It is rewarding to read an article that expresses my own views but with better writing and statistics. When Biden chose his new Press Sec’y, we were sure he had a death wish. She is a good journalist, but the Optics of LBGTQ after her name plus her past comments against Jews and Israel should have disqualified for being the main voice for Biden. Again the activists, by pushing Gender change, have poisoned the dialogue for same sex marriage which had been becoming widely supported. This article makes excellent points recalling the views the Obama’s professed.
I agree with basically everything you wrote here, politically--with the sole exception of gun control.
Two things there:
1.) Democrat politicians, especially in states like Florida and Texas, may not have control over what their voters, or potential voters, are motivated by. Big, politically salient massacres have happened in both those states, and the bases there (outvoted though they are) are as uncompromising on gun reform as anyone in the United States.
You can tell them "Hey, you need to put this issue aside, it's not going to win elections" all you want. Grieving, politically-active parents do not, and will not, listen to it. Even if you tell them it's for their own political good.
2.) Contrary to how we think about these things, gun control is not "isolated" from other, more popular issues. It gets pulled to the right or left all the time, depending on what else it's linked to. Beto O'Rourke, for example, is betting that lack of gun control will become linked to militias, racist violence, and civil unrest in general over time, given his experience with the El Paso terrorist attack. That's precisely what's let to strict gun laws in multiple parts of, e.g., the Third World.
In other words, one could just as easily argue that our current fraught situation, with American democracy imperiled, could lead to gun control being an asset in the Democrats' political appeal, not an act of self-sabotage, like you hypothesize. Then again, you have a point--the recent civil unrest over the summer put gun reform on the definite back burner. Time will tell.
All I'm saying is, be wary of giving advice on gun reform to Democrats trying to win races in states like the ones I've lived in. Opinion on this, like so many other things, is evolving far faster than what our takes can catch up to.
Thanks for trying to save America Matt! I agree with this very strongly in spirit even if I did cringe at several of your specific rhetorical suggestions. However, I would go even further and say that not only is it okay to pander, but it's okay to empathize with some of these views. Yes, the views can be harmful, but leftists who strongly feel you should never empathize with someone holding a harmful view have lost the plot imo.
I'm mad I missed the discussion on this post, this is one of the issues I feel most strongly about.
Do you see any chance that enough progressives split the vote in some of these states so moderates can win on a plurality? Say Connor Lamb in PA, Ron Kind in Wisconsin, etc. Also, do you think Trump will support mainstream people likely to win so he can boost his ego, or an all in guy like Mandel who will underperform the fundamentals due to excessive trumpiness?
John Fetterman seems like a good example of a Democratic running for Senate in a pivotal state (Pennsylvania). He's leaning extremely into the marijuana/minimum wage stuff, not trying his mast to Medicare-for-All but is squarely in the "everyone should have healthcare" camp. On interviews with lefty YouTube shows, he is doesn't allow them to label him a "progressive" despite the fact most of his policies suggest as much. His home office setup has a gigantic American flag in the background. There's a lot to like.
As a progressive who cares deeply about both abortion rights and gun control, among other issues, this is a really tough pill to swallow, but I have to admit that I think you’re absolutely right. And the past four years have freaked me out enough that I really hope people listen to you and get on this train. I also try to remind myself that it’s not like the Obama years were some horrific period—I remember them as being pretty good! Sure, elected Dems were to the right of me on a bunch of issues, but even as a progressive Middle Eastern woman, it was fine. I realize there is some privilege in this statement and eg, a trans person, might feel differently. But I don’t remember staying up nights worrying about whether America would survive and I think we progressives should remember that if the Dems don’t start winning over some moderates and Republicans are therefore able to further entrench their power, we are super duper fucked — and that the marginalized people we claim to care about will be the most trampled of all. Liberal democracy is a pre-requisite to everything we want, and it’s worth making even painful sacrifices to preserve it.
