I share your concern about the movement in the median Democratic position on a number of policy fronts and how that movement can result in more Republican wins. It would be nice if you would point to specific policies that should be either changed or dropped, though.
For me, it is around law-and-order policies that favor criminals more than victims and a toleration for disorder more broadly. These are mostly state or local policies, though, so national Democratic politicians still get my votes. But at some point, that might change if trends continue.
Broadly speaking I would prefer a return to the relative positioning and general tone of the 2012 platform. Specifically I would favor changing positions on race-based affirmative action; trans women in competitive women's sports and some of the more extreme ideas about youth medical transitions; going back to "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"; a more coherent, Australia-like position on immigration; and a greater emphasis on the bread-and-butter egalitarian economic message. I think Sherrod Brown's "dignity of work" rhetoric is great example of that last one.
SCOTUS is going to give them no choice on AA. I think (hope?) the trans discourse will reach a quieter if still uneasy consensus. Crime I think is a major wild card not only to how people react, but how the levels of it go up and down over time (and you can probably throw "disorder" into this category as well). Immigration I don't know the answer to, I'm just defeated that my preference just doesn't have the popularity yet that I wish.
Democrats would likely go back to 2012 if they lost several big national elections, similar to how three Republican presidencies in a row produced Bill Clinton. But that might not happen if Republicans just nominate Trump one or two more times to lose before they pick someone else, like William Jennings Bryan.
I’m always surprised, but not shocked, to hear mention of my beloved native Iron Range in national context.*
I’m surprised because the area’s isolation--geographic, meteorologic--leaves it out of sight and mind. But I’m never shocked, because that string of small cities has had an outsized effect on our nation’s fate, and because the compactness of its socioeconomic crucible offers manageable study.
To wit, I wonder if, say, your prescription for moderation as defined in your reply above (with which I broadly concur) were applied, what political affect would carry through to my hometown?
I suspect little, given other pressures of polarization. But it would be worthy of observation.
Anyways, I guess this is all by way of saying thanks for the unexpected little jolt of nativist pride via your reference.
You just listed some positions that would get you castigated in many left leaning circles. That is because nuance is dead. I am sympathetic with moderating Democratic positions on the issues you list.
A major problem with the Democratic party is that elected leadership in Washington are surrounded by staff and interns who disproportionately come from an unrepresentative part of the Democratic coalition. This shapes the information representatives see. Places like the NYT and other left leaning outlets also advocate for political positions that don't represent the median Democratic voter.
Milan, I don't agree with the tenor of spiky's comment, but I certainly don't like him being banned for it and I am one of Matt's earliest subscribers. I am not sure if I want to continue subscribing if someone like you is banning someone because you disagree with their valid point of views.
And your article is banal for the most part and a summary of common political knowledge re the change of the political climate of Southern states.
I don’t agree that this is a banal article – I think it’s excellently written and provides a lot of great supporting evidence I haven’t seen before (loving those county-level vote shift maps).
However, I am strongly with you on the point that spiky should not be banned. Policing the Overton window in such a ham-handed way serves no good purpose.
Sparky's view is ... shall I say, aggressively worded ... but does not fall into "transphobic" in my view. We are all still working through what it means to be supportive of someone who is gender dysphoric and what many see as a more radical view regarding gender and sex than what people have come to believe for a long time.
Maybe over time the current gender activist movement will be seen to be correct. Or maybe not. Either way, I think shutting down spiky's subscription is unwarranted.
I'm sorry to see you banning Spiky. I'm especially sorry to see you slur him as you ban him.
It's your site, of course. Your site, your rules. Still, I hope you'll reconsider this one. Despite the intemperance of Spiky's comments, I myself found them to be the most helpful comments that I have so far encountered in the Slow Boring comment sections.
Many thanks for your consideration, Milan. *And* for your wonderful work!
Reminder- it’s not “his” site it’s Matt’s. He is assigned the job of moderating the comments section by Matt, thoigh one hopes the owner and boss keeps tabs every once in a while to make sure the enforcement is in line with his wishes…
I don't spend a lot of time in the comments section of Matt's blog. I find the substack comments format hard to follow (no doubt an artifact of my advanced years, lol). But I did happen to see this thread with Spiky and all. Spiky's intemperate. And, obviously, he has a low opinion of "gender affirming care" (if I've got that buzzword right). But I found his articulation of his alternative viewpoint to be helpful.
I grew up, Jasper, on the unfashionable side of Fort Worth, Texas, back in the waning days of Jim Crow (my class admitted the first two African Americans to my high school). I've got a lot of anti-trans, old fart, Facebook friends from back home. I know these kinda guys. They're upstanding citizens and responsible family men. But they hate Democrats and love Trump and take a very dim view of transexuality. They just look at the world differently than we Slow Borers do. I'm always interested in understanding their point of view; but they're not always all that good on explaining it to me. Spiky *did* explain it to me, and I found that helpful.
I just want to voice my support for this decision, since it seems it's pretty unpopular.
Spiky has made SEVERAL comments over the past week that indicate a deeper transphobia and fundamental detachment from reality -- they appear to think that there's a lot of minors getting bottom surgery, which simply isn't true. Reading down the thread, they made further offensive comments on top of the one they were banned for.
The level of alarm with which they are writing these comments indicates someone who is very angry and _not_well_. We shouldn't mistake them for a lone voice bravely speaking truth to power. They're just speaking nonsense which occasionally aligns, superficially, with the culture-war gripes that some commenters and readers around here are known to have.
If anything, I find it kind of disappointing that my fellow commenters are falling for this (pardon my French, Milan) line of fucking bullshit. I thought we were smarter than that around here.
I do not view this as transphobic in the slightest - trans people are not being attacked; an unpopular and untenable *political* stance is being attacked. I really don’t see why it’s inappropriate to call a particular set of policies “deranged”
Yikes. And this attitude and rhetoric is exactly why I think Democrats will be fine in the long run--because the Dem approach includes compassion and, ultimately, is more libertarian. The trans issue is complicated, and most people I think recognize that. Letting individual adults make choices as to their own health care (and parents for their children) in consultation with doctors, while enshrining protections for employment and shelter, is broadly popular.
Yes, the thing is no one wants to talk about it. But I can tell you I've queried many of my close friends and family privately (everyone I know, including myself, are on the left/liberal spectrum)and, to a person, everyone I've asked has expressed deep concern about this issue with regards to children.
This is an important question -- can men be men while adopting traditionally feminine characteristics? Or are the traditional and society-endorsed characteristics now the *definition* of a what a woman is?
It appears, though, that this question is off-limits here, which is unfortunate. The debate -- and it is an interesting debate with potentially uncomfortable results for both sides of the argument -- will continue elsewhere.
Milan, I share other commentators’ concerns. I just read that comment twice. It seems to use strong language against a *policy* and against certain types of treatment, but does not demonize any group of people. It seems thus quite different from the comments on this issue that have previously been banned. The number of likes, though irrelevant in and of it self, should give you pause- it’s a suggestion that many did not view this as hate speech. They may be wrong and you may be right but you ought to give it some thought . May not be a bad idea to re think or at least to try to give a detailed explanation of your choice. Censorship ought to be a last resort and only for hate speech.
Spiky has made other comments, including one I reported, that made clear they think there's a widespread epidemic of bottom surgery being performed on minors. Which is just not true. Spiky likely isn't getting banned for this comment alone, but for a disturbing pattern of behavior. I'm behind Milan on this one.
What does not equivocating mean? The big problem with issues like transgender rights is that you can't choose to support different policies without sending a different message about values. You can't send the message that these policies are dumb without sending the message that treating trans people with respect and dignity isn't important.
It's the same with race. Even if you believed (not advocating just a hypo) that anti-discriminaton laws are no longer worth the cost or even that if you repealed them civil society would take over and do a better job with boycotts you can't support that policy with people understanding you as saying that racial discrimination isn't a big deal or isn't very important.
That's how we get into these situations. Even if many ppl of the left don't like the dumb shit that happens around trans issues they think it's too important not to suggest that it's ok to see trans people as less deserving of respect etc to risk supporting that message.
--
In the long run it's an issue I hope gets solved by just having some unremarkable trans politicians. They can cut the bullshit on this without that meaning being read in.
And they should. Even if you're a trans person whose primary concern in this world is to increase acceptance and quality of life for trans people, you too should hope the issue goes away. After all, if the Dems weren't so eager to push it the republicans wouldn't be so eager to pass symbolic laws.
"[Y]ou can't choose to support different policies without sending a different message about values."
This isn't natural or inevitable. It only seems like it because activists viciously police the boundaries, and now well-meaning people are too afraid to dissent from the smallest detail.
I'll share with you something of my own recent experience with something that some might view as “activist policing".
I'm a 69 year old, conservative Democrat who is active in a liberal, Presbyterian congregation. My bride and I have been married for 43 happy years, and one of our six children is homosexual. In March of this year, the associate pastor of our congregation announced that she (to use my, rather than her, prefered pronoun) was “non-binary, gender non-conforming, gender queer.”
Well ok, these things happen. The mantra I developed when my homosexual son discovered his sexual orientation is this: “Human sexuality happens. It happens to a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. When it happens to you, you need to deal with it responsibly.” The associate pastor of my congregation is a *very* responsible young woman (and I here refer not to her chosen gender, but to what I take to be her “biological” sex). It appeared to me (and continues to appear to me) that she was (and is) managing her gender dysphoria issues in an entirely responsible and constructive manner. I just assumed that I could tweak my human sexuality mantra to cover human gender issues as well, and move on. But it didn't quite work out that easily for me.
I had had an excellent relationship with Rachel. When I read her “gender queer” announcement, my primary concern was to ensure that my good working relationship with her continued. She told us, among other things, that we could support her by using the Elverson variation of Spivak pronouns, “ey/em/eir” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun), when referring to her. I chose not to employ these pronouns. I naively thought that that wouldn't be a problem. And indeed, it didn't seem to me to be a problem for my relationship with Rachel. We talked about it, and I felt that we understood each other fine. To my relief, my relationship with Rachel appeared to me to continue to be an excellent one. However, my decision did lead to some minor awkwardness elsewhere in the congregation. To my astonishment, I found myself being told that in continuing to use the traditional third person pronouns to refer to Rachel, I was “saying the wrong thing.”
Well again, these things happen. I've been hanging around church houses for seven decades now. I can manage church stuff. But then to my further astonishment, as I was casually discussing my church challenges with our youngest one day, the girl, who has never met my associate pastor and has never seen me working with that pastor, my daughter burst into tears, told me that I was being “cruel” to Rachel, and proceeded to take actions that caused me (and continues to cause me) minor difficulties in my family life.
Geez Louise.
But again, I've been navigating the challenges of family life for as long as I've been hanging around church houses. It's just part of it.
And really, I don't myself see any of this stuff as “activist policing”, exactly. The guy down at church who has insisted (to my astonishment) that I am “saying the wrong thing” is pastoring, not policing, me. And my youngest child is just working through her own issues, I think.
But still…. My experience *has* offered me an opportunity to reflect upon the analogous experiences of more vulnerable folks caught in the crossfire of these gender disputes. I can't see that we Democrats could be doing ourselves any favors by taking potentially Democratic voters to task for their reluctance to embrace every nuance of our *au courant*.
Umm who cares if they are right or wrong? I don't believe in god but I don't try to stop those who want to go to church and I'll call people rabbi or whatever to be polite.
I can appreciate your perspective because I share a few feelings about the T issue. Yes, it is a medical ethics question whether treatment of adults falls under "do no harm" - an interesting case where individual preference comes up against medical practice (can anyone think of other examples of this? I can't, at the moment.)
But ultimately we have the social ethic of treating all individuals equally in the public sphere, which extends to demonstrating respect (i.e. basic courtesy) no matter what. This is where I would disagree with the use of the word "equivocating." The ethic stems from deeply and widely held principles of equality for disabled, mentally ill, economically vulnerable, racially non-dominant etc.
(So you could ironically, or not, just consider some trans persons to be a bit psychologically, er, immature or whatever.)
Honestly, just expressing sympathy for crime victims would go a long way. There is a really annoying and counterproductive tendency to tell victims of property crime to just get over it because insurance will cover it. That reeks of cluelessness. People stealing your stuff gets to people. You feel violated and telling people not to feel that way doesn't work. Plus, if you're constantly filing insurance claims over crime, your insurer is going to hike your rates. You still use.
Same for public disorder. If someone is upset about people smoking fentanyl on the train, you express sympathy and acknowledge that it's a bad thing. You don't tell them that it's harmless because someone at the health department says so. And you absolutely do not tell someone who has an asthma attack triggered by fentanyl smoke that it's a panic attack not an asthma attack and it's all in their head.
50 years from 1970-2020 had only THREE Democratic presidents:
Carter who failed (in the electorate's opinion)
Clinton who was aggressively centrist
and Obama who was low-key centrist
I feel like we spend a lot of time in the comments repeatedly arguing about how moderate a Democrat needs to be to win the White House when the evidence is pretty clear about what was required.
And linking this back to your top level comment, you don't code as "right" to me at all. Or "left", for that matter. If anything, you've got the unique Dave Coffin worldview, and it's good to hear it.
And there's plenty of places where they overlap and don't become useful axes. Immigration is an excellent example that historically divided both parties between each other.
My son is the opposite - economically quite liberal but socially conservative, at least for a Gen Z (e.g. he is OK with same sex marriage, but frowns on recreational use of marijuana). Some people think he is a right wing Christian Nationalist or something and others think he is a Communist. I kind of like the own worldview designation.
Meh. For my part, you seem pretty reasonable on economic issues, and at-times downright reactionary on many social issues, but at other times surprisingly reasonable on other social issues. FWIW, you at least make yourself easy to talk to when you're being disagreeable, which I can't say for many others here (myself included).
First, more moderation on contemptuous identity politics. Bo Burnham’s “Straight White Male” song is the example of this stuck in my mind. The progressive left should do more to not alienate people like they have been.
Second, dial down the embrace of cosmopolitanism to re-embrace patriotism and American culture.
That patriotism has become a right-coded value, and a subject of flat out contempt among the left, is a very serious problem for a pluralistic, multi-racial, multi-cultural nation.
We need to nuance this somewhat. I don't think "favor criminals more than victims and a toleration for disorder more broadly" is the best diagnosis of suboptimal policing. I agree that Democrats, especially local level Democrats should change their rhetoric (the should have been rhetorically and to the extent possible prosecutionarily harsh on the "criminals" who tainted the BLM demonstrations), but exactly how to reduce crime and disorder most cost effectively city by city is not so obvious.
“On the other hand, a lot of people don’t really care if people use drugs or camp in the park as long as they aren’t bothering anyone else, don’t think those people should be sent to jail, don’t want to see racial discrimination or violence from police (most of whom live in the suburbs), and don’t want to feel like the neighborhood is under occupation.”
Is it the police doing the occupation or the homeless junkies taking over public parks, underpasses and streets?
If you have ever been to a homeless tent camp of any size you would know these camps are full of drug use, rape, unvaccinated, unleashed and dangerous dogs, stolen goods, public drunkenness and fires that often get out of hand and burn down tents or near by buildings.
After living through the last few years outside a major American city, I would like less of the homeless occupation please.
I don't think church vs stores is a fair comparison. Churches usually provide services to the vulnerable and their ethos is supposed to include embracing the downtrodden.
I don’t think the church not being active participants in making peoples lives better is good. There is a difference in forgiving someone’s past and then enabling their abusive behavior into the future. I would expect the church to have a moral obligation not only to provide a “safe space” but to then make sure that space is indeed safe for women, children and the vulnerable.
The church is supposed to be the Shepard and Shepards tend to have disagreements with wolves living among their sheep.
