
After the 2010 midterms that’s exactly the same bet I’d have made for Republicans. They didn’t learn their lesson, went all in with entitlement reform, and here we are. I am much more pessimistic.
I strongly suspect Vance has no chance unless he inherits the seat... This is unrelated to a Republican winning. When all else fails you can just try to steal the election since there doesn't seem to be any reason not to.
I honestly don't get this kind of comment, and I see such sentiments frequently. I believe people are letting their dislike of Vance get in the way of reasoning.
No sitting Republican Vice President has ever lost a nomination bid. It's never happened. And on the Dem side it hasn't happened in 75 years.
At some point the streak will be broken. Maybe even in 2028! I absolutely am NOT saying Vance has a guarantee. But he's probably a fairly heavy early favorite for the 2028 nomination, and if he wins, he surely has a non-trivial shot at winning the general election.
So, George HW Bush won the presidency after winning the nomination. But it's actually incredibly rare for a vice president to win the presidency right after the president they serve terms out. Most vice presidents who served immediately after the president they served got there because their president died, so they ran for re-election rather than succession. Biden and Nixon both had gaps between their vice-presidential terms and their presidencies. I'd also note that a lot of vice presidents that wouldn't have won the nomination haven't bothered to run. Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle come to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
>But it's actually incredibly rare for a vice president to win the presidency right after the president they serve terms out.<
I don't know about "incredibly" rare. The sample size of sitting vice presidents who have attempted to run for the presidency isn't that large. And again, they virtually always succeed in the nomination quest.
So we're mostly talking about failure to win the general election, BUT most of those attempts (Nixon 1960, Humphrey 1968, etc) have been after two term administrations, and that won't be a factor in 2028. IOW, structurally, the 2028 GOP nominee will have it a bit easier (all else equal) than otherwise. And, let's face it, the razor-sharp margins we've been seeing in recent cycles suggest, that, as long as this dynamic *persists, EITHER the Democratic or Republican nominee has a pretty fair chance of winning the general election. Their vote share floors are high!
*Provided we continue to have free and fair elections, at some point we'll surely exit this dynamic and have a blowout. And perhaps public disgust at MAGA/GOP will do it 2028. Maybe! But we really can't count on that.
And let's put it this way: which individual in the country has the single greatest odds of taking the oath of office in January, 2029? Even taking away the possibility he succeeds the current POTUS if the latter dies in office, that person is surely J.D. Vance. I give him about 35% odds of becoming POTUS because he's got about a 70% chance of taking the nomination, and the eventual nominee (until we get closer to the election and can feel confident otherwise) has about a 50% chance of winning the general election. There's no other person in either party we can say that about.
Where can I go to see the alternative strategy? Give me an example of an advocacy group that’s “doing this right” and not a book or some blog posts.
Maybe the California YIMBY groups are the closest? Otherwise I can’t think of any, instead there are some candidates who are centrist.
The Federalist society?
The alternative strategy is to not listen to advocacy groups.
Sure. Yes. Let’s go with the thing we have no control over and can’t enforce, and not the thing we’re complaining about because it works.
Works for who?
For the people who deploy advocacy groups on issues they care about. Obviously that’s not going to work for abundance centrists because they have no such groups.
How's that working out for them right now? Are LCV's donors and staffers getting what they want from the current government?
It should be standard practice to share these questionnaires, and candidates’ responses to them, publicly. The groups should own their policy commitments, and the candidates should own their answers. If they can’t, then there’s a problem with the questions.
Reading candidates' short paragraph answers to a questionnaire is my favorite way to get informed before a primary election, since there are so many candidates to sift through. But yes/no checklist questions are reductive, and yes/no endorsements are even more reductive still.
Alas, only a tiny minority of voters are like you.
I mean, it is standard practice? Usually, it goes into the oppo research, like Harris' ACLU one.
I expect it's not that answers aren't public, it's that most voters will only every see
1. (if left-leaning) the group's endorsement or non-endorsement of a candidate
2. (if right-leaning) the group's stupidest proposals juxtaposed with an endorsement (either the group's endorsement of the candidate, or the candidate's endorsement of said stupid proposals)
(because the way I see it, "leaning" left or right is usually a consequence of which media a voter consumes.)
