Sorry for chiming in late, but reading this post this morning triggered some thoughts on "Theory of Mind".
Matt said: "But the barrier to Democrats winning more elections is that lots of voters think the party is dominated by culturally alien weirdos who practice anti-white racial discrimination, won’t enforce the law, and have bizarre beliefs about sex and gender. The best Republican issues are ones that hit on multiple topics, like Democrats are soft on illegal immigration because they hate enforcing the law and also want to do a great replacement of white people. Or (per Trump’s ad) Democrats have both weird ideas about gender identity and also are soft on crime, so they want government-funded sex-change operations for convicts. "
Here, Matt demonstrates Theory of Mind by explaining how some voters see Democrats. (He is not explaining his own perspective here, in case you're reading this in my Notes. Quotes in notes can get a bit ambivalent, I've noticed.)
Democrats, perhaps the younger ones, need to develop their theory of mind in order to be effective in getting votes. Wikipedia first describes the absence of theory in mind in someone as some kind of cognitive deficit. But later on we have this: "Theory of mind appears to be an innate potential ability in humans that requires social and other experience over many years for its full development."
If developing one's personal "theory of mind" can be a matter of maturity, maybe the adolescent rebellion stage of life temporarily makes it inaccessible. Indeed, perhaps one of the roots of political extremism is collective or viral adolescent rebellion growing into ideology.
From my perspective, all anyone has to do to understand social conservatism is to read history or pay attention to parents and grandparents (or high school classmates.) Instead there seems to be the idea among political rights movements that if we offend and disgust people enough, they'll magically start being tolerant and supportive of whatever we want to convince them of. (Even labeling someone racist is offensive.)
But there's hope. I think I may be starting to see signs in "the kids" (just my shortcut term that doesn't apply to any youngsters here) that they are starting to grow up and become a bit more tolerant of conservative moral viewpoints. One factor may be that young white resistance communities are finding it necessary to work with Latino activists. This close coalition work might lead to deeper appreciation of the rich cultures of our southern neighbors, "despite" their Catholicism and social conservatism.
I thought your response about slavery was excellent!
Reminds me of this quote from the extraordinary Frederick Douglass: "I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes."
He is the last person to remotely excuse slavery, but even he was able to separate that issue from everything else that they did, and to give them well-deserved credit for all the amazing things they accomplished and have inspired.
We already have the best electoral system. We use it for primaries.
Here is my perfect electoral system. You get 3 points for a win. So for small states and dc it is 3-0. For everywhere else, you split N-3 based on vote share. So if you win 2:1 on a 30 vote state, you get 18+3 and the other guy gets 9.
If you barely win a basically 50/50 matchup, you get 14 of the 27 for a total of 17, they get 13.
I’m your age, Matt, and lived in DC for the 2008 election. I remember my hard left friends lining up behind Dennis Kucinich for exactly the reasons you describe. And Howard Dean in 2004.
A quick note on Costco: we did a case study on them at my elite MBA program. I note the eliteness not out of snobbery, just to emphasize that it's been looked at by some very smart strategists and financial analysts. The major consensus on them in business circles is that while there are some amazing lessons to be learned around employee relations, the primary reason for their success was that they created two parallel and symbiotic financial streams. The stores themselves run on incredibly low margins, lower than even most grocery stores (which are themselves incredibly low margin to begin with). They aim to make 5-10% in gross margin on almost everything they sell, just enough to cover the stores themselves and not lose money. And for access to these incredible deals, customers are willing to pay a modest membership fee (the second revenue stream). And that membership fee flows almost entirely to Costco's bottom line.
It's a genius model but it's also very hard to replicate (for lots of reasons). Interestingly, Amazon these days I think does the reverse; they lose money on most prime memberships but can price individual sales more intelligently than any company on earth and squeeze 3rd party merchants on their site.
1. Kristen McDonald Rivet was elected to the US House in 2024. I do not think Michigan voters would have responded well to a first-term attempt to jump to Senate.
2. Mike Duggan could’ve won, but it is absolutely not in his temperament or in his operational experience to be a legislator; he’s an executive. It’s like saying a cat should run to be a dog.
3. McMorrow had *two* “disparaging” tweets about the Midwest: in one, she said that she did not like the weather here, and in the other, made shortly after the 2016 election, she said that Michigan having voted for Trump made her miss California. This was a brilliant deployment of oppo research - the headlines were all about a candidate having deleted tweets that mocked the Midwest, and it opened the door to a carpetbagger-out-of-touch narrative. But mostly, McMorrow really did from the polarized nature of primaries. … and, I think - this is just spitballing, I don’t have a source here - maybe wasn’t prepared for how ugly this race would get.