Liberals want some crazy things, that's for sure. Using drugs in a public spaces is incompatible with not bothering anyone. How are you going to ride the metro as a young woman alone or play in the park as a kid if there are adult men junkies hanging out there.
"(most of whom live in the suburbs)". What is up with this line of complaint? If this is a big problem, why can't liberals hire police from the vast population that lives within their own cities? Near-every city is controlled by liberals and they can appoint and dismiss police chiefs. I know you're going to say police unions or something, but unions have vastly different sets of powers depending on the state or county and this seems to be a perm-complaint. And any way, Unions aren't trying to block hiring of new police based on zip code.
Agree. To expand on your point, the most illiberal police are in states without unions. I worked in Portland as a police officer and they did a survey shortly before I left. About 33% identified as somewhat or vey conservative and about 26% as somewhat or very liberal. The rest were moderate. This was with a strong union. As a person who is probably somewhat liberal I can attest that convincing people about the benefits of more liberal ideas becomes tough when the ideas start getting associated with absolutely insane policies (I.e., no boarder controls what so ever, decriminalizing hard drugs, allowing people to block the exits to police buildings and light them on fire or to repeatedly set fire to the police unions privately owned building.
My sister left Portland after 10 years there. Things went downhill. She felt unself on busses and with homeless encampments moving into her area. On top of that covid and the anarchist-fascist brawls made her throw her hands up.
1) I would encourage you not to assume that Mike is representative of “liberals” writ large. I consider myself liberal, including on criminal justice issues, but we should not routinely tolerate camping or drug use in public spaces.
2) I agree with you that liberal urban-dwellers (like me) who think it is a problem that our police forces include a significant cohort of people who do not live in our communities bear the responsibility to do something about it.
But you too easily dismiss the difficulty of this task. Any large organization will be resistant to change, and the hiring decisions are largely made by lower level management, not political appointees. Most people want to hire other people that they vibe with. Changing this is difficult in any large organization.
Police departments in particular have quite a bit of power to make politicians lose political capital. It doesn’t take much effort from police to make a mayor extremely unpopular. Push too hard for change in policing that the police don’t want and you may soon find yourself being openly mocked by police union leadership while you are falling over yourself trying to be complimentary. (See “DeBlasio, Bill”)
That doesn’t mean it’s not on those of us who’s like to have a police force that comes from our community to make it happen. But it’s very difficult.
The cities where that complaint ("police live in the suburbs") is most important tend to be the cities that are having a very difficult time hiring any officers at all. Places like Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia have seen waves of officer resignations. The average tenure tenure in those depts is super low and they are basically desperate for people who can pass the minimum standards. If the have the luxury of hiring suburban guys for vibes I'd be amazed.
I'm frustrated by this because it seems like the constituencies complaining the loudest about urban PDs are the ones doing the least to personally step up to the challenge. A young liberal who actually lives in one of these liberal cities should have all kinds of support from his / her community and from his / her local politicians and media even if they think the police culture is hostile.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying here. I was reacting to my perception that your original comment was suggesting that we urban liberals who want a more representative police force should just go get one. It’s much, much easier said than done, was my point.
I don’t follow this last part:
“ A young liberal who actually lives in one of these liberal cities should have all kinds of support from his / her community and from his / her local politicians and media even if they think the police culture is hostile.”
Support to do what? Work in the police department? Propose changes to the police department staffing? Just be supported in general? I don’t follow.
When I've asked similar kinds of questions a common response I hear is something like "Police are racist / hostile to liberals so how can they / we work there and change things?"
If that concern is real then it's valid ( I tend to think it's overstated). But it at least should be somewhat countered by the communities demanding that their police be "of the community".
For example, if you're a young liberal / black guy in SF and are telling me the SFPD work environment is too hostile for you to attempt change from within, maybe there's something to that, I don't know. But I'm saying if we buy that premise then at least you ought to have the support of broader community. A white cop from the suburbs might equally say that the community is likely to be hostile to him. If you have an issue with discrimination or a controversial situation arises then you ought to expect the community to have your back.
So it sort of feels like another version of excuse-making. It's also one of the reasons I like Yglesias Police for America idea. Let's get these Yale kids into the trenches for a couple years.
You all seem to have missed that: 1) it’s hard to hire police officers and narrowing your pool to people from the urban community likely makes it all but impossible to hire (they should absolutely be trying); 2) people who get married and have kids tend to move to the suburbs, and police often are people who get married and have kids.
This is part of my point - it’s hard! Whining about it accomplishes nothing. We have to do the work to make policing attractive and rewarding to the diverse array of people we want in our police departments.
I can't believe I never thought of this, but you just described my city completely. So many people hate our current mayor. I thought it was because she replaced a long line of good old boys and also has put focus on neglected neighborhoods. But the police mostly hate her, and the union leaders have made lots of inflammatory comments about her.
But also, a lot of residents think she does not hold the police accountable enough. Watching this whole thing play out has just confirmed my thought that I never want to hold public office.
My personal line between "too extreme" and "just fine" is crossed a long time before a Boudin shows up, which explains why I choose not to live in a place like SF (among other reasons).
You're right, though, that local politicians are, and should be, responsive to local concerns. My concern is if federal policies start to reflect the same ethos as what I see in more progressive locales then some people will start to peel away to the other side.
IDK if it's worth correcting the several mischaracterizations and misconceptions here about Chesa Boudin, but they do contribute to a certain narrative of "wacky progressive voters in SF" (a narrative which, of course has more than one grain of truth). But here goes:
Boudin was not "raised in a terrorist cell." He was a toddler when his parents went to prison, and his adoptive parents , ex-terrorists by some definitions, had already "re-integrated" into mainstream urban capitalist academia. Boudin never ran on the politics of his parents, and few SF voters supported or rejected him because of his family or childhood.
Boudin had eight years experience working as a public defender before he was elected DA by a narrow margin in 2020. Enough voters bought into his argument that the criminal justice system was broken and he had a plan to fix it, with restorative justice, etc. In this, he, and his "project," were almost identical to that of many other self-styled "progressive" DA's in LA, Oakland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, etc. etc.
Boudin is a highly educated, very articulate,and likeable candidate who would have been attractive to many voters in many cities even had his politics been more conventional. To give him credit, he was always very open and honest about his project.
By 2022 it was evident to most voters in SF, myself included, that his policies and attitudes, while understandible in a public defender, were the wrong ones for a prosecutor, and he was easily recalled. He had a plan, it was failing, and he was dumped.
I don't think that Boudin was any more or less unhinged than Larry Krasner (Philly), Alvin Bragg (Manhattan), Pamela Price (Oakland), George Gascon (LA), etc. These are all highly ideological Social Justice Warriors whose policies are coming up against the reality that people in cities largely want the laws enforced.
I agree with most of this but I think Boudin was unnecessarily confrontational (not as bad as Alison Collins) and did not work to convince people they should not recall him.
I give him credit for at least being honest about his project. He explained exactly what he was going to do before he did it. Property criminals, small time drug dealers, minors, even repeat offenders charged with violent crimes were going to be released without charge or "diverted" to "restorative justice" programs (many didn't even go to the first meeting). Big time criminals, murderers, ghost gun users, cops accused of misbehavior etc. were mostly prosecuted as before- or more so. His goal was to reduce the number of criminals sent to prison, while assuring the public that they would be "just as safe, if not safer."
As it happened, a few highly publicized violent offenders, mostly deranged unhoused persons, who had brutalized elderly Asian citizens, were treated leniently-essentially let go. (A very similar scenario played out, I believe, in NYC).
Boudin gained the enmity of the Asian and non-"progressive" whites in SF- mostly Democrats BTW. Since that's most voters in the city, he was recalled.
My personal view is that the evidence shows his project failed, but I think there are still some who would argue that it didn't get enough time to be proven right or wrong- that the "jury is still out on restorative justice."
To their credit, SF voters didn't care much about what his parents had done in the 60's when they elected him in 2020-nor when they recalled him in 2022.
Boudin was recalled with 55% of the vote. That's not really a "narrow result" by modern US standards. In fact, CBS News called the vote result "overwhelming." His election in 2019, OTOH, was very narrow: he won by just 2825 votes.
I agree that some of Boudin's supporters want to feel "transgressive". Fortunately, white self-styled "progressives" do not always determine policy, even in "wacky San Francisco." I'm also not supporting his policies (I voted against him) which actually are the very same policies espoused by Bragg, Price, Gascon, Kramer, Schmidt, Holmes, etc. (it's actually a long list). The "progressive DA movement" is an experiment that is playing out in lots of cities now.
In general, yes, out-of-sight out-of-mind. But in Portland I see law-and-order demands rapidly swinging back and forth depending on current events. Police brutality / no wait downtown vandalism. Decriminalize individual drug possession / no wait people are doing fentanyl in my posh neighborhood. Have sympathy for the homeless / no wait they leave trash all over and start fires. Right now the youngsters(?) on my social media sites want pretty much everyone who offends public order to be "locked up" , elected officials to quit being "weak." The police are routinely condemning for not being everywhere at once.
Yet I suspect all these folks will vote for Democrats on the federal level. We did get a law-and-order guy on the City Council and now we're "banning" camping during the day; not being enforced yet but I'm just waiting for the unintended consequences. At this point some are protesting, like the guy who set up his tent next to the most-traveled trail in the city and was apparently using a propane stove to make coffee as fire season is beginning.
(Just ask Portland people on Reddit if they voted for the drug decriminalization ballot measure and watch your unlike points go deep into the negatives.)
People are bothered by the camps in the park especially if they reside near you. That public green space can no longer be used by your or your children. There is litter. There is drug use. There is aggressive panhandling. A lot of the NIMBY left that doesn't have to live around homeless encampments and just drive to where they want to go admonish people who don't like those social problems right next to where they live.
I mainly agree, but it wouldn't hurt to err a bit on the side of the national median voter. The DC crime bill for example did not need to run so many red flags up the flagpost. Ceasar's wife.
I think that 'openness to new experiences' is a characteristic of being young. Not all young people feel this way, but most people's lives go through a -- move away from home and parental control -- try a whole bunch of new things -- decide for yourself that some of these things are great and some are lousy -- and make a life for yourself in the light of this knowledge'. As you get older you are less interested in novelty and change because, at least if your life is working out for you, you've already got what you want.
People become more conservative when, in their own lives, they find good things they want to conserve.
A desire for change, especially radical change, always appeals to those who are dissatisfied.
Looking from overseas at the USA, I see a distinct lack of conservatives. Both Democrats and Republicans are selling themselves as the party of the disenfranchised and unhappy -- they just disagree as to who gets to wear those labels. What if modern politics has stopped being about giving people solutions, however imperfect to their problems and just about managing unhappiness, unhappiness you can create should people ever stop being unhappy enough to vote for you?
To me modern politics is about the fact that the government spends trillions every year and the two parties have important differences in how they want to raise and allocate that sum and how much control a woman should have over her body.
"Both Democrats and Republicans are selling themselves as the party of the disenfranchised and unhappy... What if modern politics has stopped being about giving people solutions..." Ugh. As a moderate Democrat, this attitude really grates on me. Democrats see problems like climate change or high child poverty, and attempt to enact solutions like clean-energy incentives and child tax credits. It all seems very real to me. And sure there are some rhetorical flourishes as part of campaigning or by some more ideological members of the party, but that doesn't discount that what the party is able to rally around and pass tends to be actual policies addressing real-world problems, not fake problems ginned up by hyperactive partisans on ideological cable news outlets.
I am also a Democrat (have never voted for any R, ever), and I strongly disagree.
The Democrat's actual policies addressing real world problems are largely fantasy.
The basis concept behind all Dem economic policy is that we can have a European-style social democracy (or welfare capitalism, if you prefer) based entirely on progressive taxation. It's never been achieved anywhere else, despite decades of experimentation with wealth taxes and other schemes across the pond.
The biggest impediment to the Democrats social spending priorities is not the Republicans, it's the Democrats.
1) Biden promised no tax increases on those making <$400k. That's about 99% of households. Keeping up that promise (something no Euro social dem state would insist on) has stalled any meaningful policy action to redistribute income.
2) House Democrats were only willing to advance a spending bill (BBB) that included a large increase in the SALT deduction cap (a Trump era tax-INCREASE on the rich). It was the #2 most expensive item in the whole bill. The media and party focused 100% of the hate on Manchin, who was complaining about the deficit spend, while giving a total free pass to the Dems insistence on an expensive and regressive tax cut for the (blue state) wealthy.
3) When push came to shove, Dems focused their spending might on student debt holders. The WH has argued that this is progressive and the media have played along, but it's a mirage. The whole exercise depends on counting the debt accrued to earn the degree, while ignoring the large, long-term economic benefit of holding that degree. Student debt holders are basically just look much poorer in aggregate than they really are, because it's a group that's much younger than the working-age population at large.
Dem's insistence on redistribution is all rhetorical. Who should pay for all this new spending? The 0.1%? Where has that worked? I get sick of this self-righteous nonsense that claims that robbing Peter to pay Paul is noble. There is nothing magnanimous about this kind of plunder. It's a valid policy position, but there's nothing noble about it unless you are *personally* volunteering your own income. Guess what? No one does that! Look at opinion polls-- overwhelming majorities (like 90%+) think they already pay their fair share or more. Dems rage against the rich lets people feel they are are actually being somehow altruistic. Call me when they get serious about preparing people for the broadly shared sacrifices that their priorities will really require.
This is all exactly what you expect from a Dem party that actually has more affluent voters than the Republicans. They think people making $350k a year is working class.
OK, so Dem's "redistribution" plan is more marketing than substance, what about the Republicans?
I find that there is deep cognitive dissonance on the left about how Trump is perceived by working class Republicans and why. Go back to the "Trump tax cuts". The media went very hard against this legislation, describing it as a big giveaway to the rich, and nothing more. This is almost entirely an artifact of the rich just paying far more taxes to begin with. The size of the cuts (in percentage point units) were actually smaller for the highest brackets than for the middle ones (lowest bracket of 10% on <$10k, was unchanged).
I don't really want to get into the weeds of whether the cuts were progressive or regressive, there's no real point to it, as it really just becomes a debate about the definitions of these terms. What Dems and the media are unwilling to see is that every single American (except a few wealthy blue state people) saw their taxes GO DOWN because of Trump (and his party's majorities in congress). They look at their pay stub, they see their after-tax income go up, and their co-workers in HR/benefits explain that it's because the federal government lowered their tax rates. Abstract arguments about the incidence of corporate tax rates or "who benefits more" are just not relevant to what people actually see and perceive on that pay stub.
One last point-- the media is generally unfair to conservatives in constantly accusing them of stinginess. Conservatives, on average, give much more money to charity than liberals. I think that conservatives have a much better and clearer idea that it's self-sacrifice that is righteous, not demands of others.
I make a lot of money and one of the reasons I vote for Dems over and over is that I am confident they will not really raise my taxes by much. Trump actually raised my taxes due to the SALT cap!
The media / Dem narrative about redistribution and the reality are quite distinct. Dems love the feeling of moral superiority from vacuous claims about redistribution, while Republicans tend to be much more straightforward (e.g. my taxes went down!, I give charity!, etc.)
My understanding has been that "conservatives donate more to charity" holds true only when counting church donations as charity. If you factor those out (e.g. think of church donations as social club membership dues) then IIRC conservatives are comparable to liberals in their donations. (Which is not to say that churches don't often do things that one would associate with charity.) But I could be misremembering!
Yeah, it's true that religious charities make up some ( a lot? ) of the difference, but I think it would be pretty disingenuous to exclude them. Firstly because, as you acknowledge, churches do a TON of run-of-the-mill charity (as Jesus very much demanded of them). And secondly, because conservatives could also point to orgs like Planned Parenthood, and see their mission as being quite uncharitable to fetuses, that they view as humans.
