I have to go help a friend move some stuff for the next few hours so I’m just dropping in now to remind people to stay civil and make me have to do as little moderating as possible this afternoon
Maybe you should try what my teachers occasionally did and put some brown-noser in charge of taking down names of people who misbehaved while you're gone.
On both the right and the left we are seeing more and more people insist on uncompromosing positions. Obviously the right is worse but I'm glad that Matt is here to try to stop progressives from becoming the thing they hate.
I think the phenomenon Matt purports to be puzzled by--that is, progressives taking uncompromising stands on social issues whereas they didn't back in the old days--is quite easy to grok. It has much to do with basic human psychology, specifically, loss aversion.
During the civil rights era, and more recently, during the gay rights struggle of the Nineties, activists were seeking rights that had long been denied them. Civil unions, back then, were a step forward, as were the Civil Rights laws and executive orders of the 1940's, 1950's, and early 1960's.
In sum, they weren't seeking to avoid losing things, they were seeking to gain things, and take steps forward.
What activists feel is happening now is quite different. They feel they are swimming against a tide of backlash, and having to limit losses of said rights that they, until recently, were gaining. This is most overt in the area of trans rights, where countless state laws are being passed from the top down banning not only participation in sports for certain people, but essential medical care as well--but it's much more consequential in the area of abortion rights, which until now were (on paper, at least) universal, and now are, well, not.
When people are working to gain something they never enjoyed before, they are more willing to compromise and grind out the "slow boring of hard boards" of politics, so to speak.
When people are having to fight a desperate rear-guard to limit losing rights they just gained recently, especially when those inflicting the loss are either gerrymandered or lifetime-appointed into power, it's a different story.
Matt seems to not quite see that, and wants to characterize today's era, politically and emotionally, as no different than previous eras of slow, grinding progress. Maybe in the long term, he's right. But I'm sure he can understand why others of conscience would see 2023 differently.
I feel like ML describes the way you make change in a Democracy that requires compromise and coalitions. Mason might say she is talking about the merits of the issue. For example as the climate changes, I’m not sure it’s incorrect to view belief in climate change as morally superior even if the way to deal with it may have have political variations.
While I share your pragmatic view, I don’t think you’ve made your case that things have changed for the worse. You’re comparing the words and actions of prominent Democratic officials with an activist. Biden is not out there talking about “people with vaginas.” And I very much remember gay rights being toxically unpopular. People hated ACT UP, hated gay marriage, and hated gay people insisting on the word “partner,” rather than “friend” or “roommate.” Gay rights activists were constantly criticized for being flamboyantly fem and obnoxious and, of course, the right to go into locker rooms.
Similarly, 99% of trans people are going to vote straight-ticket Democrat, including all the ones that live in Alabama.
I honestly suspect this is because as we age, we become less comfortable with the social issues that are getting pushed. My open-minded straight male friends in the 90s who supported gay marriage still expressed a lot of contempt for gay men. But that was enough to get liberal cred. What we consider daring and outré becomes old hat. Women who objected to phrases like “All Men Are Created Equal” were considered shrill and overly sensitive. But we now take it for granted we should use gender-neutral terms.
That’s not to say there are some terrible ideas for social progress out there. But there were in the 90s too. They get weeded out. Other ones stick and we don’t even think about them anymore.
“the problem is when we’re talking about whether an entire group of human beings in the country who are American citizens should be eradicated. There is no compromise position there. We can’t compromise on whether Black Americans should be treated equally as white Americans.”
WTF is this person talking about? The current debate in America is whether to accommodate preferred pronouns, and how much anti-white discrimination should be allowed in order to privilege Black Americans. Obviously there will be polarization between people who have the delusion they are living in Nazi Germany, and normal people.
One question for me - what is the level of support for the moralists' position, and how strongly does it show up in electoral outcomes? Primarying more moderate Ds has had limited success, and I can't think of numerous examples of races that were won or lost because the moralist view triumphed. While this is a very real position out there in the world, how relevant is it in elections?
