2012 exit polls and the post-2012 narrative
October 1, 2021 11:49 AM Subscribe
"The popular narrative after 2012 that Obama won due to historic mobilization of young and non-white voters was completely wrong and the resulting consequences of that narrative have led to massive strategic errors that have put American democracy at risk." Nate Cohn of the NYT's Upshot on how erroneous data from the 2012 exit polls created a powerful narrative - that white working-class voters were no longer a major part of the Democratic coalition - which was completely wrong. "You know how the story ends. The real Obama coalition - an alliance of northern white working class voters and high Black turnout - evaporated in 2016." Via David Shor.
Noam Chomsky: "The Democrats abandoned the working class decades ago"
--Salon, 2020/02
posted by polymodus at 2:42 PM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
--Salon, 2020/02
posted by polymodus at 2:42 PM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is not dishonest. These are facts, no matter how displeasing they are to MeFi.
posted by PhineasGage at 3:08 PM on October 1, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 3:08 PM on October 1, 2021 [12 favorites]
It might be interesting to unfold why some racists voted for Obama.
Health care.
David Shor:
posted by russilwvong at 3:34 PM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]
Health care.
David Shor:
There’s a big mass of voters who agree with us on some issues, and disagree with us on others. And whenever we talk about a given issue, that increases the extent to which voters will cast their ballots on the basis of that issue.2016 in a nutshell.
Mitt Romney and Donald Trump agreed on basically every issue, as did Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And yet, a bunch of people changed their votes. And the reason that happened was because the salience of various issues changed. Both sides talked a lot more about immigration, and because of that, correlation between preferences on immigration and which candidate people voted for went up. In 2012, both sides talked about health care. In 2016, they didn’t. And so the correlation between views on health care and which candidate people voted for went down.
So this means that every time you open your mouth, you have this complex optimization problem where what you say gains you some voters and loses you other voters. But this is actually cool because campaigns have a lot of control over what issues they talk about.
Non-college-educated whites, on average, have very conservative views on immigration, and generally conservative racial attitudes. But they have center-left views on economics; they support universal health care and minimum-wage increases. So I think Democrats need to talk about the issues they are with us on, and try really hard not to talk about the issues where we disagree. Which, in practice, means not talking about immigration.
posted by russilwvong at 3:34 PM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]
Non-college-educated whites, on average, have very conservative views on immigration, and generally conservative racial attitudes. But they have center-left views on economics; they support universal health care and minimum-wage increases.
This was my family. People from liberal families were always BAFFLED when I said my parents were racist, homophobic, fundamentalist conservatives who are pro-union, pro-teachers, and pro-increasing-the-minimum-wage. It doesn’t track for most people, but that’s the reality. They were anti-ACA, but pro-Medicaid, which was probably the racism more than actual attitudes on healthcare.
Anyway then Trump came along and now they aren’t pro- any of those things, so. Do with that what you will.
posted by brook horse at 3:42 PM on October 1, 2021 [20 favorites]
This was my family. People from liberal families were always BAFFLED when I said my parents were racist, homophobic, fundamentalist conservatives who are pro-union, pro-teachers, and pro-increasing-the-minimum-wage. It doesn’t track for most people, but that’s the reality. They were anti-ACA, but pro-Medicaid, which was probably the racism more than actual attitudes on healthcare.
Anyway then Trump came along and now they aren’t pro- any of those things, so. Do with that what you will.
posted by brook horse at 3:42 PM on October 1, 2021 [20 favorites]
White Working Class voters voted for Hillary.This just isn't true. See Figure #3.
posted by kickingtheground at 3:48 PM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
White Working Class voters voted for Hillary.
This just isn't true. See Figure #3.
Interesting figure. That shows that 38% of white working class voters voted for Hillary.
Fascinating paper overall. That found that the claims "(1) that most Trump voters were white working-class Americans; (2) that most white working-class voters supported Trump; (3) that unusually large numbers of white working-class voters switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016" were "not supported by the available data."
posted by Superilla at 4:31 PM on October 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
This just isn't true. See Figure #3.
Interesting figure. That shows that 38% of white working class voters voted for Hillary.
Fascinating paper overall. That found that the claims "(1) that most Trump voters were white working-class Americans; (2) that most white working-class voters supported Trump; (3) that unusually large numbers of white working-class voters switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016" were "not supported by the available data."
posted by Superilla at 4:31 PM on October 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
unusually large numbers of white working-class voters switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 ... not supported by the available data
According to David Shor, the Democrat-to-Republican swing in 2016 for non-college white voters was 10%.
Non-college white voters were about 44% of 2016 voters.
Matthew Yglesias talks about the "BA bubble" - political staffers tend to be young and highly educated, and they often don't realize just how unusual this makes them.
Biden's advice on political communication: "Pick up your phone, call your mother, read her what you just told me. If she understands, we can keep talking."
If progressive, highly-educated voters aren't aware of just how unusual they are, they can end up employing self-defeating tactics. Jonathan Freeland, writing in the Guardian:
According to David Shor, the Democrat-to-Republican swing in 2016 for non-college white voters was 10%.
Non-college white voters were about 44% of 2016 voters.
Matthew Yglesias talks about the "BA bubble" - political staffers tend to be young and highly educated, and they often don't realize just how unusual this makes them.
People working in [American] progressive politics at all levels could probably improve their decision-making by just sticking a post-it on their monitors that says:Similarly, James Carville talks about "faculty-lounge politics."
- Most voters are over 50
- Most voters didn’t graduate college
- The electoral map is even more biased toward older non-college voters
Biden's advice on political communication: "Pick up your phone, call your mother, read her what you just told me. If she understands, we can keep talking."
If progressive, highly-educated voters aren't aware of just how unusual they are, they can end up employing self-defeating tactics. Jonathan Freeland, writing in the Guardian:
Part of the problem is language. “If you go out and start talking about ‘racial justice’ or ‘social justice’ or ‘climate justice’, you just sound like a super-educated weird person,” says Shor. It’s not that working people don’t care about racism or the climate, they just don’t speak about it in the same way. It means dialling down the ideology and the jargon – note that Hispanic Americans reject the Twitter-approved term “Latinx” to describe themselves – and focusing instead on the kind of unfairness and human suffering that even those whose instincts are socially conservative cannot ignore.Shor finds the situation scary:
I confess that when I spoke to Shor I felt a shudder of recognition. Here in Britain, Labour is lumped in with a “big blob” of its own. Too often a loud part of that blob sounds like either a select priesthood, speaking to itself about questions that would strike most people as abstract angels-on-a-pinhead theology, or a self-appointed police force dispensing constant, scolding judgment, wagging its finger at the latest supposed infraction of progressive standards. It’s exhausting and so unappealing that even a serially dishonest and incompetent government – but one that seems to accept you, your country and your way of life without pursed-lipped judgment – seems preferable by comparison.
Q. Why did down-ballot Democrats do even worse than Biden did?posted by russilwvong at 7:14 PM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]
Shor: There are certainly structural issues, partly from gerrymandering, partly from the fact that Democrats increasingly are concentrated in certain places. But I think that there’s another problem. The 2020 election was a situation where Democrats picked literally the most popular person in our party whose last name is not Obama. Republicans decided to run literally the most unpopular person to run for president in decades. And we were barely able to scrape up a 0.3% majority.
It’s very scary. There’s going to be someone after Trump who’s probably going to be more popular. These results are a warning sign. We actually aren’t winning the war of ideas as much as we think. The Republican Party is more popular relative to the Democratic Party than people think. The Democratic Party brand and agenda has shifted a lot in the last four to five years, and it’s gone in a direction that a lot of voters aren’t necessarily comfortable with.
The 2020 election was a situation where Democrats picked literally the most popular person in our party whose last name is not Obama.
It was also a situation that--or at the very least, had the optics such that--multiple center-left candidates folded in the primaries all but ensuring Bernie Sanders' chances were gone. And that's rich considering this whole anti-intersectional dichotomy about racism vs class that for reasons and provenance unclear to me that Democrat ideologues seem so invested in of late.
posted by polymodus at 9:31 PM on October 1, 2021
It was also a situation that--or at the very least, had the optics such that--multiple center-left candidates folded in the primaries all but ensuring Bernie Sanders' chances were gone. And that's rich considering this whole anti-intersectional dichotomy about racism vs class that for reasons and provenance unclear to me that Democrat ideologues seem so invested in of late.
posted by polymodus at 9:31 PM on October 1, 2021
This just isn't true. See Figure #3
People should read this one. The conclusion - that WWC voters have shifted towards voting Republican over the course of a few decades, but that the shift towards Trump does not stand out from that general trend - feels unsurprising on some level but also like it cuts through a lot of discourse and gets to the real point.
posted by atoxyl at 1:53 AM on October 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
People should read this one. The conclusion - that WWC voters have shifted towards voting Republican over the course of a few decades, but that the shift towards Trump does not stand out from that general trend - feels unsurprising on some level but also like it cuts through a lot of discourse and gets to the real point.
posted by atoxyl at 1:53 AM on October 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
This just isn't true. See Figure #3
People should read this one.
I agree. Very solid research, and I see I should modify my statement above to: many White Working Class voters voted for Hillary. Most Trump voters were and are middle class and rich racist white people.
The article doesn't change my main point, that the whole narrative about the unique appearance of white working class Trump-voters is BS that has been thoroughly debunked over the past four-five years, and that it is intellectually dishonest to bring it up again now.
According to David Shor, the Democrat-to-Republican swing in 2016 for non-college white voters was 10%.
Non-college white voters were about 44% of 2016 voters.
The paper linked by kickingtheground above reminds us that lack of college education does not equal working class, nor does low income equal working class. Some of the richest people in the US flunked out of school, and many MeFites can attest to the fact that a PhD does not automatically lead to a well-paying job.
More people with shorter educations are attracted to populist politicians than people with longer educations. And Obama is as much of a populist as Trump, he is just on "our" side of the political fence. Hillary is not a populist. But lots of people with PhDs voted for Trump, too.
I don't know, but they way I feel it, white men telling people of color and women in general how to behave isn't a good look. Regardless of what the policies of those white men are.
posted by mumimor at 3:21 AM on October 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
People should read this one.
I agree. Very solid research, and I see I should modify my statement above to: many White Working Class voters voted for Hillary. Most Trump voters were and are middle class and rich racist white people.
The article doesn't change my main point, that the whole narrative about the unique appearance of white working class Trump-voters is BS that has been thoroughly debunked over the past four-five years, and that it is intellectually dishonest to bring it up again now.
According to David Shor, the Democrat-to-Republican swing in 2016 for non-college white voters was 10%.
Non-college white voters were about 44% of 2016 voters.
The paper linked by kickingtheground above reminds us that lack of college education does not equal working class, nor does low income equal working class. Some of the richest people in the US flunked out of school, and many MeFites can attest to the fact that a PhD does not automatically lead to a well-paying job.
More people with shorter educations are attracted to populist politicians than people with longer educations. And Obama is as much of a populist as Trump, he is just on "our" side of the political fence. Hillary is not a populist. But lots of people with PhDs voted for Trump, too.
I don't know, but they way I feel it, white men telling people of color and women in general how to behave isn't a good look. Regardless of what the policies of those white men are.
posted by mumimor at 3:21 AM on October 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
There are two different conversations going on here. One is what are the right moral values, where everyone in this conversation and all over MetaFilter has the right views. The other is how are we going to win elections so that shitshows like what's happening in Washington DC right now might possibly be avoided in the future. And that's going to require an acknowledgment of who the majority of actual voters are in key districts and states, and what messages and priorities and programs will win their votes.
posted by PhineasGage at 6:17 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by PhineasGage at 6:17 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
Another summary of the core political/electoral issue: "...explicit liberalism, across racial lines, primarily appeals to highly educated/secular people, and as we’ve taken over the party and redefined it in our image it has driven away working class people of all races who do not share our values..."
posted by PhineasGage at 10:27 AM on October 2, 2021
posted by PhineasGage at 10:27 AM on October 2, 2021
I found Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal! a useful extension of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Fear of Falling.
The latter describes the emergence of the professional managerial class and the former recounts its capture of the Democratic Party, and the party's drift from being a working class party to being a part of the PMC.
I think framing the PMC/blue collar disconnect as one of values to be a little misleading. Or at least, incomplete. I really appreciated this take:
It was really important to me, when my company allowed me to facilitate ally skills workshops, to try to make those sessions safe spaces for people who were ally-curious but intimidated by price of entry into that kind of social space, because I knew exactly where they were coming from. My first few years out of the army, working as clerical staff in a high school in a university town, relearning middle class habits and manners of speech I'd picked up in college, were an alienating hell.
Ehrenreich and Frank helped me understand why I've felt so out of place, and why social justice discourse is so grating and alienating even though I share a lot of the values of the people engaging in it (if not the ideological underpinnings). Frank, in particular, does a good job of calling out that cultural/style disconnect, but also ruthlessly documents the way in which Democratic elites deliberately and with full intention disaligned with working class people and realigned with capital. I haven't been able to read the word "meritocratic" the same way since reading him.
posted by mph at 11:20 AM on October 2, 2021 [14 favorites]
The latter describes the emergence of the professional managerial class and the former recounts its capture of the Democratic Party, and the party's drift from being a working class party to being a part of the PMC.
I think framing the PMC/blue collar disconnect as one of values to be a little misleading. Or at least, incomplete. I really appreciated this take:
“Working class people who haven’t been to college rarely confront each other by calling each other out. They banter, they joke, they express anger in that egalitarian style that implies they’re ready for an argument. Generally, they don’t correct, because they don’t like bosses and don’t want to be one.It nicely encapsulated my feelings as someone who started life in a blue collar family of few means, dropped out of college, joined the army, but sorta woke up in the ranks of the PMC mid-life, and has periodic moments of dissociation during the "light small talk" period of a leadership team meeting. All the other senior directors and VPs might as well be from another planet with the things they take for granted.
“Middle class people, however, are trained to respect bossing and bossiness, so the result is a version of anti-oppression work that reinforces class roles. That version doesn’t question the effectiveness of ‘calling out’; it comes from being socialized to play the economic role of the middle class: managing, correcting, sorting people into acceptable and unacceptable.”
It was really important to me, when my company allowed me to facilitate ally skills workshops, to try to make those sessions safe spaces for people who were ally-curious but intimidated by price of entry into that kind of social space, because I knew exactly where they were coming from. My first few years out of the army, working as clerical staff in a high school in a university town, relearning middle class habits and manners of speech I'd picked up in college, were an alienating hell.
Ehrenreich and Frank helped me understand why I've felt so out of place, and why social justice discourse is so grating and alienating even though I share a lot of the values of the people engaging in it (if not the ideological underpinnings). Frank, in particular, does a good job of calling out that cultural/style disconnect, but also ruthlessly documents the way in which Democratic elites deliberately and with full intention disaligned with working class people and realigned with capital. I haven't been able to read the word "meritocratic" the same way since reading him.
posted by mph at 11:20 AM on October 2, 2021 [14 favorites]
On the one hand, this seems kind of intuitive, and it's a point I've seen people coming from a wide variety perspectives within the Democratic party make. On the other hand, I find myself with many questions regarding both interpretation and implication.
1) How reliable is our instrumentation anymore to measure trends in voting and public opinion given the demise of land-line phones and the rise of caller id and the robo-caller plague? Personally I never answer numbers I can't identify, and everyone I know does the same thing. When such high non-response rates, I'm leery of the idea that any kind of statistical correction can fully eliminate bias. Moreover, how long did it take to discover the errors after 2012? We're not even one year out from the 2020 election. How trustworthy is the data right now?
2) Related to that, how many of these are changes are contingent upon factors unique to a given election and the candidates involved? I have a very strong suspicion that an election between H.Clinton and Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, or Jeb Bush would have had a very different dynamic than one involving Trump for one very simple reason: the legacy of NAFTA. Also, I get the feeling that there is a population of voters going back to Perot that's attracted to outsiders in Presidential elections regardless of where they come from. Obama smartly cast himself as something of an outsider in 2008, and 2012 Romney didn't provide much of a contrast.
Meanwhile, in 2020, the gigantic elephants in the room were the pandemic and summer protests. I'm don't think the divisions and impacts of either of those events are fully known yet.
3) I wonder how much age acts as a hidden variable here. The proportion of college educated individuals rises the younger you go, as does the proportion of both vaguely left wing sentiments and non-voters. Even Shor admits elsewhere he is surprised by the leftward shift of young people after 2012. Unfortunately, young people tend to concentrate in areas that already vote for Democrats .....
4) Which leads to implications: If toning down the "woke" just gets Democrats votes in areas they already win like Fresno and Queens, its really not going to do much for them. I have a pretty strong suspicion that moving to the center to appease culturally conservative voters isn't going to help the Democrats much when the Trumps of the world are willing to serve them the red meat on a silver platter.