So I think it's preferable to just look at the "self-sacrifice" factor, which is the amount of money a person foregoes, and not judge the causes themselves. This matter of sacrifice, and it's distortion among Dems, was my main focus. Whether we like the cause or not, there is sacrifice happening.
You make another interesting point, which is that sometimes charity is just tax-advantaged consumption. Think fancy $500/plate gala dinners that spend most of the money they raise on lavish "fundraising" parties for the donors themselves. It's a problem in general, and I don't see it being more of an issue with churches than with secular non-profits. I've been to some pretty decadent parties for "child cancer" and other noble sounding causes, from secular orgs.
That favoring high taxes on people that make more money than you do, but not yourself, is somehow noble. It might be the right policy, but the framing really grinds my gears.
Beyond the moral dimension, I think the federal government needs more revenue to run a modern nation-state, even under current spending policies. Dems need to back off their assumed rhetorical high ground and admit that achieving their goals really does require asking most Americans to pay more tax, not just the 0.1%.
Republicans are not better, for the record. They are not willing to raise anyone's taxes meaningfully. Dems are willing to raise taxes on the 0.1%. In the Dem mind this makes them deeply morally superior. Nonsense.
Well, this is what I am reading, not on the cable news, but in the European newspapers and news magazines. I suppose other people's angst sells copy here, too, but there sure seems to be a lot of it going around, as opposed to discussion of policy successes, which I would be much more interested in reading.
I tend to avoid generalizations like this, which might be a result of deducing psychological perspectives from observations of physical limitations. There are plenty of ways to be "open to new experiences" as you get old. The older you get, the greater the chances of being thrust into new experiences unwillingly. If you can't be creative and open to the un-hoped for but possible events that come with aging (including that final one), you'll be miserable.
For me it's more a matter of whether a new experience leads to physical discomfort, takes up more energy then I have, or is not a priority given my enthusiasms and interests.
It's not clear to me that what 'open to new experiences' means when you and I are talking in the pub (or in conversation here) is the same as what the psychologists mean when they talk about what they are measuring as one of the Big 5 Personality traits. It's the latter that is claimed to be linked to both going to university and being liberal rather than conservative. I'm skeptical of there being a causal relationship rather than a temporal one here.
Good article. Two things I would make a point of is
1. it's not really all that clear how much party leadership can actually control the direction of political parties and the makeup of the coalition. Now I think it's conventional wisdom among people who are "shor-pilled" that Obama was actually relatively moderate compared to what came next but this was definitely not the perception at the time. I don't actually know what can be done to slow or reverse educational polarization, given it seems to be a trend across basically all developed countries no matter what the local party dynamics are.
2. We should also consider that in a system where you need a trifecta it might be better to pass sweeping legislation then lose, policy is not precisely thermostatic... you don't lose what you gained just because you lose some popularity. If you pass sweeping legislation the opposing party has to win a countervailing trifecta AND prioritize rolling back your agenda AND keep all their factions unified. If not, you can lose the election but still have your policies persist.
Candidates. The candidate the party supports is how the party leadership can control the direction and makeup of the coalition.
As you rightly and strikingly imply, there’s more to control than just that. But it seems clear to me that party leadership signals its values (and thus who is welcome in the coalition) by way of supporting any one candidate over another.
Given that the Squad has been identified as an insurgent faction that often challenges incumbent Democrats, it seems to me that the Democratic establishment on the whole has already indicated it's trying to moderate.
Only issue I see with this is that trifectas will be easier for Republicans than Democrats given the Senate map. Over time, this could be a one way ratchet similar to what we have seen in SCOTUS.
I always find this concern far too fatalistic. The parties are not fixed. In the last century, democrats have controlled each chamber more often than the GOP:
The last century is a very long time during which the teams essentially switched jerseys. Perhaps politics will become less geographically sorted, but for the foreseeable future, Republicans will have a significant advantage in the Senate given WyIdaMonDakota controlling 10% of the Senate with less total population than California.
This simply isn’t true. The circumstances giving rise to Republicans’ dominance of rural voters have been in place and predictably leading us here for at least 40 years. It not only was entirely foreseeable at least a generation in advance, it was predicted by almost everyone who understood politics. They just didn’t see it breaking so badly after Clinton.
The ability of Democrats to entrench themselves to slow that wave that started in the late 1960s isn’t evidence that things can change quicker than we thought, it show that even after Democrats find the right formula to winning over those voters it could take two decades to four to show results.
The “quick” swings people imagine have occurred over the past two decades are an illusion because we’ve been close to equally divided, our attention has been entirely focused on the 10% of contestable elections (not the 90% that aren’t even close), and 3-5 lucky breaks for Democrats in the Senate that have ALL gone democrats’ way.
For example, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas were decidedly conservative states long before Democrats lost power there in the 1990-2000. But that was just entrenchment that everyone understood would someday fail. When it did fail, it was like a damn breaking-now Republicans are in the position to entrench themselves to win even when they are not popular.
In short, I wouldn’t expect to see Democrats hold the Senate for more than 2 years again in my lifetime, and I’d expect Republicans to hold it well more than 60% of the time.
You realize that only a third of states have rural populations larger than a third? Only four have over 50% and the two most rural are pretty Democratic (Maine & Vermont). Utah and Florida are only 9% rural, much lower than Minnesota at 27% and Michigan at 25% so the former are definitely locks for Democrats - right?
> it was predicted by almost everyone who understood politics.
I thought a generation ago, everyone on both sides of the aisle were predicting that a growing minority population was going to usher in a new era of democratic domination?
Over the past 30 years, since the remnants of the New Coalition fell apart in 1994, Dems have won the House only four times. They have won the Senate eights. Dems struggle to win the House, not the Senate.
They have had incredible luck in the Senate. If Republicans run anyone other than Herschel Walker, Republicans would currently control the Senate.
Obviously luck is part of politics, but most of the luck in Senate elections has gone Democrats’ way. They will not hold Montana or West Virginia in 2024, for example. Ohio will be incredibly difficult to hold. There are no Republican seats anyone could reasonably expect a Democrat to pick up.
In short, the only obstacle to Republicans controlling the Senate are Republicans.
I would argue that the problem is not “bold” policies but instead silly policies. These policies are more about feeling good than doing good. Legalizing gay marriage, enacting civil rights legislation, working to improve policing are all bold but just policies. Arguing that former men should compete with females, that letting kids experiment with gender when the science is (at best) insufficient, defunding the police, supporting armed gunmen taking over parts of Seattle and Portland and believing (and enacting via policy) that “the only remedy to current racism is future racism” are not bold. They are silly and immature.
The gains of the past hundred and fifty or so years were built on bold but just policies. The current crop of ideas that we are expending so much energy on risk undoing some of those gains.
I wouldn’t lean as heavily on the “openness to experience” thing. It’s a Haidtian perspective that gets way overstated.
RE governing with slimmer majorities, my main objection isn’t that Democrats aren’t being *left* enough, it’s that they’re barely even trying to move the playing field left. PR and DC statehood at a minimum would rebalance the Senate map. Expanding the House would dilute the power of gerrymandering, such as it is. Legalizing MMD might ultimately dilute the party’s power, but would also create a long-term avenue towards building up third parties that could challenge Republicans on their own turf where the Democratic brand is too toxic to be competitive. Or maybe just abolish the freaking filibuster!!
I honestly don’t give a shit about wealth taxes or encoding Roe. We need to start playing for the actual marbles that are on the table, not obsessing about picking up every marble that Republicans have tossed on the floor in the last 50 years.
Whenever I see "openness to experience" comparisons all of things that are defined as experiences to be open to are cosmopolitan experiences. So of course progressives score higher, because those experiences occur where they live. I want to know the openness level of a bunch of people on the Upper East Side when asked about going prairie dog hunting in South Dakota or going to a NASCAR race in South Carolina. My guess is it would be lower.
Agreed on the "openness to experience". My anecdotal experience with conservatives on this is that they are just as open to new experience as liberals, they are just not open to believing that new/different must always mean better.
Political science contradicts your anecdote. In studies of OCEAN personality traits, liberals score higher on openness.
Also I think you are choosing to define “open” in a way that is inconsistent with common use. If someone claims to be “open” to new things, but is unwilling to grant that something new might be better, they aren’t really that “open” — “I’m open to trying new things and hating them!”
I generally agree, but also want to caution that political science is absolutely, and completely dominated by liberals or further left. That isn't to say their findings are wrong, but we should apply additional rigor to their findings and especially to their presentation. Similar to how you would want to question bank executives recommendations on fed policy.
I did not say that they were not open to believing that something new was better, I said that they were not open to believing that new or different MUST always be better than existing. As another commenter says, liberals write the questions and interpret the answers. It's baffling that they reach the conclusion that it turns out We Liberals are just better / nicer / more virtuous than Those People.
Openness isn’t a virtue per se. It’s also associated with risk taking and addiction, for example, in addition to good things like intellectual curiosity.
I do think there is something to be explained in the fact that scientists, say, are overwhelmingly liberal. I know the standard con explanation is that universities are work brainwashing machines, but I spent some time in academia in the hard sciences and politics rarely came up. It’s just that when it did, most everyone was liberal with a smattering of libertarians.
"Openness isn’t a virtue per se. It’s also associated with risk taking and addiction, for example, in addition to good things like intellectual curiosity."
I'm curious how that squares with Republican areas tending to have much higher levels of risk taking and addiction than Democratic areas.
Democrats' neuroticism probably cancels much of the risk taking associated with openness. Not sure about drug addiction (unless it is just cocaine and cannabis v. opioids and amphetamines).
Some journalist in the last ten years emphasized that a component of acceptance/openness for more conservative people is to emphasize the sameness first.
It is pretty well borne out by the data that liberal leaning people enjoy novelty for novelty’s sake.
Conservatives can be very open to new experiences *if the commonalities are emphasized first.*
For example, a middle American white couple owns a home. A recently immigrated Indian couple moves in next door.
If the neighbor’s commonalities are emphasized first--desire for good schools, praise for the US’s economic mobility, family values--then the conservative white family will be much more open to experiencing and enjoying, say, Indian cuisine, cultural practices that are novel, etc.
I support PR statehood (assuming it does itself when presented with a binding vote) but I don't think it necessarily moves things towards the Democrats.
I agree. I think Democrats would win in the short term but it’s an island with an aging, religious, and poorly educated population. And Puerto Rican communities on the mainland seem to be shifting right pretty rapidly.
I'm generally supportive of MMD, but I think we should look long and hard at what has happened to centrist parties in Europe over the last 30 years before assuming opening up third party candidates who challenge Republicans is good.
I disagree. We’ve already seen the exact same broader populist movement play out in the phenomenon of getting plenty of extremists elected here.
A realistic third-party alternative enabled by a larger House *isn’t* going to magically be Nazis out of nowhere, they’re going to be Forward-Party-style moderates. The GOP are *already* all but Nazis (in a political science sense); the alternative is moderates who can compete in districts where Democrats can’t.
I think this is incorrect. The GOP are not Nazis in any real sense of the word and suggestions that they are seem puerile to me.
In the current system you get a bunch a different coalitions forced together and in doing so they moderate some of the more extreme positions of the various coalitions, while also helping build workable majorities. The problem with the current system is that parties and voters are forced to choose early what compromises they are willing to make ideologically. This leads more voters choosing someone they agree with 50+1% of the time instead of 80%+ if there were more diverse parties and the single district means that whatever group can't get to 50%+1 is entirely unrepresented in their district.
But look at what has happened in a number of countries with multiple parties - the center is having a harder time getting a majority without including further extreme parties - or conceding much of their ideological differences in order to maintain a centrist government.
They're "Nazis" in the sense that they've been leveraged by an internal minority extremist faction. Perhaps it's more accurate to label them as the Wiemar conservative parties that lent the Nazis legitimacy.
But to be absolutely clear, I'm not saying they're "Nazis" in the sense that they're on some genocidal campaign. I'm only talking about in the poli-sci sense of an extremist kingmaker party. So you can leave those accusations of being "puerile" on the doorstep.
"They're "Nazis" in the sense that they've been leveraged by an internal minority extremist faction."
Would you apply the same framing to Democrats and many of their cultural issues?
My more substantive point is that I think "Nazis," "Communists," etc. have so much baggage that applying them to the current situation in the US gives off way more heat than light. Many people want to be giving off heat because they are all passion and little insight. You've got plenty of passion, but I generally find you very insightful as well*, so it seems weird for you to use it.
*You're quite insightful, but to be clear - you're also wrong when you disagree with me :)
>>Would you apply the same framing to Democrats and many of their cultural issues?
It's not remotely the same, and I think you know that. The proof is in the pudding - every single winning Dem president has been a moderate since Jimmy Carter, including the current one. Trump may have won on fooling swing voters into coding him as a moderate, but the movement he bestrides is clearly extremist and always has been since its Tea Party days.
Again, the parallel I'm drawing with the Nazis isn't the extremism itself, but that both the Nazis and the Tea Party/Trumpist movements leveraged small pluralities inside the right wing into broader control of the entire right wing. The mechanisms are different, but the strategy was the same.
Harkening back to my original comment, though, I only brought up extremism/Nazis/Trumpism because the strategy I intimated is *starkly different* from the one they exploited.
To wit, it would be for Democrats to leverage MMD to allow Libertarians (and even Greens, to a much lesser extent) to gain a foothold in rural areas where the Democratic brand is toxic. Since libertarianism was mostly absorbed into the GOP over the last two decades, it now represents a major cleavage within the party's coalition. Just imagine if Utah had MMD! Utah is a deep red state, but a large chunk of that majority are ideological libertarians, some smaller chunk of whom might be tempted to vote for a Libertarian party that actually stood a shot at winning seats. Democrats might stand to lose some percentage of their own vote share because of it, but if it destabilizes the Utah GOP and means that the Dems might have a hope of getting a police reform bill or a zoning pre-emption bill through the legislature that they'd otherwise have not even a snowball's chance at, then I'd say the juice was worth getting squeezed a little.
That's not "enabling extremism", it's just using a new electoral mechanic (MMD) to cleave your opponent's coalition. Very different strategy.
I dunno. Watching her and Boebert take very different approaches in this Congress has been interesting. As far as I can tell, Boebert is pure grifting. She would rather be in the opposition because its easier to grift there. MTG seem more some combination of ignorant, stupid, conspiracy theorist inclined, etc. but also actually more interested in being a part of doing something. I'm honestly not sure which is worse. I really dislike grifting so want to say Boebert, but she's never going to accomplish a single thing, while MTG might at some point accomplish something - might be good or might be bad.
Is this a good place to argue about how dumb that posited "conservative vs liberal" axis is? Even if I try not to get hung up on the terrible American political maldefinition of "liberal", I don't even know what the hell that chart is showing, or thinks it's showing which are probably not the same thing. Especially given that it's "conservative" vs "liberal" within the D party and the outer wings of that party are neither conservative nor liberal, so... does the rise in liberal ID imply... moderation? Maybe. Or maybe the axis is less economic and more accurately described as the Identitarian Social Justice vs Trad horseshoe where pluralist liberals occupy the center bulge. Either way I agree with the general conclusion that reading the trend towards a more "liberal" Democrat party as an endorsement of more outlier policy positions is a huge mistake.
Since you opened it up, I'll go ahead and rant on how much I avoid the terms conservative and liberal in these structures. Even worse for me is the smug term progressive ("We're for progress, how can you oppose that? And if you do, you're against progress!"). If I have to abide by a left/right one dimensional axis, those are the terms, left and right, that I will use. But as you say, I wish we could take each issue at face value and discuss it independently, instead of trying to group things into two poles.
And these words often mean such different things to people, especially depending on the era they grew up in. A high level of trust in institutional authority, for instance, was not something that was associated with the liberal team even 20 years ago. I don’t have data in front of me, but the vibe tells me that this has flipped in a big way.