All the historical compromises that you cite approvingly were *improvements over the status quo* whose main flaw was that they didn't go far enough. Civil rights activists were and generally still are willing to sign off on baby steps in the right direction.
In contrast, the compromises we're being asked to make now involve surrendering our existing rights and liberties in the hopes of maybe possibly winning more elections. This is a very different ask: it's using our rights as bargaining chips rather than as final goals.
1. You don’t really cite any evidence to say that anti-trans bigotry is popular. It’s generally popular to limit discrimination against trans people. Almost a decade ago, Mike Pence’s political career in a red state almost collapsed because he supported an anti-trans bathroom bill. The only trans related issue I’m aware of where polling is against the left leaning position is sports. But even there, I think the Republican position of banning trans kids from school sports even if it means enforcing it via examining kids’ genitals is very open to an attack. Trans issues is a social issue where the public is actually generally on the Democrats’ side.
2. The examples you give of civil rights compromises are generally places where the status quo was *worse* than the compromise. Not where Democrats agreed to make the situation worse to throw a group under the bus. The main example you have where a group was actually thrown under the bus and had the status quo become worse is Bill Clinton with DOMA. Do you think that specific “compromise” was good? I think most people today would say that was a terrible mistake Clinton made.
Regardless, what is the compromise you’re talking about with trans people? The main thing going on right now is that Republicans have been ruthlessly trying to limit trans rights everywhere they have power in a sort of moral panic. Are you suggesting that Democrats partly support spreading anti-trans laws, like bans on transgender healthcare? Or like the attempts to investigate parents of trans kids for “child abuse”? Or what?
3. If the Republicans were trying to limit rights for a different group, like if Republicans got very anti-semitic and started trying to discriminate against Jews, would all of this logic still apply? Or would that be a case where it would be essential to hold the line and protect people, because anti-semitism is so dangerous?
I'm convinced Zimmer and Mason would have been foursquare, one hundred years ago, for removing children from the custody of their parents (John Dewey), state ownership of industry (Eugene Debs), and eugenics (Margaret Sanger). All three beliefs were truths embraced by the "best" progressive progressive thinkers of that time and were fashionable. Those ideas are generally disparaged today (except by autocrats and extremists). It's amazing to me that Zimmer and Mason, one a historian, both presumably aware of the not distant past, are so arrogant as to believe themselves the vessels holding TRUTH, when their progressive progenitors, equally certain, were wrong.
Clearly proportional representation would be fairer than the first past the post single member legislative districts we have in this country. However, I won't see that in my lifetime.
Apparently "this is problematic" means "I personally don't like the thought of this, and neither would my social reference group".
It's a judgment of value and all value judgments are purely subjective.
Nice to have that cleared up, which is why the word "problematic" rings alarm bells.
It's a passive-aggressive distancing mechanism to 'appeal to a higher authority' to back up your personal, subjective opinion, as if that had some sort of objective validity. Which it doesn't. Your problems are your problems.
I think that there's also a split when it comes to progressives and economic issues and I'm not sure if it's a split on what the real outrage is or whether it is a split on how to describe the problem. On the one side, there are progressives who spend a lot of time talking about how Elon Musk has too much money and how he needs to be paying more taxes and once we tax him we can figure out how to spend that money on people who need services. On the other side, there are progressives who spend a lot of time talking about how we need to expand Medicaid and the question of how to pay for it is not something they talk about much.
In general (I'm on the west coast so this may vary by region), the first group tend to be highly-educated relatively affluent people who think that "every billionaire is a policy failure" or insist that Musk's massive wealth is the real reason that people have to go to food banks and who don't know many people who have been on Medicaid. The second tends to be more heterogeneous and often have friends or relatives who have been on Medicaid or SNAP and don't necessarily care about where the money comes from. The first group seems to be much more common on the West Coast, possibly because there are a lot of extremely rich people who feel free to let their asshole flags fly.