A number of years ago, almost a decade now, while I was working on the Hill LCV was issuing its scorecard and a number of stalwart safe seat Democrats were dinged, one vote away from a perfect score, because of a vote on delaying reforms to the nationwide flood insurance program. Members were angry, convinced that LCV had failed to properly communicate to offices that the vote would be on the scorecard. Some also argued that LCV was straying into issue space that was outside conservation. Honestly it was probably a byproduct of House offices being so siloed between issue areas that the financial services staffer in an office wasn't realizing that actually the federal subsidy to developing in flood prone areas had a conservation side.
But the end result was LCV staff were yelled at and the process was modified to be super explicit when a potential key vote was coming up.
I think it's interesting to contrast this episode, where LCV was engaged on something that while not core to environmentalism had clear environmental impacts but didn't have a strong way to push back when yelled, versus more recent episodes over the years were LCV has key voted more broadly liberal issue area votes, like campaign finance reform. LCV is part of the everything bagel coalition backing up other liberal causes, covering its ass as much as possible. Nowadays when LCV key votes something outside of the core environmental space, they are doing so to be good partners with other groups.
I superlike™️ this comment. My (even longer!) experience is the same wrt this evolution. Groups used to compete with each other for Top Group, now they’re just a blob
One of the big problems is that in local races, endorsements are often the only data available on a local candidate's issue positions. When local news doesn't cover a position that is actually on the ballot, a candidate sending back a questionnaire is the only thing you can find after a quick Google search, which is what voters will be doing in the voting booth when they find they have to vote for somebody for a local position they've never heard of.
This is why I love the League of Women Voters. The vote411.org website is where I get almost all my information about local candidates. But almost no one knows about this kind of resource.
One technique that is underutilized, even after Eddie Murphy demonstrated it in "The Distinguished Gentleman", is running a candidate with a name that can be confused for a previously well known politician.
https://youtu.be/uO1B5yaoJyU
The influence of any particular interest group can be much reduced.
Also, the Randall Munroe (xkcd) book, "How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems," has a chapter titled, "How to Win an Election," which specifically mentions that as a strategy using the real-world example of "Bob Casey" in Pennsylvania.
Not sure how well that would have worked in that specific case considering that Bob Casey lost reelection last year and was one of the most underperforming dem candidates on the ballot then 😬
The book was written pre-2024. :-P The author's point, in any event, is not rebutted by that result. As he documents in the book, at least five different individuals all named "Bob Casey" have run for public office in Pennsylvania since the 1970s and there's a decent argument that at least a couple of those individuals have substantially overperformed what would have been expected from (1) their own individual prior accomplishments and/or (2) what they spent on their campaign.
On the other hand: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v6QF-sRdU9g
Noah Millman makes an interesting case against your diagnosis, showing through data quite convincingly that the issue are Dem voters, not the donors or the groups: https://open.substack.com/pub/gideons/p/the-democrats-have-met-the-enemy?r=4j3ri7&utm_medium=ios
It's an interesting piece for sure, but that two-dimensional plot doesn't leave a lot of room for the nuance of individual issues, which is the drum Matt's been banging over the last year or more. Yes, most D voters want to see action on climate change and if you ask them, they'll tell you that. But what specific action? And what are you willing to sacrifice? That's where the consensus breaks down.
I agree, I found that argument to be unpersuasive. Sure, 50% of Democrats might say they want M4All or a Green New Deal, but those poll questions are never asking voters about the trade offs. There's a reason why Vermont doesn't have Medicare For All. There's a reason why Washington doesn't have a 100% green economy.
Those polling questions are also just “yes/no” questions. They’re not presenting partisan pro/con arguments. When you do that support drops a lot.
And I think a lot of elected officials do not know this! They're trying to read the temperature of the public, a nice organization with a nice cause comes in their office with a good poll. And they're very liberal staffers tell them to believe.
According to issue polls, voters support increased spending, lower taxes, and balanced budget amendments.