I actually prefer “progressive” over “left”, because to me “left” sounds like it’s about class and socialism, which is a different axis than a lot of the contemporary issues.
I at least like small p progressive as a coherent pole vs small c conservative. Not sure they track the capital letter versions so usefully though. I lean small p, but I could hardly be farther from Progressive.
Something like that. I think it's maybe most easily described as a psychological bias. How likely are you to accept, "Because that's the way it's always been done." as compelling reasoning? Very = conservative. Not at all = progressive.
There's also the problem of fiscal liberalism/conservatism vs. all the various social aspects. A couple years ago discovered that a politically aware family member was not even aware of the conceptual distinction.
I think there is a large and growing cohort of socially liberal (or more liberal than we used to be) but remain pro-capitalism. We don’t really like either the MAGA folks who took over the Republican Party or the coastal elites who have taken over the Democratic Party. My hope that when I divorced myself from the Republicans because of Trump, I would find a home in being a Democrat. However, I feel the only thing we completely agree on is that we hate Trump. I’ll vote for Biden in 2024, but eventually there will be some sort of moderate revolt. You can’t leave so many people feel unrepresented and unheard. The saddest thing of all is the death of meaningful debate in this country. You are either red or blue, and both colors are getting brighter.
I mean the question as to whether Democrats should moderate on policy honestly depends on the policy right? $15 minimum wage, decriminalizing marijuana possession and codifying gay marriage are all the left of where the Democratic Party was in 2012. However, they are also three issues with pretty sizable majority support. The big enchilada of course now is abortion rights. The Democratic position is now probably now closer to the centrist position than it was in 2012.
Also, good to keep in mind the “Tory Men Whig Measures” aphorism. Not on everything of course, but in general Democratic policy positions are more popular than Republican ones. Proof is in the pudding with Ron DeSantis Presidential run. In addition, see Matt’s posts about an under-discussed reason for Trump’s ability to win was being to the left (at least rhetorically) of GOP on economic policy.
My favorite political quote, possibly apocryphal, is the man who got up a town hall in 2009 and said “keep government out of my Medicare”. A true “chef’s kiss” perfect quote that encapsulates a huge percentage of Americans schizophrenic political attitudes. But also suggests there is a lot of room for Democrats to be pretty bold on policy if it can be couched and marketed with moderate rhetoric and if the message is given by someone that the public trusts as more moderate; you know like Joe Biden. It’s a hope that I have for 2024 (a “god please pull this off” hope). But also a real blueprint I hope Democrats follow rhetorically going forward.
Yeah, I do think that Dem candidates should try to use some “Moneyball” type thinking to determine where moderating would give them more bang for the buck. Purely symbolic appeals to bipartisanship/red-coded cultural pastimes? Go nuts. Crime and immigration? Also good, but don’t talk about it too much because raising the salience helps Rs. Gun rights? This one makes sense to bend on if you’re running to represent rural constituencies. But high minimum wage, legalized weed, legal abortion, infrastructure spending, keeping Medicare and Social Security intact, or keeping gay marriage legal? You’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you ditch those.
(Sinema is probably the worst kind of moderate because she tends to buck the party consensus in places where it’s unpopular to do so.)
Gun rights has always seemed like the obvious, low hanging, "how to appeal to rural constituents", fruit for Dems, especially given how hard they're losing the fight at SCOTUS anyways. Anti-legal CCW, pro-assault weapon ban gun control policy is dead. A pivot to expanded rights with more effective enforcement is a zero policy downside tradeoff.
The insane thing is far right gun control policies are just extremely soft on criminals, because it’s already really easy to get a gun if you are even remotely a responsible citizen and the only group who has a hard time getting guns now is criminals. We should be seeing ads with pictures of criminals or domestic abusers who shot and killed people (basically a non-racist version of the Willie Horton ad) in every competitive race.
The correct equilibrium is one where gun rights are broadly recognized to the point that there's substantial consensus that people who carry in violation of the narrowly defined exceptions truly deserve to have the hammer brought down upon them.
This doesn't solve the problem of the incredibly insecure middle-age man who performatively slings a rifle over his back to go get his venti chai latte, but I think it's otherwise mostly correct.
A lot of urban and suburban voters who are afraid of violent crime are also very pro-gun control, though— I think this is one of those cases where the right political tradeoff depends on who your constituents are.
I think as a matter of history it is important to remember that LBJ was wrong. Twelve years after he signed the civil rights act, Jimmy Carter won both the black vote and the entire South.
In a very large sense it is maybe true that civil rights cost the Democrats the South, but the plenty of the people who voted for Wallace voted for Clinton and Carter and for liberal senators like Sam Nunn or Al Gore. It is their children and grandchildren - people who will tell pollsters they approve of interracial marriage - who won't vote for Democrats. It wasn't written in the stars that Democrats would lose the South as completely as they have.
He didn't say "in fifty years, we will lose the South for a lifetime."
There was a gradual realignment that had already started in the 50s, with Eisenhower winning a few southern states. Then there was a sudden realignment where the Southern states supported Goldwater and Nixon, something similar to what Johnson predicted. Jimmy Carter completely undid that realignment, and two generations of recognizably modern Democrats came from the post-segregationist South.
Democrats didn't lose the South not because of civil rights laws, which were bipartisan and are very old news. They've lost it because of the gradual "education polarization" dynamic you describe, which you see in rural Minnesota (and exurban Toronto) just as much as in the South. Of course racism and the legacy of Jim Crow are a huge part of why the white South is so culturally conservative in the first place.
I think that liberal Democrats who were around for the 70s and 80s (not Milan) often want to explain the whole Regan phenomenon, or all of American conservatism, as an extension of segregationist politics.
It gives a flattering explanation of why New Deal / Great Society liberalism collapsed in the 1970s: racism! But since the equivalent left-of-center / social democratic movements ran into trouble everywhere in the developed world at that time the explanation doesn't wash.
Reagan was well-liked because his policies helped the broad middle class, which is called broad because it way outnumbers both the wealthy and the poor. Maybe it is less moral to help the middle class than the poor, but when the vast majority of the country benefits from policies that majority will generally reward the person or people who enacted those policies.
The “openness to experience” point I have always thought tells us more about the psychologists designing the survey than the studied population. If you had right wingers design the survey, the main fact about political liberals might be labeled “prone to heresy“ instead
“I’m very averse to the risk of losing elections to Republicans who will take us backward on policy, so I’m more inclined toward strategically moderating on salient issues to keep the GOP out of power.”
I am also very averse to the risk of losing elections, but at the national level it doesn’t strike me as remotely plausible that we could have one-party rule for any sustained period of time. There will be a Republican President again some day.
If your primary goal is “don’t lose the next election” and you never set out to solve any of the hard problems we face, at some point you’ll lose anyway and then you’ll have failed at your only governing objective.
Like all things, it’s a trade off. Winning elections is really important! But at some point we will lose. Governing with this in mind seems prudent.
The downside of losing in 2024 seems abnormally high. To the extent that people take their rhetoric about the threat Trump poses to the republic seriously (I do) they should put a greater premium on winning.
A major limitation and drawback of this excellent post and comments it elicited lies in the muddled and fuzzy terms "liberal", "conservative", "left" and "right." All these terms are historically problematic, and have morphed so many times since 1789 that it's unclear what we're even talking about. We've all become really lazy and are using these terms as shorthand for a wide range of attitudes and beliefs that often lack all coherence. Why is supporting the medical gender transition of children "liberal?" Why is supporting fracking and oil drilling in national forests "conservative?"
I'm as guilty as anyone else, and I don't know what the solution is, except possible to define and specify as we go along.
"My read of things is that Biden is a party man through and through — he tracked the Democratic Party’s tack to the right under Bill Clinton and then followed the party left post-Obama. It’s true that as president, Biden has signed bigger, bolder bills than Obama did ..."
I'm actually not so sure this is true. A rough comparison:
- The Affordable Care Act was the biggest deal of any Democratic bill in 50 years and blazed a new frontier for America's social insurance system. One could argue that the Inflation Reduction Act was perhaps more left wing than the ACA as a matter of coalitional politics, but substantively its social spending piece built on the ACA and its clean energy piece built on the Obama-era R&D successes.
- The 2021 ARP was larger and more immediately effective as a result, but the 2009 Recovery Act had more elements that left lasting legacies - and at a time when lots of people around the world were going all-in on austerity, fiscal stimulus bigger than the New Deal was an underrated achievement!
- Dodd-Frank is the most significant reform of the financial sector since the 1930s and I'm not sure there are any comparably important regulatory reforms (certainly not progressive ones) in recent history.
- Biden's legislative record features some really impressive bipartisan infrastructure funding and industrial policy. Obama's record included some bipartisan budget deals that made permanent some important non-ACA social program expansions, as well as the auto industry rescue and the aforementioned clean energy R&D.
My overall view is that both Obama and Biden have impressive policy legacies, and to some extent what is happening here reflects changing baselines of public policy. In other words, a big part of why the Democratic Party has moved to the left and expanded its ambitions since Obama was elected is because Obama accomplished a lot of stuff that moved the American policy baseline durably to the left! It stands to reason that the party would want to continue building on that stuff, and in many ways that's exactly what they have done in the Biden era. By contrast, Bill Clinton did not accomplish as much stuff to move the policy baseline to the left - for example, health care reform was still on the agenda in 2010 because the Dems failed to get it done in 1993.
Milan still makes a good overall point that there are tradeoffs between how big of a coalition Dems can build and how ambitious we can be about moving to the left on policy. And perhaps "bigger and bolder" just means "more left coded" in which case I might agree.
Yeah, I would say that Obama signed bigger, bolder bills - but only by a little bit despite having huge majorities. If you remove the ACA, it’s possible that their bills are actually similar in scope.
Just on Dodd-Frank ... The Glass-Steagall Act was passed in 1933 and was repealed in 1999. That "Dodd-Frank was the most significant reform ... since the 1930s" probably speaks more to the faults of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Sure ... but given the circumstances that made it possible, Obama delivered what turned out to be an effective and durable reform in an area where other recent laws have aged poorly. And (in a way that I suppose supports Milan's original point), Obama helped create the circumstances that made it possible by winning really big.
It's worth adopting bolder policies ONLY if those policies won't be immediately reversed should Republicans come to power. For example, the Affordable Care Act was worth it because the GOP failed to dislodge it under Trump. But, the Clean Power Plan, adopted through executive order, was easily reversed by Trump.
My thought is that bolder policies are worth it if they are achieved through legislation. Once a law is adopted, it becomes the status quo and the status quo is hard to dislodge because of the multiplicity of veto points that characterize the legislative process.
"This was about race, plain and simple. And it was still in motion as recently in 2008; the only areas where Barack Obama did worse than John Kerry were in the Deep South and Appalachia.
Why is the vote shift in Appalachia taken as evidence for racist voting? It wasn't even an area that was moved by the passage of the civil rights act in the earlier map. The red areas in 60-64 were very accurately described as the Solid South or the Deep South. The red areas in 2004-08 are a portion of Appalachia, most of Oklahoma and Arkansas and a few little corners of the Deep South. Are these racist areas or something? The red areas on map 1 and map 2 barely overlap.
That map doesn't align even slightly with that 2004-08 shift map, either though. Maybe there's more behind the paywall, but I don't see anything in that map that would suggest Southern born Whites are behind the latter vote shift.
If the idea is that when white voters leave the Dems it's mostly about racism, that's a theory you could try and build, but I don't think it's well-supported by these maps or assumptions that Appalachian people are racists. Maybe that Economist article has good evidence that Southern-born White migrants shifted politics to the GOP outside of the South, but the map in this link doesn't really look like a map of GOP support either. ND is plenty red in real life, and NM, CA, WA, OR and CO are plenty blue.
If the idea was that Appalachia is full of backwards racists then there's irony in that it was a section on bias and prejudice. If the idea is that areas that shifted away from Obama are racist then it's a "no true scotsman" idea.
I think the reason the areas don’t overlap much is because one region shifted about as much as it could in the 60s and the next region still had room to shift in the 2010s.
But the latter region doesn't shift at all in the first map. It's not that the Deep South goes all the way and this other area goes halfway and then catches up later. The region that Milan thinks is racist in 2008 doesn't really respond to the civil rights act in 1964 in a notable way. It's not identifiable at all in the first map.
Also - the 2nd region isn't even a region. It's Oklahoma, Arkansas, much of Appalachia and Western Pa and lastly - a chunk, maybe 20% of the deep South. So that chunk, at least, had room to shift. Do these areas have something in common, that say, Southern Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska and Missouri, don't?
That map shows that the very southern fringes of WV, Kentucky and Missouri were 10-15% southern-born Whites in 1940 (as were many other areas in the country). That does very little to explain why those areas didn't shift much AT ALL in 1960-64 and only about half of the named areas shifted red 2004-08 (over 60 years later).
Look, everything else in your article is fairly reasonable and I enjoyed it. But these defenses of the 2nd map in your post are quite stretched to say the least. They also feel built on some strangely essentialist ideas of people's political opinions based on the areas their grandparents were from.
appalachia didn’t care about the civil rights act or the voting rights act because there very vanishingly few blacks people in appalachia. give blacks the vote in georgia and they are the majority in most metropolitan counties. give blacks the vote in west virginia and nothing changes.
however, it’s pretty clear that appalachian people didn’t like seeing a biracial president on tv.
First, great writing, Milan. Really impressive.
I share your concern about the movement in the median Democratic position on a number of policy fronts and how that movement can result in more Republican wins. It would be nice if you would point to specific policies that should be either changed or dropped, though.
For me, it is around law-and-order policies that favor criminals more than victims and a toleration for disorder more broadly. These are mostly state or local policies, though, so national Democratic politicians still get my votes. But at some point, that might change if trends continue.
What policies are like that for you?
Broadly speaking I would prefer a return to the relative positioning and general tone of the 2012 platform. Specifically I would favor changing positions on race-based affirmative action; trans women in competitive women's sports and some of the more extreme ideas about youth medical transitions; going back to "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"; a more coherent, Australia-like position on immigration; and a greater emphasis on the bread-and-butter egalitarian economic message. I think Sherrod Brown's "dignity of work" rhetoric is great example of that last one.
SCOTUS is going to give them no choice on AA. I think (hope?) the trans discourse will reach a quieter if still uneasy consensus. Crime I think is a major wild card not only to how people react, but how the levels of it go up and down over time (and you can probably throw "disorder" into this category as well). Immigration I don't know the answer to, I'm just defeated that my preference just doesn't have the popularity yet that I wish.
Democrats would likely go back to 2012 if they lost several big national elections, similar to how three Republican presidencies in a row produced Bill Clinton. But that might not happen if Republicans just nominate Trump one or two more times to lose before they pick someone else, like William Jennings Bryan.
Milan,
I’m always surprised, but not shocked, to hear mention of my beloved native Iron Range in national context.*
I’m surprised because the area’s isolation--geographic, meteorologic--leaves it out of sight and mind. But I’m never shocked, because that string of small cities has had an outsized effect on our nation’s fate, and because the compactness of its socioeconomic crucible offers manageable study.
To wit, I wonder if, say, your prescription for moderation as defined in your reply above (with which I broadly concur) were applied, what political affect would carry through to my hometown?
I suspect little, given other pressures of polarization. But it would be worthy of observation.
Anyways, I guess this is all by way of saying thanks for the unexpected little jolt of nativist pride via your reference.
*Go Bluejackets!
I think your point about the WPA is a good one: if your policies get people well-paying jobs they will support you.
Its why
You just listed some positions that would get you castigated in many left leaning circles. That is because nuance is dead. I am sympathetic with moderating Democratic positions on the issues you list.
