I suspect you underestimate the importance of the unpopularity of the cultural issues. Most people don't vote based on policies, they vote on the picture each party paints of their vision of the future. And the picture the progressive paint is uniformly brutal.
On race, we've moved from Obama's "there is no white America or Black America, only the United States of America" to today, where every element in the powerset of identities has its own unique story of oppression. You can't read a news story in the times without a description of how much worse women of color, and especially women of color in the LGBT community are affected by that news.
We've seen various progressive Boards of Education, including in small states like California and unimportant purple states like Virginia, propose removing accelerated math classes in the name of equity, not apparently recognizing how damaging this is to the best students, and how patronizing it is to minorities of all flavors. At the same time, competitive public schools in NYC are moving towards lotteries instead of competitive exams.
We're continually lectured about cultural appropriation, without any apparent recognition of how much more interesting cultural mixing makes American culture compared to the rest of the world's.
We frequently talk about reparations, without any apparent recognition about how that will inevitably lead to a victimization olympics, comparing the plight of people whose grandparents lived through Jim Crow, with those whose parents were coal miners, with those who immigrated here as refugees with nothing at all. How do we compare the burdens of a great grandchild of a Chinese immigrant who labored on the railroad with those of an immigrant from the Cayman Islands?
Every large company, including my own, has its employees learn about white supremacy in corporate America today. This is even true at my Gang of Four tech company with an Indian immigrant CEO, an odd result for an effective white supremacist system.
And we pretend that there's no difference between being concerned about over-medicalizing a lower school student who expresses some non-stereotypical gender behaviors, and wanting to abolish gay marriage. One can be concerned about the effect of puberty blockers on children without being a bigot -- national health departments in France, Norway, a major children's hospital in Sweden are all changing their views on the use of puberty blockers.
Our vision of America is one of battles for resources between every possible subset of Americans. It's a vision where any discussion of any progressive overreach leads to being called a bigot. And as a result, I suspect we're going to get crushed electorally in the next few elections.
Well said. I can only hope the absolute refusal to recognize or account for any nuance in any given situation is the death of this obnoxiousness far too generously passes for an ideology.
> I suspect you underestimate the importance of the unpopularity of the cultural issues. Most people don't vote based on policies, they vote on the picture each party paints
...these claims are quantitative. Can I see an actual range of numbers for a specific scenario? Suppose the Democrats adjust their platform tomorrow to
• declare that there's no white America or black America, only the United States of America;
• oppose removing accelerated math classes;
• give a thumbs up to cultural appropriation;
• give a thumbs down to reparations;
• strip out any references to white supremacy;
• express "concern" about puberty blockers; and
• not call anyone a bigot
and (somehow) bring every elected Democrat into compliance with that platform. How many percentage points of swing should I expect that to win Democrats in, say, the 2024 presidential election? Or are we talking basis points? Put a big error bar on the number if you like, it'd just be good to get a sketch of the underlying calculations here. Otherwise the list comes across as a mere grab bag of personal grievances.
Of course you can't get those calculations, certainly not from me. This isn't my day job.
But I will point out that in 2008 and 2012, someone actually did run for President, and agreed with most of those statements (ignoring puberty blockers, which weren't an issue back then). IIRC, he won.
As for Obama in 2008 and 2012: the main factor playing into his win in 2008 was surely the Great Recession rather than e.g. opposition to reparations, and in 2012 I'd say it was incumbent advantage. It's also odd to narrow the focus from Democrats/progressives in general to one presidential candidate.
Not sure why you say "Of course" — this isn't my day job either but I can still show my calculations! I broke the question into bite-size pieces. What impact would I expect each platform change to make?
• Declaring there's no white America or black America, only the US of A: nice rhetoric but I'd expect negligible overall impact on partisans and abstainers. Might flip a tiny fraction of non-partisans. 10% of non-partisans seems too much, maybe 1%? And supposing true non-partisans are ~ 10% of voters, this might win Democrats ~ 0.1% of votes.
• Accelerated math classes are a boutique concern, I don't see most voters giving a real shit. The share of parents with budding math geeks as kids is small, and for all I know they'd be canceled out entirely by parents pissed off by geeks getting special treatment. I expect basically zero net effect from this.
• Thumbs up to cultural appropriation is pretty vague. So vague that taken literally it's not clear it'd influence many voters, or attract more voters than it would repel, so I'd call it a probable wash. Making this more specific by declaring that, say, cultural mixing enriches American culture might help — but it's plausible it'd raise immigration's salience and trigger xenophobic backlash. Again I'd guess about zero net effect.
• Thumbs down to reparations could get fleeting positive comment from social conservatives, but it's unclear it'd make many vote D, and some pro-reparations voters would be pissed off. I suspect the dominant effect might actually be a net swing AWAY from Democrats, due to lower-partisanship, staunchly pro-reparations black voters. Still, the net effect would likely be small. About 13% of eligible voters are black, of whom ~ 20% might be low in partisanship, and perhaps ~ 10% care enough about reparations to flip away from Ds based on it. Maybe ~ 0.1% after allowing for offsetting anti-reparations voters.