The main reason why people don't buy the whole "compromise a little on social issue x to win on economic issue y," is with few exceptions, it hasn't actually led to electoral success. If there were a ton of pro-gun, anti-trans, anti-abortion, pro-Medicaid expansion, pro-state-level child tax credit, etc. Governor's in places like Nebraska, Wyoming, Missouri, etc., then there'd be an argument for putting our head down, and being OK with that.
But, that hasn't happened - hell, in Oklahoma, the Democrat's literally nominated a former Republican officeholder, and still lost by 15, and there was no movement in the state legislature. The only two real examples of this are John Bel Edwards, who is helped by LA's jungle primary laws (and the GOP had a weak candidate in his initial run), and Steve Beshear, whose the son of a wildly popular former governor, and interestingly, at least on the issues that centrists on Twitter think the Democratic Party should compromise on, they haven't really compromised all that much.
Meanwhile, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan is repealing right-to-work and passing pro-trans laws. With a one-seat majority in Minnesota, Walz is passing transformative legislation, including on social issues. John Fetterman didn't back down on any social issues of note, and won by 5 points.
All stuff many in this comment section would say instead, the Minnesota DFL should only pass I don't know, a slight sales tax increase to pay for free lunch for the poorest schoolkids, instead of say, universal school meals that was just passed. Or John Fetterman should've stated, "I think boys should play with boys and girls should play with girls" if he wanted to win the Senate seat in Pennsylvania.
Also, at least specifically in Texas, the parts of the population moving to the Democrat's are the people who care more about the social issues than the economic issues, and in many cases, the people we're losing on the social issues likely can't be won back by triangulating. Like, the conservative Latino voter in the RGV whose now a Republican likely isn't going to be won back by somebody who says, "well, I think some of the trans stuff is overboard, I'll keep some abortions banned, and I don't want to get rid of all of your guns, and in exchange, I'll get you free Medicaid."
Maybe, maybe Henry Cuellar could be that guy statewide, but the question is, sure, maybe he'd do better in the RGV, but would he get the turnout in deep blue Austin and the Dallas suburbs he needs to actually win enough votes.
The reality is I think the idea, especially in a nationalized landscape, that you can make people forget you're voting for the Democratic Party that stands for things many people don't like is kind of a myth. I'm not saying every candidate needs to be AOC, but this idea that if only the damn progressives would shut up and let it be 2008 forever, we'd have big-time majorities, is simply a falsehood.
Ostracism has fundamentally different dynamics when you are dealing with peers who share the same source of legitimacy as you and your friends (classmates, union members, etc) vs. people whose power is completely separate from yours (representatives from different districts). This drives a lot of confusion. Treating your fellow academics as radioactive when they overstep ideological red lines might be an effective discipline. Blacklisting scabs certainly is. But the same tactics do not translate to the Senator from West Virginia, if you are not in West Virginia.
This is a really good point and I think there is a lot of naivety about the dynamics of political power in the discourse Matt is criticizing. If you think something is a matter of fundamental rights, you still have to ask the question of what to do when the public, elected officials, and the courts won't go along. That usually involves compromise and serious efforts at discussion and persuasion. Left-wing activists do not have the social power to just steamroll people, even for the most just cause in the world, at least not outside very select communities.
I don't think it's wrong in all circumstances to try to enforce a kind of cordon sanitaire on ideological discourse (totally fine to cancel Nazis, for an easy example) but it only makes sense when you really have the power to do it. Even if you can keep something out of NYT how much does it help when it just drives it to more right-wing media.
I have to go help a friend move some stuff for the next few hours so I’m just dropping in now to remind people to stay civil and make me have to do as little moderating as possible this afternoon
I hoped that that worked, and that nothing fell off of the truck!
Maybe you should try what my teachers occasionally did and put some brown-noser in charge of taking down names of people who misbehaved while you're gone.
Well that’s what Matt pays me to do
I think you should secretly outsource this and/or get someone to write a bot to do the job for you.