A major problem with the Democratic party is that elected leadership in Washington are surrounded by staff and interns who disproportionately come from an unrepresentative part of the Democratic coalition. This shapes the information representatives see. Places like the NYT and other left leaning outlets also advocate for political positions that don't represent the median Democratic voter.
Keep your transphobic shit to yourself.
Milan, I don't agree with the tenor of spiky's comment, but I certainly don't like him being banned for it and I am one of Matt's earliest subscribers. I am not sure if I want to continue subscribing if someone like you is banning someone because you disagree with their valid point of views.
And your article is banal for the most part and a summary of common political knowledge re the change of the political climate of Southern states.
I don’t agree that this is a banal article – I think it’s excellently written and provides a lot of great supporting evidence I haven’t seen before (loving those county-level vote shift maps).
However, I am strongly with you on the point that spiky should not be banned. Policing the Overton window in such a ham-handed way serves no good purpose.
Sparky's view is ... shall I say, aggressively worded ... but does not fall into "transphobic" in my view. We are all still working through what it means to be supportive of someone who is gender dysphoric and what many see as a more radical view regarding gender and sex than what people have come to believe for a long time.
Maybe over time the current gender activist movement will be seen to be correct. Or maybe not. Either way, I think shutting down spiky's subscription is unwarranted.
Hey Milan.
I'm sorry to see you banning Spiky. I'm especially sorry to see you slur him as you ban him.
It's your site, of course. Your site, your rules. Still, I hope you'll reconsider this one. Despite the intemperance of Spiky's comments, I myself found them to be the most helpful comments that I have so far encountered in the Slow Boring comment sections.
Many thanks for your consideration, Milan. *And* for your wonderful work!
Reminder- it’s not “his” site it’s Matt’s. He is assigned the job of moderating the comments section by Matt, thoigh one hopes the owner and boss keeps tabs every once in a while to make sure the enforcement is in line with his wishes…
If you have a complaint about my moderation write matt@slowboring.com
Y'all's site, y'all's rules.
Unfortunately, standard English doesn't distinguish between the second person possessive singular pronoun, and the second person possessive plural.
Thanks, THP! <3
>...I myself found them to be the most helpful comments that I have so far encountered in the Slow Boring comment sections.<
Seriously?
Different strokes, I guess!
"Seriously?"
Yes, Jasper. I'm a pretty earnest sort, really.
I don't spend a lot of time in the comments section of Matt's blog. I find the substack comments format hard to follow (no doubt an artifact of my advanced years, lol). But I did happen to see this thread with Spiky and all. Spiky's intemperate. And, obviously, he has a low opinion of "gender affirming care" (if I've got that buzzword right). But I found his articulation of his alternative viewpoint to be helpful.
I grew up, Jasper, on the unfashionable side of Fort Worth, Texas, back in the waning days of Jim Crow (my class admitted the first two African Americans to my high school). I've got a lot of anti-trans, old fart, Facebook friends from back home. I know these kinda guys. They're upstanding citizens and responsible family men. But they hate Democrats and love Trump and take a very dim view of transexuality. They just look at the world differently than we Slow Borers do. I'm always interested in understanding their point of view; but they're not always all that good on explaining it to me. Spiky *did* explain it to me, and I found that helpful.
Your mileage may vary.
Thanks so much for your question! <3
I just want to voice my support for this decision, since it seems it's pretty unpopular.
Spiky has made SEVERAL comments over the past week that indicate a deeper transphobia and fundamental detachment from reality -- they appear to think that there's a lot of minors getting bottom surgery, which simply isn't true. Reading down the thread, they made further offensive comments on top of the one they were banned for.
The level of alarm with which they are writing these comments indicates someone who is very angry and _not_well_. We shouldn't mistake them for a lone voice bravely speaking truth to power. They're just speaking nonsense which occasionally aligns, superficially, with the culture-war gripes that some commenters and readers around here are known to have.
If anything, I find it kind of disappointing that my fellow commenters are falling for this (pardon my French, Milan) line of fucking bullshit. I thought we were smarter than that around here.
the fact you call it the anodyne bottom surgery wow
Do you have something to say? I didn't even use the word "anodyne".
Beware that the mods are watching.
I do not view this as transphobic in the slightest - trans people are not being attacked; an unpopular and untenable *political* stance is being attacked. I really don’t see why it’s inappropriate to call a particular set of policies “deranged”
Yikes. And this attitude and rhetoric is exactly why I think Democrats will be fine in the long run--because the Dem approach includes compassion and, ultimately, is more libertarian. The trans issue is complicated, and most people I think recognize that. Letting individual adults make choices as to their own health care (and parents for their children) in consultation with doctors, while enshrining protections for employment and shelter, is broadly popular.
what beautiful rhetoric!
Yes, the thing is no one wants to talk about it. But I can tell you I've queried many of my close friends and family privately (everyone I know, including myself, are on the left/liberal spectrum)and, to a person, everyone I've asked has expressed deep concern about this issue with regards to children.
This is an important question -- can men be men while adopting traditionally feminine characteristics? Or are the traditional and society-endorsed characteristics now the *definition* of a what a woman is?
It appears, though, that this question is off-limits here, which is unfortunate. The debate -- and it is an interesting debate with potentially uncomfortable results for both sides of the argument -- will continue elsewhere.
A comment like this that generates significant a number of likes shouldn’t result in a banning.
Like count is irrelevent, the content crossed a line.
Milan, I share other commentators’ concerns. I just read that comment twice. It seems to use strong language against a *policy* and against certain types of treatment, but does not demonize any group of people. It seems thus quite different from the comments on this issue that have previously been banned. The number of likes, though irrelevant in and of it self, should give you pause- it’s a suggestion that many did not view this as hate speech. They may be wrong and you may be right but you ought to give it some thought . May not be a bad idea to re think or at least to try to give a detailed explanation of your choice. Censorship ought to be a last resort and only for hate speech.
Spiky has made other comments, including one I reported, that made clear they think there's a widespread epidemic of bottom surgery being performed on minors. Which is just not true. Spiky likely isn't getting banned for this comment alone, but for a disturbing pattern of behavior. I'm behind Milan on this one.
Steve Sailer frequently had the most liked tweet replies to Matt and he was banned. The world is a better place for it.
What does not equivocating mean? The big problem with issues like transgender rights is that you can't choose to support different policies without sending a different message about values. You can't send the message that these policies are dumb without sending the message that treating trans people with respect and dignity isn't important.
It's the same with race. Even if you believed (not advocating just a hypo) that anti-discriminaton laws are no longer worth the cost or even that if you repealed them civil society would take over and do a better job with boycotts you can't support that policy with people understanding you as saying that racial discrimination isn't a big deal or isn't very important.
That's how we get into these situations. Even if many ppl of the left don't like the dumb shit that happens around trans issues they think it's too important not to suggest that it's ok to see trans people as less deserving of respect etc to risk supporting that message.
--
In the long run it's an issue I hope gets solved by just having some unremarkable trans politicians. They can cut the bullshit on this without that meaning being read in.
And they should. Even if you're a trans person whose primary concern in this world is to increase acceptance and quality of life for trans people, you too should hope the issue goes away. After all, if the Dems weren't so eager to push it the republicans wouldn't be so eager to pass symbolic laws.
"[Y]ou can't choose to support different policies without sending a different message about values."
This isn't natural or inevitable. It only seems like it because activists viciously police the boundaries, and now well-meaning people are too afraid to dissent from the smallest detail.
Hey Deadpan.
Thanks for your comment.
I'll share with you something of my own recent experience with something that some might view as “activist policing".
I'm a 69 year old, conservative Democrat who is active in a liberal, Presbyterian congregation. My bride and I have been married for 43 happy years, and one of our six children is homosexual. In March of this year, the associate pastor of our congregation announced that she (to use my, rather than her, prefered pronoun) was “non-binary, gender non-conforming, gender queer.”
Well ok, these things happen. The mantra I developed when my homosexual son discovered his sexual orientation is this: “Human sexuality happens. It happens to a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. When it happens to you, you need to deal with it responsibly.” The associate pastor of my congregation is a *very* responsible young woman (and I here refer not to her chosen gender, but to what I take to be her “biological” sex). It appeared to me (and continues to appear to me) that she was (and is) managing her gender dysphoria issues in an entirely responsible and constructive manner. I just assumed that I could tweak my human sexuality mantra to cover human gender issues as well, and move on. But it didn't quite work out that easily for me.
I had had an excellent relationship with Rachel. When I read her “gender queer” announcement, my primary concern was to ensure that my good working relationship with her continued. She told us, among other things, that we could support her by using the Elverson variation of Spivak pronouns, “ey/em/eir” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun), when referring to her. I chose not to employ these pronouns. I naively thought that that wouldn't be a problem. And indeed, it didn't seem to me to be a problem for my relationship with Rachel. We talked about it, and I felt that we understood each other fine. To my relief, my relationship with Rachel appeared to me to continue to be an excellent one. However, my decision did lead to some minor awkwardness elsewhere in the congregation. To my astonishment, I found myself being told that in continuing to use the traditional third person pronouns to refer to Rachel, I was “saying the wrong thing.”
Well again, these things happen. I've been hanging around church houses for seven decades now. I can manage church stuff. But then to my further astonishment, as I was casually discussing my church challenges with our youngest one day, the girl, who has never met my associate pastor and has never seen me working with that pastor, my daughter burst into tears, told me that I was being “cruel” to Rachel, and proceeded to take actions that caused me (and continues to cause me) minor difficulties in my family life.
Geez Louise.
But again, I've been navigating the challenges of family life for as long as I've been hanging around church houses. It's just part of it.
And really, I don't myself see any of this stuff as “activist policing”, exactly. The guy down at church who has insisted (to my astonishment) that I am “saying the wrong thing” is pastoring, not policing, me. And my youngest child is just working through her own issues, I think.
But still…. My experience *has* offered me an opportunity to reflect upon the analogous experiences of more vulnerable folks caught in the crossfire of these gender disputes. I can't see that we Democrats could be doing ourselves any favors by taking potentially Democratic voters to task for their reluctance to embrace every nuance of our *au courant*.
Thanks for listening! <3
Umm who cares if they are right or wrong? I don't believe in god but I don't try to stop those who want to go to church and I'll call people rabbi or whatever to be polite.
I can appreciate your perspective because I share a few feelings about the T issue. Yes, it is a medical ethics question whether treatment of adults falls under "do no harm" - an interesting case where individual preference comes up against medical practice (can anyone think of other examples of this? I can't, at the moment.)
But ultimately we have the social ethic of treating all individuals equally in the public sphere, which extends to demonstrating respect (i.e. basic courtesy) no matter what. This is where I would disagree with the use of the word "equivocating." The ethic stems from deeply and widely held principles of equality for disabled, mentally ill, economically vulnerable, racially non-dominant etc.
(So you could ironically, or not, just consider some trans persons to be a bit psychologically, er, immature or whatever.)
Honestly, just expressing sympathy for crime victims would go a long way. There is a really annoying and counterproductive tendency to tell victims of property crime to just get over it because insurance will cover it. That reeks of cluelessness. People stealing your stuff gets to people. You feel violated and telling people not to feel that way doesn't work. Plus, if you're constantly filing insurance claims over crime, your insurer is going to hike your rates. You still use.
Same for public disorder. If someone is upset about people smoking fentanyl on the train, you express sympathy and acknowledge that it's a bad thing. You don't tell them that it's harmless because someone at the health department says so. And you absolutely do not tell someone who has an asthma attack triggered by fentanyl smoke that it's a panic attack not an asthma attack and it's all in their head.
I'm wondering how alone I am among "right" coded posters here in thinking that 90s "tough on crime" Democrats were the worst kind of Democrat.
50 years from 1970-2020 had only THREE Democratic presidents:
Carter who failed (in the electorate's opinion)
Clinton who was aggressively centrist
and Obama who was low-key centrist
I feel like we spend a lot of time in the comments repeatedly arguing about how moderate a Democrat needs to be to win the White House when the evidence is pretty clear about what was required.
A lot of what happened in the 90s was a reaction (sometimes overreaction) to this feeling:
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7as3dv/matthew_modine_is_the_liberal_saturday_night_live/
One of my earliest SNL memories. Sorry it’s a Reddit link, this one’s getting hard to find.
Phil Hartman will never fail to get a like from me.
I say "Damn I miss Phil Hartman" so many times. Still so gutted that he was taken away from us far too soon.
And linking this back to your top level comment, you don't code as "right" to me at all. Or "left", for that matter. If anything, you've got the unique Dave Coffin worldview, and it's good to hear it.
Maybe I mean I identify as "right" because I consider left/right to be a mostly economic axis, and I'm aggressively capitalistic.
I think the economic axis of party affiliation is a lot harder to make sense of these days than the cultural axis.
And there's plenty of places where they overlap and don't become useful axes. Immigration is an excellent example that historically divided both parties between each other.
...the deficit fight over the debt ceiling was pretty cut and dry!
My son is the opposite - economically quite liberal but socially conservative, at least for a Gen Z (e.g. he is OK with same sex marriage, but frowns on recreational use of marijuana). Some people think he is a right wing Christian Nationalist or something and others think he is a Communist. I kind of like the own worldview designation.
I've gotta say, back in ~the aughts I did not have "weird straight edge kids will become a dominant trend in youth culture" on my bingo card.
Meh. For my part, you seem pretty reasonable on economic issues, and at-times downright reactionary on many social issues, but at other times surprisingly reasonable on other social issues. FWIW, you at least make yourself easy to talk to when you're being disagreeable, which I can't say for many others here (myself included).
One the one hand, that's accurate to within the margin of error, but on the other hand https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESsmunKVAAEkVr9.jpg
2 “policies” for me:
First, more moderation on contemptuous identity politics. Bo Burnham’s “Straight White Male” song is the example of this stuck in my mind. The progressive left should do more to not alienate people like they have been.
Second, dial down the embrace of cosmopolitanism to re-embrace patriotism and American culture.
That patriotism has become a right-coded value, and a subject of flat out contempt among the left, is a very serious problem for a pluralistic, multi-racial, multi-cultural nation.
We need to nuance this somewhat. I don't think "favor criminals more than victims and a toleration for disorder more broadly" is the best diagnosis of suboptimal policing. I agree that Democrats, especially local level Democrats should change their rhetoric (the should have been rhetorically and to the extent possible prosecutionarily harsh on the "criminals" who tainted the BLM demonstrations), but exactly how to reduce crime and disorder most cost effectively city by city is not so obvious.
I’m a little confused by this phrasing-
“On the other hand, a lot of people don’t really care if people use drugs or camp in the park as long as they aren’t bothering anyone else, don’t think those people should be sent to jail, don’t want to see racial discrimination or violence from police (most of whom live in the suburbs), and don’t want to feel like the neighborhood is under occupation.”
Is it the police doing the occupation or the homeless junkies taking over public parks, underpasses and streets?
If you have ever been to a homeless tent camp of any size you would know these camps are full of drug use, rape, unvaccinated, unleashed and dangerous dogs, stolen goods, public drunkenness and fires that often get out of hand and burn down tents or near by buildings.
After living through the last few years outside a major American city, I would like less of the homeless occupation please.
I don't think church vs stores is a fair comparison. Churches usually provide services to the vulnerable and their ethos is supposed to include embracing the downtrodden.
I don’t think the church not being active participants in making peoples lives better is good. There is a difference in forgiving someone’s past and then enabling their abusive behavior into the future. I would expect the church to have a moral obligation not only to provide a “safe space” but to then make sure that space is indeed safe for women, children and the vulnerable.
The church is supposed to be the Shepard and Shepards tend to have disagreements with wolves living among their sheep.
Liberals want some crazy things, that's for sure. Using drugs in a public spaces is incompatible with not bothering anyone. How are you going to ride the metro as a young woman alone or play in the park as a kid if there are adult men junkies hanging out there.