The more I read about the inner workings of the political world, the less I understand why anyone would willingly choose to make their career in that ecosystem. It seems so very ... depressing.
Now you know why it's so screwed up, it's because most sane people think the same as you do.
There was a while back when I was hearing a bit about the idea of doing democracy by using a random sample of the population to come up with legislation instead of electing people, and one of the benefits that I saw to that system is that it would take the inputs of people who would never want to run for elected office. Most of the population is like this, so the act of elections is inherently a bit unrepresentative.
Never underestimate sincere/genuine commitment and belief in doing policy!
These sorts of polls aren't designed to accurately assess public opinion, they're designed to prove that X is popular regardless of whether X is actually popular.
Yes, this is my drumbeat of the Tony Blair video about why single issue polling is unreliable, the 5 second, 30 second and 3 minute conversation about the same issue may change the results you would get from the poll.
Never mind that your candidate's positions may poll well, but everything put together the candidate doesn't do that well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPqc9xEqRTY
He’s probably oversimplifying, it depends on the issue. On immigration sure Democratic primary voters are further left than Republican primary voters are right. Different dynamic on healthcare.
I think actually immigration and healthcare crystallize Mailman’s point perfectly. On Ds best issue (healthcare), R voters are closer to the centrist position compared to how far D voters are to the centrist position on Rs best issue (immigration).
Wait so do you think R voters are more right wing on healthcare than Ds are left on healthcare? IMO it is more like even R voters are more in the center on healthcare but R electeds are more right wing, which is what gives Rs space to move to the center since their own voters are closer to the center than them, especially on healthcare.
'Do you want a Green New Deal?'
Yes
'Do you want a Green New Deal if you aren't allowed to buy a big truck and have to settle for a EuroJap shitbox instead?'
No
First of all the only Japanese shitboxes on the market are Nissan Sentras and Mitsubishi Mirages. Stellantis pulled their European shitboxes from the market and trying to sell Fiats under the Dodge or Jeep label.
While the comment has an odor of 1975 about it, if you leave aside the phrasing, it does correctly capture reaction
As in abstractly for X but if X is perceived as either costing you OR making you have to "settle" for something you perceive negatively, not supported.
Too many people are allowed to take out mortgages for cars they shouldn’t be able to afford.
Bring back the shitbox!
What precisely is the problem with Japanese trucks? I'm genuinely curious. I've never owned a truck (they are expensive and require large parking spaces), so I don't have a lot of experience telling the difference between the various models. What's wrong with them? Genuinely curious.
He's presumably talking about small cars that Americans don't like and American companies don't build, rather than large Japanese trucks built for the US market which compete quite well in their segments.
Oh, that wasn't clear. I know a lot of people who like their Toyota Tacomas. Thanks for clarifying.
People who actually have to use their pickup trucks as pickup trucks love Japanese trucks, they're very functional. But Americans mostly use trucks as giant sedans with decorative trucks beds, and so they want Ford F150s or Chevy Silvarados.
I’ve come to think that poll questions on these issues aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
Even if they perfectly captured voters attitudes on a particular issue, they are one dimensional and don’t capture intensity or prioritization.
Gift link to a relevant NYT piece about gun control: when actual issues were put on state referendums, they performed much worse than the polling would suggest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/upshot/gun-control-polling-votes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rU8.clYx.FP4X4ylmf2EJ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I consider issue-based polls to be mostly worthless because it's too easy for the polltaker to intentionally word the question to produce whatever result they want.
The only reason I say "mostly" rather than "completely" is that issue polls, when used properly, can still be used to measure trends, since, when the same question is repeated, whatever bias exists in the wording will be exactly the same each time. But, that's about it.
I agree - I view it similarly.
I can only speak to my area of focus (gun policy). The polling is atrocious.
Gallup poll still asks people whether or not they would favor a ban on all handguns. I have no clue why. They’ve been asking that question since the 70s (which was probably the last time that idea was ever seriously considered).
At its core policy-level, most major gun control debate is about quibbling over statutory definitions and the power vested to bureaucracies.
But all gun control polls gauge the favorability of shorthand buzzwords like “do you support ‘universal background checks?’” That is a clever activist shorthand that has a clear positive bias (background checks are good, more background checks are better).