5) I also get the feeling people are going to read this in a way that reinforcers their prior wishes about the direction of the Democrats. For someone like Carville, I get the feeling that means telling AOC et. al. to shut up and in general for progressives to stop advocating policies that piss of donors. So, triangulation, deficit reduction, and means testing for all. Again though, even granting that premise, will that just get Democrats more votes in places they already win?
6) I think the big overriding issue, the gigantic elephant in the room, is the overrepresentation of culturally conservative older rural white voters at both the federal and state level in elections both for the legislative and executive branches. I'm afraid even an "economically liberal culturally moderate" direction for the Democratic party would fail because, again, Republicans like Trump are willing to give their older, white, rural, conservative base the meat - a nice big juicy steak of racism, nativism, and cultural reaction. Rural white conservatives probably aren't to go to McDonalds when they can get filet mignon from the Republicans.
7) Moreover, demographic changes exacerbate these trends. Rural areas are losing population as, outside urban centers, the US deindustrializes and what remains of family farms give way to factory farming and big ag. Meanwhile, cities and their surrounding suburbs kind of are merging demographically, especially if you look at inner ring suburbs. That change is occurring without any corresponding change in political representation, which means American politics and policy is increasingly being held hostage by a shrinking overrepresented minority.
Overall, I don't think its a bad idea to keep messaging in mind when addressing populations that haven't gone through traditional engines of middle and upper class socialization like college, but I still have a lot of questions, and I'm really not sure its a silver bullet.
posted by eagles123 at 10:27 PM on October 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
1) How reliable is our instrumentation anymore to measure trends in voting and public opinion given the demise of land-line phones and the rise of caller id and the robo-caller plague? Personally I never answer numbers I can't identify, and everyone I know does the same thing. When such high non-response rates, I'm leery of the idea that any kind of statistical correction can fully eliminate bias. Moreover, how long did it take to discover the errors after 2012? We're not even one year out from the 2020 election. How trustworthy is the data right now?
2) Related to that, how many of these are changes are contingent upon factors unique to a given election and the candidates involved? I have a very strong suspicion that an election between H.Clinton and Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, or Jeb Bush would have had a very different dynamic than one involving Trump for one very simple reason: the legacy of NAFTA. Also, I get the feeling that there is a population of voters going back to Perot that's attracted to outsiders in Presidential elections regardless of where they come from. Obama smartly cast himself as something of an outsider in 2008, and 2012 Romney didn't provide much of a contrast.
Meanwhile, in 2020, the gigantic elephants in the room were the pandemic and summer protests. I'm don't think the divisions and impacts of either of those events are fully known yet.
3) I wonder how much age acts as a hidden variable here. The proportion of college educated individuals rises the younger you go, as does the proportion of both vaguely left wing sentiments and non-voters. Even Shor admits elsewhere he is surprised by the leftward shift of young people after 2012. Unfortunately, young people tend to concentrate in areas that already vote for Democrats .....
4) Which leads to implications: If toning down the "woke" just gets Democrats votes in areas they already win like Fresno and Queens, its really not going to do much for them. I have a pretty strong suspicion that moving to the center to appease culturally conservative voters isn't going to help the Democrats much when the Trumps of the world are willing to serve them the red meat on a silver platter.
5) I also get the feeling people are going to read this in a way that reinforcers their prior wishes about the direction of the Democrats. For someone like Carville, I get the feeling that means telling AOC et. al. to shut up and in general for progressives to stop advocating policies that piss of donors. So, triangulation, deficit reduction, and means testing for all. Again though, even granting that premise, will that just get Democrats more votes in places they already win?
6) I think the big overriding issue, the gigantic elephant in the room, is the overrepresentation of culturally conservative older rural white voters at both the federal and state level in elections both for the legislative and executive branches. I'm afraid even an "economically liberal culturally moderate" direction for the Democratic party would fail because, again, Republicans like Trump are willing to give their older, white, rural, conservative base the meat - a nice big juicy steak of racism, nativism, and cultural reaction. Rural white conservatives probably aren't to go to McDonalds when they can get filet mignon from the Republicans.
7) Moreover, demographic changes exacerbate these trends. Rural areas are losing population as, outside urban centers, the US deindustrializes and what remains of family farms give way to factory farming and big ag. Meanwhile, cities and their surrounding suburbs kind of are merging demographically, especially if you look at inner ring suburbs. That change is occurring without any corresponding change in political representation, which means American politics and policy is increasingly being held hostage by a shrinking overrepresented minority.
Overall, I don't think its a bad idea to keep messaging in mind when addressing populations that haven't gone through traditional engines of middle and upper class socialization like college, but I still have a lot of questions, and I'm really not sure its a silver bullet.
posted by eagles123 at 10:27 PM on October 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
lack of college education does not equal working class
U.S. political discourse really does not have a single shared definition of what does equal “working class” and I often feel like we’d be better off avoiding the term.
posted by atoxyl at 10:40 PM on October 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
U.S. political discourse really does not have a single shared definition of what does equal “working class” and I often feel like we’d be better off avoiding the term.
posted by atoxyl at 10:40 PM on October 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
To me, all the WWV stuff is about a certain subset of the Democrats (both center and left) not so subtly saying: we need to keep the racists (and sexists) in the tent in order to hold on to power. I'm guessing this has been part of the discussion within the party since the civil rights era, when the Democrats shifted sides.
It is not completely untrue, because of the many layers of rules that give rural voters in smaller states more of a say than urban voters in large states. Bill Clinton could navigate in those waters because he was born into them, but other Democrats are baffled by the issue. And some, I suspect, are just racist (and sexist).
My political opinion is that the solution is to persuade those of the racists that can be persuaded that Democratic led government is in their own interest. And that can only be achieved by long and patient footwork along with administrative successes.
posted by mumimor at 5:04 AM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
It is not completely untrue, because of the many layers of rules that give rural voters in smaller states more of a say than urban voters in large states. Bill Clinton could navigate in those waters because he was born into them, but other Democrats are baffled by the issue. And some, I suspect, are just racist (and sexist).
My political opinion is that the solution is to persuade those of the racists that can be persuaded that Democratic led government is in their own interest. And that can only be achieved by long and patient footwork along with administrative successes.
posted by mumimor at 5:04 AM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
To me, all the WWV stuff is about a certain subset of the Democrats (both center and left) not so subtly saying: we need to keep the racists (and sexists) in the tent in order to hold on to power.
Pretty much. David Shor, July 2020:
Some more data points from Shor, boiling down to "if Democrats continue trying to appeal primarily to highly educated voters, they're going to lose":
Of course in thinking about education polarization, it's good to keep in mind that MetaFilter is a community which places a high value on literacy, and where the most prominent participants are highly educated. So if David Shor's argument is correct, Democratic moves which make a lot of MeFites happy are likely to be a strategic mistake! MeFites are not representative of the American electorate.
posted by russilwvong at 8:00 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
Pretty much. David Shor, July 2020:
When you take the results of the 2012 and 2016 elections, and model changes in Democratic vote share, you see the biggest individual-level predictor for vote switching was education; college-educated people swung toward Democrats and non-college-educated people swung toward Republicans. But, if you ask a battery of “racial resentment” questions — stuff like, “Do you think that there are a lot of white people who are having trouble finding a job because nonwhite people are getting them instead?” or, “Do you think that white people don’t have enough influence in how this country is run?” — and then control for the propensity to answer those questions in a racially resentful way, education ceases to be the relevant variable: Non-college-educated white people with low levels of racial resentment trended towards us in 2016, and college-educated white people with high levels of racial resentments turned against us.Shor's messaging recommendation: Democrats should talk about issues where these voters agree with Democrats (health care), and try not to talk about issues where they disagree (immigration). In part because of the erroneous interpretation of the 2012 results, Democrats went in exactly the opposite direction.
You can say, “Oh, you know, the way that political scientists measure racial resentment is a class marker because college-educated people know that they’re not supposed to say politically incorrect things.” But when you look at Trump’s support in the Republican primary, it correlated pretty highly with, uh … racially charged … Google search words. So you had this politician who campaigned on an anti-immigrant and anti–political correctness platform. And then he won the votes of a large group of swing voters, and vote switching was highly correlated with various individual level measures of racial resentment — and, on a geographic level, was correlated with racist search terms. At some point, you have to be like, oh, actually, these people were motivated by racism. It’s just an important fact of the world.
I think people take the wrong conclusions from it. The fight I saw on Twitter after the 2016 election was one group of people saying the Obama-to-Trump voters are racist and irredeemable, and that’s why we need to focus on the suburbs. And then you had leftists saying, “Actually these working-class white people were betrayed by decades of neoliberalism and we just need to embrace socialism and win them back, we can’t trust people in the suburbs.” And I think the real synthesis of these views is that Obama-to-Trump voters are motivated by racism. But they’re really electorally important, and so we have to figure out some way to get them to vote for us.
Some more data points from Shor, boiling down to "if Democrats continue trying to appeal primarily to highly educated voters, they're going to lose":
Liberals only overtook moderates as the largest faction in the Democratic Party around 2015 - causesData from Thomas Piketty on education polarization across Western countries, from 1970 to 2010.
Long-term trend is towards education polarization (Democrats losing non-college voters), but it diminished under Obama (they hated Romney) and then jumped in 2016
The underlying causal mechanism here is that there are giant latent class divides on core values (social trust, racial resentment, openness to new experiences, zero vs positive sum thinking) and as the country has become more educated those value divides have become more salient
Non-college whites who make less than 25k per year voted for Obama in 2012, Trump won them by >40 points. The whole narrative about small business owners is cope
The big picture story [in 2020] is that Democrats declined among working class non-whites and probably improved a bit among educated non-whites. That translates to a 3% decline among black voters but probably was a wash for Asian voters.
Explicit liberalism, across racial lines, primarily appeals to highly educated/secular people, and as we’ve taken over the party and redefined it in our image it has driven away working class people of all races who do not share our values
Highly educated people have wildly disproportionate influence in the Democratic Party via a bunch of different channels and we need to empower the working class people still left in our party
The reality is that the rules of politics have radically changed in the last decade and we can either rise to the challenge or we can just meekly let conservatives take over the country
Nate's take is that education depolarization is impossible and so instead Democrats just have to rush toward getting 54% of the vote. That doesn't seem crazy to me but the path to both places seem pretty similar to me
Of course in thinking about education polarization, it's good to keep in mind that MetaFilter is a community which places a high value on literacy, and where the most prominent participants are highly educated. So if David Shor's argument is correct, Democratic moves which make a lot of MeFites happy are likely to be a strategic mistake! MeFites are not representative of the American electorate.
posted by russilwvong at 8:00 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
Does he say anywhere what he means by "explicit liberalism"? I understand that he recommends Democrats talk more about healthcare and less about education, but is he using the term just to refer to communication/interaction modes and priorities favored by the college educated, or is there a specific policy program he believes follows from his observation? I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere in the links, and I am just curious. Sorry if the question is obviously stated somewhere.
posted by eagles123 at 8:18 PM on October 3, 2021
posted by eagles123 at 8:18 PM on October 3, 2021
is there a specific policy program he believes follows from his observation?
This diagram shows policies which increase Democratic support. At the very top: give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for pharmaceuticals. Loan Shark Prevention Act. Extend Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing. Raise the minimum wage. A wealth tax. Right now, he and Simon Bazelon argue that the Democrats should make the Child Tax Credit permanent, but with sharper means-testing.
posted by russilwvong at 8:46 PM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
This diagram shows policies which increase Democratic support. At the very top: give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for pharmaceuticals. Loan Shark Prevention Act. Extend Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing. Raise the minimum wage. A wealth tax. Right now, he and Simon Bazelon argue that the Democrats should make the Child Tax Credit permanent, but with sharper means-testing.
posted by russilwvong at 8:46 PM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
From a recent article on Shor's ideas and "popularism." How Much Should Democrats Care What Is Popular?
This is a very old left-wing idea, which is, we need to get broader support from working-class people in order to accomplish our goals. In order for us to win, we have to talk about things using language that regular people can understand. And we have to focus on the issues that they care about. Otherwise, they won’t vote for us. They’ll vote for the fascists, who are actually giving them what they want.posted by russilwvong at 8:48 PM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Thanks for the info. Not sure I agree with it though. Sure, I can see why slogans like "abolish the police" might scare people, but no Democrat supported that. If police reform activists think their cause would be better served by adopting different messaging, that's their business, not Shors and certainly not Yglesias's. Blaming activists is just an excuse.
Democrats, for their part, should be better about messaging. I agree part of that is adopting a language that isn't off-putting to people, but I also think the quality of the discourse put out by the party in general is poor. The primary debates were particularly embarrassing shouting matches that communicated nothing of substance, and I haven't talked to anyone in "real life" that wasn't turned off by both candidates in the general election debates. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I talk to more "regular people" in my day to day life than either Shor or Yglesias, even if I agree in part with their advice on messaging.
In general, I don't think people focus much on specifics like whether something like the child tax credit is means tested or the means testing cut-off that should be used. Sure, if their forced to answer they'll give their opinion, but in general I haven't seen much evidence people care about policy in that level of granular detail. I get the feeling Shor is betraying his own elite bias here. After all, if you poll individual elements of the ACA they come off as much more popular than the bill itself save the individual mandate, and I completely understand why people opposed that considering it often forced them to spend money to buy insurance that in many instances wasn't very good. In that case the policy directly affected them. Would the cut-off for means testing the child tax credit make any difference in the day to day lives of the average voter? I don't think so unless they fall above the cut-off.
posted by eagles123 at 9:58 PM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
Democrats, for their part, should be better about messaging. I agree part of that is adopting a language that isn't off-putting to people, but I also think the quality of the discourse put out by the party in general is poor. The primary debates were particularly embarrassing shouting matches that communicated nothing of substance, and I haven't talked to anyone in "real life" that wasn't turned off by both candidates in the general election debates. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I talk to more "regular people" in my day to day life than either Shor or Yglesias, even if I agree in part with their advice on messaging.
In general, I don't think people focus much on specifics like whether something like the child tax credit is means tested or the means testing cut-off that should be used. Sure, if their forced to answer they'll give their opinion, but in general I haven't seen much evidence people care about policy in that level of granular detail. I get the feeling Shor is betraying his own elite bias here. After all, if you poll individual elements of the ACA they come off as much more popular than the bill itself save the individual mandate, and I completely understand why people opposed that considering it often forced them to spend money to buy insurance that in many instances wasn't very good. In that case the policy directly affected them. Would the cut-off for means testing the child tax credit make any difference in the day to day lives of the average voter? I don't think so unless they fall above the cut-off.
posted by eagles123 at 9:58 PM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sure, I can see why slogans like "abolish the police" might scare people, but no Democrat supported that. If police reform activists think their cause would be better served by adopting different messaging, that's their business, not Shor's and certainly not Yglesias's. Blaming activists is just an excuse.
So there's another category of player here, besides politicians and activists: donor organizations. Donors are much more left-wing than the electorate. They may not realize that left-wing messaging is counterproductive when it comes to actually winning elections.
Matthew Yglesias quotes Ady Barkan of "Fed Up," a campaign aimed at monetary policy, describing how he needed to pitch the campaign to donor organizations based on racial justice:
posted by russilwvong at 10:42 PM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
So there's another category of player here, besides politicians and activists: donor organizations. Donors are much more left-wing than the electorate. They may not realize that left-wing messaging is counterproductive when it comes to actually winning elections.
Matthew Yglesias quotes Ady Barkan of "Fed Up," a campaign aimed at monetary policy, describing how he needed to pitch the campaign to donor organizations based on racial justice:
I had laid out a good argument for why the Fed should pursue full employment, but I still needed to tell a comprehensible story about how the Fed should do that and how we could plausibly get the Fed to do it. Over my first months at CPD, Amy and I talked through those questions, and quite soon she had identified the crucial element that was missing from my analysis and my proposal: race.Yglesias:
... So my framing would matter. A campaign pitch about the Federal Reserve and creative expansionary monetary policy would be met by glazed-over eyes and silence. A campaign about jobs and wages would be met by nodding heads and smiles. But a campaign about combatting racial and economic equality by delivering full employment to all communities? That might actually get some people excited.
Barkan’s frankness about this was really helpful and enlightening to me because the monetary policy campaign has been very successful but also very deliberately focused on elite persuasion. The basic question was how could a white activist convince a group of funders to give him money to convince a group of highly educated monetary policy officials to care more about working-class people and the answer was … talk a lot about race.TLDR: Since 2012, American progressives have ended up talking to themselves instead of the broader electorate. Given the very high stakes, this is a dangerous situation.
... What I would really like is for funders to think harder about these issues and try to adopt more of an ethic of responsibility and less of an ethic of moral conviction. What does that mean? Well in the ethics of conviction what matters are your feelings and intentions. Your job on this view is to wage the righteous struggle, and a struggle against white supremacy sounds a lot more righteous than a struggle against inefficient regulation.