I think though, that part of what’s happened on the left is that we’ve drunk our own Kool-Aid by convincing ourselves that moderates don’t win, base mobilization is all that matters. I see the Bernie/AOC crowd saying this all the time - often quite dismissively! - on social media, and it also seems to now be the conventional wisdom among my most politically tuned-in and active colleagues and friends. This is of course a very convenient narrative because it tells you that the winning strategy just happens to be “do the stuff you wanted to do anyway.” So it’s a hard one to combat. Which is why I’m so glad you’re working to chip away at it.
Again, I don’t *want* to live in a world where candidates sometimes have to throw my preferred policy positions under the bus, let alone one where they have to pander to people’s barely-veiled racial resentments (just ew). But if that’s the actual world we’re living in (spoiler alert: it is), then we’re not doing ourselves any favors by pretending otherwise!
Tl;dr - Thanks for making me take my medicine; this is why I give you money.
I agree with some of this advice. Although, I'm not sure it applies evenly across all the different swingy states. I've seen a lot of talk on Georgia in this thread and I think it's fair to wonder a little bit about the elasticity of states here. For instance, it seems like there are almost no swing voters in GA just based on the 538 elasticity scores and the fact that white people in the south are mostly republican and non-whites are mostly democrats. It seems like making sure to juice base turnout matters a lot in a situation like that and maybe running a Manchin like figure somewhere with few swing voters could be hurtful in a situation like that.
However, I wonder specifically if it's even possible for up and coming politicians to create these types of brands given the information ecosystems at work. I think you could argue Dem candidates could more forcefully come out against the party platform on an issue (and I think moderating on abortion would be tactically smart, using your example); but, I'm not sure it would matter. I guess to give an example: Say Lizzie Fletcher (who has bucked Dem party a bit, notably on fossil fuel stuff) stressed her support for some of fossil fuels staying around/ tax cuts/ immigration enforcement/ more moderate abortion or gun stance etc. in a run statewide in texas in either 2 or 4 years after her house seat gets redistricted into oblivion. It's unclear to me that branding would help her because I doubt she'd get any credit for it from the people she'd need to reach in order to win. On the flip side, it'd be tough to stomach voting for that person if you're liberal on some of those issue. That's not to say that's tactically prudent, but I do think this type of advice could backfire in some way. I guess in general I just don't think Manchins are really possible to create anymore cause they could never get elected under today's highly nationalized politicial environment to begin with.
I feel like backing away from gun control by itself would swing an awful lot of elections. I'm 90% liberal and my entire inner circle is liberal and I know for a fact that the absurd caricature of gun owners that prevails in liberal circles is an insulting farce. By virtue of being a gun guy I wind up in contact with an awful lot of conservatives I wouldn't otherwise. They're by and large a lot less like Donald Trump and more like Hank Hill. If Democrats reached out to them instead of demonizing them at every opportunity, I feel like that alone could swing a lot of these elections that come down to a couple thousand votes.
I agree with this take but as practical matter what does that mean for a middle class voter in a Bay Area suburb. I do donate but it is mostly when I really like someone that I give 100~500 bucks. I would have a hard time looking up a senate race in North Dakota and giving 500 bucks to someone who has social views about gay marriage or abortion I find immoral.
Not supporting a Democratic candidate who you agree with on views other than gay marriage and abortion makes it more likely that their Republican opponent, who *definitely* disagrees with progressive views on gay marriage and abortion, wins instead.
Also, after having donated to the Hillary campaign in 2016 and seeing them mismanage their strategy so badly really turned me off political donations. That view's only been reinforced this last cycle with the fundraising for McGrath and Harrison, plus the straight grift of the Lincoln Project. Anything I would have donated to a political campaign now goes to an actual charity instead.
Not trying to be snarky, but as someone who lives in the Upper Midwest (though not ND), why don’t you just keep your money out of our politics? There should be a law against out of state political donations.
I agree with the policy goal of getting money out of politics but as Matt originally wrote, we can’t do that much if we don’t win elections in the upper mid west. So again your statement has me torn.
You can only imagine my disappointment as an Ohioan to see Ohio go from a purple state that voted for Obama twice to a solid red-state whose deciding issue for Portman's empty seat is "who can suck Trump's c**k harder?"