• Stripping out references to white supremacy probably wouldn't do much because it's the ABSENCE of a talking point. Few voters would notice the disappearance of such a specific talking point. I guess zero again.
• Expressing "concern" about puberty blockers is liable to influence basically just two blocs: fixated transphobes, and trans people and their allies. Both are small groups who'd pull in opposite directions. Net effect plausibly ~ 0.
• Not calling anyone a bigot. Understood broadly (i.e. not even calling people "racist" or "deplorable" or whatever) this would probably come across as weird tap-dancing around calling people out? If Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, etc. stopped calling anyone a bigot, I think R partisans would write it off as cynical tongue-biting, D partisans would be mildly antagonized by D politicians playing coy like that, and a minuscule handful of swing voters might actually notice and approve of the change. This could go either way; I call it basically zero again.
Adding it all up I get a net swing to Democrats of nil, with an error bar of something like 0.2 percentage points. I wouldn't bet my life on those numbers, but they're specific enough to be interrogated sensibly.
"Our vision of America is one of battles for resources between every possible subset of Americans. "
The other points are really just exemplars of that statement. You're right that changing any one position isn't going to change anything. Our whole vision of racial essentialism is the problem.
In that case, I don't think the main point is an accurate characterization of cultural progressives in general. Envisioning a country as "battles for resources between every possible subset" of denizens sounds more like a right-libertarian ultra-capitalist's vision of omnipresent dog-eat-dog competition. And such a vision isn't a vision of "racial essentialism" — racial essentialism, after all, prioritizes only those subsets of Americans defined in RACIAL terms, not subsets and divisions in general.
Do you think we have eliminated racism in America? It's important to stand for what is right, not always what is politically expedient.
It's important for Progressives to paint an optimistic vision of the future to be successful. Especially after a generation of economic growth generating gains almost entirely for the upper 20%, if not the upper 0.1%. Getting distracted from economic issues is a bad idea for anyone who wants to succeed politically in the United States.
I'm not sure what your point is. Has racism been *eliminated*? No, not here, not anywhere, not likely any time soon.
But this country incomparably less racist than it was 50 years ago. Your race, religion and sexual orientation limits the possible trajectories of your life much, much less than it did in 1960.
You're right, of course, that since the late '90s, income growth has all but stopped for a large chunk of the country, unless you're in the top 1-5%. I suspect that's due to globalization pitting US labor against the rest of the world, while US capital still gets a good return.
By most measures, the economic quality of life of Blacks has not moved much since the death of MLK. Home ownership, median wealth, family income are all about the same, especially compared to society as a whole. Incarceration rates and the percentage born out of wedlock are higher, though incarceration has come down from the highs in the 90s.
High school and college graduation rates are higher though. Maybe you mean that the ceiling is much higher than it used to be. We had a Black President right? But for the vast majority of Black citizens, not much has changed in 50 years.
What is not clear is how pretending that a white girl wearing cornrows or dreadlocks is a crime against humanity on par with slavery or the Holocaust will actually help Black people victims of institutional racism/institutional laziness.
you can see that median Black household income has moved from 60% of the US median household income in 1967 to about 69% today. I wouldn't call that "about the same," but it isn't great, either, especially considering that it's across 50+ years.
Some of that difference is due to the vast increase in single parent households in the Black community from 1970 to 2000. I'm still looking for the right figures for that, but I suspect it is significant.
The bottom 50% of whites and the bottom 50% of blacks have not moved much at all since the 60s. The issue we have is economic, not racial. Unfortunately, Democrats make political hay by confusing class with race.
While trying to refine my stats below, trying to take into effect the difference in workers per household, I realized that I really just wanted to compare the change in median worker income. Of course, the census bureau has all this:
Cut to the chase: in 1967, median Black income was 57% of median US income.
In 2020, median Black income was 74% of median US income.
So, the gap dropped 17 percentage points, going from 43% down to 26%. That's a significant improvement on Black economic quality of life.
Now, you can view other stats: household income will look worse because the number of Black households headed by a single parent grew significantly during this period, and a household with only one wage earner will be poorer.
Wealth, of course, takes a couple of generations to accumulate, so looking at wealth is a good way to hide the impact of more recent changes.
But I have to disagree with the statement that the financial position of Blacks hasn't improved since MLK.
I mean sure, you are right. But so what? Far more Black families live in poverty. Generational wealth has not increased (Black families still have 1/10 the wealth of White families), etc.
17% in 50 years is not nothing but it is very little. It will take another 70 to get to parity at this rate?