I agree about slavery. Many other places had slavery but it was just one of many aspects of a totally oppressive society. America, Britain, and France were different. Those societies aspired to be liberal.
Costco workers are highly productive, as Matt says, because the store is designed to require a lot less labor. Businesses tend to value highly productive labor. It’s not that complicated. I don’t think many people understand labor productivity, though.
I think transportation abundance (closely linked to energy abundance, as Matt notes) is the next area to expand the agenda. Transit, but also Waymo, EVs (which run cheap when the President decides to bomb oil-producing countries), and sure, even big-ass trucks. There's something for everyone.
For state-level proportional representation, to me the natural solution is a pairing compact. Find a blue state and red state who agree to do it together. There won't be exact matchups, but enough to popularize the idea.
"I think it’s pretty obvious that McMorrow was the strongest general election candidate, and simply got squeezed out between two camps who would’ve otherwise been OK with her. In an RCV primary, she probably wins out."
No, she would've won an _Approval_ primary. (Or a Condorcet primary.) In RCV, she would've been squeezed out between two camps who would’ve otherwise been OK with her, because Stevens and El-Sayed would've been way ahead of her on first-choice votes.
Referring back to the Costco question, I am surprised that Matt didn't push back on the reader's proposition that government should get involved to encourage more Costco-like behavior. As a centrist, i am very wary of government intervention to promote specific business models. The government should stay out of telling companies how to operate, outside of the broad strokes of minimum pay, safety regulations, EEO regulations, etc. But to tell a company what business model is should adopt is definitely not a centrist or center-left position. Costco's success should be enough to encourage the C-suite of other companies to ask whether there is something there worth copying or not.
I think matt forgets voters who believe "we tried these policies before" and why not take a gamble and risk. That's Trump and that's left wing progressives.
How could moderates be bolder and take more risks? What could the results be? How could moderates communicates this message without slipping into populism?
You’re reasonably clear on the difference between your personal views on cultural issues and the ones you would tolerate in a candidate trying to win a purple/red district for the Dems. What is your limiting principle on this? Are there cultural views that go so far away from your own that you don’t want to let them in the tent even if it risks a house seat?
I’m glad you made your clarifying suggestion to focus on the poor (while sacrificing, where necessary other people oppressed by cultural attitudes. The factional fighting really is quite a lot about whether this is OK compared to focusing on the oppressed (economically and culturally) while sacrificing something else, maybe optimal economic policies. Of course most factional fighters on all sides aren’t really good about clearly saying what they want to relax on. Everyone wants to battle on all fronts.
A fundamental insight that I think is tied to the abundance movement: In the long run, we can best help the poor and everyone else by making more economic growth happen, and usually that amounts to letting markets work and then compensating the losers via social programs of some kind.
How do you avoid that ending up as "we use our political capital getting a bunch of social programs that we can't afford without the extra economic growth, but then never get around to the policies that enable that extra economic growth?"
Seriously, while we should do that too - what’s the point of having nukes if you don’t use them to extract tribute - the trust is lost with the “winners compensating the losers” but, it’s never happened before. Whereas growth has happened plenty. So before any policies that increase it, you have to make the policies that make the losers whole first
We have a ton of poverty programs, job retraining programs, block redevelopment grants, medical benefits, disability payments, and the like in the US. Social security, medicare, and medicaid make up a big chunk of the US federal budget. So it's not like we're just now contemplating whether we will sully Galt's Gulch with its first ever poverty program for the very most deserving of widows and orphans.
A lot of our attempts to "make the losers whole" end up making us all poorer, for that matter.
Something you have mentioned here is that politics have become more expressive. I talk all the time about why I think this is: politics now serve as a meaning-providing cultural worldview within which participation is legible but fairly low impact, and also faces substantial opposition that can involve world-sundering loss on a regular basis. All of that just encourages more vehement expression as both a mode of participation and a defensive response. But what do you think the driver of why it's gotten more expressive tends to be? Hollow parties? Social media lowering the bar for conducting expression? Something else??
"But the barrier to Democrats winning more elections is that lots of voters think the party is dominated by culturally alien weirdos who practice anti-white racial discrimination, won’t enforce the law, and have bizarre beliefs about sex and gender."