This is why we need proportional representation so the 10% of not all-in republicans voting for Trump will be able to vote for moderate "Republicans" (It would be a different party) that would agree and support democrats on some stuff. The same would go for far-left and far-right populists who agree on more than they would like to admit and could potentially pass things if they were able to get a boost from bi-tri-or quad partisan (multi-parties) policies rather than look like they're giving in to the left (or the right).
This is a solid list. I have a very particular personal history, and I'll try to explain it as briefly as possible: I'm originally froma college town in Kentucky. I went to work on the floor of a factory in Kentucky in my early 20s (mid-90s) because I grew up poor, was seriously (religiously) debt averse, so I decided to do this ad a means up saving up money to pay for law school. Not the kind of thing you could do over a single summer, even then. I ended up helping to organize a union, then I got elected to the first bargaining committee. When that was finished, I actually left the manufacturing environment and became a union organizer.
I was only (relatively) briefly a union organizer, then I moved into another sphere of lefty politics (that, being non-labor, was staffed almost exclusively by what a small band of us secretly referred to as "trust fund babies"). I did that work for nearly a decade, moving all over the country. Then I ended up geographically near someone that I worked with in the factory. He had started on the floor, moved into salaried engineering, and been successful, moving to work at other plants. I was probably on my way to a similar experience when I left that place; they were actually trying to move me into engineering, but I was working a ton of overtime and (a) the salary-without-overtime would've been a huge pay cut for me and (b) I wanted to see through the union thing.
My acquaintance had me come interview for engineering-adjacent work. I had already been considering leaving the political work because I thought I might not want to be a workaholics for the rest of my days (we used to say " it's not a job, it's a lifestyle ") and I didn't want to die almost as poor as when I was born. Then they offered me a job, and it was for an amount of money that sounded almost supernatural to me at that point in my life. So I went back, have been unbelievably fortunate and now make a living that no sane person would see as working class. No, I still haven't been to law school.
Anyway, I still spend most of my time on plant floors. I work with both customers and suppliers, so I'm on lots of plant floors and I'm in all the break rooms. Maybe not surprisingly, even with my now-background, I'm still more comfortable there than among the chamber of commerce types with whom I'm in business. And, please believe me: 'economically conservative' is a thing that barely exists among the working class. And not because of Trump; this was true for at least the last few years of the Obama administration. I hear people talking about how we have to tolerate Manchin and Kaine rolling back banking regulations because of all the economic conservatives. That's nonsense. They simply vote for rolling them back and then no one mentions it again because, let's be real, most Democrats don't want to talk about it either.
But culturally conservative is still very much a thing. And it's not as 'regressive' as we say. There are studies that show most Democrats being *more* sympathetic toward other races than their own. Um, that's the unusual thing. I'd almost bet that it's a world-historical first. Last summer, a politically motivated group took over a section of a major American city. The cops just stayed out until they surrendered, which didn't happen until people got murdered. This event virtually doesn't exist outside the conservative echo chamber. Before you hand-wave that, consider if a conservative-sympathetic group did a similar thing, would there ever be a day when it didn't come up on MSNBC? Even CNN?
The Paper of Record did one lonely story from the perspective of people who had businesses destroyed last year (I keep waiting for poor Nellie Bowles to get run out of there), in the midst of a billion dollar property destruction event. That seems strange. I think that's objectively strange. By the way, have you ever tried to get an insurance company to pay up when your ability to pay your bills depended upon their doing so quickly? Neither have I, but merely thinking about just made me instinctively flinch.
At least have of black Americans want more police. Among lower income black Americans, like the people who live in the property destruction zones, that number is well over half. Why doesn't their perspective exist in the media that I consume? That's odd, right?
Democrats have largely become a boutique operation culturally, and the market that they serve isn't black Americans. It's trust fund babies. That's a problem. It's unfortunately the kind of problem that, if you'd like to even discuss it, I'm afraid you'll need to leave Vox and set up shop with Substack. Our information ecosystem won't even countenance the point of view that most Americans have. Hand-wave if you will, that's a legitimate political problem.
The one thing I'll push back on a smidge is the "Dems being more sympathetic towards other races" bit. I can construct a scenario in my head where the thinking would be "minorities have it bad so I feel bad for them" or something that makes sense like that.