But to use the social justice jargon of our time, intentions aren’t what matters. And relatively privileged people ought to be self-reflective about our privileges. If there are urgent problems, your obligation is to act like a responsible person and actually try to make them better. ... does setting up your grantmaking in such a way that any progressive cause’s advocates are strongly incentivized to turn it into a highly polarized issue of racial conflict make those causes more or less likely to prevail?
posted by russilwvong at 10:42 PM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
That might be true regarding some issues, but the term "left wing" covers a wide spectrum. To be more specific, Yglesias focuses on the need he perceives for proposals to be cast in terms of "racial justice" to attract funding. Considering even corporations have adopted "social justice" messaging, broadly defined, in their advertising, I'd agree that framing is popular amongst the professional class. How far that conviction even extends beyond a mere messaging gloss is very much an open question, though. I think left wing concerns extend far beyond whether or not the NBA or Nike puts BLM logos on their products. See, for example, critiques of "woke capitalism" that have even made their way into popular culture products like the Amazon series, "The Boys."
So, my question would be, which issues are we talking about? Which funders are we talking about?
And wouldn't an ethic of responsibility entail enacting policies that actually improve people's lives, rather than one that might poll slightly better but either not improve things or make things worse? I think that argument can cut both ways depending on what issue one applies it to.
posted by eagles123 at 11:51 PM on October 3, 2021
So, my question would be, which issues are we talking about? Which funders are we talking about?
And wouldn't an ethic of responsibility entail enacting policies that actually improve people's lives, rather than one that might poll slightly better but either not improve things or make things worse? I think that argument can cut both ways depending on what issue one applies it to.
posted by eagles123 at 11:51 PM on October 3, 2021
I find myself deeply suspicious about a report that claims science says the Democrats need to throw minorities under the bus in hopes of chasing after the white male vote.
That's not groundbreaking, that's been the Democratic strategy since before I was born. That's been the core Democratic strategy since the Civil Rights Act turned the racist white vote against them and they've been desperately seeking some way to get the racists back voting Democratic.
Why, precicely, should we take this most recent round of "Democrats must chase after white racist votes" more seriously than all the other conventional wisdom dispensers of the past 50 years?
And, can I point out, that they've been wrong? That their strategy isn't actually working? That we keep losing elections because of their strategy of chasing after the racist white vote and just assuming everyone else will vote Democratic because they have no other option?
Every election we get the headlines boldly declaring that the only possible way forward is for Democrats to stop talking about icky stuff like women's rights and to start pushing hard for the racist white guy vote because that's how you really win elections.
Here's the thing: we ain't going to get their vote. Not now. Not ever. They'll vote Republican every time, you can't change that. And trying does nothing but drive your allies away.
May I suggest that one reason there isn't much turnout among the other groups is because the Democrats are so singleminded in their fruitless pursuit of the racist white voter that they don't bother even trying to offer anything except "vote for us or Trump wins" to anyone else?
The potential Democratic voters of America have now had almost a full year of seeing what the Democrats do for them when they're in power. And the answer is "jack shit".
You can blame that on Manchin all you want, and you might even be somewhat correct, but the average non-voter isn't going to care.
They see only that Biden won, and nothing changed. All the promises were lies, all the hopes false, CBP is still cramming kids into cages, wages are still stagnant, healthcare remains unaffordable, college bankrupts you, and everything is exactly as shitty as it was before Biden won.
So they'll ask themselves why they should bother voting.
And they're right to ask.
Instead of chasing after that oh so essential white racist vote, maybe the Democrats could try diverting that attention to other groups and, I know this is crazy, actually getting laws passed that improve things?
posted by sotonohito at 9:06 AM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
That's not groundbreaking, that's been the Democratic strategy since before I was born. That's been the core Democratic strategy since the Civil Rights Act turned the racist white vote against them and they've been desperately seeking some way to get the racists back voting Democratic.
Why, precicely, should we take this most recent round of "Democrats must chase after white racist votes" more seriously than all the other conventional wisdom dispensers of the past 50 years?
And, can I point out, that they've been wrong? That their strategy isn't actually working? That we keep losing elections because of their strategy of chasing after the racist white vote and just assuming everyone else will vote Democratic because they have no other option?
Every election we get the headlines boldly declaring that the only possible way forward is for Democrats to stop talking about icky stuff like women's rights and to start pushing hard for the racist white guy vote because that's how you really win elections.
Here's the thing: we ain't going to get their vote. Not now. Not ever. They'll vote Republican every time, you can't change that. And trying does nothing but drive your allies away.
May I suggest that one reason there isn't much turnout among the other groups is because the Democrats are so singleminded in their fruitless pursuit of the racist white voter that they don't bother even trying to offer anything except "vote for us or Trump wins" to anyone else?
The potential Democratic voters of America have now had almost a full year of seeing what the Democrats do for them when they're in power. And the answer is "jack shit".
You can blame that on Manchin all you want, and you might even be somewhat correct, but the average non-voter isn't going to care.
They see only that Biden won, and nothing changed. All the promises were lies, all the hopes false, CBP is still cramming kids into cages, wages are still stagnant, healthcare remains unaffordable, college bankrupts you, and everything is exactly as shitty as it was before Biden won.
So they'll ask themselves why they should bother voting.
And they're right to ask.
Instead of chasing after that oh so essential white racist vote, maybe the Democrats could try diverting that attention to other groups and, I know this is crazy, actually getting laws passed that improve things?
posted by sotonohito at 9:06 AM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don’t think these authors advocate throwing anyone under the bus, and it’s extremely important to not shout down credible findings we don’t like. To my ignorant ass, these links do a lot to explain the underperformance of the current Democratic coalition, and why our messaging seems so needlessly antagonistic to people who have voted with us in the past.
posted by ducky l'orange at 11:51 AM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by ducky l'orange at 11:51 AM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
Could you please show me an example of messaging that's antagonistic towards cis het white men from the Democrats?
posted by sotonohito at 1:33 PM on October 4, 2021
posted by sotonohito at 1:33 PM on October 4, 2021
"Abolish the police"
posted by PhineasGage at 1:47 PM on October 4, 2021
posted by PhineasGage at 1:47 PM on October 4, 2021
Why, precicely, should we take this most recent round of "Democrats must chase after white racist votes" more seriously than all the other conventional wisdom dispensers of the past 50 years?
The practical argument seems pretty obvious, actually - white racist votes literally count the most! Obviously the best thing to do would be to try to fix that but the design of the American political system makes it fundamentally difficult.
If you accept that we do need to thread the needle here somehow, well, the standard lefty take is that it should be done by uniting people behind shared economic interests. Will that ever work? I prefer to believe so, personally, but I sure can’t promise you.
posted by atoxyl at 1:55 PM on October 4, 2021
The practical argument seems pretty obvious, actually - white racist votes literally count the most! Obviously the best thing to do would be to try to fix that but the design of the American political system makes it fundamentally difficult.
If you accept that we do need to thread the needle here somehow, well, the standard lefty take is that it should be done by uniting people behind shared economic interests. Will that ever work? I prefer to believe so, personally, but I sure can’t promise you.
posted by atoxyl at 1:55 PM on October 4, 2021
Not hostile towards white men.
posted by sotonohito at 1:55 PM on October 4, 2021
posted by sotonohito at 1:55 PM on October 4, 2021
And it's not "cis het white men" - the point is "over 50, non-college grad, suburban men and women" are the median voter, which isn't the same as the median MeFite nor the median media & political campaign worker, who are skewed toward highly educated, urban sophisticates.
posted by PhineasGage at 1:58 PM on October 4, 2021
posted by PhineasGage at 1:58 PM on October 4, 2021
Not to abuse edit window, here's a more precise summary of the point: "College graduates (again, of all ethnicities) concentrate in cities, so a coalition grounded in the highly educated faces an unwinnable senate map."
posted by PhineasGage at 2:01 PM on October 4, 2021
posted by PhineasGage at 2:01 PM on October 4, 2021
atoxyl: The practical argument seems pretty obvious, actually - white racist votes literally count the most!
Exactly. sotonohito is correct in saying that the Democratic strategy has always been to pander to these voters, including under Obama. An example: guns.
The mistake Democrats made after 2012 was thinking that they no longer needed to pander to these voters. This was a mistake with huge consequences in 2016. To take just one example, Covid deaths so far in the US have been at least 700,000; if the US death rate had been more like Canada's, it would have been a third of that. There's been so much needless death and suffering in the US as a direct result of Trump's victory in 2016.
Matthew Yglesias, Progressives' mobilization delusion. If mobilization isn't the answer, then Democrats will need to work on both language (e.g. don't use academic concepts and acronyms) and policy moderation to appeal to more non-college voters.
As I understand it, non-college voters tend to see things in zero-sum terms, while college-educated voters see things in positive-sum terms. Therefore explicit racial framing is not a good way to appeal to non-college white voters, and thus the electorate as a whole: in zero-sum terms, more for black people means less for white people. A couple examples of 2020 ballot initiatives: affirmative action lost in California, while a minimum wage increase (a race-neutral policy which benefits lower-income workers who are disproportionately non-white) passed in Florida.
Yglesias, Minimum wage wins, affirmative action loses.
posted by russilwvong at 3:07 PM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Exactly. sotonohito is correct in saying that the Democratic strategy has always been to pander to these voters, including under Obama. An example: guns.
The mistake Democrats made after 2012 was thinking that they no longer needed to pander to these voters. This was a mistake with huge consequences in 2016. To take just one example, Covid deaths so far in the US have been at least 700,000; if the US death rate had been more like Canada's, it would have been a third of that. There's been so much needless death and suffering in the US as a direct result of Trump's victory in 2016.
Matthew Yglesias, Progressives' mobilization delusion. If mobilization isn't the answer, then Democrats will need to work on both language (e.g. don't use academic concepts and acronyms) and policy moderation to appeal to more non-college voters.
By undersampling [non-college] whites, the exit polls wound up asserting that Obama got absolutely creamed in this demographic but won anyway thanks to his support among nonwhite voters and younger college graduates. This was a particularly significant coalition concept because educational attainment is rising, and so is the nonwhite population share. So if Democrats could win while doing this poorly with older working-class whites, future Democrats could afford to do even worse with these voters.sotonohito: Could you please show me an example of messaging that's antagonistic towards cis het white men from the Democrats?
As Ron Brownstein put it in 2013, “With New Support Base, Obama Doesn’t Need Right-Leaning Voters Anymore.”
Progressive Democrats — those frustrated with the moderation and neoliberal incrementalism of the Obama administration — took this concept even further. Observing that young and nonwhite voters participate at a lower rate than older and whiter voters, they concluded that further progressive gains could be wrung out of the electorate by seeking to supercharge turnout and embracing left-wing cultural politics. Might doing this alienate more culturally conservative voters who still back Democratic positions on health care and Social Security? Sure, but who cares? We didn’t need ’em anyway.
As tends to happen in life, a lot of this story ended up involving rhetorical slippage from accurate analytical points to wild and sloppy overstatements.
... the number of swing voters and potential crossover voters [have] diminished to a tiny rump of the population.
But there’s a world of difference between that observation and John Long proclaiming in the New Republic that swing voters are “a persona from a political landscape that simply no longer exists,” and progressives should instead see that “mobilizing more Democratic voters is the key to the 2020 election.”
Some journalists were more blunt, just proclaiming falsely that “there are no fucking swing voters.”
Supercharging this way of thinking, a lot of people went to bed on Election Day 2016 not only despondent at Donald Trump’s victory but convinced that plummeting turnout had played a key role in it. But that was a mix-up; the vote totals reporting on Election Day simply didn’t reflect a ton of mail-in ballots. Turnout was actually really high in 2016 — Clinton got almost the exact same number of raw votes as Obama. The problem was she got 48% of the total while he got 51%. And she picked up a lot of “wasted” votes in the suburbs of Los Angeles and Houston while trading away key votes in rural portions of the Midwest.
But during this period, there was nonetheless an obsession with mobilization strategies. Articles like “How Democrats Can Mobilize Millions of Non-Voters” appeared in the press, almost always engaging in further analytic slippage. You would start with the observation that the demographic characteristics of non-voters (younger, poorer) were characteristics associated with Democrats, and then assume that meant those voters were clamoring for left-wing policy.
In reality, both Obama voters who didn’t vote in 2016 and Obama voters who voted third party in 2016 were more moderate than consistent Democrats.
So the whole idea of a tradeoff between mobilization and polarization or of a lurking army of secret leftwingers never made any sense. It is, of course, good to mobilize voters. But just as donors are more ideological than rank-and-file voters, highly engaged people who vote all the time are more ideological than sporadic voters.
As I understand it, non-college voters tend to see things in zero-sum terms, while college-educated voters see things in positive-sum terms. Therefore explicit racial framing is not a good way to appeal to non-college white voters, and thus the electorate as a whole: in zero-sum terms, more for black people means less for white people. A couple examples of 2020 ballot initiatives: affirmative action lost in California, while a minimum wage increase (a race-neutral policy which benefits lower-income workers who are disproportionately non-white) passed in Florida.
Yglesias, Minimum wage wins, affirmative action loses.
Advancing universalistic programs that disproportionately benefit Black and Latino people is traditionally how liberal policymakers have tried to promote racial equity (Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson labeled it “The Hidden Agenda” in his 1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged), while conservatives do the opposite.Marc Novicoff gives more examples of this counterproductive framing: Stop marketing race-blind policies as racial equity initiatives. "The country is already sold on a left-of-center economic agenda. Why complicate it?"
... Thinking about [Democrats not talking about the minimum wage] reminds me of the odd extent to which contemporary progressives have started doing the politics of race and class backwards.
White people, occupying as we do a privileged position in American life, are on average considerably richer than Black people. Consequently, from the New Deal onward programs designed to help the needy have held a disproportionate appeal to Black voters who disproportionately benefit from them (Eric Shickler’s book Racial Realignment is a great account of how northern African-Americans got incorporated into FDR’s coalition even while he remained terrible on civil rights issues). Then, because most voters are white, conservatives try to associate economic redistribution with racial redistribution to try to get white people to oppose it. Progressives for generations tended to downplay racial angles to maximize the size of the coalition for redistribution, and the traditional debate inside progressives circles was what to say about the fact that race-blind, class-centric measures would never fully close the racial divide.
But in recent years the internal dynamics of progressive spaces have gotten this turned around. These days the perception is that if you want to generate enthusiasm for class politics you should emphasize racial angles.
Hence:None of these points are wrong. Because Black people have, on average, less wealth and income than white people, anything that redistributes wealth and income from the haves to the have-nots reduces racial gaps. But the politics of these framings are perverse. It’s particularly perverse because the kinds of people who spend a lot of time thinking about race from a progressive point of view are precisely the people who in other contexts are inclined to emphasize what a big deal racism has historically been in shaping American politics.
- Union Membership Narrows the Racial Wealth Gap for Families of Color [Center for American Progress]
- Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality [Washington Center for Equitable Growth]
- Medicaid Expansion Has Helped Narrow Racial Disparities in Health Coverage and Access to Care [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]
- How the Affordable Care Act Has Narrowed Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Access to Health Care [Commonwealth Fund]
- How Student Debt and the Racial Wealth Gap Reinforce Each Other [The Century Foundation]
That’s why liberals from FDR and LBJ to Obama tried to downplay it when possible — they were trying to win and help people! After all, there’s no special features of unions or Medicaid or the minimum wage that leads them to close racial gaps — all egalitarian economic policy has this effect.
posted by russilwvong at 3:07 PM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
As I understand it, non-college voters tend to see things in zero-sum terms, while college-educated voters see things in positive-sum terms. Therefore explicit racial framing is not a good way to appeal to non-college white voters, and thus the electorate as a whole: in zero-sum terms, more for black people means less for white people
This is such an important point.
My extra spin on this is that an issue doesn’t even have to be an explicit “us vs. them” to turn off non-college voters, it just has to feel irrelevant, like someone else’s priority competing for air time with issues that affect the non-college voters directly. Unsympathetic, sure, but a pretty common human tendency.
(See as well: calling them “non-college voters.”)
posted by ducky l'orange at 3:49 PM on October 4, 2021
This is such an important point.
My extra spin on this is that an issue doesn’t even have to be an explicit “us vs. them” to turn off non-college voters, it just has to feel irrelevant, like someone else’s priority competing for air time with issues that affect the non-college voters directly. Unsympathetic, sure, but a pretty common human tendency.
(See as well: calling them “non-college voters.”)
posted by ducky l'orange at 3:49 PM on October 4, 2021
I don't want to sound dismissive or mean, but you do realize that all the points being made here about messaging and appealing to the racists and chasing that mythic "swing voter" all boil down to: "never mention any priority except white priorities, never advocate for anything except stuff for white people".