A big part of this is no doubt all the out of wedlock births and the single parent households. But again, so what? Black men are far more likely to be in jail or with felony records: about 1/3 of all Black men under 35 are one or the other. So there is a shortage of men, at least in part due to the system racism in the criminal justice system. Blacks are more likely to be policed, more likely to be stopped when policed, more likely to be arrested when stopped, more likely to be charged when arrested, more likely to be convicted when charged and more likely to be sentenced to longer prison terms. For the same crimes. So there is that.
But on the other hand I follow Glenn Loury's substack and he persuasively argues that the Black community is ultimately going to have to come to its own rescue, and that efforts, even by well meaning Whites, are not going to fix the problems Black people in general face.
They can both be true at the same time. I am not Black and cannot possibly solve Black problems. But I can try and help the police (and all the other parts of the system) that are biased to do better.
I wasn't trying to make a stronger claim other than that the economic situation of Black Americans *has* improved significantly since the late '60s.
If you look at it on a log scale, that 17% is essentially half the gap, so I'd guess another 50 years to parity at the same rate. Now, I expect there are some non-linearities that will cause the gap to close faster, but I'm 65, so you'll have to let me know via ouija board.
That's my hope, too. The only thing that makes me think I could be too pessimistic is that the Republicans seem to be determined to make abortion at any stage, for any reason, a crime.
And if they make progress along that path, suburbanites might rebel.
Well, in hindsight I got the election results wrong, because of the Dobbs decision. Dobbs is the Right's answer to the question "How stupid can we be? How about declaring that women count as nothing but vessels for growing babies, with no right to even medical care to save their lives?"
I agree with your last paragraph, but I don't think that a lot of the stuff before it really matters. Dems got a big opportunity to try progressive fiscal policy and pass an infrastructure bill after decades of austerity. There was inflation because of decades of built-up underinvestment in fixed capital and useful production in the United States, with a big, BIG component being the energy austerity we've suffered from the government being totally captive to oil companies.
As a result of the underinvestment in the base, you get a superstructure of "progressive" politics that consists of finding reasons to take from one social group and redistribute to another (but never actually along the lines of class!). Again, this is the ideological superstructure people associate with high inflation, a possible recession, and high crime, so oh well, it gets its ass kicked in midterm elections.
The question is whether progressives want to continue focusing on superstructural bullshit or actually address the issue in the base: investing to increase what American workers can produce for American consumers.
What seems clear to me is that returns on capital have come at the expense of most workers. The top 5-10% perhaps are seeing good salary increases, often linked to stock grants in their companies. But significant stock compensation isn't available to most employees. Some of this is due to manufacturing moving off shore, and some is due to automation. Just look at the car factory in the film Koyaanisqaatsi from the '70s and compare it with scenes of a car factory today, with robots doing most of the work.
To paraphrase Willie Sutton, yet again, you're going to have to move money from those who have it to those who don't. This probably involves increasing the minimum wage for large companies, increased corporate taxes, increased personal taxes on the very rich, and increased social services, such as increasing subsidies for health insurance (which is unaffordable to those making above 400% FPL).
You should consider popularism. "Dealing with matters of substance," which you rightly value, requires winning elections. Popularism the way Yglesias frames it doesn't require you to change your opinions about which policies are good on the merits. Only to consider the trade-offs between merit vs. popularity and to prioritize.
"Nor have I ever been a popularist; I think Democrats should use rhetoric that appeals to people (including patriotic rhetoric), but on matters of substance, doing the right thing is more important than winning elections."
There is no "doing", it's only shouting into the wind if you don't have the votes.
I remember how gay marriage was a non-starter for a generation until suddenly it wasn't. The Civil Rights movement took even longer. Sometimes it takes a while to convince people.
In the longer run I agree with you, but I suspect all the social wedge issues being used to divide us will seem like nothing in a generation.
Remember that Obama ran on a platform opposing gay marriage, only to nominate the judges who made it legal.
You don’t convince people by immediately taking the most radical position and calling anyone who disagrees a bigot.
You start with decriminalization of sodomy.
Then you move on to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Then you push for civil unions.
Then for gay marriage.
And then for antidiscrimination.
If you jump all the way to antidiscrimination, you just lose. Convincing people requires meeting them where they are and pulling them a few feet in the right direction. Try to pull them a mile and they’ll reject you.
Convincing people never means calling them a bigot or any other name. I agree with you there.
In my heart of hearts I hold many radical positions but when I talk to my mostly conservative family I smile and nod and don’t budge on what I believe. Facts work with some people but not most.
Changing minds is a multi-generational project. My kids are way ahead of me on most things.
When has political change happened without the votes? Social/cultural change leading to getting the votes/political change happens, but first you have you change the culture, not the politics.
Under the comment to which you replied are further comments from Jim #3 and me with examples that answer your question. And your second sentence is just a tautology!
There's some wiggle room in what "historically unusual or rare" means precisely but I don't think it's historically unusual or rare for, say, striking workers to win concessions.