"(most of whom live in the suburbs)". What is up with this line of complaint? If this is a big problem, why can't liberals hire police from the vast population that lives within their own cities? Near-every city is controlled by liberals and they can appoint and dismiss police chiefs. I know you're going to say police unions or something, but unions have vastly different sets of powers depending on the state or county and this seems to be a perm-complaint. And any way, Unions aren't trying to block hiring of new police based on zip code.
Agree. To expand on your point, the most illiberal police are in states without unions. I worked in Portland as a police officer and they did a survey shortly before I left. About 33% identified as somewhat or vey conservative and about 26% as somewhat or very liberal. The rest were moderate. This was with a strong union. As a person who is probably somewhat liberal I can attest that convincing people about the benefits of more liberal ideas becomes tough when the ideas start getting associated with absolutely insane policies (I.e., no boarder controls what so ever, decriminalizing hard drugs, allowing people to block the exits to police buildings and light them on fire or to repeatedly set fire to the police unions privately owned building.
After the protests. I loved the city, lived in the city or a suburb all my life but it just went crazy. Hated to see it eat itself. Things are
Getting better I hope. A really good candidate Mingus Mapps is running for mayor which will help.
I lived in Oregon for 41 years and Portland was my favorite city in the U.S. I'm still depressed about what's happened to it.
Thanks for hanging in there for awhile. That was heavy, unremitting duty.
My sister left Portland after 10 years there. Things went downhill. She felt unself on busses and with homeless encampments moving into her area. On top of that covid and the anarchist-fascist brawls made her throw her hands up.
1) I would encourage you not to assume that Mike is representative of “liberals” writ large. I consider myself liberal, including on criminal justice issues, but we should not routinely tolerate camping or drug use in public spaces.
2) I agree with you that liberal urban-dwellers (like me) who think it is a problem that our police forces include a significant cohort of people who do not live in our communities bear the responsibility to do something about it.
But you too easily dismiss the difficulty of this task. Any large organization will be resistant to change, and the hiring decisions are largely made by lower level management, not political appointees. Most people want to hire other people that they vibe with. Changing this is difficult in any large organization.
Police departments in particular have quite a bit of power to make politicians lose political capital. It doesn’t take much effort from police to make a mayor extremely unpopular. Push too hard for change in policing that the police don’t want and you may soon find yourself being openly mocked by police union leadership while you are falling over yourself trying to be complimentary. (See “DeBlasio, Bill”)
That doesn’t mean it’s not on those of us who’s like to have a police force that comes from our community to make it happen. But it’s very difficult.
The cities where that complaint ("police live in the suburbs") is most important tend to be the cities that are having a very difficult time hiring any officers at all. Places like Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia have seen waves of officer resignations. The average tenure tenure in those depts is super low and they are basically desperate for people who can pass the minimum standards. If the have the luxury of hiring suburban guys for vibes I'd be amazed.
I'm frustrated by this because it seems like the constituencies complaining the loudest about urban PDs are the ones doing the least to personally step up to the challenge. A young liberal who actually lives in one of these liberal cities should have all kinds of support from his / her community and from his / her local politicians and media even if they think the police culture is hostile.
Remember lots of older experienced police quit during covid. It was part of the Baby Boomer retirement wave.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying here. I was reacting to my perception that your original comment was suggesting that we urban liberals who want a more representative police force should just go get one. It’s much, much easier said than done, was my point.
I don’t follow this last part:
“ A young liberal who actually lives in one of these liberal cities should have all kinds of support from his / her community and from his / her local politicians and media even if they think the police culture is hostile.”
Support to do what? Work in the police department? Propose changes to the police department staffing? Just be supported in general? I don’t follow.
When I've asked similar kinds of questions a common response I hear is something like "Police are racist / hostile to liberals so how can they / we work there and change things?"
If that concern is real then it's valid ( I tend to think it's overstated). But it at least should be somewhat countered by the communities demanding that their police be "of the community".
For example, if you're a young liberal / black guy in SF and are telling me the SFPD work environment is too hostile for you to attempt change from within, maybe there's something to that, I don't know. But I'm saying if we buy that premise then at least you ought to have the support of broader community. A white cop from the suburbs might equally say that the community is likely to be hostile to him. If you have an issue with discrimination or a controversial situation arises then you ought to expect the community to have your back.
So it sort of feels like another version of excuse-making. It's also one of the reasons I like Yglesias Police for America idea. Let's get these Yale kids into the trenches for a couple years.
You all seem to have missed that: 1) it’s hard to hire police officers and narrowing your pool to people from the urban community likely makes it all but impossible to hire (they should absolutely be trying); 2) people who get married and have kids tend to move to the suburbs, and police often are people who get married and have kids.
This is part of my point - it’s hard! Whining about it accomplishes nothing. We have to do the work to make policing attractive and rewarding to the diverse array of people we want in our police departments.
I can't believe I never thought of this, but you just described my city completely. So many people hate our current mayor. I thought it was because she replaced a long line of good old boys and also has put focus on neglected neighborhoods. But the police mostly hate her, and the union leaders have made lots of inflammatory comments about her.
But also, a lot of residents think she does not hold the police accountable enough. Watching this whole thing play out has just confirmed my thought that I never want to hold public office.
My personal line between "too extreme" and "just fine" is crossed a long time before a Boudin shows up, which explains why I choose not to live in a place like SF (among other reasons).
You're right, though, that local politicians are, and should be, responsive to local concerns. My concern is if federal policies start to reflect the same ethos as what I see in more progressive locales then some people will start to peel away to the other side.
IDK if it's worth correcting the several mischaracterizations and misconceptions here about Chesa Boudin, but they do contribute to a certain narrative of "wacky progressive voters in SF" (a narrative which, of course has more than one grain of truth). But here goes:
Boudin was not "raised in a terrorist cell." He was a toddler when his parents went to prison, and his adoptive parents , ex-terrorists by some definitions, had already "re-integrated" into mainstream urban capitalist academia. Boudin never ran on the politics of his parents, and few SF voters supported or rejected him because of his family or childhood.
Boudin had eight years experience working as a public defender before he was elected DA by a narrow margin in 2020. Enough voters bought into his argument that the criminal justice system was broken and he had a plan to fix it, with restorative justice, etc. In this, he, and his "project," were almost identical to that of many other self-styled "progressive" DA's in LA, Oakland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, etc. etc.
Boudin is a highly educated, very articulate,and likeable candidate who would have been attractive to many voters in many cities even had his politics been more conventional. To give him credit, he was always very open and honest about his project.
By 2022 it was evident to most voters in SF, myself included, that his policies and attitudes, while understandible in a public defender, were the wrong ones for a prosecutor, and he was easily recalled. He had a plan, it was failing, and he was dumped.
I don't think that Boudin was any more or less unhinged than Larry Krasner (Philly), Alvin Bragg (Manhattan), Pamela Price (Oakland), George Gascon (LA), etc. These are all highly ideological Social Justice Warriors whose policies are coming up against the reality that people in cities largely want the laws enforced.
I agree with most of this but I think Boudin was unnecessarily confrontational (not as bad as Alison Collins) and did not work to convince people they should not recall him.
I give him credit for at least being honest about his project. He explained exactly what he was going to do before he did it. Property criminals, small time drug dealers, minors, even repeat offenders charged with violent crimes were going to be released without charge or "diverted" to "restorative justice" programs (many didn't even go to the first meeting). Big time criminals, murderers, ghost gun users, cops accused of misbehavior etc. were mostly prosecuted as before- or more so. His goal was to reduce the number of criminals sent to prison, while assuring the public that they would be "just as safe, if not safer."
As it happened, a few highly publicized violent offenders, mostly deranged unhoused persons, who had brutalized elderly Asian citizens, were treated leniently-essentially let go. (A very similar scenario played out, I believe, in NYC).
Boudin gained the enmity of the Asian and non-"progressive" whites in SF- mostly Democrats BTW. Since that's most voters in the city, he was recalled.
My personal view is that the evidence shows his project failed, but I think there are still some who would argue that it didn't get enough time to be proven right or wrong- that the "jury is still out on restorative justice."
To their credit, SF voters didn't care much about what his parents had done in the 60's when they elected him in 2020-nor when they recalled him in 2022.
Boudin was recalled with 55% of the vote. That's not really a "narrow result" by modern US standards. In fact, CBS News called the vote result "overwhelming." His election in 2019, OTOH, was very narrow: he won by just 2825 votes.
I agree that some of Boudin's supporters want to feel "transgressive". Fortunately, white self-styled "progressives" do not always determine policy, even in "wacky San Francisco." I'm also not supporting his policies (I voted against him) which actually are the very same policies espoused by Bragg, Price, Gascon, Kramer, Schmidt, Holmes, etc. (it's actually a long list). The "progressive DA movement" is an experiment that is playing out in lots of cities now.
In general, yes, out-of-sight out-of-mind. But in Portland I see law-and-order demands rapidly swinging back and forth depending on current events. Police brutality / no wait downtown vandalism. Decriminalize individual drug possession / no wait people are doing fentanyl in my posh neighborhood. Have sympathy for the homeless / no wait they leave trash all over and start fires. Right now the youngsters(?) on my social media sites want pretty much everyone who offends public order to be "locked up" , elected officials to quit being "weak." The police are routinely condemning for not being everywhere at once.
Yet I suspect all these folks will vote for Democrats on the federal level. We did get a law-and-order guy on the City Council and now we're "banning" camping during the day; not being enforced yet but I'm just waiting for the unintended consequences. At this point some are protesting, like the guy who set up his tent next to the most-traveled trail in the city and was apparently using a propane stove to make coffee as fire season is beginning.
(Just ask Portland people on Reddit if they voted for the drug decriminalization ballot measure and watch your unlike points go deep into the negatives.)
People are bothered by the camps in the park especially if they reside near you. That public green space can no longer be used by your or your children. There is litter. There is drug use. There is aggressive panhandling. A lot of the NIMBY left that doesn't have to live around homeless encampments and just drive to where they want to go admonish people who don't like those social problems right next to where they live.
I mainly agree, but it wouldn't hurt to err a bit on the side of the national median voter. The DC crime bill for example did not need to run so many red flags up the flagpost. Ceasar's wife.
"But if you’re aware of Betteridge’s law of headlines...."
Are Slow Boring Readers Unaware of Betteridge's Law?
well played, sir
Sneaking in under the wire with Comment of the Week.
First I’d heard if it.
I think that 'openness to new experiences' is a characteristic of being young. Not all young people feel this way, but most people's lives go through a -- move away from home and parental control -- try a whole bunch of new things -- decide for yourself that some of these things are great and some are lousy -- and make a life for yourself in the light of this knowledge'. As you get older you are less interested in novelty and change because, at least if your life is working out for you, you've already got what you want.
People become more conservative when, in their own lives, they find good things they want to conserve.
A desire for change, especially radical change, always appeals to those who are dissatisfied.
Looking from overseas at the USA, I see a distinct lack of conservatives. Both Democrats and Republicans are selling themselves as the party of the disenfranchised and unhappy -- they just disagree as to who gets to wear those labels. What if modern politics has stopped being about giving people solutions, however imperfect to their problems and just about managing unhappiness, unhappiness you can create should people ever stop being unhappy enough to vote for you?
To me modern politics is about the fact that the government spends trillions every year and the two parties have important differences in how they want to raise and allocate that sum and how much control a woman should have over her body.
"Both Democrats and Republicans are selling themselves as the party of the disenfranchised and unhappy... What if modern politics has stopped being about giving people solutions..." Ugh. As a moderate Democrat, this attitude really grates on me. Democrats see problems like climate change or high child poverty, and attempt to enact solutions like clean-energy incentives and child tax credits. It all seems very real to me. And sure there are some rhetorical flourishes as part of campaigning or by some more ideological members of the party, but that doesn't discount that what the party is able to rally around and pass tends to be actual policies addressing real-world problems, not fake problems ginned up by hyperactive partisans on ideological cable news outlets.
I am also a Democrat (have never voted for any R, ever), and I strongly disagree.
The Democrat's actual policies addressing real world problems are largely fantasy.
The basis concept behind all Dem economic policy is that we can have a European-style social democracy (or welfare capitalism, if you prefer) based entirely on progressive taxation. It's never been achieved anywhere else, despite decades of experimentation with wealth taxes and other schemes across the pond.
The biggest impediment to the Democrats social spending priorities is not the Republicans, it's the Democrats.
1) Biden promised no tax increases on those making <$400k. That's about 99% of households. Keeping up that promise (something no Euro social dem state would insist on) has stalled any meaningful policy action to redistribute income.
2) House Democrats were only willing to advance a spending bill (BBB) that included a large increase in the SALT deduction cap (a Trump era tax-INCREASE on the rich). It was the #2 most expensive item in the whole bill. The media and party focused 100% of the hate on Manchin, who was complaining about the deficit spend, while giving a total free pass to the Dems insistence on an expensive and regressive tax cut for the (blue state) wealthy.
3) When push came to shove, Dems focused their spending might on student debt holders. The WH has argued that this is progressive and the media have played along, but it's a mirage. The whole exercise depends on counting the debt accrued to earn the degree, while ignoring the large, long-term economic benefit of holding that degree. Student debt holders are basically just look much poorer in aggregate than they really are, because it's a group that's much younger than the working-age population at large.
Dem's insistence on redistribution is all rhetorical. Who should pay for all this new spending? The 0.1%? Where has that worked? I get sick of this self-righteous nonsense that claims that robbing Peter to pay Paul is noble. There is nothing magnanimous about this kind of plunder. It's a valid policy position, but there's nothing noble about it unless you are *personally* volunteering your own income. Guess what? No one does that! Look at opinion polls-- overwhelming majorities (like 90%+) think they already pay their fair share or more. Dems rage against the rich lets people feel they are are actually being somehow altruistic. Call me when they get serious about preparing people for the broadly shared sacrifices that their priorities will really require.
This is all exactly what you expect from a Dem party that actually has more affluent voters than the Republicans. They think people making $350k a year is working class.
OK, so Dem's "redistribution" plan is more marketing than substance, what about the Republicans?
I find that there is deep cognitive dissonance on the left about how Trump is perceived by working class Republicans and why. Go back to the "Trump tax cuts". The media went very hard against this legislation, describing it as a big giveaway to the rich, and nothing more. This is almost entirely an artifact of the rich just paying far more taxes to begin with. The size of the cuts (in percentage point units) were actually smaller for the highest brackets than for the middle ones (lowest bracket of 10% on <$10k, was unchanged).
https://smartasset.com/taxes/trump-tax-brackets
I don't really want to get into the weeds of whether the cuts were progressive or regressive, there's no real point to it, as it really just becomes a debate about the definitions of these terms. What Dems and the media are unwilling to see is that every single American (except a few wealthy blue state people) saw their taxes GO DOWN because of Trump (and his party's majorities in congress). They look at their pay stub, they see their after-tax income go up, and their co-workers in HR/benefits explain that it's because the federal government lowered their tax rates. Abstract arguments about the incidence of corporate tax rates or "who benefits more" are just not relevant to what people actually see and perceive on that pay stub.
One last point-- the media is generally unfair to conservatives in constantly accusing them of stinginess. Conservatives, on average, give much more money to charity than liberals. I think that conservatives have a much better and clearer idea that it's self-sacrifice that is righteous, not demands of others.
I make a lot of money and one of the reasons I vote for Dems over and over is that I am confident they will not really raise my taxes by much. Trump actually raised my taxes due to the SALT cap!
The media / Dem narrative about redistribution and the reality are quite distinct. Dems love the feeling of moral superiority from vacuous claims about redistribution, while Republicans tend to be much more straightforward (e.g. my taxes went down!, I give charity!, etc.)