It seems that people are making the mistake of simply assuming the enthusiastic and cheerful support of everyone else to cater to the white racist snowflakes. The Democrats can't do that. If the Democratic message to everyone who isn't an old white man is, essentially, "STFU and vote blue no matter who, maybe we can sneak you some crumbs when the important white people aren't looking but no promises and for God's sake don't complain" then they're not going to vote for Democrats.
Look, I get that the Democrats want to be universally loved and have everyone vote for them and have these idealistic fantasies of their unquestioned dominance of Congress back in the old days. They had that because they had racism and white supremacy tying their voters together.
The modern Democrats can't have that. If the Democrats want the Black vote they can't have the racist white guy vote. Pick one. If the Democrats want the women's vote they can't have the misogynist vote. If the Democrats want the Christian vote they can't have the LGBT vote.
The Democrats can't have both. They can either be a party catering to the racist old white guys or they can be the party catering to everyone else. And they can't just take everyone else for granted.
atoxyl white racist votes literally count the most!
Yeah, but see, you've got to be a racist to get them. In fact you don't just have to be racist, you've got to be super hardcore mega racist because they've already got a political party that's giving them racism, the Republican Party, so drawing them away from that would require you to be more racist than the Republicans.
If the proposed strategy is to abandon all Democratic principles and rush hard to the right then, well, I can see why that's a strategy that appeals to billionaire data analysts and media personalities but it's not a strategy that's going to have much support among the majority of Americans who aren't openly, nakedly, proudly, racist.
posted by sotonohito at 5:03 PM on October 4, 2021
It seems that people are making the mistake of simply assuming the enthusiastic and cheerful support of everyone else to cater to the white racist snowflakes. The Democrats can't do that. If the Democratic message to everyone who isn't an old white man is, essentially, "STFU and vote blue no matter who, maybe we can sneak you some crumbs when the important white people aren't looking but no promises and for God's sake don't complain" then they're not going to vote for Democrats.
Look, I get that the Democrats want to be universally loved and have everyone vote for them and have these idealistic fantasies of their unquestioned dominance of Congress back in the old days. They had that because they had racism and white supremacy tying their voters together.
The modern Democrats can't have that. If the Democrats want the Black vote they can't have the racist white guy vote. Pick one. If the Democrats want the women's vote they can't have the misogynist vote. If the Democrats want the Christian vote they can't have the LGBT vote.
The Democrats can't have both. They can either be a party catering to the racist old white guys or they can be the party catering to everyone else. And they can't just take everyone else for granted.
atoxyl white racist votes literally count the most!
Yeah, but see, you've got to be a racist to get them. In fact you don't just have to be racist, you've got to be super hardcore mega racist because they've already got a political party that's giving them racism, the Republican Party, so drawing them away from that would require you to be more racist than the Republicans.
If the proposed strategy is to abandon all Democratic principles and rush hard to the right then, well, I can see why that's a strategy that appeals to billionaire data analysts and media personalities but it's not a strategy that's going to have much support among the majority of Americans who aren't openly, nakedly, proudly, racist.
posted by sotonohito at 5:03 PM on October 4, 2021
No, that is NOT what we are suggesting. You aren't being mean but you are setting up a straw person. Saying "the proposed strategy is to abandon all Democratic principles and rush hard to the right" is reading this whole thread in bad faith.
The argument presented above - based on all the polling and voting statistics being linked to - is that progressives and moderates should use the progressive issues that garner the widest range of voter support, so we can win enough seats in a structurally gerrymandered system to be able to do those good things and many others.
"Abolish the police" and "Medicare for All" and "Green New Deal" are not winning agenda items right now with non-college-educated white suburbanites (nor with voters in communities of color). Economic arguments like allowing negotiation of drug prices and increasing the minimum wage have multiple anti-racist results: we're more likely to win elections, we're more likely to be able to enact these measures and many others, and communities of color will disproportionately benefit because of the legacy of disproportionate disadvantage.
posted by PhineasGage at 5:50 PM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
The argument presented above - based on all the polling and voting statistics being linked to - is that progressives and moderates should use the progressive issues that garner the widest range of voter support, so we can win enough seats in a structurally gerrymandered system to be able to do those good things and many others.
"Abolish the police" and "Medicare for All" and "Green New Deal" are not winning agenda items right now with non-college-educated white suburbanites (nor with voters in communities of color). Economic arguments like allowing negotiation of drug prices and increasing the minimum wage have multiple anti-racist results: we're more likely to win elections, we're more likely to be able to enact these measures and many others, and communities of color will disproportionately benefit because of the legacy of disproportionate disadvantage.
posted by PhineasGage at 5:50 PM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
you do realize that all the points being made here about messaging and appealing to the racists and chasing that mythic "swing voter" all boil down to: "never mention any priority except white priorities, never advocate for anything except stuff for white people”
I realize you’re replying to multiple comments but I articulated one understanding of what could be done here that explicitly does not mean this, that is instead premised on the idea that there exist priorities that cross racial lines! One can certainly dispute how well that works and you do implicitly here
Yeah, but see, you've got to be a racist to get them. In fact you don't just have to be racist, you've got to be super hardcore mega racist because they've already got a political party that's giving them racism, the Republican Party, so drawing them away from that would require you to be more racist than the Republicans.
but you’re not really arguing a case. Like, what am I supposed to say? No, I don’t believe that “is this politician sufficiently racist/anti-racist?” is the only factor in American voting decisions.
posted by atoxyl at 6:09 PM on October 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
I realize you’re replying to multiple comments but I articulated one understanding of what could be done here that explicitly does not mean this, that is instead premised on the idea that there exist priorities that cross racial lines! One can certainly dispute how well that works and you do implicitly here
Yeah, but see, you've got to be a racist to get them. In fact you don't just have to be racist, you've got to be super hardcore mega racist because they've already got a political party that's giving them racism, the Republican Party, so drawing them away from that would require you to be more racist than the Republicans.
but you’re not really arguing a case. Like, what am I supposed to say? No, I don’t believe that “is this politician sufficiently racist/anti-racist?” is the only factor in American voting decisions.
posted by atoxyl at 6:09 PM on October 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
sotonohito: There's this weird phenomenon where the Democrats thought they were appealing to non-white voters by embracing anti-racism, but it turned out they were appealing to college-educated voters, especially white liberals. The 2020 results were that the Democrats gained with white college-educated voters (going from 50% to 54%), but lost ground with black and Latino voters. The Democratic share of the black vote was 93% in 2016, 90% in 2020; the Latino vote was 71% in 2016, 63% in 2020.
It's not that the Democrats want everyone to love them. Because of the small-state bias in the Senate and because of the importance of midwestern states in the electoral college, it's not enough for Democrats to win >50% of the vote - the Republicans can maintain a hammerlock on power even when the Democrats are at 51% of the two-party vote. Democrats need to get more like 54% of the vote, and that means they can't ignore white non-college voters.
posted by russilwvong at 6:11 PM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
It's not that the Democrats want everyone to love them. Because of the small-state bias in the Senate and because of the importance of midwestern states in the electoral college, it's not enough for Democrats to win >50% of the vote - the Republicans can maintain a hammerlock on power even when the Democrats are at 51% of the two-party vote. Democrats need to get more like 54% of the vote, and that means they can't ignore white non-college voters.
posted by russilwvong at 6:11 PM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
To be fair, and I'm not an Yglesias fan, I don't see him suggesting Democrats adopt explicit racist dog whistling so much as concentrating on policies that have support across racial lines but that nevertheless also achieve anti-racist aims such as reducing or ameliorating racial inequality. And I do somewhat agree that the Democrat's embrace of a heavily middle class/upper class college educated version of anti-racism likely turned off voters across racial and ethnic groups who didn't pass through the professional class socialization engine that is American (particularly elite) college, even if those individuals might have been sympathetic to the aims of those movements were the messaging less middle/upper class coded.
The bolded is the point. There is a big difference between adapting a message to an audience and surrendering principal. For example, the college educated anti-racists use a very specific set of linguistic rules that might sound off-putting to outsiders, even if those rules come from a place of compassion. For another example, middle and upper middle class anti-racists might see protest as a sign of allyship or as operating in a protest tradition stemming from the civil rights era. Others without those historical priors might be disturbed by what they see as violence and disorder - smashing stores and burning down police stations.
Whether or not what I wrote in the preceding sentences is true, and I'm more exploring ideas I can't possibly do justice to here and sketching possibilities than setting anything in stone, it is still different than abandoning principal to appease those whose aims are directly counter to yours. I see Yglesias and Shor as essentially arguing leftists and Democrats should do that, even if they don't come right out and say it.
And, I'm not sure it will even help Democrats much. Trump won conservative rural whites through nativist and racist messaging in 2016, long before "abolish the police" became a thing. And, the continued refusal to see the legacy of NAFTA and the specific historical contingency involved with a protectionist/natvist candidate like Trump running against a Clinton is just willful ignorance of the historical experience of the politics and culture of voters across racial and ethnic groups in the industrial regions of the Upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, exactly the areas in which Trump (barely) beat Clinton. I'd bet my life that a race with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Christ Christie would have gone differently. Clinton still might have lost, but the coalitions would have broke differently.
In any case, while I agree that going less hard on "abolish the police" specifically might help the Democrats with the type of voter across racial and ethnic lines who supports someone like Eric Adams, for example, it won't help them win back voters who are seduced by the red meat of the nativism of Trump's Republican Party and the cultural politics (guns ect.) that go along with it. Those voters will want the real thing and not the substitute. Democrats always lose when they try to play that game. "John Kerry reporting for duty" anyone?
"Abolish the police" and "Medicare for All" and "Green New Deal" are not winning agenda items right now with non-college-educated white suburbanites (nor with voters in communities of color).
Last, the above three examples are very different things, so I disagree with lumping them together. The first is extremely unpopular across demographic lines, and I'm not even sure if its a specific policy proposal so much as a slogan or an expression of aspirations to change to a system of community based restorative justice, for example. The other two actually have some degree of popularity, even if you could produce a poll stating that a "less extreme" version such as "Medicare for those who want it" is more popular. Less popular than an alternative is very different than totally unpopular. Moreover, "racial justice", broadly construed, is much more popular with political donors than anything threatening interests of the healthcare or fossil fuel industries. Just look at the well-funded opposition to the very popular proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices.
In any case, I completely disagree with the idea that Democrats adopting a completely poll driven policy agenda will help them. Voters don't really want that. If they did, they wouldn't vote for Republicans over Democrats whose policies are demonstratively more in line with their views. Even Yglesias and Shor have to concede this when they note Trumps tax cuts and ACA repeal efforts were unpopular. What was popular was Trump speaking out against NAFTA, which helped him against Clinton in PA, Michigan, and Wisconsin and was something his Republican primary opponents couldn't and wouldn't do. That dynamic again points to historical contingencies analytic techniques such as those used by Shor can't possibly capture. As well, the impact of the pandemic on voter preferences and Democratic get out the vote efforts can't be ignored.
Overall, these "findings" can't be treated like experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider or even well-designed quasi-experimental medical studies. The instrumentation (surveys) and methodology simply isn't powerful enough to eliminate confounds such a those mentioned above. So to0, as Shor himself rightly points out, the questions asked and methods used can influence results. Just as surveys from environmental groups can give a biased view of the popularity of proposals those groups advocate because they don't consider salience or alternatives policies, Shor's methods also produce biases for similar reasons. The reification of data itself is a middle class, college educated bias. So lets not pretend that Shor and Yglesias aren't also selling college educated Democrats a story that flatters their biases. After all, in the end, Shor basically advocates Democrats adopt the same type policies the party has advocated since 90's. No matter how much he insists to the contrary, he's basically giving the party and those traditionally most invested in Democratic politics - college educated older voters - justification to advocate positions they already do.
posted by eagles123 at 9:39 PM on October 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
The bolded is the point. There is a big difference between adapting a message to an audience and surrendering principal. For example, the college educated anti-racists use a very specific set of linguistic rules that might sound off-putting to outsiders, even if those rules come from a place of compassion. For another example, middle and upper middle class anti-racists might see protest as a sign of allyship or as operating in a protest tradition stemming from the civil rights era. Others without those historical priors might be disturbed by what they see as violence and disorder - smashing stores and burning down police stations.
Whether or not what I wrote in the preceding sentences is true, and I'm more exploring ideas I can't possibly do justice to here and sketching possibilities than setting anything in stone, it is still different than abandoning principal to appease those whose aims are directly counter to yours. I see Yglesias and Shor as essentially arguing leftists and Democrats should do that, even if they don't come right out and say it.
And, I'm not sure it will even help Democrats much. Trump won conservative rural whites through nativist and racist messaging in 2016, long before "abolish the police" became a thing. And, the continued refusal to see the legacy of NAFTA and the specific historical contingency involved with a protectionist/natvist candidate like Trump running against a Clinton is just willful ignorance of the historical experience of the politics and culture of voters across racial and ethnic groups in the industrial regions of the Upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, exactly the areas in which Trump (barely) beat Clinton. I'd bet my life that a race with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Christ Christie would have gone differently. Clinton still might have lost, but the coalitions would have broke differently.
In any case, while I agree that going less hard on "abolish the police" specifically might help the Democrats with the type of voter across racial and ethnic lines who supports someone like Eric Adams, for example, it won't help them win back voters who are seduced by the red meat of the nativism of Trump's Republican Party and the cultural politics (guns ect.) that go along with it. Those voters will want the real thing and not the substitute. Democrats always lose when they try to play that game. "John Kerry reporting for duty" anyone?
"Abolish the police" and "Medicare for All" and "Green New Deal" are not winning agenda items right now with non-college-educated white suburbanites (nor with voters in communities of color).
Last, the above three examples are very different things, so I disagree with lumping them together. The first is extremely unpopular across demographic lines, and I'm not even sure if its a specific policy proposal so much as a slogan or an expression of aspirations to change to a system of community based restorative justice, for example. The other two actually have some degree of popularity, even if you could produce a poll stating that a "less extreme" version such as "Medicare for those who want it" is more popular. Less popular than an alternative is very different than totally unpopular. Moreover, "racial justice", broadly construed, is much more popular with political donors than anything threatening interests of the healthcare or fossil fuel industries. Just look at the well-funded opposition to the very popular proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices.
In any case, I completely disagree with the idea that Democrats adopting a completely poll driven policy agenda will help them. Voters don't really want that. If they did, they wouldn't vote for Republicans over Democrats whose policies are demonstratively more in line with their views. Even Yglesias and Shor have to concede this when they note Trumps tax cuts and ACA repeal efforts were unpopular. What was popular was Trump speaking out against NAFTA, which helped him against Clinton in PA, Michigan, and Wisconsin and was something his Republican primary opponents couldn't and wouldn't do. That dynamic again points to historical contingencies analytic techniques such as those used by Shor can't possibly capture. As well, the impact of the pandemic on voter preferences and Democratic get out the vote efforts can't be ignored.
Overall, these "findings" can't be treated like experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider or even well-designed quasi-experimental medical studies. The instrumentation (surveys) and methodology simply isn't powerful enough to eliminate confounds such a those mentioned above. So to0, as Shor himself rightly points out, the questions asked and methods used can influence results. Just as surveys from environmental groups can give a biased view of the popularity of proposals those groups advocate because they don't consider salience or alternatives policies, Shor's methods also produce biases for similar reasons. The reification of data itself is a middle class, college educated bias. So lets not pretend that Shor and Yglesias aren't also selling college educated Democrats a story that flatters their biases. After all, in the end, Shor basically advocates Democrats adopt the same type policies the party has advocated since 90's. No matter how much he insists to the contrary, he's basically giving the party and those traditionally most invested in Democratic politics - college educated older voters - justification to advocate positions they already do.
posted by eagles123 at 9:39 PM on October 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
I swear I'm not trying to strawman, and I'll do my best here to be dispassionate.
In this thread it was explicitly stated that merely mentioning people other than white people and issues other than those which directly impact white people is "needlessly antagonistic".
Needlessly antagonistic. I'm not exaggerating or strawmanning that's the exact phrase that was used. CTRL+F and see for yourself.
Can you see how I'm more than a little put off by the idea that the mere **EXISTENCE** of messages not centered on rural white people is antagonistic? Or that even talking about non-white issues is harmful?
Since the Democratic Party isn't an all white Party like the Republicans it also seems self destructive to alienate a huge swath of the Democratic voters by telling them that to even acknowledge their presence and issues is bad for the Party as a whole.
Not that the left is immune to this, we're infested with brosocialists who scream "idpol!" every time anyone dares mention an issue other than class, but for the party as a whole to join in seems excessive.
I continue to be baffled as to why these articles, and all the others in the sea of articles all but identical to it, are treated as news or worthy of comment much less worthy of deep consideration and should be seen as an indicator for a viable strategy.