I was not considering strikes as part of "not having the votes". I suppose you can, say the "fight for $15" is an example here, but often a strike is company specific and outside the paradigm I'm thinking of here. Not that you're wrong.
I meant instances where something societal (eg., a law) could not pass legislatively but gained a favorable judicial ruling, typically but in line with emerging public opinion. So Loving, Roe, Obergefell, as opposed to any enacted legislation.
I disagree because Noah's comparative advantage is policy analysis. I think he has a lot to add in terms of identifying important problems and evaluating policies that could help those problems, both because of his training as an economist and his long-term engagement with policy. I don't think he'd have much to say about what messages are or are not popular.
And I think it's important for there to be voices focusing on arguing about what the *right* thing to do is, even if politicians and political operatives ought to ignore them sometimes in order to win elections.
This is pretty much the path taken by the Labour party in the UK under "New Labour" (Blair, Mandelson et al). The only problem is that it amounts to treating voters with great condescention. Long term it leads to a loss of trust. Voters assess both the policies and the politicians. It's rare for voters to trust a politician to enact a policy they believe to be directly against that politician's instincts or opinions. The problem is compounded when voters see politicians seeming to defer to activists on twitter etc and infer their opinions from that.
"Peter Mandelson said to me, 'your preoccupation with the working-class vote is wrong. They've got nowhere else to go.'" — Peter Hain
"I didn’t listen, or have to listen, to anything on the left in — while I was working in — the Democratic Party, because the left had nowhere to go." — Lawrence O'Donnell
I don't see how, even if you were correct, that would show I'd misquoted Hain and O'Donnell. And you're not correct: under Corbyn Labour's membership expanded and it won more of the electorate in general elections, twice, than under Brown and Miliband.
I'd think of it less as a "reactionary moment" (and saying such marks one as a far leftist) and more as a Thermidor where sane center-leftists decide to try and reel in their "allies" who have been allowed to throw temper tantrums by promoting idiotic and unpopular views in the name of "allyship" since the Trump years.
This was a beautiful article. But the truth is democrats make it easy to be fatalists. Each time the Democratic party gains power, they manage to do very little with it. And most of that good is often rolled back by much more aggressive republican governments.
Because democrats explicitly want to change the status quo on a lot of things, they have to overcome a lot more inertia than the republican government will deal with. But the ways they fight against that inertia is tellingly disappointing to say the least.
I would like to see a little more 'dirty fighting', a little more 'aggression', heck, a little more populism if that is what is required. The simple truth is we are mostly monkeys with smartphones. Most of the electorate are not intellectuals cognizant with statistical modelling and logical errors. Most people simply want to feel safe, they want to feel prosperous, they want to feel patriotic, sometimes even at the expense of actually being these things.
When people think of dictatorships, they think of massive instruments of rigid oppression. And that is true but most of the time, that always comes later. The other, more concealed, truth is the dictators often enjoy massive support to get there. They tell simple stories. They initially do the things people actually want done. Most people prefer prosperity to freedom.
And the democratic party has to come to terms with some of that and take that into account. The policies don't need to change. They are sound, sensible policies. But the approach needs to change. The left must become the party of the working people again. The ongoing unionization attempts and strikes represent an excellent chance to begin.
Although I must confess that I am a traveler of the Right, I think the problem for Democrats (as it is for Republicans) is that power is quite dissipated in the Federal system of the USA. To truly force through an agenda you need a supermajority in the House and Senate as well as the Presidency. You still have to contend with the court system and hope that state governments don’t nullify your agenda.
You cannot fault Democrats too much. You also need to consider that “Democrat” is a loose definition for a very broad coalition. Joe Manchin is a Democrat but not in the same way as Chesa.
Your point is valid. The problem is it applies to the republicans as well and it hasn't stopped them from largely enacting the policies they want even when they are barely reasonable.
If democrats need a super majority to have a meaningful impact, then we can as well conclude that america simply has two right-wing parties, because the chances of that happening are very slim.
That is true but I think where Republicans have an advantage is the inertia of the system. Generally, the Right tries to preserve the status quo versus enacting large scale changes—this is easier to do. I would also say that to many on the Right, Republican policies are reasonable.
Also, there are no left wing Republicans but there are conservative Democrats. I think most of the GOP’s agenda that gets enacted has partial support from conservative Dems.
The other thing I would say is that America really has three parties—a collection of center left and center right politicians who do most of the actual effective governing and then two extreme parties, one far left and the other far right which generate much of the toxic partisanship we have seen in recent years.
America's far left pretty much only exists on twitter threads and YouTube videos. They don't have any significant impact. America has never had any substantial far left position. The closest were probably the Roosevelts and it took the gilded age and the great depression to get them into power.
The far right, on the other hand, are well organized. They number in millions, and they are very active politically.
Most of the time, the centre is the best place to be. Because both the far right and the far left want some very extreme things. However, the times we are living in do not qualify as most of the time. Wealth inequality is skyrocketing, fraud and deception are institutionalized, crime rates are rising, the healthcare system has managed to become even more broken, America's infrastructure needs substantial repair, etc.