My understanding has been that "conservatives donate more to charity" holds true only when counting church donations as charity. If you factor those out (e.g. think of church donations as social club membership dues) then IIRC conservatives are comparable to liberals in their donations. (Which is not to say that churches don't often do things that one would associate with charity.) But I could be misremembering!
Yeah, it's true that religious charities make up some ( a lot? ) of the difference, but I think it would be pretty disingenuous to exclude them. Firstly because, as you acknowledge, churches do a TON of run-of-the-mill charity (as Jesus very much demanded of them). And secondly, because conservatives could also point to orgs like Planned Parenthood, and see their mission as being quite uncharitable to fetuses, that they view as humans.
So I think it's preferable to just look at the "self-sacrifice" factor, which is the amount of money a person foregoes, and not judge the causes themselves. This matter of sacrifice, and it's distortion among Dems, was my main focus. Whether we like the cause or not, there is sacrifice happening.
You make another interesting point, which is that sometimes charity is just tax-advantaged consumption. Think fancy $500/plate gala dinners that spend most of the money they raise on lavish "fundraising" parties for the donors themselves. It's a problem in general, and I don't see it being more of an issue with churches than with secular non-profits. I've been to some pretty decadent parties for "child cancer" and other noble sounding causes, from secular orgs.
.. it's my biggest gripe with my Dems.
That favoring high taxes on people that make more money than you do, but not yourself, is somehow noble. It might be the right policy, but the framing really grinds my gears.
Beyond the moral dimension, I think the federal government needs more revenue to run a modern nation-state, even under current spending policies. Dems need to back off their assumed rhetorical high ground and admit that achieving their goals really does require asking most Americans to pay more tax, not just the 0.1%.
Republicans are not better, for the record. They are not willing to raise anyone's taxes meaningfully. Dems are willing to raise taxes on the 0.1%. In the Dem mind this makes them deeply morally superior. Nonsense.
Well, this is what I am reading, not on the cable news, but in the European newspapers and news magazines. I suppose other people's angst sells copy here, too, but there sure seems to be a lot of it going around, as opposed to discussion of policy successes, which I would be much more interested in reading.
I tend to avoid generalizations like this, which might be a result of deducing psychological perspectives from observations of physical limitations. There are plenty of ways to be "open to new experiences" as you get old. The older you get, the greater the chances of being thrust into new experiences unwillingly. If you can't be creative and open to the un-hoped for but possible events that come with aging (including that final one), you'll be miserable.
For me it's more a matter of whether a new experience leads to physical discomfort, takes up more energy then I have, or is not a priority given my enthusiasms and interests.
It's not clear to me that what 'open to new experiences' means when you and I are talking in the pub (or in conversation here) is the same as what the psychologists mean when they talk about what they are measuring as one of the Big 5 Personality traits. It's the latter that is claimed to be linked to both going to university and being liberal rather than conservative. I'm skeptical of there being a causal relationship rather than a temporal one here.
Yes. The January 6 people certainly were opening themselves to new experiences. :)
Good article. Two things I would make a point of is
1. it's not really all that clear how much party leadership can actually control the direction of political parties and the makeup of the coalition. Now I think it's conventional wisdom among people who are "shor-pilled" that Obama was actually relatively moderate compared to what came next but this was definitely not the perception at the time. I don't actually know what can be done to slow or reverse educational polarization, given it seems to be a trend across basically all developed countries no matter what the local party dynamics are.
2. We should also consider that in a system where you need a trifecta it might be better to pass sweeping legislation then lose, policy is not precisely thermostatic... you don't lose what you gained just because you lose some popularity. If you pass sweeping legislation the opposing party has to win a countervailing trifecta AND prioritize rolling back your agenda AND keep all their factions unified. If not, you can lose the election but still have your policies persist.
I feel like 1 is such an obvious point it's a fundamental flaw of the post.
Candidates. The candidate the party supports is how the party leadership can control the direction and makeup of the coalition.
As you rightly and strikingly imply, there’s more to control than just that. But it seems clear to me that party leadership signals its values (and thus who is welcome in the coalition) by way of supporting any one candidate over another.
Given that the Squad has been identified as an insurgent faction that often challenges incumbent Democrats, it seems to me that the Democratic establishment on the whole has already indicated it's trying to moderate.
Only issue I see with this is that trifectas will be easier for Republicans than Democrats given the Senate map. Over time, this could be a one way ratchet similar to what we have seen in SCOTUS.
I always find this concern far too fatalistic. The parties are not fixed. In the last century, democrats have controlled each chamber more often than the GOP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses#/media/File:Combined--Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png
Yes, when Democrats were the rural party, they won trifectas. The point is that the US Senate biases massively in favor of the rural party.
The last century is a very long time during which the teams essentially switched jerseys. Perhaps politics will become less geographically sorted, but for the foreseeable future, Republicans will have a significant advantage in the Senate given WyIdaMonDakota controlling 10% of the Senate with less total population than California.
The "foreseeable future" in politics is probably 8-10 years at most, and even that is generous.
This simply isn’t true. The circumstances giving rise to Republicans’ dominance of rural voters have been in place and predictably leading us here for at least 40 years. It not only was entirely foreseeable at least a generation in advance, it was predicted by almost everyone who understood politics. They just didn’t see it breaking so badly after Clinton.
The ability of Democrats to entrench themselves to slow that wave that started in the late 1960s isn’t evidence that things can change quicker than we thought, it show that even after Democrats find the right formula to winning over those voters it could take two decades to four to show results.
The “quick” swings people imagine have occurred over the past two decades are an illusion because we’ve been close to equally divided, our attention has been entirely focused on the 10% of contestable elections (not the 90% that aren’t even close), and 3-5 lucky breaks for Democrats in the Senate that have ALL gone democrats’ way.
For example, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas were decidedly conservative states long before Democrats lost power there in the 1990-2000. But that was just entrenchment that everyone understood would someday fail. When it did fail, it was like a damn breaking-now Republicans are in the position to entrench themselves to win even when they are not popular.
In short, I wouldn’t expect to see Democrats hold the Senate for more than 2 years again in my lifetime, and I’d expect Republicans to hold it well more than 60% of the time.
You realize that only a third of states have rural populations larger than a third? Only four have over 50% and the two most rural are pretty Democratic (Maine & Vermont). Utah and Florida are only 9% rural, much lower than Minnesota at 27% and Michigan at 25% so the former are definitely locks for Democrats - right?
> it was predicted by almost everyone who understood politics.
I thought a generation ago, everyone on both sides of the aisle were predicting that a growing minority population was going to usher in a new era of democratic domination?
Over the past 30 years, since the remnants of the New Coalition fell apart in 1994, Dems have won the House only four times. They have won the Senate eights. Dems struggle to win the House, not the Senate.
They have had incredible luck in the Senate. If Republicans run anyone other than Herschel Walker, Republicans would currently control the Senate.
Obviously luck is part of politics, but most of the luck in Senate elections has gone Democrats’ way. They will not hold Montana or West Virginia in 2024, for example. Ohio will be incredibly difficult to hold. There are no Republican seats anyone could reasonably expect a Democrat to pick up.
In short, the only obstacle to Republicans controlling the Senate are Republicans.
I would argue that the problem is not “bold” policies but instead silly policies. These policies are more about feeling good than doing good. Legalizing gay marriage, enacting civil rights legislation, working to improve policing are all bold but just policies. Arguing that former men should compete with females, that letting kids experiment with gender when the science is (at best) insufficient, defunding the police, supporting armed gunmen taking over parts of Seattle and Portland and believing (and enacting via policy) that “the only remedy to current racism is future racism” are not bold. They are silly and immature.
The gains of the past hundred and fifty or so years were built on bold but just policies. The current crop of ideas that we are expending so much energy on risk undoing some of those gains.
Another good post!!
I wouldn’t lean as heavily on the “openness to experience” thing. It’s a Haidtian perspective that gets way overstated.
RE governing with slimmer majorities, my main objection isn’t that Democrats aren’t being *left* enough, it’s that they’re barely even trying to move the playing field left. PR and DC statehood at a minimum would rebalance the Senate map. Expanding the House would dilute the power of gerrymandering, such as it is. Legalizing MMD might ultimately dilute the party’s power, but would also create a long-term avenue towards building up third parties that could challenge Republicans on their own turf where the Democratic brand is too toxic to be competitive. Or maybe just abolish the freaking filibuster!!
I honestly don’t give a shit about wealth taxes or encoding Roe. We need to start playing for the actual marbles that are on the table, not obsessing about picking up every marble that Republicans have tossed on the floor in the last 50 years.
Whenever I see "openness to experience" comparisons all of things that are defined as experiences to be open to are cosmopolitan experiences. So of course progressives score higher, because those experiences occur where they live. I want to know the openness level of a bunch of people on the Upper East Side when asked about going prairie dog hunting in South Dakota or going to a NASCAR race in South Carolina. My guess is it would be lower.
Most of the time Openness is quantified using the Big Five Inventory (example here: https://fetzer.org/sites/default/files/images/stories/pdf/selfmeasures/Personality-BigFiveInventory.pdf) which does not include any specific experiences at all. The closest they get to a politically oriented question is whether you like artistic/aesthetic experiences.
Exactly.
Agreed on the "openness to experience". My anecdotal experience with conservatives on this is that they are just as open to new experience as liberals, they are just not open to believing that new/different must always mean better.
Political science contradicts your anecdote. In studies of OCEAN personality traits, liberals score higher on openness.
Also I think you are choosing to define “open” in a way that is inconsistent with common use. If someone claims to be “open” to new things, but is unwilling to grant that something new might be better, they aren’t really that “open” — “I’m open to trying new things and hating them!”
I generally agree, but also want to caution that political science is absolutely, and completely dominated by liberals or further left. That isn't to say their findings are wrong, but we should apply additional rigor to their findings and especially to their presentation. Similar to how you would want to question bank executives recommendations on fed policy.
I did not say that they were not open to believing that something new was better, I said that they were not open to believing that new or different MUST always be better than existing. As another commenter says, liberals write the questions and interpret the answers. It's baffling that they reach the conclusion that it turns out We Liberals are just better / nicer / more virtuous than Those People.
Openness isn’t a virtue per se. It’s also associated with risk taking and addiction, for example, in addition to good things like intellectual curiosity.
I do think there is something to be explained in the fact that scientists, say, are overwhelmingly liberal. I know the standard con explanation is that universities are work brainwashing machines, but I spent some time in academia in the hard sciences and politics rarely came up. It’s just that when it did, most everyone was liberal with a smattering of libertarians.
"Openness isn’t a virtue per se. It’s also associated with risk taking and addiction, for example, in addition to good things like intellectual curiosity."
I'm curious how that squares with Republican areas tending to have much higher levels of risk taking and addiction than Democratic areas.
Democrats' neuroticism probably cancels much of the risk taking associated with openness. Not sure about drug addiction (unless it is just cocaine and cannabis v. opioids and amphetamines).
Some journalist in the last ten years emphasized that a component of acceptance/openness for more conservative people is to emphasize the sameness first.
It is pretty well borne out by the data that liberal leaning people enjoy novelty for novelty’s sake.
Conservatives can be very open to new experiences *if the commonalities are emphasized first.*
For example, a middle American white couple owns a home. A recently immigrated Indian couple moves in next door.
If the neighbor’s commonalities are emphasized first--desire for good schools, praise for the US’s economic mobility, family values--then the conservative white family will be much more open to experiencing and enjoying, say, Indian cuisine, cultural practices that are novel, etc.
I support PR statehood (assuming it does itself when presented with a binding vote) but I don't think it necessarily moves things towards the Democrats.
I agree. I think Democrats would win in the short term but it’s an island with an aging, religious, and poorly educated population. And Puerto Rican communities on the mainland seem to be shifting right pretty rapidly.
I'm generally supportive of MMD, but I think we should look long and hard at what has happened to centrist parties in Europe over the last 30 years before assuming opening up third party candidates who challenge Republicans is good.
I disagree. We’ve already seen the exact same broader populist movement play out in the phenomenon of getting plenty of extremists elected here.
A realistic third-party alternative enabled by a larger House *isn’t* going to magically be Nazis out of nowhere, they’re going to be Forward-Party-style moderates. The GOP are *already* all but Nazis (in a political science sense); the alternative is moderates who can compete in districts where Democrats can’t.
I think this is incorrect. The GOP are not Nazis in any real sense of the word and suggestions that they are seem puerile to me.
In the current system you get a bunch a different coalitions forced together and in doing so they moderate some of the more extreme positions of the various coalitions, while also helping build workable majorities. The problem with the current system is that parties and voters are forced to choose early what compromises they are willing to make ideologically. This leads more voters choosing someone they agree with 50+1% of the time instead of 80%+ if there were more diverse parties and the single district means that whatever group can't get to 50%+1 is entirely unrepresented in their district.
But look at what has happened in a number of countries with multiple parties - the center is having a harder time getting a majority without including further extreme parties - or conceding much of their ideological differences in order to maintain a centrist government.
They're "Nazis" in the sense that they've been leveraged by an internal minority extremist faction. Perhaps it's more accurate to label them as the Wiemar conservative parties that lent the Nazis legitimacy.
But to be absolutely clear, I'm not saying they're "Nazis" in the sense that they're on some genocidal campaign. I'm only talking about in the poli-sci sense of an extremist kingmaker party. So you can leave those accusations of being "puerile" on the doorstep.
"They're "Nazis" in the sense that they've been leveraged by an internal minority extremist faction."
Would you apply the same framing to Democrats and many of their cultural issues?
My more substantive point is that I think "Nazis," "Communists," etc. have so much baggage that applying them to the current situation in the US gives off way more heat than light. Many people want to be giving off heat because they are all passion and little insight. You've got plenty of passion, but I generally find you very insightful as well*, so it seems weird for you to use it.
*You're quite insightful, but to be clear - you're also wrong when you disagree with me :)
>>>*You're quite insightful, but to be clear - you're also wrong when you disagree with me :)
As are you, but I appreciate the compliment. Cheers!
>>Would you apply the same framing to Democrats and many of their cultural issues?
It's not remotely the same, and I think you know that. The proof is in the pudding - every single winning Dem president has been a moderate since Jimmy Carter, including the current one. Trump may have won on fooling swing voters into coding him as a moderate, but the movement he bestrides is clearly extremist and always has been since its Tea Party days.
Again, the parallel I'm drawing with the Nazis isn't the extremism itself, but that both the Nazis and the Tea Party/Trumpist movements leveraged small pluralities inside the right wing into broader control of the entire right wing. The mechanisms are different, but the strategy was the same.
Harkening back to my original comment, though, I only brought up extremism/Nazis/Trumpism because the strategy I intimated is *starkly different* from the one they exploited.
To wit, it would be for Democrats to leverage MMD to allow Libertarians (and even Greens, to a much lesser extent) to gain a foothold in rural areas where the Democratic brand is toxic. Since libertarianism was mostly absorbed into the GOP over the last two decades, it now represents a major cleavage within the party's coalition. Just imagine if Utah had MMD! Utah is a deep red state, but a large chunk of that majority are ideological libertarians, some smaller chunk of whom might be tempted to vote for a Libertarian party that actually stood a shot at winning seats. Democrats might stand to lose some percentage of their own vote share because of it, but if it destabilizes the Utah GOP and means that the Dems might have a hope of getting a police reform bill or a zoning pre-emption bill through the legislature that they'd otherwise have not even a snowball's chance at, then I'd say the juice was worth getting squeezed a little.
That's not "enabling extremism", it's just using a new electoral mechanic (MMD) to cleave your opponent's coalition. Very different strategy.
>> play out in the phenomenon of getting plenty of extremists elected here.
IE, MTG.
What would you consider MTG's most extreme policy position and what do you consider the likelihood of her achieving it?
Jewish space lasers.
She's an extremist because she actually believes that shit. Policy has nothing to do with it; it's a red herring.