The linked articles are just the most recent iteration of the last 50 years (at least) of identical articles saying exactly the same thing. It's as inevitable as gravity, and as predictable as as sunrise. Some "liberal" person will produce a report claiming that the only possible path to victory for the Democrats is to focus with laserlike intensity on... rural white people who have never voted Democratic since 1968 and never will again no matter how much they're pandered to.
It seems as if the context, that articles like this are a dime a dozen and have been the totality of advice given to Democrats by various Very Important People for the past 50 years, is important, but ignored.
If this advice is so great why hasn't it worked all the other times the Democrats have tried it? Which they do every election and which fails over and over. Yet somehow the advice cannot fail, it can only be failed.
I find the implicit assumption that the votes of everyone except white Christian rural conservative men are just property of the Democrats by default and birthright disheartening and self destructive of the Democratic party. The Democrats appear to believe that no effort ever need be expended getting those votes, that those voters can be ignored, derided, mocked, and insulted and they must still vote blue no matter who, and that policies beneficial to those voters can be ignored or even mocked and those voters are obligated to exercise a sort of perverse political masochism and keep voting for a Party that often seems to hate them.
Where are the hand wringing articles wondering how the Democrats failed Black voters so badly that they lost 4 percent of those voters in 2016? Where are the articles wondering how the Democrats have failed women so badly they've already lost the white women and are losing Hispanic women? Where are the articles saying that the Democrats must work for those votes instead of simply assuming that those voters owe the Democratic Party their votes? Where are the articles painting losing those votes as a failure of the Democratic Party rather than a lack of virtue on those who have stopped voting Democratic?
Am I missing some obvious fact, or exercising some horrible error in reasoning, or just delusional if it seems to me that those sorts of things ought to be at least considered? That perhaps courting the Democratic base rather than people who hate the Democrats and will never vote Democratic might be a good idea?
I'm also rather deeply disturbed by the idea that preserving the human species and keeping us from going extinct is presented as some highly objectionable unthinkable luxury. Like we were a greedy child demanding an entire cake for themselves rather than the only people who seem to notice that we're headed for a cliff.
The green new deal, or any other really sweeping environmental legislation, is not a nice benefit, it's not an optional extra we can get once the all important rural white guy is satisfied, it's the survival of the human species. The idea that plans to keep us all from dying are so vile, so needlessly antagonistic, that they must be kept secret and enacted only in tiny dribs and drabs when the very important white Christian rural men aren't looking is, to put it mildly, extremely frusturating.
And, on a final and somewhat personal and emotional note that ties back to my first point, I'm getting really tired of always being at the back of the line for the benefits but the front of the line for the blame.
The left, Black people, women, LGBT people, all are told that they are simultaneously so insignificant that they are not due a place at the table nor any consideration at all, but also told that they are the only reason the Democrats ever lose.
TL;DR: the linked articles are just the latest in a decades long history of similar articles telling Democrats to ignore everyone but rural white men and as such aren't important or worth anything. The Democrats should try to court their base rather than pandering exclusively to rural white men. Climate change is not a luxury that can be considered only after everything else. And it's really hurtful and demoralizing to constantly be told that you're so insignificant your concerns should never be discussed, but also so important that all failures are your fault.
posted by sotonohito at 7:52 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
In this thread it was explicitly stated that merely mentioning people other than white people and issues other than those which directly impact white people is "needlessly antagonistic".
Needlessly antagonistic. I'm not exaggerating or strawmanning that's the exact phrase that was used. CTRL+F and see for yourself.
Can you see how I'm more than a little put off by the idea that the mere **EXISTENCE** of messages not centered on rural white people is antagonistic? Or that even talking about non-white issues is harmful?
Since the Democratic Party isn't an all white Party like the Republicans it also seems self destructive to alienate a huge swath of the Democratic voters by telling them that to even acknowledge their presence and issues is bad for the Party as a whole.
Not that the left is immune to this, we're infested with brosocialists who scream "idpol!" every time anyone dares mention an issue other than class, but for the party as a whole to join in seems excessive.
I continue to be baffled as to why these articles, and all the others in the sea of articles all but identical to it, are treated as news or worthy of comment much less worthy of deep consideration and should be seen as an indicator for a viable strategy.
The linked articles are just the most recent iteration of the last 50 years (at least) of identical articles saying exactly the same thing. It's as inevitable as gravity, and as predictable as as sunrise. Some "liberal" person will produce a report claiming that the only possible path to victory for the Democrats is to focus with laserlike intensity on... rural white people who have never voted Democratic since 1968 and never will again no matter how much they're pandered to.
It seems as if the context, that articles like this are a dime a dozen and have been the totality of advice given to Democrats by various Very Important People for the past 50 years, is important, but ignored.
If this advice is so great why hasn't it worked all the other times the Democrats have tried it? Which they do every election and which fails over and over. Yet somehow the advice cannot fail, it can only be failed.
I find the implicit assumption that the votes of everyone except white Christian rural conservative men are just property of the Democrats by default and birthright disheartening and self destructive of the Democratic party. The Democrats appear to believe that no effort ever need be expended getting those votes, that those voters can be ignored, derided, mocked, and insulted and they must still vote blue no matter who, and that policies beneficial to those voters can be ignored or even mocked and those voters are obligated to exercise a sort of perverse political masochism and keep voting for a Party that often seems to hate them.
Where are the hand wringing articles wondering how the Democrats failed Black voters so badly that they lost 4 percent of those voters in 2016? Where are the articles wondering how the Democrats have failed women so badly they've already lost the white women and are losing Hispanic women? Where are the articles saying that the Democrats must work for those votes instead of simply assuming that those voters owe the Democratic Party their votes? Where are the articles painting losing those votes as a failure of the Democratic Party rather than a lack of virtue on those who have stopped voting Democratic?
Am I missing some obvious fact, or exercising some horrible error in reasoning, or just delusional if it seems to me that those sorts of things ought to be at least considered? That perhaps courting the Democratic base rather than people who hate the Democrats and will never vote Democratic might be a good idea?
I'm also rather deeply disturbed by the idea that preserving the human species and keeping us from going extinct is presented as some highly objectionable unthinkable luxury. Like we were a greedy child demanding an entire cake for themselves rather than the only people who seem to notice that we're headed for a cliff.
The green new deal, or any other really sweeping environmental legislation, is not a nice benefit, it's not an optional extra we can get once the all important rural white guy is satisfied, it's the survival of the human species. The idea that plans to keep us all from dying are so vile, so needlessly antagonistic, that they must be kept secret and enacted only in tiny dribs and drabs when the very important white Christian rural men aren't looking is, to put it mildly, extremely frusturating.
And, on a final and somewhat personal and emotional note that ties back to my first point, I'm getting really tired of always being at the back of the line for the benefits but the front of the line for the blame.
The left, Black people, women, LGBT people, all are told that they are simultaneously so insignificant that they are not due a place at the table nor any consideration at all, but also told that they are the only reason the Democrats ever lose.
TL;DR: the linked articles are just the latest in a decades long history of similar articles telling Democrats to ignore everyone but rural white men and as such aren't important or worth anything. The Democrats should try to court their base rather than pandering exclusively to rural white men. Climate change is not a luxury that can be considered only after everything else. And it's really hurtful and demoralizing to constantly be told that you're so insignificant your concerns should never be discussed, but also so important that all failures are your fault.
posted by sotonohito at 7:52 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
I’m the one who used the phrase “needlessly antagonistic.” Since clearly that was, itself, inflammatory, I will exit this conversation.
But before I go, please understand, Sonohito, that for me, the issue at hand is this and only this:
We leave working-class votes, black, brown *and* white, on the table when we insist on using language/messaging/jargon that appeals mainly to our donors and activists. That’s it, dude.
posted by ducky l'orange at 11:36 AM on October 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
But before I go, please understand, Sonohito, that for me, the issue at hand is this and only this:
We leave working-class votes, black, brown *and* white, on the table when we insist on using language/messaging/jargon that appeals mainly to our donors and activists. That’s it, dude.
posted by ducky l'orange at 11:36 AM on October 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
NYT: "Democrats Lost the Most in Midwestern ‘Factory Towns,’ Report Says."
The share of the Democratic presidential vote in the Midwest declined most precipitously between 2012 and 2020 in counties that experienced the steepest losses in manufacturing and union jobs and saw declines in health care, according to a new report to be released this month.posted by PhineasGage at 4:24 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
The party’s worsening performance in the region’s midsize communities — often overlooked places like Chippewa Falls, Wis., and Bay City, Mich. — poses a dire threat to Democrats, the report warns.
sotonohito: Where are the hand wringing articles wondering how the Democrats failed Black voters so badly that they lost 4 percent of those voters in 2016? Where are the articles wondering how the Democrats have failed women so badly they've already lost the white women and are losing Hispanic women? Where are the articles saying that the Democrats must work for those votes instead of simply assuming that those voters owe the Democratic Party their votes? Where are the articles painting losing those votes as a failure of the Democratic Party rather than a lack of virtue on those who have stopped voting Democratic?
Shor talks about the swing towards Republicans among non-white voters in a Politico interview in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election. How 2020 Killed Off Democrats’ Demographic Hopes.
BBC article on the swing to Trump among Black voters in 2020:
Shor talks about the swing towards Republicans among non-white voters in a Politico interview in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election. How 2020 Killed Off Democrats’ Demographic Hopes.
There was an initial tendency to say, “Oh, of course we lost Cubans in Florida,” or “In the Rio Grande Valley, they’re all very conservative.” But within Texas, we also fell tremendously in Hispanic precincts in Houston; there were substantial drops in Hispanic support for Democrats in the northeast, around Massachusetts; same thing in Osceola County, Florida, which is predominantly Puerto Ricans who live near Orlando. In large swaths of the country, there was a pretty broad-based decline. Looking at precincts in Miami-Dade specifically, the decline was basically the same for Cuban precincts and non-Cuban precincts — it was a little bit larger in Cuban precincts, but not by very much.There's a lot of Hispanic conservatives who voted for Obama in 2012 (39% Republican, 49% Democrat) and for Clinton in 2016 (39% Republican, 47% Democrat). In 2020 they swung to Trump (67% Republican, 27% Democrat). Twitter thread.
What’s really interesting is that this change was reflected down-ballot. That’s actually very surprising. In 2016, there were a lot of areas that swung 20 points against Democrats — rural, white working-class areas — but still voted for Democratic Senate, House and state legislative candidates. This year, in a lot of Hispanic areas, down-ballot Democrats got slaughtered. In Florida, we lost Hispanic House seats, and on the state-legislative level, it was pretty brutal. There was a congressional seat in the Rio Grande Valley [Texas’ 15th district] that we had won by 20 points in 2018 and 2016, and this time only won by 3 points. It’s possible that politics is just different now in 2020 than in 2016, but that really tells me that this was a change in party ID more than anything specifically that Trump or Biden did.
There is a broader trend, though, that as college-educated white people become a larger share of the Democratic coalition and a larger share of the Democratic voice, they do pull the party on cultural issues. Non-college educated white people have more culturally in common with working-class Black and working-class Hispanic voters. So, it should be unsurprising that as the cultural power of college-educated white people increases in the Democratic Party, non-white voters will move against us.
Q. Among Black men and Hispanic voters overall, there was an increase in support for Donald Trump in 2020. Do you see those voters coming back to the Democrats, or does the GOP become sort of a pan-racial, anti-cosmopolitan party?
The joke is that the GOP is really assembling the multiracial working-class coalition that the left has always dreamed of. But I think it’s worth remembering that both Black and Hispanic voters are still an overwhelmingly Democratic group, though Hispanic voters by a lot less than they were four or eight years ago.
In terms of whether these trends will continue or not, I think that when it comes to African Americans, there is this very real question: How sustainable is it to get 95 percent of the vote within a racial or ethnic group for long periods of time? And I think the answer is that it probably isn’t. If you look at these long-term structural factors, the reason why there are all of these culturally conservative African Americans who vote for Democrats is that, in the same way that there are a lot of economically liberal, non-college educated white people who vote for Republicans, there are these social institutions that kind of transmute identity with party politics. And if you look at what the big predictors are, what those institutions are among Black voters and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic voters, you’re looking at churches. You’re looking at a lot of community organizations that are declining in power. And you also have this broader trend of racial integration and intermarriage.
So, the long-term trend probably is toward racial depolarization. And I think that’s really interesting and surprising. Racial [political] polarization had been steadily increasing from 1992 up until 2016; 2016 is when it reversed course, and a lot of people thought that was an aberration. But 2018 and 2020 show it’s not.
[After discussing some Democratic advantages:] The flipside is that we have an election system that makes it basically impossible for Democrats’ current coalition to ever wield legislative power. Non-college educated whites are highly represented at every single level of government, and we are currently fighting elections on state legislative maps, congressional maps, an Electoral College map and a Senate map that are ludicrously unfavorable for us. We are legitimately in a position from here on out where we would need to get 54 percent of the popular vote — which we did not even accomplish this time — for multiple cycles in a row, for us to be in a position to really pass laws. That’s pretty bad.
We need to change the nature of our coalition if we want to wield legislative power. It’s possible that maybe the Republican Party will just really mess up. But we just had basically the most unpopular Republican president since Nixon, and Democrats were not able to capture the kind of legislative majorities we need to affect change. That highlights the need for us to try to change the nature of our coalition.
BBC article on the swing to Trump among Black voters in 2020:
But although black voters tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat, they are not a monolith. According to a Pew Research Center study from January 2020, a quarter of black Democrats identify as conservative, and 43% as moderate.One more interview, discussing the swing in the Hispanic vote. Latino Voters Are Leaving the Democratic Party.
A 2018 Harvard-Harris poll also found that 85% of black Americans favour reducing legal immigration, more than any other demographic - 54% chose the strictest options available, allowing fewer than 250,000 immigrants per year, or even say they want to no new immigrants at all.
... in the last four years, as the clout of college-educated white people in the Democratic Party has increased, you know, the Democratic Party brand has increasingly been associated, you know, with liberalism in a way that it might not have been before. And I think that there's a lot of micro stories. I think that, you know, if you look at defund the police, that's a highly ideological issue where liberals are on one end, and conservatives are on the other. And that really contrasts to other issues, you know, like increasing the minimum wage or getting people health care, where there really are a lot of conservatives who defect and have liberal positions on these issues.How Trump has tilted the playing field against Democrats:
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So the logic, I guess, follows that talking about highly partisan issues like immigration, for example, isn't a winning formula. In fact, most Hispanics wouldn't necessarily put immigration at the top of their list of priorities for reform. Why, then, is the Democratic Party trying so hard to push these messages?
SHOR: It's a great question. You know, I think that there's something that, you know, I've struggled with a lot in my career, and I think there's been a really big change in how Democrats talk that, you know, Democrats historically were seen as this kind of coalition party that, you know, we had this broad mix of conservative Black and Hispanic voters and white liberals, and working-class white people. And, you know, we try to find language that would make everyone happy. But I think with the rise of online donations, with the rise of social media, this has, like, really changed the incentive structure for how a Democratic politician can get ahead. And I think that that's really changed how we talk and how the party is perceived in really fundamental ways.
the big thing that Donald Trump did is he created these large coalitional shifts, you know, in 2016 among noncollege whites, and in 2020 among noncollege nonwhites toward the Republican Party and kind of pushed, you know, college-educated voters toward the Democratic Party. But these voters aren't distributed efficiently, geographically. You know, Donald Trump, because of these coalition shifts that his strategy ended up making happen - the bias of the Electoral College went from, you know, about a point in favor of Democrats - If Barack Obama had gotten 49.5% of the vote, he still probably would have won the Electoral College - to being four points biased against Democrats.posted by russilwvong at 4:40 PM on October 5, 2021 [4 favorites]
Joe Biden got about 52.3% of the vote. And if he had gotten 52% of the vote, he would have lost. And that's a sea change in American politics.
One big question is how transferable Trump's appeal is to other Republicans if he doesn't run, especially if he turns antagonistic towards the party for some reason. As Shor points out, Trump's appeal in 2016 rested in part on him running as an outsider. I acknowledge his appeal started to extend down ballot in 2020, but I kind of doubt if that will continue in the event Republicans no longer are associated with his "brand." Even though a guy like DeSantis clearly is trying to style himself as a Trump successor, it remains to be seen whether or not he can replicate Trumps appeal, which is/was based in part on media savvy honed from years of celebrity. Let's not forget that Desantis barely beat Gillum in 2018 despite Gillum being in many ways a flawed candidate and Republicans engaging in voter suppression. And, again, it also remains to be seen how much of 2020's voting patterns arose from the unique circumstances and politics of the pandemic.
I think its helpful to take a trip through history to see how much is really new and what is really changing. For one, the departure of the white working class from the Democrats dates back to the 60's at least, though it hasn't been a uninform downward trend. Really, the decline of Democratic votes in rural areas dates even further back to as early as the 40's and 50's. Two of the three pillars of Democratic strength in rural areas, remnant populists and labor unions in factory towns, are pretty much gone today. We're just seeing the final dissolution of the faint echoes of those political formations.