Most people don’t know how background checks work in their current form, or what’s at stake when we talk about “universal background checks.”
Or entirely unintentionally from pollster staff blindspots.
MEasuring trends against a standard set of phrasing is useful in having sense of Like-to-Like comparison of change of attitude but getting real sense pulling-vote-lever [or push vote buttom] support, quite dubious.
Yes, this is my drumbeat of the Tony Blair video about why single issue polling is unreliable, the 5 second, 30 second and 3 minute conversation about the same issue may change the results you would get from the poll.
Never mind that your candidate's positions may poll well, but everything put together the candidate doesn't do that well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPqc9xEqRTY
But do you doubt the main point that in order capture the swing voters they need, Ds have to reach further from their own center than Rs do? And that D voters have more liberal and ideologically cohesive than the R voters are conservative?
Nate Cohn in his piece about Zohran made a similar point about how liberal the Dem base has become even since 2016, which opens an opportunity for left insurgencies but creates problems in generals and swing states.
Washington has the highest gas prices of the lower 48 states and I think that's intentional; the government wants carbon pricing to make the lives of exurban people in WA more expensive so they will change. Today's piece by Yglesias is waiting for a powerful politician to successfully subordinate these ideological activists, similar to what happened in the GOP circa 2015. It might work!
They had a ballot proposition to get rid of their cap and trade program and it lost.
Yes I'm quite painfully aware from working with people on that.
I was surprised, I thought it'd get the boot.
The cap and trade bill was only responsible for a small portion of the overall gas price. Even if it were repealed, gas prices would still be among the highest in the country, anyway. Repealing it would have also blown a hole in numerous state and local budgets, as funding for all of the projects financed by the cap and trade bill would have suddenly disappeared.
There probably are people who would rather you trade in your Mastercraft boat and F250 for a Subaru Crosstrek and a sea kayak. That said, I used to live in Seattle and volunteered for ST3. IMO the animosity towards exurban people stems from a very loud and overrepresented group of bicycle urbanists who are extremely unpleasant and aggressive online. They’re their own cause’s worst enemy IMO.
While there are fewer of us every day, I lived through Tim Eyman era austerity in WA and it was bad IMO. The freeway between Woodinville and Monroe got stopped and still isn’t finished due to those tax cuts. The higher gas taxes, higher sales taxes, more tolls, more parking fees, 3x in state tuition, 3x ferry fares, etc. backfill only some of the loses of MVET and property tax revenue.
Isn’t the reason Vermont doesn’t have M4A more (lack of) federalism rather than ideology? Like, doing M4A by increasing taxes balanced out by your employer not having to pay your premiums is reasonable enough, but doing that within a framework where most health funding is federal and presumes employer health care as the default is hard.
Step (1): influential centrists bloggers learn a lot more about climate change and energy transition issues than they currently do.
Step (2): some of these folks form actual advocacy groups (or get involved with them) that have a targeted plan for speeding up the energy transition in an affordability-friendly way.
I have yet to see any details other than “just get rid of some laws” that really fit the bill for either of these steps. “Abundance” is incredibly vague on the details, particularly the details of how you remove environmental restrictions specifically for new energy construction. What’s the Greenpeace/MoveOn-style pro-growth environmental advocacy group I can look into for these issues after reading one of Matt’s posts? Does it even exist?
As a general matter what the Abundance talk has been about is regulatory simplification, streamlining and general making things easier - getting into gory details on permits etc is likely a loser, talking "cutting red-tape, rationalising regulation to be small business friendly, help get things Done, make America Build Again" is good sloganeering counter to MAGA type slogans
Over definition and over-explaining is very much a professional class disease.
That’s why I don’t take abundance that seriously. Doing things in politics means getting into details. If you can’t get down to brass tacks because the argument becomes a turkey at that level, then you don’t want to put a lot of structural load onto that movement because it’s screwed.