Sounds like Milan needs an intern!
A Deputy Intern. Who in turn could outsource the work to an Assistant Deputy Intern!
Assistant TO the Deputy Intern.
"I don't care what you do, just don't create any extra paperwork for me" comprises a significant portion of my management strategy.
i’m becoming a fan of the warning then one day ban concept.
"...stay civil and make me have to do as little moderating as possible...."
Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue! Incivility in defense of liberty is no vice!
[said the guy who lost to LBJ in a landslide, and I hope all of my political opponents adopt his position!]
His other slogan was “In your heart you know he’s right,” to which liberals replied, “In your guts you know he’s nuts”--those were the days
it must be said that even philosophically these shibboleths are just wrong
On both the right and the left we are seeing more and more people insist on uncompromosing positions. Obviously the right is worse but I'm glad that Matt is here to try to stop progressives from becoming the thing they hate.
I think the phenomenon Matt purports to be puzzled by--that is, progressives taking uncompromising stands on social issues whereas they didn't back in the old days--is quite easy to grok. It has much to do with basic human psychology, specifically, loss aversion.
During the civil rights era, and more recently, during the gay rights struggle of the Nineties, activists were seeking rights that had long been denied them. Civil unions, back then, were a step forward, as were the Civil Rights laws and executive orders of the 1940's, 1950's, and early 1960's.
In sum, they weren't seeking to avoid losing things, they were seeking to gain things, and take steps forward.
What activists feel is happening now is quite different. They feel they are swimming against a tide of backlash, and having to limit losses of said rights that they, until recently, were gaining. This is most overt in the area of trans rights, where countless state laws are being passed from the top down banning not only participation in sports for certain people, but essential medical care as well--but it's much more consequential in the area of abortion rights, which until now were (on paper, at least) universal, and now are, well, not.
When people are working to gain something they never enjoyed before, they are more willing to compromise and grind out the "slow boring of hard boards" of politics, so to speak.
When people are having to fight a desperate rear-guard to limit losing rights they just gained recently, especially when those inflicting the loss are either gerrymandered or lifetime-appointed into power, it's a different story.
Matt seems to not quite see that, and wants to characterize today's era, politically and emotionally, as no different than previous eras of slow, grinding progress. Maybe in the long term, he's right. But I'm sure he can understand why others of conscience would see 2023 differently.
I feel like ML describes the way you make change in a Democracy that requires compromise and coalitions. Mason might say she is talking about the merits of the issue. For example as the climate changes, I’m not sure it’s incorrect to view belief in climate change as morally superior even if the way to deal with it may have have political variations.
While I share your pragmatic view, I don’t think you’ve made your case that things have changed for the worse. You’re comparing the words and actions of prominent Democratic officials with an activist. Biden is not out there talking about “people with vaginas.” And I very much remember gay rights being toxically unpopular. People hated ACT UP, hated gay marriage, and hated gay people insisting on the word “partner,” rather than “friend” or “roommate.” Gay rights activists were constantly criticized for being flamboyantly fem and obnoxious and, of course, the right to go into locker rooms.
Similarly, 99% of trans people are going to vote straight-ticket Democrat, including all the ones that live in Alabama.
I honestly suspect this is because as we age, we become less comfortable with the social issues that are getting pushed. My open-minded straight male friends in the 90s who supported gay marriage still expressed a lot of contempt for gay men. But that was enough to get liberal cred. What we consider daring and outré becomes old hat. Women who objected to phrases like “All Men Are Created Equal” were considered shrill and overly sensitive. But we now take it for granted we should use gender-neutral terms.
That’s not to say there are some terrible ideas for social progress out there. But there were in the 90s too. They get weeded out. Other ones stick and we don’t even think about them anymore.
“the problem is when we’re talking about whether an entire group of human beings in the country who are American citizens should be eradicated. There is no compromise position there. We can’t compromise on whether Black Americans should be treated equally as white Americans.”