Far more recently, in 2004, George W. Bush won Ohio and came within a hair of winning Wisconsin partly because he was able to peel off culturally conservative Black and Latino voters. That was also the only time since 1988 a Republican actually managed to win the popular vote - that's 32 years! That's more than the amount of time that elapsed between Kennedy and Reagan.
So, the existence of culturally conservative POC open to voting Republican shouldn't come as a surprise to people whose jobs are to analyze political trends and interact with the many demographic groups composing the US electorate. In fact, there was a time when Republicans thought Latinos would deliver them a permanent majority. So, how much is new here, or should be new here. And, despite all that, Democrats still continue to win the popular vote in Presidential elections.
That points to a far more interesting, and dangerous, structural problem in American government: Republican voters from economically and demographically declining areas of the country are overrepresented at both the Federal and State level and, knowing this, the Republican party is becoming ever more nihilistic with each passing election cycle. I doubt the micro-targeted polling strategy Shor is trying to sell is going to fix that. That too isn't anything new. Clinton and his band of whiz kids sold that to the Democrats in the 80's and 90's when they were getting slaughtered in Congressional elections. At least Shor is more photogenic when he goes on shoes like Real Time with Bill Maher than James Carville was when he'd appear on Politically Correct.
I'm honestly not sure what is going to solve that problem. Since the 2010 elections I've become convinced the American political system is heading towards an unavoidable crisis point rooted in structural issues dating the country's founding. I'm not sure what form that crisis is going to take, but I'm sure it won't be pleasant. We may very well already be living in that crisis; I imagine future historians will argue about it if any are left to care enough to do so. I am sure its going to get worse, though.
I only take heart for the fact that, for all his political impact, Trump never had the positive approval ratings even Biden had at the start of his Presidency. On the flipside, Romney really should have beaten Obama is 2012 given the Democrat's failure to adequately respond to the financial crisis. Neither party is particularly healthy at the moment, its just that the inherent structure of American politics gives Republicans a head start.
Democrat's best chance, in my view, is to concentrate on enacting policies that actually help people and on communicating how those policies help people. On that front, I have to say they are doing a much better job now than they did from 2008 to 2010. They can get much better though, and the current infighting instigated by the "moderates" (e.g. Sinema, Gottheimer) doesn't help. Democrats also need to replicate what the party accomplished in Georgia under Stacey Abrams. In that, I disagree with Yglesias and Shor's skepticism regarding political engagement and mobilization. I still believe Democrats have a much better chance mobilizing voters through building get out the vote infrastructure than they do trying to appeal to rural voters already lost to them.
That being said, I do agree in part that messaging is important, and its important to keep in mind that most voters aren't part of the mostly college educated politically active bubble. That cuts both ways though. Just as Democrats should worry about turning voters off, both party officials and activists shouldn't write potential voters off either just because they don't inhabit the same semiotic universe as liberal arts campuses, Twitter, or MSNBC.
Fixing the structural issues enabling wreckers like Gottheimer and Sinema also would be nice.
posted by eagles123 at 8:46 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think its helpful to take a trip through history to see how much is really new and what is really changing. For one, the departure of the white working class from the Democrats dates back to the 60's at least, though it hasn't been a uninform downward trend. Really, the decline of Democratic votes in rural areas dates even further back to as early as the 40's and 50's. Two of the three pillars of Democratic strength in rural areas, remnant populists and labor unions in factory towns, are pretty much gone today. We're just seeing the final dissolution of the faint echoes of those political formations.
Far more recently, in 2004, George W. Bush won Ohio and came within a hair of winning Wisconsin partly because he was able to peel off culturally conservative Black and Latino voters. That was also the only time since 1988 a Republican actually managed to win the popular vote - that's 32 years! That's more than the amount of time that elapsed between Kennedy and Reagan.
So, the existence of culturally conservative POC open to voting Republican shouldn't come as a surprise to people whose jobs are to analyze political trends and interact with the many demographic groups composing the US electorate. In fact, there was a time when Republicans thought Latinos would deliver them a permanent majority. So, how much is new here, or should be new here. And, despite all that, Democrats still continue to win the popular vote in Presidential elections.
That points to a far more interesting, and dangerous, structural problem in American government: Republican voters from economically and demographically declining areas of the country are overrepresented at both the Federal and State level and, knowing this, the Republican party is becoming ever more nihilistic with each passing election cycle. I doubt the micro-targeted polling strategy Shor is trying to sell is going to fix that. That too isn't anything new. Clinton and his band of whiz kids sold that to the Democrats in the 80's and 90's when they were getting slaughtered in Congressional elections. At least Shor is more photogenic when he goes on shoes like Real Time with Bill Maher than James Carville was when he'd appear on Politically Correct.
I'm honestly not sure what is going to solve that problem. Since the 2010 elections I've become convinced the American political system is heading towards an unavoidable crisis point rooted in structural issues dating the country's founding. I'm not sure what form that crisis is going to take, but I'm sure it won't be pleasant. We may very well already be living in that crisis; I imagine future historians will argue about it if any are left to care enough to do so. I am sure its going to get worse, though.
I only take heart for the fact that, for all his political impact, Trump never had the positive approval ratings even Biden had at the start of his Presidency. On the flipside, Romney really should have beaten Obama is 2012 given the Democrat's failure to adequately respond to the financial crisis. Neither party is particularly healthy at the moment, its just that the inherent structure of American politics gives Republicans a head start.
Democrat's best chance, in my view, is to concentrate on enacting policies that actually help people and on communicating how those policies help people. On that front, I have to say they are doing a much better job now than they did from 2008 to 2010. They can get much better though, and the current infighting instigated by the "moderates" (e.g. Sinema, Gottheimer) doesn't help. Democrats also need to replicate what the party accomplished in Georgia under Stacey Abrams. In that, I disagree with Yglesias and Shor's skepticism regarding political engagement and mobilization. I still believe Democrats have a much better chance mobilizing voters through building get out the vote infrastructure than they do trying to appeal to rural voters already lost to them.
That being said, I do agree in part that messaging is important, and its important to keep in mind that most voters aren't part of the mostly college educated politically active bubble. That cuts both ways though. Just as Democrats should worry about turning voters off, both party officials and activists shouldn't write potential voters off either just because they don't inhabit the same semiotic universe as liberal arts campuses, Twitter, or MSNBC.
Fixing the structural issues enabling wreckers like Gottheimer and Sinema also would be nice.
posted by eagles123 at 8:46 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
The part of the NYT article about the Democrats losing vote share in Chippewa Falls stands out to me because I have family in the area and canvassed there for the 2020 election (among other things). Chippewa Falls has an estimated population of 14,407 people. The Democrats lost vote share there, so clearly we need to tailor our policies to better target voters in these small Midwestern towns.
But what else was happening in the region? A few miles away, in another part of the Chippewa Valley, is Eau Claire where the Democrats gained vote share. Eau Claire is larger (69,087 people), slightly more diverse, and has a progressive bloc on the city council. There was a fairly big campaign to get conversion therapy banned recently for example. The increased vote share in Eau Claire more than makes up for the decreased vote share in Chippewa Falls.
So, the framing of the NYT article seems a little disingenuous to me.
I don't presume to speak to what's happening in the rest of the country, but this pattern is pretty consistent in the area. I think there's an increased polarization happening between the small towns and the (relatively) larger towns partly because conservative people keep moving to the small towns and more progressive people keep moving to larger places.
posted by Space Kat at 7:55 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
But what else was happening in the region? A few miles away, in another part of the Chippewa Valley, is Eau Claire where the Democrats gained vote share. Eau Claire is larger (69,087 people), slightly more diverse, and has a progressive bloc on the city council. There was a fairly big campaign to get conversion therapy banned recently for example. The increased vote share in Eau Claire more than makes up for the decreased vote share in Chippewa Falls.
So, the framing of the NYT article seems a little disingenuous to me.
I don't presume to speak to what's happening in the rest of the country, but this pattern is pretty consistent in the area. I think there's an increased polarization happening between the small towns and the (relatively) larger towns partly because conservative people keep moving to the small towns and more progressive people keep moving to larger places.
posted by Space Kat at 7:55 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
I doubt the micro-targeted polling strategy Shor is trying to sell is going to fix that.
To me it seems that there's some widely held assumptions in progressive American politics that are not true. Maybe it boils down to: progressives have overestimated the ability of the Democrats to win elections while passing ambitious and unpopular policies.
Shor isn't optimistic that the Republicans will lose this advantage, even after Trump leaves the scene.
posted by russilwvong at 11:56 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
To me it seems that there's some widely held assumptions in progressive American politics that are not true. Maybe it boils down to: progressives have overestimated the ability of the Democrats to win elections while passing ambitious and unpopular policies.
- Because of the incorrect data from the 2012 exit polls, Democrats assumed they no longer needed non-college white voters to win, and didn't have to worry about appealing to them. This was not true, and resulted in Trump winning in 2016. Even in 2020, in the middle of Covid, Biden just barely won.
- There also appears to be tremendous pressure from activist organizations for the Democrats to do things that are unpopular, justified by saying that it's not their job to help the Democrats win elections. This seems short-sighted. If it results in Democrats trying to support ambitious, sweeping, and unpopular changes, and then Republicans defeating Democrats and taking power, that's bad.
- Explicit anti-racism doesn't seem to be an effective way to hold together the Democratic coalition - polarization based on education increased from 2016 to 2020, polarization based on race decreased, with Trump winning over more non-white voters.
- Increasing voter turnout (although a good thing) isn't going to help Democrats win more elections, because college-educated voters already vote much more consistently than non-college voters.
Shor isn't optimistic that the Republicans will lose this advantage, even after Trump leaves the scene.
Broadly speaking, the choices Trump made in 2016 — embracing nationalism, chasing voters with high levels of racial resentment, having a very class-loaded language and speaking in ways that really educated people hate and uneducated people don’t hate as much — it’s kind of clear that was a good trade. It’s something a lot of people in the Republican Party didn’t like, but they know it was a good trade. They can see that they have these near-permanent structural advantages in the Senate and in all of these state legislatures. So, I’m skeptical that they will change course.So the Democrats need to broaden their current coalition. This isn't particle physics, but there's some really basic principles to keep in mind - talk about popular things, don't talk about unpopular things, persuade swing voters.
posted by russilwvong at 11:56 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
This isn't particle physics, but there's some really basic principles to keep in mind - talk about popular things, don't talk about unpopular things, persuade swing voters.
Even more basically the Democrats need to stop trying to wonk their way to victory and remember that in a two party system they just need to beat the other guy by being the more charismatic and convincing and making the opposing candidate look like the chump they undoubtedly will be. Find candidates that people respond to emotionally and they'll bring the voters.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:38 AM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Even more basically the Democrats need to stop trying to wonk their way to victory and remember that in a two party system they just need to beat the other guy by being the more charismatic and convincing and making the opposing candidate look like the chump they undoubtedly will be. Find candidates that people respond to emotionally and they'll bring the voters.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:38 AM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
progressives have overestimated the ability of the Democrats to win elections while passing ambitious and unpopular policies.
???
WTF?
You've got that exactly, 100%, backwards. The center-right majority of the Democratic Party is unwilling to pass even minor things that are extremely popular.
Progressives believe that if the Democrats passed legislation that is popular and which benefits people it would strengthen them and give people a reason to vote Democratic.
"Vote Democratic: Better Things Aren't Possible" is a terrible message that all but guarantees low voter turnout.
Expanding Medicare is hugely popular (83%), and would be of direct material benefit to millions of Americans who would remember that at the polls.
62%, not quite so overwhelming but still a huge majority, favor raising the minimum wage to $15/hour and even more support raising it by somewhat less.
67% of Americans favor some form of student loan forgiveness.
About 2/3 of Americans support legislation to address climate change.
75% of Americans favor cutting the military budget.
69% favor increasing taxes on the rich.
Where are you getting this idea that progressive ideas are massively unpopular and that talking about and/or working for them is bad for the Democrats?
You seem to be under the impression that there's some very large group of current Republican voters who can be swayed to the Democratic side if only the Democrats will try to do less for fewer people and support the status quo more.
Further, you seem to think that the Democrats can keep 100% of their current voters wwhile rurushing to the right to chase after the mythic "independent" or "swing" voter.
Where's your evidence that a charge rightward won't alienate more current Democrats than it would attract right wingers?
posted by sotonohito at 6:49 AM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
???
WTF?
You've got that exactly, 100%, backwards. The center-right majority of the Democratic Party is unwilling to pass even minor things that are extremely popular.
Progressives believe that if the Democrats passed legislation that is popular and which benefits people it would strengthen them and give people a reason to vote Democratic.
"Vote Democratic: Better Things Aren't Possible" is a terrible message that all but guarantees low voter turnout.
Expanding Medicare is hugely popular (83%), and would be of direct material benefit to millions of Americans who would remember that at the polls.
62%, not quite so overwhelming but still a huge majority, favor raising the minimum wage to $15/hour and even more support raising it by somewhat less.
67% of Americans favor some form of student loan forgiveness.
About 2/3 of Americans support legislation to address climate change.
75% of Americans favor cutting the military budget.
69% favor increasing taxes on the rich.
Where are you getting this idea that progressive ideas are massively unpopular and that talking about and/or working for them is bad for the Democrats?
You seem to be under the impression that there's some very large group of current Republican voters who can be swayed to the Democratic side if only the Democrats will try to do less for fewer people and support the status quo more.
Further, you seem to think that the Democrats can keep 100% of their current voters wwhile rurushing to the right to chase after the mythic "independent" or "swing" voter.
Where's your evidence that a charge rightward won't alienate more current Democrats than it would attract right wingers?
posted by sotonohito at 6:49 AM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
An example that I'm familiar with is Medicare for all. When you poll people whether they support "Medicare for all", you'll get a majority that supports it. If you poll people whether they want to replace their employer sponsored plan with a government plan, you get a majority that opposes it. So, what's the popular mandate there?
You could play that trick with any issue, though. The ACA famously polled well if you asked people about its components, but then if you asked if they supported the ACA they'd say no.
The ACA just barely breaks even in terms of popularity, by the way. It's at 53 percent favorable in Kaiser polling as of May.
Just looking at the change in question wording, Medicare is a hugely popular program that most everyone is familiar with. "Government run program" could mean anything.
I'm certain I could play a similar trick with the Public Option. It sounds great because people like choice, but I doubt it would poll as well if I described it as a "high deductible government plan that might undermine private healthcare and cause people to lose their plans".
With respect to the polling, David Shor argues that issue polling is very frequently misleading, because it's often handled by advocacy groups who run the polls largely as an exercise to prove how popular their causes are.
I'm sure that's true. All interest groups want to put together the best argument for the policies they put forward. Are we really going to act like the fossil fuel and health insurance industries don't do the same thing, though?
And, the "forced choice" polls beloved by people like Shor and John Marshal don't impress me much either. How the choices are worded inevitably biases the result. For example, describing "Medicare for All" as a "government plan that replaces your employer sponsored plan" basically paints MFA in the most negative possible light while failing to highlight it's positive aspects. The wording emphasizes what people will lose (their current insurance) and describes M4A as a "government plan", which carries negative connotations. What if they described M4A as "an expansion of Medicare that will allow to you choose your own doctor, will eliminate the need to manage medical bills, and guarantee your health insurance won't change because you move, lose your job, or your employer decides to switch plans." Guaranteed you get a different result. That's just highlighting a basic consideration of survey design.
You seem to be under the impression that there's some very large group of current Republican voters who can be swayed to the Democratic side if only the Democrats will try to do less for fewer people and support the status quo more.
I agree with the implication that, for example, setting the means testing level just right for parental leave isn't going to persuade culturally conservative voters to suddenly forget their racial resentments/fears and worries about gun control, immigration ect. Democrats have tried that strategy since Clinton. It never works. Look at when they won: 2006 and 2008 happened because the Bush II administration presided over a failed Iraq War, economic disaster, and a deeply unpopular attempt to privatize social security; 2018 and 2020 happened because of suburban backlash over Trump. Even Clinton probably wouldn't have been elected absent the short, sharp recession of the early 90's.
Last, regarding college education, student debt became a salient issue because the percentage of individuals pursuing high education increases the more recently they were born. Economic changes drove that change. As a middle and high school student in the late 90's and early 2000's, I remember the message basically being that a bachelors degree was the bare minimum requirement for a "middle class" life. At the same time, K-12 schools started to do away with vocational training (I remember this at my school) and transition to college prep to prepare students for the "new economy". As a result, even learning a trade started to require post K-12 education. Student debt started to explode around that time too. Student loans are basically a tax on people whose parents couldn't pay for their higher education, which reinforces all sorts of inequalities. That dynamic also complicates Shor's idea that Democrats are just becoming the party of the college educated because higher education doesn't mean the same thing that it did in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. Part of the change in the composition of the Democratic electorate Shor detects is an artifact of generational changes in the US economy and educational attainment. I don't think that is a complete explanation for the shift he highlights, but it can't be ignored either.
posted by eagles123 at 9:41 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
You could play that trick with any issue, though. The ACA famously polled well if you asked people about its components, but then if you asked if they supported the ACA they'd say no.