I would add as both personally and as my professional role I see quite the good opportunity for the broad approach. Regulatory streamlining and simplication (rather than branding it as deregulation), red-tape cutting are outside of Lefty-Left administrative class broadly popular concepts, while at same time real needs as demonstrated by the failures of past four years in physical assets build outs. A pitch that has an orientation to the Ordinary Joes, ordinary business - not engaging in Marxist coded and inflected anti-oligarchs speech - for federal level code reform is at least something national party has reasonable chances on. And could be sold to “normies” - non-Dems overall, as like myself who has never been a D and while I do stratetically vote D it’s often with great reluctance and distrust (as in e.g. I liked Biden at start but soured as the Lefty Wokey side become prevalent and I saw no effectifve action on issues clearly piling up on IRA etc
?? - So Trump won on his greatly detailed campaign plan?
Or the Republicans have been multiply successful with Small Government rhetoric via campaigning on gory details of what they are intending to cut?
No - quite the contrary
Doing things in governance certainly but Democrats seem to have some bizarre mistake in their brains to confuse politics with governance as synonyms.
A successfuly governance, once one has won, certainly getting things done can very well mean having a good command of the relevant details under your control - although as Trump is showing, that's not per se needed either albeit I would prefer that.
Abundance promoting itself right now I think is doing quite the right thing - not engaging in the typical Democrat error of going into tedious wonkery before they are even there.
If you can get the backing of a tremendously cult-of-personality candidate who makes people create fan art and forgive him for any sin, then I suppose Abundance will also have the opportunity to stumble around failing to achieve beneficial goals, just like Trump’s policies.
"I have yet to see any details other than “just get rid of some laws” that really fit the bill for either of these steps"
Ok sure, but have you, like.... *tried* to "just get rid of some laws"? It seems like no one is ever willing to try that, but super willing to tell us all about how it won't work, and happy to stick with the status quo that we know does not work.
Yes I have and it’s literally the hardest thing on earth, even at the small-city level. You have no idea what a fight this will be, particularly with that level of reconnaissance.
https://www.climateactioncampaign.org/
The moderate, sensible, abundance climate people. They explicitly position themselves against the more radical ones.
Actually, I gave you the wrong link. This is a problem with all these different climate groups. Here's the group I meant.
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
i don't find this data very convincing. the scatterplot is difficult to interpret: the distances on it represent differences in answers to poll questions, which means the structure of the plot is highly sensitive to the choice of questions. if you were to ask only about issues that unite democrats and divide republicans (and in 2016 there were plenty of these) you'd get a similar shape with a tight blue ball and a diffuse red cloud.
more importantly, a preference for left wing policy does not mean primary voters cannot vote strategically. but i cant find anything in this piece (maybe i missed something) connecting cohesive liberal beliefs to unstrategic primary behavior
Sure they can vote strategically but do you take the point that Dem voters are more liberal and ideologically cohesive than the R voters are conservative? Imo the story Matt is trying to paint about how it’s all bc of annoying activists just seems too easy an explanation of what’s happened here in left of center politics.
This is quite an interesting article and a very useful point about the challenge that an ideologically-cohesive liberal base poses for outreach-oriented Dems
The evidence that President Vance will be real just keeps piling up! Get ready for the guy who will make Donald Trump look like he’s in touch with reality.
Lol, as Millman writes: “What stands in the way of the Democrats seizing it? Only that the people who fund, staff and lead the party are all out of touch with what ordinary Americans believe and want. That, in itself, is kind of an extraordinary admission—if you take away the donors, the staff and the leadership, who’s left to reform the party? Mounk’s answer, presumably, would be: the voters. Which voters, though?”
The article you linked to is focused on a left vs right spectrum (economically and socially). But what Matt is talking about in this article is primarily a third axis, which I call up versus down or north vs south[1]. He's saying: yes, let's stop global warming, but in a *smart* way where it will *actually* stop rather than a *dumb* way that will get more Republicans elected.
Note: after making the chart I became convinced that Matt's actual position on the left-right spectrum is closer to the center ― but it took me some time to figure that out because smart left-wing policy looks very similar to smart center-left policy.
(A steelman of your argument: Democrats fundamentally aren't smart. I would agree, but respond that they're smarter and easier to persuade than Trumpists so I'm attaching my life raft to the Dems and rowing in the right direction)
[1] https://x.com/DPiepgrass/status/1808746065132130494
I would consider that preference setting is in part driven by the groups.