Yeah, the recent nymag interview with David Shor has a passage where he talks about how Dem embrace of race related social justice issues has resulted in the party trading non college educated white, black and hispanic voters for college educated white voters, and I think your comment explains this well.
Great comment. I have a similar background where I’ve been able to straddle between being around very highly educated, elite educated people and factory workers and other working class types. I joke with my friends that I identify as “culturally deplorable” but I’m a registered Dem and I’m saddened by what the Dem party has become given the GOP is an absolute mess. There is a market in Middle America out there for more progressive economic politics mixed with a culture war truce. The Dems better get it before the GOP figures is out.
I normally glance over, skim or skip long comments but I read every word heree. That's a great way to describe the NYTs coverage choices last summer, I'll probably borrow some of it when I try to explain their lack of objectivity.
I think I see today's politics in a similar way. Liberals seem to think Ds and Rs are split by race and racial issues. There's some truth to that. But the bigger issue, the one that really moves votes, is class. All the energy in the Democratic camp comes from the college and advanced degree holders, especially in the big cities and those are the voices that get magnified and catered to.
Well argued and I completely agree. The cultural battles are mostly stupid anyway. Conceding this stuff to preserve democracy and add fairness to elections is a no brainer. Just ignore your priors and think about what's best for the country/world.
The only argument I can see being against it is the desire by Rs to make up new cultural taboos on the left. There's a very real possibility that someone who did all that would then be excoriated for some unknown crap that Fox News can cook up. I'm less worried about it, but many of my liberal friends are very worried about it and I see their point sometimes.
I don't think the idea is that we can stamp out all things that will get the Fox News fanbase ginned up--it's that we need some candidates in purple states to be willing to distance themselves from those positions or even join team Fox instead of close rank with the left.
It is rewarding to read an article that expresses my own views but with better writing and statistics. When Biden chose his new Press Sec’y, we were sure he had a death wish. She is a good journalist, but the Optics of LBGTQ after her name plus her past comments against Jews and Israel should have disqualified for being the main voice for Biden. Again the activists, by pushing Gender change, have poisoned the dialogue for same sex marriage which had been becoming widely supported. This article makes excellent points recalling the views the Obama’s professed.
I agree with basically everything you wrote here, politically--with the sole exception of gun control.
Two things there:
1.) Democrat politicians, especially in states like Florida and Texas, may not have control over what their voters, or potential voters, are motivated by. Big, politically salient massacres have happened in both those states, and the bases there (outvoted though they are) are as uncompromising on gun reform as anyone in the United States.
You can tell them "Hey, you need to put this issue aside, it's not going to win elections" all you want. Grieving, politically-active parents do not, and will not, listen to it. Even if you tell them it's for their own political good.
2.) Contrary to how we think about these things, gun control is not "isolated" from other, more popular issues. It gets pulled to the right or left all the time, depending on what else it's linked to. Beto O'Rourke, for example, is betting that lack of gun control will become linked to militias, racist violence, and civil unrest in general over time, given his experience with the El Paso terrorist attack. That's precisely what's let to strict gun laws in multiple parts of, e.g., the Third World.
In other words, one could just as easily argue that our current fraught situation, with American democracy imperiled, could lead to gun control being an asset in the Democrats' political appeal, not an act of self-sabotage, like you hypothesize. Then again, you have a point--the recent civil unrest over the summer put gun reform on the definite back burner. Time will tell.
All I'm saying is, be wary of giving advice on gun reform to Democrats trying to win races in states like the ones I've lived in. Opinion on this, like so many other things, is evolving far faster than what our takes can catch up to.
Has everyone read NY Mag's new interview with David Shor?
Shouldn't we believe the (political) science?
Thanks for trying to save America Matt! I agree with this very strongly in spirit even if I did cringe at several of your specific rhetorical suggestions. However, I would go even further and say that not only is it okay to pander, but it's okay to empathize with some of these views. Yes, the views can be harmful, but leftists who strongly feel you should never empathize with someone holding a harmful view have lost the plot imo.
I'm mad I missed the discussion on this post, this is one of the issues I feel most strongly about.