I really like and believe with your two priorities - help the poor, big tent on culture. But shouldnt Democrats point out two things - republicans also have a lot of "retvrn" weirdos, really weird ideas on whiteness and immigration and most importantly...theyre pretty bad at being in charge? Trump is losing a war that Obama had won with peace. The economy is worse. Pets are at risk of screw worm. Red states have measles outbreaks and 3/4 of medical bankruptices are in Texas, Florida and Georgia because they weirdly hate the best president of my lifetime more than they lile America. The last republican president before this one was W.
Shouldn't that just be hammered over and over - that Dems have run the country better, and republicans have weirdos in charge too, including JD Vance and Stephen Miller?
For some reason, moderates believe that inherently, Americans are more afraid of a college radical who like trans people than the garden variety of insane people the GOP puts up and thinks it has nothing to do with the avalanche of coverage about any sort of left-wing overreach anywhere but Republican candidates and elected officials can do explicitly insane things and face no cost outside of that race for it.
Like, you know there's a Republican candidate for office with multiple SA accusations - where's the 24 hour coverage on him? Why isn't every Republican who's in public immediately being asked and pushed about this.
Hell, for all the worries about El-Sayed in MI or Hong in WI, the Colorado GOP looks like it's about to nominate a guy who makes up stories about killing people, being on raids to save children from sex traffickers, and talks how he threw his kid across the room once.
Why is it impossible to tie that guy to every swing state Republican but any single online creator, college student, or activist who appears on TV once has to be ritually hailed as an evil leftie by any swing state Democrat? I have an answer but it's one moderates refuse to admit.
If youre referring to the tim walz comment, im not sure theres much evidence it was working. But even if it was, it hadn't reached the inevitable people in glass houses response yet.
No I didnt think of that, but it is a good counter to what i am saying - Dems already tried to portray Reps as weird.
I meant Republicans have effectively portrayed Dems as more weird and so gave themselves a pass on both having strange views on working moms but also potentially gotten a pass on being bad at running the country
Sorry for chiming in late, but reading this post this morning triggered some thoughts on "Theory of Mind".
Matt said: "But the barrier to Democrats winning more elections is that lots of voters think the party is dominated by culturally alien weirdos who practice anti-white racial discrimination, won’t enforce the law, and have bizarre beliefs about sex and gender. The best Republican issues are ones that hit on multiple topics, like Democrats are soft on illegal immigration because they hate enforcing the law and also want to do a great replacement of white people. Or (per Trump’s ad) Democrats have both weird ideas about gender identity and also are soft on crime, so they want government-funded sex-change operations for convicts. "
Here, Matt demonstrates Theory of Mind by explaining how some voters see Democrats. (He is not explaining his own perspective here, in case you're reading this in my Notes. Quotes in notes can get a bit ambivalent, I've noticed.)
Democrats, perhaps the younger ones, need to develop their theory of mind in order to be effective in getting votes. Wikipedia first describes the absence of theory in mind in someone as some kind of cognitive deficit. But later on we have this: "Theory of mind appears to be an innate potential ability in humans that requires social and other experience over many years for its full development."
If developing one's personal "theory of mind" can be a matter of maturity, maybe the adolescent rebellion stage of life temporarily makes it inaccessible. Indeed, perhaps one of the roots of political extremism is collective or viral adolescent rebellion growing into ideology.
From my perspective, all anyone has to do to understand social conservatism is to read history or pay attention to parents and grandparents (or high school classmates.) Instead there seems to be the idea among political rights movements that if we offend and disgust people enough, they'll magically start being tolerant and supportive of whatever we want to convince them of. (Even labeling someone racist is offensive.)
But there's hope. I think I may be starting to see signs in "the kids" (just my shortcut term that doesn't apply to any youngsters here) that they are starting to grow up and become a bit more tolerant of conservative moral viewpoints. One factor may be that young white resistance communities are finding it necessary to work with Latino activists. This close coalition work might lead to deeper appreciation of the rich cultures of our southern neighbors, "despite" their Catholicism and social conservatism.
I thought your response about slavery was excellent!
Reminds me of this quote from the extraordinary Frederick Douglass: "I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes."
He is the last person to remotely excuse slavery, but even he was able to separate that issue from everything else that they did, and to give them well-deserved credit for all the amazing things they accomplished and have inspired.
We already have the best electoral system. We use it for primaries.