This is just not a good time to be centrist. It's a good time to be firmly leftist until some of those problems are fixed.
The times should dictate the politics, not the other way around.
LBJ is a funny one. He's the complete opposite of Ronald Reagan. He was a great president but with bad optics in contrast to Reagan who was a bad president with great optics.
He could have been among the very best though. There is an intriguing panoply of reasons, most notably contained in Robert Caro's biography, behind his failures to do so.
Yes...the major problem is that the US, as the atomized and individualistic society it is, will always revert to the egoistical "base", as opposed to more communitarian countries, where this might lead to a revolution (usually left-wing)...
Yes, Agree. Here in Western Europe it is the left who is quite mainstream though, and I think their positions on most issues (e.g. Nuclear Power, GMOS, Climate Change mitigation, immigration and taxation) is farther from the "utilitarian centre" than is that of the right-wing parties in Europe...in the US and Canada, I feel it's the opposite, with the GOP and Cons being further way from the centre...
The same factors that make it difficult for Democrats the change things, also make it difficult for Republicans to change things back afterwards.
Which is something that Republicans collectively realized ~10 years ago, and led them to stop compromising and fight tooth-and-nail to prevent any 'progress'.
I agree. But I don't see the same amount of fight, I don't see the same quality of strategy, I don't see the same effort put into grassroots participation.
If the republicans push the country, say, five metres in the direction they want it to go, the democrats come in and then pull the country back five inches. That's the essence of the problem for the left.
I look at Chesa Boudin's attitude to hate crimes or Harvard administrators claiming Asian have a bad personality so should be discriminated against in admissions. I strikes me that the simplest explanation is that a lot of progressives have a burning hatred of Asians.
The idea that there is some ideological point outside of bigotry seems a less elegant explanation.
It's often barely concealed dislike of south and east asians from upper middle class white ex-hippies. Many of my Indian friends tell me stories about shit they deal with that you wouldn't believe.
I am Indian and this is very true. From being told to denounce Modi, to listening to woke idiots explain how their knowledge of Indian politics was greater than mine (they would sooner die than tell black people they knew what it was like to be black) and hearing that it's OK that Asians are discriminated against in college admissions and DEI (it's OK to disadvantage us for leftist racial patronage), what you described is palpable. Economically successful Asians are considered "white adjacent" and feel the wrath of the loony left because they don't feel like taking a back seat to the designated victims. I hear similar from my Chinese friends as well.
unbelievable?! I mean, I'm white and I really don't get this weirdly selective bigotry.
Discrimination in admissions would be one thing (it's naked self interest as far as white educated/liberal parents are concerned) but blaming Indians/Asians for not having been victimized enough?!? WTF.
Don't mention the tiger mom. Just far too unwilling to fit the role of victim. Also recent African Anerican immigrants, many of whom came to fulfil the American dream and do. Further longer African Americans who escape the ghetto to middle class.
Interesting...could it be similar to the dislike of Eastern Europeans by many left-wingers in the Western EU? After all, many Eastern Europeans are similar in many way to Asian-Americans: hard-working, relatively conservative on both social and economic issues, value education highly, capitalistic etc.?
I disagree, in western europe the dislike of easterners is just as newcomers with a different culture and sometimes accepting lower pay.
I have never seen anyone want then blocked from education or ignore/celebrate crime against them. The dislike of Asians seems to apply just as much to 3rd generation immigrants who speak perfect English and have always lived in San Francisco or NY.
This is honestly a huge problem for the Democrats/left-of-center, and it's turning off not just Asian-Americans but also working class Hispanics. A big problem is that those folks with the means and motivation to work unpaid/lowly paid in Dem/left-of-center NGOs/orgs tend to have the demographics of a good (but not top-tier-enough to reflect the US) liberal arts college: well-educated, generally well-off, wokists/progressive/leftist uber-lefty on social issues, and generally quite white.
While the practical part of me hopes that you are right, Noah, there's another part that has grown completely disillusioned with the progressive Left. Appalled, in fact. Perhaps a good ass kicking come the mid-terms will help stir something in the seat of memory, and remind Dems of what they used to stand for until just a few short years ago. Until that day dawns, I'm done. If enough "reactionaries" feel the same, perhaps a "silent majority" can take back control. I'm not hopeful. I'm not a single-issue voter, or concerned with the purity of my beliefs, or sympathetic with today's Right. But I'll not walk another step in the direction the Maoist Left would lead us. Basta!
I don't think the defeat in the midterm will necessarily change anything in terms of the wokes. They're just on Twitter. They're not elected officials and will lose nothing in the defeat. Indeed, they will gain something. Trump's return as the perfect villain.