The ACA just barely breaks even in terms of popularity, by the way. It's at 53 percent favorable in Kaiser polling as of May.
Just looking at the change in question wording, Medicare is a hugely popular program that most everyone is familiar with. "Government run program" could mean anything.
I'm certain I could play a similar trick with the Public Option. It sounds great because people like choice, but I doubt it would poll as well if I described it as a "high deductible government plan that might undermine private healthcare and cause people to lose their plans".
With respect to the polling, David Shor argues that issue polling is very frequently misleading, because it's often handled by advocacy groups who run the polls largely as an exercise to prove how popular their causes are.
I'm sure that's true. All interest groups want to put together the best argument for the policies they put forward. Are we really going to act like the fossil fuel and health insurance industries don't do the same thing, though?
And, the "forced choice" polls beloved by people like Shor and John Marshal don't impress me much either. How the choices are worded inevitably biases the result. For example, describing "Medicare for All" as a "government plan that replaces your employer sponsored plan" basically paints MFA in the most negative possible light while failing to highlight it's positive aspects. The wording emphasizes what people will lose (their current insurance) and describes M4A as a "government plan", which carries negative connotations. What if they described M4A as "an expansion of Medicare that will allow to you choose your own doctor, will eliminate the need to manage medical bills, and guarantee your health insurance won't change because you move, lose your job, or your employer decides to switch plans." Guaranteed you get a different result. That's just highlighting a basic consideration of survey design.
You seem to be under the impression that there's some very large group of current Republican voters who can be swayed to the Democratic side if only the Democrats will try to do less for fewer people and support the status quo more.
I agree with the implication that, for example, setting the means testing level just right for parental leave isn't going to persuade culturally conservative voters to suddenly forget their racial resentments/fears and worries about gun control, immigration ect. Democrats have tried that strategy since Clinton. It never works. Look at when they won: 2006 and 2008 happened because the Bush II administration presided over a failed Iraq War, economic disaster, and a deeply unpopular attempt to privatize social security; 2018 and 2020 happened because of suburban backlash over Trump. Even Clinton probably wouldn't have been elected absent the short, sharp recession of the early 90's.
Last, regarding college education, student debt became a salient issue because the percentage of individuals pursuing high education increases the more recently they were born. Economic changes drove that change. As a middle and high school student in the late 90's and early 2000's, I remember the message basically being that a bachelors degree was the bare minimum requirement for a "middle class" life. At the same time, K-12 schools started to do away with vocational training (I remember this at my school) and transition to college prep to prepare students for the "new economy". As a result, even learning a trade started to require post K-12 education. Student debt started to explode around that time too. Student loans are basically a tax on people whose parents couldn't pay for their higher education, which reinforces all sorts of inequalities. That dynamic also complicates Shor's idea that Democrats are just becoming the party of the college educated because higher education doesn't mean the same thing that it did in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. Part of the change in the composition of the Democratic electorate Shor detects is an artifact of generational changes in the US economy and educational attainment. I don't think that is a complete explanation for the shift he highlights, but it can't be ignored either.
posted by eagles123 at 9:41 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's possible to get an impression of how people's politics are spread over the left-right spectrum by looking at countries with multi-party parliamentary systems, like Germany, where there was recently an election.
Germany is a Western democracy like the US, and though it's issues with race are very different from those of the US, they are comparable for this particular purpose. Germany has a functional welfare state, so all the parties are some steps to the left of the equivalent American positions.
If you look at the graphics or tables, you can see that the "mainstream" center parties (the conservative coalition and the social democrats) are very equal in size. These parties usually lead the governing coalition, and voters can move between them, but not in large numbers.
The liberal center (FDP) which imagines itself to be smack in the center of politics, are actually one of four "fringe" positions, the others being the hard right (AfD), the hard left (Die Linke), and the Green party.
In Germany, and most of Europe, the hard left is a smaller fraction than the hard right, which has to do with the post WW2 history, but for this comparison with the US, it can make sense to mentally merge them with the Greens, and then the leftist position weighs quite a bit more than the hard right.
That means the social democrats can build a coalition with the liberal center and the greens, whereas the conservatives won't get any other party on to a ship with the hard right, and so have to reach across the aisle. Which they have successfully done under Angela Merkels leadership, but that seems to be over now.
I think the distribution of opinions across the US is probably not very different, but because of the composition of the two chambers is not representative, you get the well-known unequal representation and the two-party system.
posted by mumimor at 11:57 PM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
Germany is a Western democracy like the US, and though it's issues with race are very different from those of the US, they are comparable for this particular purpose. Germany has a functional welfare state, so all the parties are some steps to the left of the equivalent American positions.
If you look at the graphics or tables, you can see that the "mainstream" center parties (the conservative coalition and the social democrats) are very equal in size. These parties usually lead the governing coalition, and voters can move between them, but not in large numbers.
The liberal center (FDP) which imagines itself to be smack in the center of politics, are actually one of four "fringe" positions, the others being the hard right (AfD), the hard left (Die Linke), and the Green party.
In Germany, and most of Europe, the hard left is a smaller fraction than the hard right, which has to do with the post WW2 history, but for this comparison with the US, it can make sense to mentally merge them with the Greens, and then the leftist position weighs quite a bit more than the hard right.
That means the social democrats can build a coalition with the liberal center and the greens, whereas the conservatives won't get any other party on to a ship with the hard right, and so have to reach across the aisle. Which they have successfully done under Angela Merkels leadership, but that seems to be over now.
I think the distribution of opinions across the US is probably not very different, but because of the composition of the two chambers is not representative, you get the well-known unequal representation and the two-party system.
posted by mumimor at 11:57 PM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'll accept that a "strong far left agenda" may not be what some people want. I'll even stipulate that talking about it may turn some people off.
What I don't accept is that arguing people shouldn't die in the street because they can't afford healthcare and that work should pay enough to live on is a strong far left agenda.
I also disagree that the Democratic Party as a whole has ever focused its ad campaigns on any leftist agenda. AOC? Sure. Sanders and Warren, yes. Biden? Hell no. Clinton? Hell no.
We're talking about the same Hillary Clinton who was criticized by many in the center-right pundit class for not talking about issues at all in her ads. So now she simultaneously never talked about issues, but also failed because she ignored the poor Forgotten Man and/or didn't kick enough hippies?
On this thread several people have claimed that merely hearing about anything other than themselves is going to turn that fabled Forgotten Man away from the Democrats. Which implies that on a national level this message means we're going to see more scolds telling AOC and anyone else to the left of Manchin to just shut up lest they cost us the 2022 and 2024 elections.
Being told that the Presidential candidate should run on my favored issues is, not exactly something I like but OK. I still maintain that talking about **AND DOING** popular shit that would help white people too would be a really good idea. But OK. Biden et al won't even mention my existence or my issues. That's nothing new, that's been the reality since forever.
But it looks like I'm being told that the mere existence of leftists, much less the existence of leftists who talk about their issues or advocate for them, is a bad thing that hurts the Democrats.
And it looks like that because, well, we've been told that a lot. AOC got a shitton of criticism from the dominant center right faction in the Democratic party simply for running her own campaign the way she thought would win (and did win). The Democratic Party kept claiming that she was scaring away voters in the all important "heartland" simply by existing and running her campaign in New York City.
So.... Yeah. I'm a bit jumpy but I shouldn't be jumping at people here for stuff they aren't responsible for.
I do also find the presentation of Shor as some sort of bold teller of truth to power who is now suffering mightily in canceldom for speaking an uncomfortable truth to be both untrue and repugnant.
Far from telling the Democrats what they don't want to hear, Shor told the establishment Democrats exactly what they wanted to hear. His message was that center-right politics are good, leftism is bad, and talking about issues other than those which appeal to Trump voting cishet white Christian men will lose elections.
That's not a new message, that's what the Democratic Party has run on since 1968. That's not revolutionary, it's the prevailing conventional wisdom that sounds comfortable and familiar to every Democratic insider there is.
He's the dude we're supposed to praise as a bold truth speaker facing down the overpowered and overrepresented and far too influential far left?
I really wish the left was even a tenth as powerful as the center-right faction of the Democratic Party wants to pretend we are.
posted by sotonohito at 9:34 AM on October 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
What I don't accept is that arguing people shouldn't die in the street because they can't afford healthcare and that work should pay enough to live on is a strong far left agenda.
I also disagree that the Democratic Party as a whole has ever focused its ad campaigns on any leftist agenda. AOC? Sure. Sanders and Warren, yes. Biden? Hell no. Clinton? Hell no.
We're talking about the same Hillary Clinton who was criticized by many in the center-right pundit class for not talking about issues at all in her ads. So now she simultaneously never talked about issues, but also failed because she ignored the poor Forgotten Man and/or didn't kick enough hippies?
On this thread several people have claimed that merely hearing about anything other than themselves is going to turn that fabled Forgotten Man away from the Democrats. Which implies that on a national level this message means we're going to see more scolds telling AOC and anyone else to the left of Manchin to just shut up lest they cost us the 2022 and 2024 elections.
Being told that the Presidential candidate should run on my favored issues is, not exactly something I like but OK. I still maintain that talking about **AND DOING** popular shit that would help white people too would be a really good idea. But OK. Biden et al won't even mention my existence or my issues. That's nothing new, that's been the reality since forever.
But it looks like I'm being told that the mere existence of leftists, much less the existence of leftists who talk about their issues or advocate for them, is a bad thing that hurts the Democrats.
And it looks like that because, well, we've been told that a lot. AOC got a shitton of criticism from the dominant center right faction in the Democratic party simply for running her own campaign the way she thought would win (and did win). The Democratic Party kept claiming that she was scaring away voters in the all important "heartland" simply by existing and running her campaign in New York City.
So.... Yeah. I'm a bit jumpy but I shouldn't be jumping at people here for stuff they aren't responsible for.
I do also find the presentation of Shor as some sort of bold teller of truth to power who is now suffering mightily in canceldom for speaking an uncomfortable truth to be both untrue and repugnant.
Far from telling the Democrats what they don't want to hear, Shor told the establishment Democrats exactly what they wanted to hear. His message was that center-right politics are good, leftism is bad, and talking about issues other than those which appeal to Trump voting cishet white Christian men will lose elections.
That's not a new message, that's what the Democratic Party has run on since 1968. That's not revolutionary, it's the prevailing conventional wisdom that sounds comfortable and familiar to every Democratic insider there is.
He's the dude we're supposed to praise as a bold truth speaker facing down the overpowered and overrepresented and far too influential far left?
I really wish the left was even a tenth as powerful as the center-right faction of the Democratic Party wants to pretend we are.
posted by sotonohito at 9:34 AM on October 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
What I don't accept is that arguing people shouldn't die in the street because they can't afford healthcare and that work should pay enough to live on is a strong far left agenda.
Here I think people are mostly in agreement. Expanding Medicare and raising the minimum wage are both popular policies. A big part of the criticism from David Shor and the "popularists" is that the language and values of the post-2012 Democrats were counter-productive, more so than policies.
And "popularism" isn't synonymous with "doing what the moderates want." From the NYT article: "Nor is Shor’s ire aimed only at the liberal wing of the party. Popularism isn’t mere moderation. One of the highest-polling policies in Shor’s research is letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices, but it’s so-called moderates, like Sinema, who are trying to strike that from the reconciliation bill. To Shor, this is lunacy."
Simon Bazelon:
He's arguing that the post-2012 Democrats have been suffering from groupthink. He's got data showing that donors are far to the left of the median Democrat - the gap is as large as the gap between the median Democrat and the median Republican.
Shor talks about how the Internet has nationalized political contests, but party branding and message discipline have always been important. The Democratic coalition needs to work out what its message is, and stick to it. And working out that message can't be dominated by highly-educated, very-liberal Democrats - less-educated and less-liberal Democrats also need to have a say.
posted by russilwvong at 4:55 PM on October 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Here I think people are mostly in agreement. Expanding Medicare and raising the minimum wage are both popular policies. A big part of the criticism from David Shor and the "popularists" is that the language and values of the post-2012 Democrats were counter-productive, more so than policies.
And "popularism" isn't synonymous with "doing what the moderates want." From the NYT article: "Nor is Shor’s ire aimed only at the liberal wing of the party. Popularism isn’t mere moderation. One of the highest-polling policies in Shor’s research is letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices, but it’s so-called moderates, like Sinema, who are trying to strike that from the reconciliation bill. To Shor, this is lunacy."
Simon Bazelon:
The NYT op-ed board endorsed Warren and Klobuchar in the primary, but the woman working in the elevator wanted Biden.[Shor's] a bold truth speaker facing down the overpowered and overrepresented and far too influential far left?
I see popularism as mostly "let's cater less to the cosmopolitan views of NYT writers, and more to the views of the working class people in the building."
Catering to these voters means using language in our messaging that doesn't feel taken from seminars at selective schools. It means emphasizing popular, progressive economic policies. It means focusing on issues voters say are most important to them.
Compare and contrast, for example, AOC's 2020 speech at the DNC, with Jennifer Granholm's from 2012.
I agree with pretty much all the content in both speeches. But one of them is much better suited to winning elections in a world where the tipping point state in the Electoral College (WI) is 87% white, and ~75% of adults didn't graduate college.
I am not a neoliberal. Neither is @davidshor! Both of us supported Bernie in the 2020 primary. But our position – run on popular economic policies and use rhetoric that appeals to working people – feels like it's become coded as the "neoliberal" stance and I can't understand why.
He's arguing that the post-2012 Democrats have been suffering from groupthink. He's got data showing that donors are far to the left of the median Democrat - the gap is as large as the gap between the median Democrat and the median Republican.
I think the story is that because the country’s shift left was highly correlated with education, the small core of staffers/donors/writers are much more liberal relative to both swing voters and Democrats than they’ve been in the pastFrom the NYT article:
And that means we’re in a weird place where the primary group of people who would get mad about a return to Obama 2012 era messaging are very small in terms of their share of voters but quite large in terms of people who are influential in the party (donors/staffers/journalists)
Shor believes the party has become too unrepresentative at its elite levels to continue being representative at the mass level. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the people we’ve lost are likely to be low-socioeconomic-status people,” he said. “If you look inside the Democratic Party, there are three times more moderate or conservative nonwhite people than very liberal white people, but very liberal white people are infinitely more represented. That’s morally bad, but it also means eventually they’ll leave.” The only way out of this, he said, is to “care more and cater to the preference of our low-socioeconomic-status supporters.”Ruy Texeira:
The cultural left has managed to associate the Democratic party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech and of course race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter. That’s a success for the cultural left but the hard reality is that it’s an electoral liability for the Democratic party. From time to time Democratic politicians like Biden try to dissociate themselves from super-unpopular ideas like defunding the police but the voices of the cultural left within the party are still more deferred to than opposed. These voices are further amplified by Democratic-leaning media and nonprofits, as well as within the Democratic party infrastructure itself, all of which are thoroughly dominated by the cultural left. In an era when a party’s national brand increasingly defines state and even local electoral contests, Democratic candidates have a very hard time shaking these cultural left associations.It looks like I'm being told that the mere existence of leftists, much less the existence of leftists who talk about their issues or advocate for them, is a bad thing that hurts the Democrats.
Shor talks about how the Internet has nationalized political contests, but party branding and message discipline have always been important. The Democratic coalition needs to work out what its message is, and stick to it. And working out that message can't be dominated by highly-educated, very-liberal Democrats - less-educated and less-liberal Democrats also need to have a say.
posted by russilwvong at 4:55 PM on October 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
The Democratic coalition needs to work out what its message is, and stick to it.
I'm not trying to strawman or put your words in a bad light, so I'd like to ask for clarification. Are you saying that I'm right that the big takeaway from these articles is that, properly, AOC et al should STFU because their mere existence is a threat to the electoral survival of the Democratic party?
He's arguing that the post-2012 Democrats have been suffering from groupthink
The Democratic Party has been suffering from groupthink ever since Reagan creamed Carter in 1980.
The message has been identical since then: America is an inherently right wing country, the only way for the Democrats to survive is to rush to the right, leftists are a threat to the survival of the Party because they scare away voters. It's repeated like clockwork, which is why I'm still puzzled at how Shor has managed to convince people here that he's a bold truthspeaker with a new message.