Do you see any chance that enough progressives split the vote in some of these states so moderates can win on a plurality? Say Connor Lamb in PA, Ron Kind in Wisconsin, etc. Also, do you think Trump will support mainstream people likely to win so he can boost his ego, or an all in guy like Mandel who will underperform the fundamentals due to excessive trumpiness?
John Fetterman seems like a good example of a Democratic running for Senate in a pivotal state (Pennsylvania). He's leaning extremely into the marijuana/minimum wage stuff, not trying his mast to Medicare-for-All but is squarely in the "everyone should have healthcare" camp. On interviews with lefty YouTube shows, he is doesn't allow them to label him a "progressive" despite the fact most of his policies suggest as much. His home office setup has a gigantic American flag in the background. There's a lot to like.
"US" and "G.O.P."--Why opt for such violently incongruent punctuation? Hire me. I work for gratitude, not money.
As a progressive who cares deeply about both abortion rights and gun control, among other issues, this is a really tough pill to swallow, but I have to admit that I think you’re absolutely right. And the past four years have freaked me out enough that I really hope people listen to you and get on this train. I also try to remind myself that it’s not like the Obama years were some horrific period—I remember them as being pretty good! Sure, elected Dems were to the right of me on a bunch of issues, but even as a progressive Middle Eastern woman, it was fine. I realize there is some privilege in this statement and eg, a trans person, might feel differently. But I don’t remember staying up nights worrying about whether America would survive and I think we progressives should remember that if the Dems don’t start winning over some moderates and Republicans are therefore able to further entrench their power, we are super duper fucked — and that the marginalized people we claim to care about will be the most trampled of all. Liberal democracy is a pre-requisite to everything we want, and it’s worth making even painful sacrifices to preserve it.
I think though, that part of what’s happened on the left is that we’ve drunk our own Kool-Aid by convincing ourselves that moderates don’t win, base mobilization is all that matters. I see the Bernie/AOC crowd saying this all the time - often quite dismissively! - on social media, and it also seems to now be the conventional wisdom among my most politically tuned-in and active colleagues and friends. This is of course a very convenient narrative because it tells you that the winning strategy just happens to be “do the stuff you wanted to do anyway.” So it’s a hard one to combat. Which is why I’m so glad you’re working to chip away at it.
Again, I don’t *want* to live in a world where candidates sometimes have to throw my preferred policy positions under the bus, let alone one where they have to pander to people’s barely-veiled racial resentments (just ew). But if that’s the actual world we’re living in (spoiler alert: it is), then we’re not doing ourselves any favors by pretending otherwise!
Tl;dr - Thanks for making me take my medicine; this is why I give you money.
I agree with some of this advice. Although, I'm not sure it applies evenly across all the different swingy states. I've seen a lot of talk on Georgia in this thread and I think it's fair to wonder a little bit about the elasticity of states here. For instance, it seems like there are almost no swing voters in GA just based on the 538 elasticity scores and the fact that white people in the south are mostly republican and non-whites are mostly democrats. It seems like making sure to juice base turnout matters a lot in a situation like that and maybe running a Manchin like figure somewhere with few swing voters could be hurtful in a situation like that.
However, I wonder specifically if it's even possible for up and coming politicians to create these types of brands given the information ecosystems at work. I think you could argue Dem candidates could more forcefully come out against the party platform on an issue (and I think moderating on abortion would be tactically smart, using your example); but, I'm not sure it would matter. I guess to give an example: Say Lizzie Fletcher (who has bucked Dem party a bit, notably on fossil fuel stuff) stressed her support for some of fossil fuels staying around/ tax cuts/ immigration enforcement/ more moderate abortion or gun stance etc. in a run statewide in texas in either 2 or 4 years after her house seat gets redistricted into oblivion. It's unclear to me that branding would help her because I doubt she'd get any credit for it from the people she'd need to reach in order to win. On the flip side, it'd be tough to stomach voting for that person if you're liberal on some of those issue. That's not to say that's tactically prudent, but I do think this type of advice could backfire in some way. I guess in general I just don't think Manchins are really possible to create anymore cause they could never get elected under today's highly nationalized politicial environment to begin with.