What we may hope for is indeed elected Dems/politicians deciding that they need to be way more forceful on the topic and beat the wokes back in order to win. Though Matt Yglesias isn't very optimist b/c he says the wokes are all the unpaid interns and lefty think tanks and NGO workers who power the machine.
It's a huge problem for the Democrats/left of center. Basically, the folks with the means and motivation to work unpaid/lowly paid in positions of influence are almost all socially leftist wokists who are out of step (in so many ways) with the working class moderates who have the numbers and thus hold the balance of power at the ballot box (and also comprise a majority of even Democrats).
A big problem I have with defund: it fully participates in the childishly simplistic Norquistisa falsehood:
If an institution is corrupt and/or incompetent, the solution is the eviscerate its funding. Simple. Twirl finger in cheek.
When I see my fellow liberals embracing pernicious right-wing theories and talking points (not even realizing that they're doing so), I get very depressed.
(Don't even get me started on lefties defending, justifying, even embracing Putin's imperialistic military attack/invasion and the wacko Nazi storyline that goes with it, because America is and has been violently imperialistic, militarily and commercially.)
SF Progs have lost 2 recall elections + got their butt kicked in the Haney/Campos race. Maybe this time they’ll get the message that lecturing the 60+% of voters in very blue SF about how Republican they are for throwing out a DA who thinks DA stands for “Defense Attorney” isn’t going to win elections.
Or better, nah, let ‘em keep foot-gunning themselves
Progressives have an 8-3 advantage on the BoS. I am a YIMBY and like the way the wind is blowing but we have a long time before you can claim that Moderates and Conservatives are the dominant political force.
True. While progress feels good, nobody should be hanging "mission accomplished" banners. Next we vote out Preston, Peskin, and similar people who are the enablers of most of this.
This captures where I'm at too, for sure. Except I'm a little more peeved about some aspects of the culture stuff, because I think important freedoms are at stake. Like I buy the line that a senator saying to FB and Twitter "Regulate what your users say in the way we want or we'll come after you on antitrust" is a serious First Amendment violation.
> The DA's office said that Tanner's [11 year old] son allegedly swung a plastic bat at Le several times. Additionally, the DA's office said Tanner intervened and made verbal threats against Le while holding a Snapple bottle, however the release noted that "photographs taken by police at the scene do not depict any physical injuries to Mr. Lê."
Although I'm not sure what to make of the defendant ultimately making a plea deal to a battery charge. Anyway, it seems that your quote is repeating claims that are at very least misleading, if not outright false. I'd support your summary here if it was actually true, but it does seem to me that a smear campaign was at least partly involved in Boudin's downfall.
Thanks for sticking to your principles despite criticism, which is another huge problem, lack of character and willful blindness due to partisanship. Truly the biggest problem we have now is partisanship. I think people are scared so they back into their tribal corners and turn their brains off.
Concerning demand-shock vs supply-chain problems as an inflation explanation, I have noticed in recent commentary on the point that EU inflation is quite high now as well, notwithstanding their relatively modest Covid stimulus compared to the US. So, it isn’t the same world now as it was at the time of your January 19 post to which you link in the above.
Is the hypothesis that EU inflation is solely the result of the fuel-price and Ukraine shocks? Clearly the fuel-price shock is affecting the US; I don’t know about the effect of the Russian wheat blockade in the US. This suggests to me at least that it is more difficult to tease out root causes of the current inflation than you seem to suggest.
Also, didn’t inflation take off in early 21, before the last Biden stimulus could have been the most significant driver?
Concerning demand shock and supply chain issues, I believe it was generally known in the 20-21 period that, on average, people were sitting on their Covid relief payments rather than spending them, which suggests that it was inevitable that they would start spending again once the immediate crisis passed or seemed to pass. The supply-side of the economy seems to have been woefully unprepared for this development. Why? And how is this the fault of the stimulus? The “just in time” supply chain is now more of a “not in time” supply chain.
Concerning your “center-left good, progressive left bad” analysis, what center-left priorities have been enacted under the current administration, or even introduced by leaders of the Democratic caucus? Not many. Where have the police actually been defunded?
The conclusion I would draw from your political analysis is that the decisive slice of the electorate is constantly looking for some reason, any reason at all, to vote R rather than D, but there seems to be little evidence of voters who are put off by the extremism on the right. In other words, as has often been commented, swing voters are just squishy Republicans, not really gettable at all except under extraordinary circumstances. It isn’t even necessary for Republicans to have any kind of policy platform at all, as long as these voters are unhappy with the Democrats for one reason or another.
So, I guess the right can do no wrong, and the left can do no right.
Great post. The far Left’s rhetoric is approaching the event horizon of Doom. Post Covid social media is needlessly fatalistic and punitive. If you bring up even a remotely centrist POV (oftentimes what used to be considered Liberal), you will be flamed or excommunicated from your in-group; it’s an old time religion. It seems any parameter, rule, social contract, or boundary is right wing and must be replaced. No wonder we are all on edge--positivity has been replaced by online ideological clout chasing.