Seriously, I can go back here on MeFi and link to the discussions in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 and we'll see this exact same conversation. This ain't new, and the proposed bold visionary strategy is more of the same.
posted by sotonohito at 7:42 PM on October 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm not trying to strawman or put your words in a bad light, so I'd like to ask for clarification. Are you saying that I'm right that the big takeaway from these articles is that, properly, AOC et al should STFU because their mere existence is a threat to the electoral survival of the Democratic party?
He's arguing that the post-2012 Democrats have been suffering from groupthink
The Democratic Party has been suffering from groupthink ever since Reagan creamed Carter in 1980.
The message has been identical since then: America is an inherently right wing country, the only way for the Democrats to survive is to rush to the right, leftists are a threat to the survival of the Party because they scare away voters. It's repeated like clockwork, which is why I'm still puzzled at how Shor has managed to convince people here that he's a bold truthspeaker with a new message.
Seriously, I can go back here on MeFi and link to the discussions in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 and we'll see this exact same conversation. This ain't new, and the proposed bold visionary strategy is more of the same.
posted by sotonohito at 7:42 PM on October 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Agreed, and so the fact that some polls show support for some progressive policies doesn't demonstrate that there's a significant unsatisfied demand for a strong far left agenda.
But people who advocate for "strong far left" policies have plenty of other reasons to advocate for those positions, such as the interests of themselves, their families, and their loved ones, over and above the dubious proposition that shutting up and letting the party dictate supposedly slightly more popular policies will peel off some marginal percentage of Trump voters. All Shore has is that same potentially flawed methodology.
And lets not forget, the Democrats never have actually run on those horrible "far left" positions. Right now the agenda both Biden and Sanders are rallying behind pretty much follows Shor's suggestions to the letter.
So, what exactly is Shor adding to the discussion here to warrant the fawning publicity tour? I can practically hear "It's the economy stupid" echoing behind everything Shor and Yglesias are saying. That was from the Clinton people almost 30 years ago!
And, what right do they have to tell AOC et. al. to shut up. Last I checked AOC won her primary against a very well funded challenger in in 2020 with 75% of the vote. Eric Adams only received ~30% of the vote in the first round of the voting, and he only hit 50.4% in the last run-off.
AOC's district alone has more people than Wyoming. I don't disagree that her politics wouldn't work in say, West Virginia or even Michigan, but don't the people who voted for her have the right to have their views represented too?
And, there is physical reality to consider, which exists independent of political expediency. I have no doubt that, in theory, voters who perceive their economic interests to be harmed by decarbonization policies enacted to combat change are leery of the Green New Deal. That doesn't change the fundamental truth of atmospheric chemistry, or the fact that governments in Europe, China, and India are basically forcing the auto industry to move away from ICE engines. At this point its a question of whether the US wants to have an auto industry at all beyond Tesla, not to mention whether we want to mitigate the damage to the Western US and coastal areas that will be caused by climate change. The current debate over immigration is just a small foreshock of the disruptions climate change induced migrations will induce as well. Do we really want our political debate to be further unmoored from reality by forcing the discourse to cater to the concerns of some theorized group of swing voters whose carbon related jobs are doomed regardless of what the US government wants?
I do also find the presentation of Shor as some sort of bold teller of truth to power who is now suffering mightily in canceldom for speaking an uncomfortable truth to be both untrue and repugnant.
Far from telling the Democrats what they don't want to hear, Shor told the establishment Democrats exactly what they wanted to hear. His message was that center-right politics are good, leftism is bad, and talking about issues other than those which appeal to Trump voting cishet white Christian men will lose elections
This 1000 times. You've articulated my concerns better and more succinctly than I can. Shor is currently being being feted by outlets ranging from Politico, to the New York Times, to Real Time with Bill Mahre, as some whiz kid genius data scientist who just reading "the data" to tell the "dumb privileged college kids something they don't want to hear". Please. I wish I could be "cancelled" like that. He'd just another another rich white dude from Brooklyn with a glamor shot complete with stylish glasses and a leather jacket trying to tell other rich white people he's discerned the heart of the "common man" with his magic polls.
Incidentally, the "capture" of the Democratic Party by the college educated isn't anything new either. It was an explicit strategy that, again, started under Clinton the 90's. It was enacted to counteract the decline of organized labor. Are we really going to forget the "smart America versus Jesusland" rhetoric that circulated in the early aughts? Thomas Frank started writing about this phenomena in in 2004. He wrote Listen Liberal in 2016. Frank actually is from Kansas, a red state, and he still has family ties there.
Again, nothing that Shor is saying is new.
posted by eagles123 at 9:18 PM on October 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also, while arguing about messaging is fun, I think the real issue is simply a failure on the part of the Democrats to deliver visible results.
Here, for example, we see an indication that Biden's failure to deliver may well cost us Georgia's Senators and likely take Georgia out of play in the 2024 Presidential election.
It's the same as in 2010. The loss won't be because some hypothetical segment of Republican voters were scared to vote Democratic because of too much liberalism. It'll be because the Democratic Party had total control of the government and delivered.... nothing.
Not that the ACA is exactly nothing, but it was so watered down that even explaining how it was beneficial was difficult, and even worse, the parts that would measurably help people didn't kick in until after the elections.
It's like the Democrats are terrified of doing popular things.
Or, perhaps more likely, that the Democrats know doing popular things will piss off their Wall Street friends so they find any excuse they can to avoid doing popular things.
I don't claim there's an actual conspiracy involved, but I find it really interesting that both times lately that the Democrats have had total control of the government they've been "one vote short" to actually accomplish anything. And that the number it takes to accomplish anything keeps changing so they can always be just one vote short.
In 2008-2010 the Democrats didn't do anything because that pesky Joe Lieberman just wouldn't get them over the 60 vote threshold. Now in 2020-2022 the message is that pesky Joe Manchin just won't let them over the 50 vote threshold.
At some point you have to start wondering if the people running the Democratic Party are really being stymied or if they just don't want to get shit done.
What do you think will be the more likely culprit for the almost inevitable loss the Democrats are facing in 2022: a hypothetical slice of the MAGA voting crowd who could hypothetically be persuaded to vote Democratic if only the left would STFU and let the conservative-lite faction of the Democratic Party get their message out unimpeded by any criticism at all? Or that the Democrats didn't do anything when they had control of the government?
I'm betting on the latter.
"Vote Democratic, nothing will fundamentally change" is a lousy message, and an even worse reality.
posted by sotonohito at 6:52 AM on October 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
Here, for example, we see an indication that Biden's failure to deliver may well cost us Georgia's Senators and likely take Georgia out of play in the 2024 Presidential election.
It's the same as in 2010. The loss won't be because some hypothetical segment of Republican voters were scared to vote Democratic because of too much liberalism. It'll be because the Democratic Party had total control of the government and delivered.... nothing.
Not that the ACA is exactly nothing, but it was so watered down that even explaining how it was beneficial was difficult, and even worse, the parts that would measurably help people didn't kick in until after the elections.
It's like the Democrats are terrified of doing popular things.
Or, perhaps more likely, that the Democrats know doing popular things will piss off their Wall Street friends so they find any excuse they can to avoid doing popular things.
I don't claim there's an actual conspiracy involved, but I find it really interesting that both times lately that the Democrats have had total control of the government they've been "one vote short" to actually accomplish anything. And that the number it takes to accomplish anything keeps changing so they can always be just one vote short.
In 2008-2010 the Democrats didn't do anything because that pesky Joe Lieberman just wouldn't get them over the 60 vote threshold. Now in 2020-2022 the message is that pesky Joe Manchin just won't let them over the 50 vote threshold.
At some point you have to start wondering if the people running the Democratic Party are really being stymied or if they just don't want to get shit done.
What do you think will be the more likely culprit for the almost inevitable loss the Democrats are facing in 2022: a hypothetical slice of the MAGA voting crowd who could hypothetically be persuaded to vote Democratic if only the left would STFU and let the conservative-lite faction of the Democratic Party get their message out unimpeded by any criticism at all? Or that the Democrats didn't do anything when they had control of the government?
I'm betting on the latter.
"Vote Democratic, nothing will fundamentally change" is a lousy message, and an even worse reality.
posted by sotonohito at 6:52 AM on October 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
A different view of what Shor gets wrong.
posted by PhineasGage at 10:38 AM on October 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 10:38 AM on October 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A lot of good up there. I especially liked this part:
The conflicted voters in the middle who toggle between the two parties — and thus the voters who determine elections — are not “moderate.” They are low-information voters who are not paying attention (something Shor sometimes concedes). More than that, they often quickly bounce between progressive and reactionary views of the world (but certainly do NOT hold nuanced, considered, centrist views). They are “conflicted,” in the sense that they can be pulled in very different and possibly extreme directions. It makes no sense to advise Democrats to adopt ideologically moderate policies to appeal to people who are not, in fact, ideologically moderate.
I mean, Joe Rogan anyone (or at least until the pandemic made him go full libertarian alt right, maybe?) ?
And then:
Conflicted voters will not decide whether to support one or the other party by evaluating the relative efficacy of, say, high taxes on corporations to fund government programs, or instead the plausibility of the Laffer curve, low taxes, and trickle-down economics. They will instead use identity issues as a proxy for whom to trust.
This is so fucking true, and not just in politics. We are seeing this right now in public health with the vaccines. Yes, there are ideologically motivated anti-vaxxers, but there are also legions of young people awash in a sea of misinformation that don't have the education to sift fact from bullshit. Trusted brokers are key to reaching these people. It's practically an axiom of advertising as well. That's why influencers exist.
Really, Democrats are still reeling from the decline of organized labor in the midwest and the disappearance of the populist wing of the party that was rooted in family farms in the plains states. That infrastructure gave Democrats roots in those communities that have long since frayed or dissapeared. Anybody trying to effect political change should keep the above in mind, though. It's really, really, important.
Or, perhaps more likely, that the Democrats know doing popular things will piss off their Wall Street friends so they find any excuse they can to avoid doing popular things.
Sadly, I think we can move this one out of the realm of speculation when the New York Times will deliver a description of the influence of corporate donors on the Democratic agenda for free to your inbox as an act of Vox style explainer journalism:
Unpopulism
The first reason is classic interest-group politics: Well-financed, well-organized lobbying groups strongly oppose some of the bill’s major provisions.
Most Americans favor lower drug prices, but there is no powerful grass-roots group devoted to the issue. And there is a major lobbying group on the other side — PhRMA, which represents the drug industry. It has helped persuade a few Democrats to oppose a reduction in drug prices, as our colleague Margot Sanger-Katz has explained.
There is part of your answer to David Shor's question as to why Democrats won't rally behind the super popular proposal his polling found. It doesn't have anything to do with Twitter activists or race obsessed partisan donors (as opposed to the bipartisan donors who lobby on behalf of corporate interests).
Then there is the sad fate of the Democrats Paid Leave plan in the house.It's a really sad and sordid tale that illustrates the influence of corporate donors on even progressive policies. Any economist would recognize classic rent seeking behavior. You don't have to be a Jacobin leftist to see it.
posted by eagles123 at 9:19 PM on October 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
A lot of good up there. I especially liked this part:
The conflicted voters in the middle who toggle between the two parties — and thus the voters who determine elections — are not “moderate.” They are low-information voters who are not paying attention (something Shor sometimes concedes). More than that, they often quickly bounce between progressive and reactionary views of the world (but certainly do NOT hold nuanced, considered, centrist views). They are “conflicted,” in the sense that they can be pulled in very different and possibly extreme directions. It makes no sense to advise Democrats to adopt ideologically moderate policies to appeal to people who are not, in fact, ideologically moderate.
I mean, Joe Rogan anyone (or at least until the pandemic made him go full libertarian alt right, maybe?) ?
And then:
Conflicted voters will not decide whether to support one or the other party by evaluating the relative efficacy of, say, high taxes on corporations to fund government programs, or instead the plausibility of the Laffer curve, low taxes, and trickle-down economics. They will instead use identity issues as a proxy for whom to trust.
This is so fucking true, and not just in politics. We are seeing this right now in public health with the vaccines. Yes, there are ideologically motivated anti-vaxxers, but there are also legions of young people awash in a sea of misinformation that don't have the education to sift fact from bullshit. Trusted brokers are key to reaching these people. It's practically an axiom of advertising as well. That's why influencers exist.
Really, Democrats are still reeling from the decline of organized labor in the midwest and the disappearance of the populist wing of the party that was rooted in family farms in the plains states. That infrastructure gave Democrats roots in those communities that have long since frayed or dissapeared. Anybody trying to effect political change should keep the above in mind, though. It's really, really, important.
Or, perhaps more likely, that the Democrats know doing popular things will piss off their Wall Street friends so they find any excuse they can to avoid doing popular things.
Sadly, I think we can move this one out of the realm of speculation when the New York Times will deliver a description of the influence of corporate donors on the Democratic agenda for free to your inbox as an act of Vox style explainer journalism:
Unpopulism
The first reason is classic interest-group politics: Well-financed, well-organized lobbying groups strongly oppose some of the bill’s major provisions.
Most Americans favor lower drug prices, but there is no powerful grass-roots group devoted to the issue. And there is a major lobbying group on the other side — PhRMA, which represents the drug industry. It has helped persuade a few Democrats to oppose a reduction in drug prices, as our colleague Margot Sanger-Katz has explained.
There is part of your answer to David Shor's question as to why Democrats won't rally behind the super popular proposal his polling found. It doesn't have anything to do with Twitter activists or race obsessed partisan donors (as opposed to the bipartisan donors who lobby on behalf of corporate interests).
Then there is the sad fate of the Democrats Paid Leave plan in the house.It's a really sad and sordid tale that illustrates the influence of corporate donors on even progressive policies. Any economist would recognize classic rent seeking behavior. You don't have to be a Jacobin leftist to see it.
posted by eagles123 at 9:19 PM on October 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
sotonohito: I'm not trying to strawman or put your words in a bad light, so I'd like to ask for clarification.
Thanks for putting it that way - I appreciate your taking the time to engage with someone who you disagree with.
Are you saying that I'm right that the big takeaway from these articles is that, properly, AOC et al should STFU because their mere existence is a threat to the electoral survival of the Democratic party?
I actually think that AOC, as a national figure for the Democrats, should seriously consider running for President in 2028. That includes considering what it would take to win, including how to win over cross-pressured non-college voters (who are inclined to support the Democrats on health care and oppose them on immigration, for example). I wouldn't characterize this as "shutting up," more as thinking seriously about how to appeal to the median voter. In today's media environment, where local news sources are withering and everyone gets their news from national sources, there no longer seems to be a distinction between local and national political contests.
And then I also think that centrist Democrats like Abigail Spanberger, who are already aligned with the median voter but who don't have AOC's national profile, should be attempting to raise their profile.
posted by russilwvong at 3:36 PM on October 15, 2021
Thanks for putting it that way - I appreciate your taking the time to engage with someone who you disagree with.
Are you saying that I'm right that the big takeaway from these articles is that, properly, AOC et al should STFU because their mere existence is a threat to the electoral survival of the Democratic party?
I actually think that AOC, as a national figure for the Democrats, should seriously consider running for President in 2028. That includes considering what it would take to win, including how to win over cross-pressured non-college voters (who are inclined to support the Democrats on health care and oppose them on immigration, for example). I wouldn't characterize this as "shutting up," more as thinking seriously about how to appeal to the median voter. In today's media environment, where local news sources are withering and everyone gets their news from national sources, there no longer seems to be a distinction between local and national political contests.
And then I also think that centrist Democrats like Abigail Spanberger, who are already aligned with the median voter but who don't have AOC's national profile, should be attempting to raise their profile.
posted by russilwvong at 3:36 PM on October 15, 2021
India Walton, democratic socialist candidate for mayor of Buffalo, says "I'm not that woke " and the Left must do a better job relating to working-class people. (Full New York magazine article.)
posted by PhineasGage at 4:32 PM on October 23, 2021
posted by PhineasGage at 4:32 PM on October 23, 2021
That's a great analogy:
Walton invoked her experience as a nurse. Medical professionals have language they use with each other, but that is not how they might talk to a patient. "We have industry language and we have lay language. A lot of language that we use in progressive circles is industry language and we have to begin using more lay language and being a lot more patient with people when they don't understand it."Another example I came across recently, from former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna:
I grew up in the Hammer, in Hamilton, and had a pretty middle-class existence. But one thing about Hamilton, you can't be fancy. And I think that's something that I hopefully brought with me to politics. ...posted by russilwvong at 2:29 PM on October 24, 2021
Anyone in cabinet or probably anyone in the House knows this - I would say often, "Yeah, this is really interesting, but no one in the Hammer will know what you're talking about." And it's a good reminder in politics to be about people, to not be fancy.
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It might be interesting to unfold why some racists voted for Obama. My gut knows why, but I wouldn't be able to explain it at an academic level.
posted by mumimor at 2:20 PM on October 1, 2021 [9 favorites]