I feel like backing away from gun control by itself would swing an awful lot of elections. I'm 90% liberal and my entire inner circle is liberal and I know for a fact that the absurd caricature of gun owners that prevails in liberal circles is an insulting farce. By virtue of being a gun guy I wind up in contact with an awful lot of conservatives I wouldn't otherwise. They're by and large a lot less like Donald Trump and more like Hank Hill. If Democrats reached out to them instead of demonizing them at every opportunity, I feel like that alone could swing a lot of these elections that come down to a couple thousand votes.
I agree with this take but as practical matter what does that mean for a middle class voter in a Bay Area suburb. I do donate but it is mostly when I really like someone that I give 100~500 bucks. I would have a hard time looking up a senate race in North Dakota and giving 500 bucks to someone who has social views about gay marriage or abortion I find immoral.
Not supporting a Democratic candidate who you agree with on views other than gay marriage and abortion makes it more likely that their Republican opponent, who *definitely* disagrees with progressive views on gay marriage and abortion, wins instead.
Also, after having donated to the Hillary campaign in 2016 and seeing them mismanage their strategy so badly really turned me off political donations. That view's only been reinforced this last cycle with the fundraising for McGrath and Harrison, plus the straight grift of the Lincoln Project. Anything I would have donated to a political campaign now goes to an actual charity instead.
Not trying to be snarky, but as someone who lives in the Upper Midwest (though not ND), why don’t you just keep your money out of our politics? There should be a law against out of state political donations.
That would be fair to say if superpacs, the Mercers, corporations, and dark money had to keep out of your politics too.
I agree with the policy goal of getting money out of politics but as Matt originally wrote, we can’t do that much if we don’t win elections in the upper mid west. So again your statement has me torn.
You can only imagine my disappointment as an Ohioan to see Ohio go from a purple state that voted for Obama twice to a solid red-state whose deciding issue for Portman's empty seat is "who can suck Trump's c**k harder?"
This is dangerously rational and I love it.
This is why we need proportional representation so the 10% of not all-in republicans voting for Trump will be able to vote for moderate "Republicans" (It would be a different party) that would agree and support democrats on some stuff. The same would go for far-left and far-right populists who agree on more than they would like to admit and could potentially pass things if they were able to get a boost from bi-tri-or quad partisan (multi-parties) policies rather than look like they're giving in to the left (or the right).
This is a solid list. I have a very particular personal history, and I'll try to explain it as briefly as possible: I'm originally froma college town in Kentucky. I went to work on the floor of a factory in Kentucky in my early 20s (mid-90s) because I grew up poor, was seriously (religiously) debt averse, so I decided to do this ad a means up saving up money to pay for law school. Not the kind of thing you could do over a single summer, even then. I ended up helping to organize a union, then I got elected to the first bargaining committee. When that was finished, I actually left the manufacturing environment and became a union organizer.
I was only (relatively) briefly a union organizer, then I moved into another sphere of lefty politics (that, being non-labor, was staffed almost exclusively by what a small band of us secretly referred to as "trust fund babies"). I did that work for nearly a decade, moving all over the country. Then I ended up geographically near someone that I worked with in the factory. He had started on the floor, moved into salaried engineering, and been successful, moving to work at other plants. I was probably on my way to a similar experience when I left that place; they were actually trying to move me into engineering, but I was working a ton of overtime and (a) the salary-without-overtime would've been a huge pay cut for me and (b) I wanted to see through the union thing.
My acquaintance had me come interview for engineering-adjacent work. I had already been considering leaving the political work because I thought I might not want to be a workaholics for the rest of my days (we used to say " it's not a job, it's a lifestyle ") and I didn't want to die almost as poor as when I was born. Then they offered me a job, and it was for an amount of money that sounded almost supernatural to me at that point in my life. So I went back, have been unbelievably fortunate and now make a living that no sane person would see as working class. No, I still haven't been to law school.