WTF is this person talking about? The current debate in America is whether to accommodate preferred pronouns, and how much anti-white discrimination should be allowed in order to privilege Black Americans. Obviously there will be polarization between people who have the delusion they are living in Nazi Germany, and normal people.
One question for me - what is the level of support for the moralists' position, and how strongly does it show up in electoral outcomes? Primarying more moderate Ds has had limited success, and I can't think of numerous examples of races that were won or lost because the moralist view triumphed. While this is a very real position out there in the world, how relevant is it in elections?
All the historical compromises that you cite approvingly were *improvements over the status quo* whose main flaw was that they didn't go far enough. Civil rights activists were and generally still are willing to sign off on baby steps in the right direction.
In contrast, the compromises we're being asked to make now involve surrendering our existing rights and liberties in the hopes of maybe possibly winning more elections. This is a very different ask: it's using our rights as bargaining chips rather than as final goals.
A few things:
1. You don’t really cite any evidence to say that anti-trans bigotry is popular. It’s generally popular to limit discrimination against trans people. Almost a decade ago, Mike Pence’s political career in a red state almost collapsed because he supported an anti-trans bathroom bill. The only trans related issue I’m aware of where polling is against the left leaning position is sports. But even there, I think the Republican position of banning trans kids from school sports even if it means enforcing it via examining kids’ genitals is very open to an attack. Trans issues is a social issue where the public is actually generally on the Democrats’ side.
2. The examples you give of civil rights compromises are generally places where the status quo was *worse* than the compromise. Not where Democrats agreed to make the situation worse to throw a group under the bus. The main example you have where a group was actually thrown under the bus and had the status quo become worse is Bill Clinton with DOMA. Do you think that specific “compromise” was good? I think most people today would say that was a terrible mistake Clinton made.
Regardless, what is the compromise you’re talking about with trans people? The main thing going on right now is that Republicans have been ruthlessly trying to limit trans rights everywhere they have power in a sort of moral panic. Are you suggesting that Democrats partly support spreading anti-trans laws, like bans on transgender healthcare? Or like the attempts to investigate parents of trans kids for “child abuse”? Or what?
3. If the Republicans were trying to limit rights for a different group, like if Republicans got very anti-semitic and started trying to discriminate against Jews, would all of this logic still apply? Or would that be a case where it would be essential to hold the line and protect people, because anti-semitism is so dangerous?
I'm convinced Zimmer and Mason would have been foursquare, one hundred years ago, for removing children from the custody of their parents (John Dewey), state ownership of industry (Eugene Debs), and eugenics (Margaret Sanger). All three beliefs were truths embraced by the "best" progressive progressive thinkers of that time and were fashionable. Those ideas are generally disparaged today (except by autocrats and extremists). It's amazing to me that Zimmer and Mason, one a historian, both presumably aware of the not distant past, are so arrogant as to believe themselves the vessels holding TRUTH, when their progressive progenitors, equally certain, were wrong.
Clearly proportional representation would be fairer than the first past the post single member legislative districts we have in this country. However, I won't see that in my lifetime.
That seems cogent.
Apparently "this is problematic" means "I personally don't like the thought of this, and neither would my social reference group".
It's a judgment of value and all value judgments are purely subjective.
Nice to have that cleared up, which is why the word "problematic" rings alarm bells.
It's a passive-aggressive distancing mechanism to 'appeal to a higher authority' to back up your personal, subjective opinion, as if that had some sort of objective validity. Which it doesn't. Your problems are your problems.
I think that there's also a split when it comes to progressives and economic issues and I'm not sure if it's a split on what the real outrage is or whether it is a split on how to describe the problem. On the one side, there are progressives who spend a lot of time talking about how Elon Musk has too much money and how he needs to be paying more taxes and once we tax him we can figure out how to spend that money on people who need services. On the other side, there are progressives who spend a lot of time talking about how we need to expand Medicaid and the question of how to pay for it is not something they talk about much.