Here is my perfect electoral system. You get 3 points for a win. So for small states and dc it is 3-0. For everywhere else, you split N-3 based on vote share. So if you win 2:1 on a 30 vote state, you get 18+3 and the other guy gets 9.
If you barely win a basically 50/50 matchup, you get 14 of the 27 for a total of 17, they get 13.
Problem solved
I’m your age, Matt, and lived in DC for the 2008 election. I remember my hard left friends lining up behind Dennis Kucinich for exactly the reasons you describe. And Howard Dean in 2004.
A quick note on Costco: we did a case study on them at my elite MBA program. I note the eliteness not out of snobbery, just to emphasize that it's been looked at by some very smart strategists and financial analysts. The major consensus on them in business circles is that while there are some amazing lessons to be learned around employee relations, the primary reason for their success was that they created two parallel and symbiotic financial streams. The stores themselves run on incredibly low margins, lower than even most grocery stores (which are themselves incredibly low margin to begin with). They aim to make 5-10% in gross margin on almost everything they sell, just enough to cover the stores themselves and not lose money. And for access to these incredible deals, customers are willing to pay a modest membership fee (the second revenue stream). And that membership fee flows almost entirely to Costco's bottom line.
It's a genius model but it's also very hard to replicate (for lots of reasons). Interestingly, Amazon these days I think does the reverse; they lose money on most prime memberships but can price individual sales more intelligently than any company on earth and squeeze 3rd party merchants on their site.
1. Kristen McDonald Rivet was elected to the US House in 2024. I do not think Michigan voters would have responded well to a first-term attempt to jump to Senate.
2. Mike Duggan could’ve won, but it is absolutely not in his temperament or in his operational experience to be a legislator; he’s an executive. It’s like saying a cat should run to be a dog.
3. McMorrow had *two* “disparaging” tweets about the Midwest: in one, she said that she did not like the weather here, and in the other, made shortly after the 2016 election, she said that Michigan having voted for Trump made her miss California. This was a brilliant deployment of oppo research - the headlines were all about a candidate having deleted tweets that mocked the Midwest, and it opened the door to a carpetbagger-out-of-touch narrative. But mostly, McMorrow really did from the polarized nature of primaries. … and, I think - this is just spitballing, I don’t have a source here - maybe wasn’t prepared for how ugly this race would get.
(I’m a Michigan political journalist.)
I agree about slavery. Many other places had slavery but it was just one of many aspects of a totally oppressive society. America, Britain, and France were different. Those societies aspired to be liberal.
Costco workers are highly productive, as Matt says, because the store is designed to require a lot less labor. Businesses tend to value highly productive labor. It’s not that complicated. I don’t think many people understand labor productivity, though.
I think transportation abundance (closely linked to energy abundance, as Matt notes) is the next area to expand the agenda. Transit, but also Waymo, EVs (which run cheap when the President decides to bomb oil-producing countries), and sure, even big-ass trucks. There's something for everyone.
For state-level proportional representation, to me the natural solution is a pairing compact. Find a blue state and red state who agree to do it together. There won't be exact matchups, but enough to popularize the idea.
"I think it’s pretty obvious that McMorrow was the strongest general election candidate, and simply got squeezed out between two camps who would’ve otherwise been OK with her. In an RCV primary, she probably wins out."
No, she would've won an _Approval_ primary. (Or a Condorcet primary.) In RCV, she would've been squeezed out between two camps who would’ve otherwise been OK with her, because Stevens and El-Sayed would've been way ahead of her on first-choice votes.
Referring back to the Costco question, I am surprised that Matt didn't push back on the reader's proposition that government should get involved to encourage more Costco-like behavior. As a centrist, i am very wary of government intervention to promote specific business models. The government should stay out of telling companies how to operate, outside of the broad strokes of minimum pay, safety regulations, EEO regulations, etc. But to tell a company what business model is should adopt is definitely not a centrist or center-left position. Costco's success should be enough to encourage the C-suite of other companies to ask whether there is something there worth copying or not.
I think matt forgets voters who believe "we tried these policies before" and why not take a gamble and risk. That's Trump and that's left wing progressives.
How could moderates be bolder and take more risks? What could the results be? How could moderates communicates this message without slipping into populism?
You’re reasonably clear on the difference between your personal views on cultural issues and the ones you would tolerate in a candidate trying to win a purple/red district for the Dems. What is your limiting principle on this? Are there cultural views that go so far away from your own that you don’t want to let them in the tent even if it risks a house seat?