Anyway, I still spend most of my time on plant floors. I work with both customers and suppliers, so I'm on lots of plant floors and I'm in all the break rooms. Maybe not surprisingly, even with my now-background, I'm still more comfortable there than among the chamber of commerce types with whom I'm in business. And, please believe me: 'economically conservative' is a thing that barely exists among the working class. And not because of Trump; this was true for at least the last few years of the Obama administration. I hear people talking about how we have to tolerate Manchin and Kaine rolling back banking regulations because of all the economic conservatives. That's nonsense. They simply vote for rolling them back and then no one mentions it again because, let's be real, most Democrats don't want to talk about it either.
But culturally conservative is still very much a thing. And it's not as 'regressive' as we say. There are studies that show most Democrats being *more* sympathetic toward other races than their own. Um, that's the unusual thing. I'd almost bet that it's a world-historical first. Last summer, a politically motivated group took over a section of a major American city. The cops just stayed out until they surrendered, which didn't happen until people got murdered. This event virtually doesn't exist outside the conservative echo chamber. Before you hand-wave that, consider if a conservative-sympathetic group did a similar thing, would there ever be a day when it didn't come up on MSNBC? Even CNN?
The Paper of Record did one lonely story from the perspective of people who had businesses destroyed last year (I keep waiting for poor Nellie Bowles to get run out of there), in the midst of a billion dollar property destruction event. That seems strange. I think that's objectively strange. By the way, have you ever tried to get an insurance company to pay up when your ability to pay your bills depended upon their doing so quickly? Neither have I, but merely thinking about just made me instinctively flinch.
At least have of black Americans want more police. Among lower income black Americans, like the people who live in the property destruction zones, that number is well over half. Why doesn't their perspective exist in the media that I consume? That's odd, right?
Democrats have largely become a boutique operation culturally, and the market that they serve isn't black Americans. It's trust fund babies. That's a problem. It's unfortunately the kind of problem that, if you'd like to even discuss it, I'm afraid you'll need to leave Vox and set up shop with Substack. Our information ecosystem won't even countenance the point of view that most Americans have. Hand-wave if you will, that's a legitimate political problem.
Excellent comment. Thanks for sharing.
The one thing I'll push back on a smidge is the "Dems being more sympathetic towards other races" bit. I can construct a scenario in my head where the thinking would be "minorities have it bad so I feel bad for them" or something that makes sense like that.
Yeah, the recent nymag interview with David Shor has a passage where he talks about how Dem embrace of race related social justice issues has resulted in the party trading non college educated white, black and hispanic voters for college educated white voters, and I think your comment explains this well.
Great comment. I have a similar background where I’ve been able to straddle between being around very highly educated, elite educated people and factory workers and other working class types. I joke with my friends that I identify as “culturally deplorable” but I’m a registered Dem and I’m saddened by what the Dem party has become given the GOP is an absolute mess. There is a market in Middle America out there for more progressive economic politics mixed with a culture war truce. The Dems better get it before the GOP figures is out.
I normally glance over, skim or skip long comments but I read every word heree. That's a great way to describe the NYTs coverage choices last summer, I'll probably borrow some of it when I try to explain their lack of objectivity.
I think I see today's politics in a similar way. Liberals seem to think Ds and Rs are split by race and racial issues. There's some truth to that. But the bigger issue, the one that really moves votes, is class. All the energy in the Democratic camp comes from the college and advanced degree holders, especially in the big cities and those are the voices that get magnified and catered to.
Wish I could edit a few things. Whoops :)
Well argued and I completely agree. The cultural battles are mostly stupid anyway. Conceding this stuff to preserve democracy and add fairness to elections is a no brainer. Just ignore your priors and think about what's best for the country/world.
The only argument I can see being against it is the desire by Rs to make up new cultural taboos on the left. There's a very real possibility that someone who did all that would then be excoriated for some unknown crap that Fox News can cook up. I'm less worried about it, but many of my liberal friends are very worried about it and I see their point sometimes.
I don't think the idea is that we can stamp out all things that will get the Fox News fanbase ginned up--it's that we need some candidates in purple states to be willing to distance themselves from those positions or even join team Fox instead of close rank with the left.
Ya I agree and I would agree that it's a good idea. Just noting what others are concerned about when they hear an argument similar to Matt's. :)