In general (I'm on the west coast so this may vary by region), the first group tend to be highly-educated relatively affluent people who think that "every billionaire is a policy failure" or insist that Musk's massive wealth is the real reason that people have to go to food banks and who don't know many people who have been on Medicaid. The second tends to be more heterogeneous and often have friends or relatives who have been on Medicaid or SNAP and don't necessarily care about where the money comes from. The first group seems to be much more common on the West Coast, possibly because there are a lot of extremely rich people who feel free to let their asshole flags fly.
The main reason why people don't buy the whole "compromise a little on social issue x to win on economic issue y," is with few exceptions, it hasn't actually led to electoral success. If there were a ton of pro-gun, anti-trans, anti-abortion, pro-Medicaid expansion, pro-state-level child tax credit, etc. Governor's in places like Nebraska, Wyoming, Missouri, etc., then there'd be an argument for putting our head down, and being OK with that.
But, that hasn't happened - hell, in Oklahoma, the Democrat's literally nominated a former Republican officeholder, and still lost by 15, and there was no movement in the state legislature. The only two real examples of this are John Bel Edwards, who is helped by LA's jungle primary laws (and the GOP had a weak candidate in his initial run), and Steve Beshear, whose the son of a wildly popular former governor, and interestingly, at least on the issues that centrists on Twitter think the Democratic Party should compromise on, they haven't really compromised all that much.
Meanwhile, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan is repealing right-to-work and passing pro-trans laws. With a one-seat majority in Minnesota, Walz is passing transformative legislation, including on social issues. John Fetterman didn't back down on any social issues of note, and won by 5 points.
All stuff many in this comment section would say instead, the Minnesota DFL should only pass I don't know, a slight sales tax increase to pay for free lunch for the poorest schoolkids, instead of say, universal school meals that was just passed. Or John Fetterman should've stated, "I think boys should play with boys and girls should play with girls" if he wanted to win the Senate seat in Pennsylvania.
Also, at least specifically in Texas, the parts of the population moving to the Democrat's are the people who care more about the social issues than the economic issues, and in many cases, the people we're losing on the social issues likely can't be won back by triangulating. Like, the conservative Latino voter in the RGV whose now a Republican likely isn't going to be won back by somebody who says, "well, I think some of the trans stuff is overboard, I'll keep some abortions banned, and I don't want to get rid of all of your guns, and in exchange, I'll get you free Medicaid."
Maybe, maybe Henry Cuellar could be that guy statewide, but the question is, sure, maybe he'd do better in the RGV, but would he get the turnout in deep blue Austin and the Dallas suburbs he needs to actually win enough votes.
The reality is I think the idea, especially in a nationalized landscape, that you can make people forget you're voting for the Democratic Party that stands for things many people don't like is kind of a myth. I'm not saying every candidate needs to be AOC, but this idea that if only the damn progressives would shut up and let it be 2008 forever, we'd have big-time majorities, is simply a falsehood.
Ostracism has fundamentally different dynamics when you are dealing with peers who share the same source of legitimacy as you and your friends (classmates, union members, etc) vs. people whose power is completely separate from yours (representatives from different districts). This drives a lot of confusion. Treating your fellow academics as radioactive when they overstep ideological red lines might be an effective discipline. Blacklisting scabs certainly is. But the same tactics do not translate to the Senator from West Virginia, if you are not in West Virginia.
This is a really good point and I think there is a lot of naivety about the dynamics of political power in the discourse Matt is criticizing. If you think something is a matter of fundamental rights, you still have to ask the question of what to do when the public, elected officials, and the courts won't go along. That usually involves compromise and serious efforts at discussion and persuasion. Left-wing activists do not have the social power to just steamroll people, even for the most just cause in the world, at least not outside very select communities.
I don't think it's wrong in all circumstances to try to enforce a kind of cordon sanitaire on ideological discourse (totally fine to cancel Nazis, for an easy example) but it only makes sense when you really have the power to do it. Even if you can keep something out of NYT how much does it help when it just drives it to more right-wing media.