“The Groups” vs. “centrist” pundits (e.g. The Argument, which consists of a couple Effective Altruists and a socialist) seems a little like the Coates-Klein debate.
Both sides of the debate share similar values. It’s like a debate between Catholic priests who take Scripture very seriously and ordinary devout Catholics who are constrained by the practicalities of life while admiring the purity of priests’ faith.
The Coates prescription for electoral strategy is terrible, and it’s good that this faction is no longer able to bully the “centrists.” Nevertheless, I’m not sure that the Klein side has a winning formula: to the extent that voters disagree with Democrats on values, I’m not sure the Kleins of the world will fool anyone by simply downplaying their beliefs.
I think Democratic thought leaders may need to be more introspective about their values before they can return to a position of strength. This is going to require more than simple tactical adjustments.
But like, the groups are often wrong on the merits. I don't dislike labor groups (for example) because I think they hurt us in elections, I dislike them because they make our country and economy weaker to benefit a small special interest.
My point is that I don’t think these intra-party disagreements have *that* much to do with Democrats’ weakness.
If the Klein/Yglesias types were understood to be fully in charge, would Dems start trouncing Republicans? I’m not sure voters really think of them as centrists either.
Neither of them, or claim to be, centrists. But they are both pragmatists that would welcome centrists into the party. They would be happy to have Joe Manchin, and not constantly raking him over the coals.
No one really thinks Trump is a centrist, but he got some centrist votes because he made sure to get everyone to just STFU about abortion and other unpopular right-wing talking points.
There will always be people in the middle willing to swing back and forth with thermostatic opinion. Pissing them off with really unpopular left wing (or right wing) views just is not going to win elections. Especially if, after pissing them off with your view point, you tell them to "go away, we didn't want your vote anyway, deplorable guy"
Do they really share similar values? I would consider the Groups and Effective Altruists to go on one pole of substantive values and a socialist on a different pole.
Somehow becoming *more* pessimistic about the future of our governance is not the way I wanted to start my work week…at least the post is strategically unpaywalled.
Anakin, over Zoom call: Indeed, to the extent that the environmental community has any real ideas on affordability, it’s the too-cute-by-half argument that banning exports is affordability policy, because it depresses the price of domestic natural gas.
Padme, on vacation in Puerto Rico: Great, so they're on board with repealing the Jones Act, right?
Anakin: They say that 100 percent clean energy by 2035 should be achieved "in a manner that creates family-supporting, union jobs."
Padme, waiting on an LNG export tanker from Spain: ...they're on board with repealing the Jones Act, right?
...more seriously, is there any reason reasonable candidates can't run campaign ads leaking these full-of-shit full questionnaires, and banging on a bit about Well, I'm a moderate and I love [group's focus area], but acktually...? If primary voters become aware of how the endorsement sausage is made, perhaps getting one from these special interest bakeries would become more of a millstone for polling than a rise.
($150m is also just, I don't know, chump change? We're happy to spend billions a year on datacenters, but can get a bare fraction of that scraped together in loose change to "defend democracy"? People are saying we need to get money out of politics, but to me it sure sounds like there isn't nearly *enough*.)
AFAICT, the only restriction would be copyright, and I think it might be a bad look for questionnaire-promulgators to sue on that basis. Alternatively, nothing stops anyone from making public-domain questionnaires.
It's a fair use anyway. You can't use copyright law to keep the public in the dark about your political lobbying.
I would be inclined to say that there are compelling fair use arguments in this context but as an affirmative defense it’s always dicey to go whole hog on it if there are reasonable alrernative options.
It's a fair use. It's transformative and doesn't affect the market for the original. Any copyright owner stupid enough to bring this case would end up paying the other side's attorney's fees.
How is it transformative? It’s the same content.
For the same reason that if you dig up a person's racist tweets from 10 years ago and comment on them, you aren't infringing the copyright by quoting the tweets.
A use is transformative if it is used for a different purpose of the original, such as comment or criticism.