Further, my best friend is my suburb’s most popular pediatrician and he recently stated that mental health visits are now his and other’s #1 appointment. Teens preferring social media over spending time with friends in person are starting to forget emotional regulation skills and find it difficult to figure out how to “be” in real life with all of its normal awkwardness. This further exacerbates the problem. (This brings to mind Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and The Sun, but I digress...)
Compromising and working together seems old fashioned. When we can’t even agree on basic social parameters we lose votes.
(Don’t get me started on the condition of the Far Right.)
Yeah, I agree...main problem in terms of politics seems to be that in the US and Canada, FPTP discourages working together" across parties, so it's basically a zero-sum competition...that's why I would like to think a good analogy in terms of politics is to compare US/Canadian politics to sports, while Northern EU politics is more like a (collaborative) jam session...
1. A lot of "reactionaries," like Yglesias, seem to be saying that progressives' strategies aren't conducive to Democrats winning elections. Wouldn't this type of discussion become *more* important after the midterms (if Dems lose) rather than *less*?
2. Another strand of "reactionary" thinking is that the new norms adopted by the left are ill-suited to the purpose of knowledge creation. Given that these new norms have been adopted across the board by such institutions, this remains a concern even if Republicans return to political power. What do you think of this?
I wonder if perhaps another all-style-no-substance issue is at play. It seems to me at least you've used phrases like "leftist screechings" somewhat frequently of late, which perhaps comes across as hippie bashing...
Sometimes it's just discovering one's boundaries as the issues develop greater resolution. And I'd estimate Noah's views are to the left of about 90% of the populace, so 10% are going to bear the same punch burden as the 90% to his right and feel targeted.
Indeed that's not the only thing of Noah's that might come across as bashing hippies. He's also
• alleged that "[the] American socialist worldview is just totally broken" in a post that started with Noah breathlessly clutching pearls about his overinterpretation of a snippet from a Noam Chomsky interview (https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-american-socialist-worldview);
The 10% of the population to his left may not like it, but Noah is correct in all of those things. DSA and the socialists movement more broadly is broken, a lot of the environmental groups have lost the plot and are making large strategic mistakes (not to mention sometimes just being substantively wrong), and we do need a military build up to deal with rising authoritarian powers that want to remake the world order.
In my view Noah isn't correct about all of those things, and I'm confident that my disagreement is substantially factual, not a touchy-feely psychological matter of whether I "like it" — but in any event, whatever one thinks of the issues themselves, there's patent hippie-bashing in Noah's back catalog.
I suspect you underestimate the importance of the unpopularity of the cultural issues. Most people don't vote based on policies, they vote on the picture each party paints of their vision of the future. And the picture the progressive paint is uniformly brutal.
On race, we've moved from Obama's "there is no white America or Black America, only the United States of America" to today, where every element in the powerset of identities has its own unique story of oppression. You can't read a news story in the times without a description of how much worse women of color, and especially women of color in the LGBT community are affected by that news.
We've seen various progressive Boards of Education, including in small states like California and unimportant purple states like Virginia, propose removing accelerated math classes in the name of equity, not apparently recognizing how damaging this is to the best students, and how patronizing it is to minorities of all flavors. At the same time, competitive public schools in NYC are moving towards lotteries instead of competitive exams.
We're continually lectured about cultural appropriation, without any apparent recognition of how much more interesting cultural mixing makes American culture compared to the rest of the world's.
We frequently talk about reparations, without any apparent recognition about how that will inevitably lead to a victimization olympics, comparing the plight of people whose grandparents lived through Jim Crow, with those whose parents were coal miners, with those who immigrated here as refugees with nothing at all. How do we compare the burdens of a great grandchild of a Chinese immigrant who labored on the railroad with those of an immigrant from the Cayman Islands?
Every large company, including my own, has its employees learn about white supremacy in corporate America today. This is even true at my Gang of Four tech company with an Indian immigrant CEO, an odd result for an effective white supremacist system.
And we pretend that there's no difference between being concerned about over-medicalizing a lower school student who expresses some non-stereotypical gender behaviors, and wanting to abolish gay marriage. One can be concerned about the effect of puberty blockers on children without being a bigot -- national health departments in France, Norway, a major children's hospital in Sweden are all changing their views on the use of puberty blockers.
Our vision of America is one of battles for resources between every possible subset of Americans. It's a vision where any discussion of any progressive overreach leads to being called a bigot. And as a result, I suspect we're going to get crushed electorally in the next few elections.
Well said. I can only hope the absolute refusal to recognize or account for any nuance in any given situation is the death of this obnoxiousness far too generously passes for an ideology.
To try to flesh out the headline point...