I’m glad you made your clarifying suggestion to focus on the poor (while sacrificing, where necessary other people oppressed by cultural attitudes. The factional fighting really is quite a lot about whether this is OK compared to focusing on the oppressed (economically and culturally) while sacrificing something else, maybe optimal economic policies. Of course most factional fighters on all sides aren’t really good about clearly saying what they want to relax on. Everyone wants to battle on all fronts.
A fundamental insight that I think is tied to the abundance movement: In the long run, we can best help the poor and everyone else by making more economic growth happen, and usually that amounts to letting markets work and then compensating the losers via social programs of some kind.
The social programs have to happen first
How do you avoid that ending up as "we use our political capital getting a bunch of social programs that we can't afford without the extra economic growth, but then never get around to the policies that enable that extra economic growth?"
Seriously, while we should do that too - what’s the point of having nukes if you don’t use them to extract tribute - the trust is lost with the “winners compensating the losers” but, it’s never happened before. Whereas growth has happened plenty. So before any policies that increase it, you have to make the policies that make the losers whole first
We have a ton of poverty programs, job retraining programs, block redevelopment grants, medical benefits, disability payments, and the like in the US. Social security, medicare, and medicaid make up a big chunk of the US federal budget. So it's not like we're just now contemplating whether we will sully Galt's Gulch with its first ever poverty program for the very most deserving of widows and orphans.
A lot of our attempts to "make the losers whole" end up making us all poorer, for that matter.
Make weaker countries pay tribute!
Your man in Washington is on it. Of course, he'll collect a cut, but you can't have everything....
Something you have mentioned here is that politics have become more expressive. I talk all the time about why I think this is: politics now serve as a meaning-providing cultural worldview within which participation is legible but fairly low impact, and also faces substantial opposition that can involve world-sundering loss on a regular basis. All of that just encourages more vehement expression as both a mode of participation and a defensive response. But what do you think the driver of why it's gotten more expressive tends to be? Hollow parties? Social media lowering the bar for conducting expression? Something else??
"But the barrier to Democrats winning more elections is that lots of voters think the party is dominated by culturally alien weirdos who practice anti-white racial discrimination, won’t enforce the law, and have bizarre beliefs about sex and gender."
I really like and believe with your two priorities - help the poor, big tent on culture. But shouldnt Democrats point out two things - republicans also have a lot of "retvrn" weirdos, really weird ideas on whiteness and immigration and most importantly...theyre pretty bad at being in charge? Trump is losing a war that Obama had won with peace. The economy is worse. Pets are at risk of screw worm. Red states have measles outbreaks and 3/4 of medical bankruptices are in Texas, Florida and Georgia because they weirdly hate the best president of my lifetime more than they lile America. The last republican president before this one was W.
Shouldn't that just be hammered over and over - that Dems have run the country better, and republicans have weirdos in charge too, including JD Vance and Stephen Miller?
For some reason, moderates believe that inherently, Americans are more afraid of a college radical who like trans people than the garden variety of insane people the GOP puts up and thinks it has nothing to do with the avalanche of coverage about any sort of left-wing overreach anywhere but Republican candidates and elected officials can do explicitly insane things and face no cost outside of that race for it.
Like, you know there's a Republican candidate for office with multiple SA accusations - where's the 24 hour coverage on him? Why isn't every Republican who's in public immediately being asked and pushed about this.
Hell, for all the worries about El-Sayed in MI or Hong in WI, the Colorado GOP looks like it's about to nominate a guy who makes up stories about killing people, being on raids to save children from sex traffickers, and talks how he threw his kid across the room once.
Why is it impossible to tie that guy to every swing state Republican but any single online creator, college student, or activist who appears on TV once has to be ritually hailed as an evil leftie by any swing state Democrat? I have an answer but it's one moderates refuse to admit.
As a campaign slogan "theyre weird too so you should ignore our own weirdness" doesnt really work.
Intuitively I want to agree but...it seemed to work all right for them in 2024?
If youre referring to the tim walz comment, im not sure theres much evidence it was working. But even if it was, it hadn't reached the inevitable people in glass houses response yet.
No I didnt think of that, but it is a good counter to what i am saying - Dems already tried to portray Reps as weird.
I meant Republicans have effectively portrayed Dems as more weird and so gave themselves a pass on both having strange views on working moms but also potentially gotten a pass on being bad at running the country