I dunno. Watching her and Boebert take very different approaches in this Congress has been interesting. As far as I can tell, Boebert is pure grifting. She would rather be in the opposition because its easier to grift there. MTG seem more some combination of ignorant, stupid, conspiracy theorist inclined, etc. but also actually more interested in being a part of doing something. I'm honestly not sure which is worse. I really dislike grifting so want to say Boebert, but she's never going to accomplish a single thing, while MTG might at some point accomplish something - might be good or might be bad.
Is this a good place to argue about how dumb that posited "conservative vs liberal" axis is? Even if I try not to get hung up on the terrible American political maldefinition of "liberal", I don't even know what the hell that chart is showing, or thinks it's showing which are probably not the same thing. Especially given that it's "conservative" vs "liberal" within the D party and the outer wings of that party are neither conservative nor liberal, so... does the rise in liberal ID imply... moderation? Maybe. Or maybe the axis is less economic and more accurately described as the Identitarian Social Justice vs Trad horseshoe where pluralist liberals occupy the center bulge. Either way I agree with the general conclusion that reading the trend towards a more "liberal" Democrat party as an endorsement of more outlier policy positions is a huge mistake.
Since you opened it up, I'll go ahead and rant on how much I avoid the terms conservative and liberal in these structures. Even worse for me is the smug term progressive ("We're for progress, how can you oppose that? And if you do, you're against progress!"). If I have to abide by a left/right one dimensional axis, those are the terms, left and right, that I will use. But as you say, I wish we could take each issue at face value and discuss it independently, instead of trying to group things into two poles.
And these words often mean such different things to people, especially depending on the era they grew up in. A high level of trust in institutional authority, for instance, was not something that was associated with the liberal team even 20 years ago. I don’t have data in front of me, but the vibe tells me that this has flipped in a big way.
I actually prefer “progressive” over “left”, because to me “left” sounds like it’s about class and socialism, which is a different axis than a lot of the contemporary issues.
I at least like small p progressive as a coherent pole vs small c conservative. Not sure they track the capital letter versions so usefully though. I lean small p, but I could hardly be farther from Progressive.
Is this like cosmopolitan change vs some other social conservative hierarchy?
Something like that. I think it's maybe most easily described as a psychological bias. How likely are you to accept, "Because that's the way it's always been done." as compelling reasoning? Very = conservative. Not at all = progressive.
It just sounds like a simple direction to me.
There's also the problem of fiscal liberalism/conservatism vs. all the various social aspects. A couple years ago discovered that a politically aware family member was not even aware of the conceptual distinction.
I think there is a large and growing cohort of socially liberal (or more liberal than we used to be) but remain pro-capitalism. We don’t really like either the MAGA folks who took over the Republican Party or the coastal elites who have taken over the Democratic Party. My hope that when I divorced myself from the Republicans because of Trump, I would find a home in being a Democrat. However, I feel the only thing we completely agree on is that we hate Trump. I’ll vote for Biden in 2024, but eventually there will be some sort of moderate revolt. You can’t leave so many people feel unrepresented and unheard. The saddest thing of all is the death of meaningful debate in this country. You are either red or blue, and both colors are getting brighter.
Nice article Milan.
I mean the question as to whether Democrats should moderate on policy honestly depends on the policy right? $15 minimum wage, decriminalizing marijuana possession and codifying gay marriage are all the left of where the Democratic Party was in 2012. However, they are also three issues with pretty sizable majority support. The big enchilada of course now is abortion rights. The Democratic position is now probably now closer to the centrist position than it was in 2012.
Also, good to keep in mind the “Tory Men Whig Measures” aphorism. Not on everything of course, but in general Democratic policy positions are more popular than Republican ones. Proof is in the pudding with Ron DeSantis Presidential run. In addition, see Matt’s posts about an under-discussed reason for Trump’s ability to win was being to the left (at least rhetorically) of GOP on economic policy.
My favorite political quote, possibly apocryphal, is the man who got up a town hall in 2009 and said “keep government out of my Medicare”. A true “chef’s kiss” perfect quote that encapsulates a huge percentage of Americans schizophrenic political attitudes. But also suggests there is a lot of room for Democrats to be pretty bold on policy if it can be couched and marketed with moderate rhetoric and if the message is given by someone that the public trusts as more moderate; you know like Joe Biden. It’s a hope that I have for 2024 (a “god please pull this off” hope). But also a real blueprint I hope Democrats follow rhetorically going forward.
Yeah, I do think that Dem candidates should try to use some “Moneyball” type thinking to determine where moderating would give them more bang for the buck. Purely symbolic appeals to bipartisanship/red-coded cultural pastimes? Go nuts. Crime and immigration? Also good, but don’t talk about it too much because raising the salience helps Rs. Gun rights? This one makes sense to bend on if you’re running to represent rural constituencies. But high minimum wage, legalized weed, legal abortion, infrastructure spending, keeping Medicare and Social Security intact, or keeping gay marriage legal? You’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you ditch those.
(Sinema is probably the worst kind of moderate because she tends to buck the party consensus in places where it’s unpopular to do so.)
Gun rights has always seemed like the obvious, low hanging, "how to appeal to rural constituents", fruit for Dems, especially given how hard they're losing the fight at SCOTUS anyways. Anti-legal CCW, pro-assault weapon ban gun control policy is dead. A pivot to expanded rights with more effective enforcement is a zero policy downside tradeoff.
The insane thing is far right gun control policies are just extremely soft on criminals, because it’s already really easy to get a gun if you are even remotely a responsible citizen and the only group who has a hard time getting guns now is criminals. We should be seeing ads with pictures of criminals or domestic abusers who shot and killed people (basically a non-racist version of the Willie Horton ad) in every competitive race.
The correct equilibrium is one where gun rights are broadly recognized to the point that there's substantial consensus that people who carry in violation of the narrowly defined exceptions truly deserve to have the hammer brought down upon them.
This doesn't solve the problem of the incredibly insecure middle-age man who performatively slings a rifle over his back to go get his venti chai latte, but I think it's otherwise mostly correct.
How often do you see this occurring?
A lot of urban and suburban voters who are afraid of violent crime are also very pro-gun control, though— I think this is one of those cases where the right political tradeoff depends on who your constituents are.
I think as a matter of history it is important to remember that LBJ was wrong. Twelve years after he signed the civil rights act, Jimmy Carter won both the black vote and the entire South.
In a very large sense it is maybe true that civil rights cost the Democrats the South, but the plenty of the people who voted for Wallace voted for Clinton and Carter and for liberal senators like Sam Nunn or Al Gore. It is their children and grandchildren - people who will tell pollsters they approve of interracial marriage - who won't vote for Democrats. It wasn't written in the stars that Democrats would lose the South as completely as they have.
That sounds more like realignment taking time than LBJ being wrong.
He didn't say "in fifty years, we will lose the South for a lifetime."
There was a gradual realignment that had already started in the 50s, with Eisenhower winning a few southern states. Then there was a sudden realignment where the Southern states supported Goldwater and Nixon, something similar to what Johnson predicted. Jimmy Carter completely undid that realignment, and two generations of recognizably modern Democrats came from the post-segregationist South.
Democrats didn't lose the South not because of civil rights laws, which were bipartisan and are very old news. They've lost it because of the gradual "education polarization" dynamic you describe, which you see in rural Minnesota (and exurban Toronto) just as much as in the South. Of course racism and the legacy of Jim Crow are a huge part of why the white South is so culturally conservative in the first place.
Yeah extending the prediction timeline out 50 years makes just about any prediction look prescient
I think that liberal Democrats who were around for the 70s and 80s (not Milan) often want to explain the whole Regan phenomenon, or all of American conservatism, as an extension of segregationist politics.
It gives a flattering explanation of why New Deal / Great Society liberalism collapsed in the 1970s: racism! But since the equivalent left-of-center / social democratic movements ran into trouble everywhere in the developed world at that time the explanation doesn't wash.
Reagan was well-liked because his policies helped the broad middle class, which is called broad because it way outnumbers both the wealthy and the poor. Maybe it is less moral to help the middle class than the poor, but when the vast majority of the country benefits from policies that majority will generally reward the person or people who enacted those policies.
The “openness to experience” point I have always thought tells us more about the psychologists designing the survey than the studied population. If you had right wingers design the survey, the main fact about political liberals might be labeled “prone to heresy“ instead
I struggle with this:
“I’m very averse to the risk of losing elections to Republicans who will take us backward on policy, so I’m more inclined toward strategically moderating on salient issues to keep the GOP out of power.”
I am also very averse to the risk of losing elections, but at the national level it doesn’t strike me as remotely plausible that we could have one-party rule for any sustained period of time. There will be a Republican President again some day.
If your primary goal is “don’t lose the next election” and you never set out to solve any of the hard problems we face, at some point you’ll lose anyway and then you’ll have failed at your only governing objective.
Like all things, it’s a trade off. Winning elections is really important! But at some point we will lose. Governing with this in mind seems prudent.
The downside of losing in 2024 seems abnormally high. To the extent that people take their rhetoric about the threat Trump poses to the republic seriously (I do) they should put a greater premium on winning.
Agreed! This year it’s worth doing almost anything to win.
A major limitation and drawback of this excellent post and comments it elicited lies in the muddled and fuzzy terms "liberal", "conservative", "left" and "right." All these terms are historically problematic, and have morphed so many times since 1789 that it's unclear what we're even talking about. We've all become really lazy and are using these terms as shorthand for a wide range of attitudes and beliefs that often lack all coherence. Why is supporting the medical gender transition of children "liberal?" Why is supporting fracking and oil drilling in national forests "conservative?"
I'm as guilty as anyone else, and I don't know what the solution is, except possible to define and specify as we go along.
"My read of things is that Biden is a party man through and through — he tracked the Democratic Party’s tack to the right under Bill Clinton and then followed the party left post-Obama. It’s true that as president, Biden has signed bigger, bolder bills than Obama did ..."
I'm actually not so sure this is true. A rough comparison:
- The Affordable Care Act was the biggest deal of any Democratic bill in 50 years and blazed a new frontier for America's social insurance system. One could argue that the Inflation Reduction Act was perhaps more left wing than the ACA as a matter of coalitional politics, but substantively its social spending piece built on the ACA and its clean energy piece built on the Obama-era R&D successes.
- The 2021 ARP was larger and more immediately effective as a result, but the 2009 Recovery Act had more elements that left lasting legacies - and at a time when lots of people around the world were going all-in on austerity, fiscal stimulus bigger than the New Deal was an underrated achievement!
- Dodd-Frank is the most significant reform of the financial sector since the 1930s and I'm not sure there are any comparably important regulatory reforms (certainly not progressive ones) in recent history.
- Biden's legislative record features some really impressive bipartisan infrastructure funding and industrial policy. Obama's record included some bipartisan budget deals that made permanent some important non-ACA social program expansions, as well as the auto industry rescue and the aforementioned clean energy R&D.
My overall view is that both Obama and Biden have impressive policy legacies, and to some extent what is happening here reflects changing baselines of public policy. In other words, a big part of why the Democratic Party has moved to the left and expanded its ambitions since Obama was elected is because Obama accomplished a lot of stuff that moved the American policy baseline durably to the left! It stands to reason that the party would want to continue building on that stuff, and in many ways that's exactly what they have done in the Biden era. By contrast, Bill Clinton did not accomplish as much stuff to move the policy baseline to the left - for example, health care reform was still on the agenda in 2010 because the Dems failed to get it done in 1993.
Milan still makes a good overall point that there are tradeoffs between how big of a coalition Dems can build and how ambitious we can be about moving to the left on policy. And perhaps "bigger and bolder" just means "more left coded" in which case I might agree.
Yeah, I would say that Obama signed bigger, bolder bills - but only by a little bit despite having huge majorities. If you remove the ACA, it’s possible that their bills are actually similar in scope.
Just on Dodd-Frank ... The Glass-Steagall Act was passed in 1933 and was repealed in 1999. That "Dodd-Frank was the most significant reform ... since the 1930s" probably speaks more to the faults of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Sure ... but given the circumstances that made it possible, Obama delivered what turned out to be an effective and durable reform in an area where other recent laws have aged poorly. And (in a way that I suppose supports Milan's original point), Obama helped create the circumstances that made it possible by winning really big.
It's worth adopting bolder policies ONLY if those policies won't be immediately reversed should Republicans come to power. For example, the Affordable Care Act was worth it because the GOP failed to dislodge it under Trump. But, the Clean Power Plan, adopted through executive order, was easily reversed by Trump.
My thought is that bolder policies are worth it if they are achieved through legislation. Once a law is adopted, it becomes the status quo and the status quo is hard to dislodge because of the multiplicity of veto points that characterize the legislative process.
"This was about race, plain and simple. And it was still in motion as recently in 2008; the only areas where Barack Obama did worse than John Kerry were in the Deep South and Appalachia.
Why is the vote shift in Appalachia taken as evidence for racist voting? It wasn't even an area that was moved by the passage of the civil rights act in the earlier map. The red areas in 60-64 were very accurately described as the Solid South or the Deep South. The red areas in 2004-08 are a portion of Appalachia, most of Oklahoma and Arkansas and a few little corners of the Deep South. Are these racist areas or something? The red areas on map 1 and map 2 barely overlap.
Because of this https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/03/29/americas-other-great-migration
That map doesn't align even slightly with that 2004-08 shift map, either though. Maybe there's more behind the paywall, but I don't see anything in that map that would suggest Southern born Whites are behind the latter vote shift.
If the idea is that when white voters leave the Dems it's mostly about racism, that's a theory you could try and build, but I don't think it's well-supported by these maps or assumptions that Appalachian people are racists. Maybe that Economist article has good evidence that Southern-born White migrants shifted politics to the GOP outside of the South, but the map in this link doesn't really look like a map of GOP support either. ND is plenty red in real life, and NM, CA, WA, OR and CO are plenty blue.
Yea, I don't think the supposed link between those two maps is compelling at all.
If the idea was that Appalachia is full of backwards racists then there's irony in that it was a section on bias and prejudice. If the idea is that areas that shifted away from Obama are racist then it's a "no true scotsman" idea.
I think the reason the areas don’t overlap much is because one region shifted about as much as it could in the 60s and the next region still had room to shift in the 2010s.
But the latter region doesn't shift at all in the first map. It's not that the Deep South goes all the way and this other area goes halfway and then catches up later. The region that Milan thinks is racist in 2008 doesn't really respond to the civil rights act in 1964 in a notable way. It's not identifiable at all in the first map.
Also - the 2nd region isn't even a region. It's Oklahoma, Arkansas, much of Appalachia and Western Pa and lastly - a chunk, maybe 20% of the deep South. So that chunk, at least, had room to shift. Do these areas have something in common, that say, Southern Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska and Missouri, don't?
A lot of white Southerners moved there after the Civil War https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/03/29/americas-other-great-migration
That map shows that the very southern fringes of WV, Kentucky and Missouri were 10-15% southern-born Whites in 1940 (as were many other areas in the country). That does very little to explain why those areas didn't shift much AT ALL in 1960-64 and only about half of the named areas shifted red 2004-08 (over 60 years later).
Look, everything else in your article is fairly reasonable and I enjoyed it. But these defenses of the 2nd map in your post are quite stretched to say the least. They also feel built on some strangely essentialist ideas of people's political opinions based on the areas their grandparents were from.
appalachia didn’t care about the civil rights act or the voting rights act because there very vanishingly few blacks people in appalachia. give blacks the vote in georgia and they are the majority in most metropolitan counties. give blacks the vote in west virginia and nothing changes.
however, it’s pretty clear that appalachian people didn’t like seeing a biracial president on tv.
"however, it’s pretty clear that appalachian people didn’t like seeing a biracial president on tv."
How do you know this? Where is Appalachia to you?