> I suspect you underestimate the importance of the unpopularity of the cultural issues. Most people don't vote based on policies, they vote on the picture each party paints
...these claims are quantitative. Can I see an actual range of numbers for a specific scenario? Suppose the Democrats adjust their platform tomorrow to
• declare that there's no white America or black America, only the United States of America;
• oppose removing accelerated math classes;
• give a thumbs up to cultural appropriation;
• give a thumbs down to reparations;
• strip out any references to white supremacy;
• express "concern" about puberty blockers; and
• not call anyone a bigot
and (somehow) bring every elected Democrat into compliance with that platform. How many percentage points of swing should I expect that to win Democrats in, say, the 2024 presidential election? Or are we talking basis points? Put a big error bar on the number if you like, it'd just be good to get a sketch of the underlying calculations here. Otherwise the list comes across as a mere grab bag of personal grievances.
Of course you can't get those calculations, certainly not from me. This isn't my day job.
But I will point out that in 2008 and 2012, someone actually did run for President, and agreed with most of those statements (ignoring puberty blockers, which weren't an issue back then). IIRC, he won.
As for Obama in 2008 and 2012: the main factor playing into his win in 2008 was surely the Great Recession rather than e.g. opposition to reparations, and in 2012 I'd say it was incumbent advantage. It's also odd to narrow the focus from Democrats/progressives in general to one presidential candidate.
Not sure why you say "Of course" — this isn't my day job either but I can still show my calculations! I broke the question into bite-size pieces. What impact would I expect each platform change to make?
• Declaring there's no white America or black America, only the US of A: nice rhetoric but I'd expect negligible overall impact on partisans and abstainers. Might flip a tiny fraction of non-partisans. 10% of non-partisans seems too much, maybe 1%? And supposing true non-partisans are ~ 10% of voters, this might win Democrats ~ 0.1% of votes.
• Accelerated math classes are a boutique concern, I don't see most voters giving a real shit. The share of parents with budding math geeks as kids is small, and for all I know they'd be canceled out entirely by parents pissed off by geeks getting special treatment. I expect basically zero net effect from this.
• Thumbs up to cultural appropriation is pretty vague. So vague that taken literally it's not clear it'd influence many voters, or attract more voters than it would repel, so I'd call it a probable wash. Making this more specific by declaring that, say, cultural mixing enriches American culture might help — but it's plausible it'd raise immigration's salience and trigger xenophobic backlash. Again I'd guess about zero net effect.
• Thumbs down to reparations could get fleeting positive comment from social conservatives, but it's unclear it'd make many vote D, and some pro-reparations voters would be pissed off. I suspect the dominant effect might actually be a net swing AWAY from Democrats, due to lower-partisanship, staunchly pro-reparations black voters. Still, the net effect would likely be small. About 13% of eligible voters are black, of whom ~ 20% might be low in partisanship, and perhaps ~ 10% care enough about reparations to flip away from Ds based on it. Maybe ~ 0.1% after allowing for offsetting anti-reparations voters.
• Stripping out references to white supremacy probably wouldn't do much because it's the ABSENCE of a talking point. Few voters would notice the disappearance of such a specific talking point. I guess zero again.
• Expressing "concern" about puberty blockers is liable to influence basically just two blocs: fixated transphobes, and trans people and their allies. Both are small groups who'd pull in opposite directions. Net effect plausibly ~ 0.
• Not calling anyone a bigot. Understood broadly (i.e. not even calling people "racist" or "deplorable" or whatever) this would probably come across as weird tap-dancing around calling people out? If Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, etc. stopped calling anyone a bigot, I think R partisans would write it off as cynical tongue-biting, D partisans would be mildly antagonized by D politicians playing coy like that, and a minuscule handful of swing voters might actually notice and approve of the change. This could go either way; I call it basically zero again.
Adding it all up I get a net swing to Democrats of nil, with an error bar of something like 0.2 percentage points. I wouldn't bet my life on those numbers, but they're specific enough to be interrogated sensibly.
My main point was really at the end of my post:
"Our vision of America is one of battles for resources between every possible subset of Americans. "
The other points are really just exemplars of that statement. You're right that changing any one position isn't going to change anything. Our whole vision of racial essentialism is the problem.
In that case, I don't think the main point is an accurate characterization of cultural progressives in general. Envisioning a country as "battles for resources between every possible subset" of denizens sounds more like a right-libertarian ultra-capitalist's vision of omnipresent dog-eat-dog competition. And such a vision isn't a vision of "racial essentialism" — racial essentialism, after all, prioritizes only those subsets of Americans defined in RACIAL terms, not subsets and divisions in general.
No impact.
That's about where I ended up: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-year-we-all-became-reactionaries/comment/7044591. Which surprised me! Before I worked out my guesstimates I thought I might end up with a tiny pro-Democrat swing.
Do you think we have eliminated racism in America? It's important to stand for what is right, not always what is politically expedient.
It's important for Progressives to paint an optimistic vision of the future to be successful. Especially after a generation of economic growth generating gains almost entirely for the upper 20%, if not the upper 0.1%. Getting distracted from economic issues is a bad idea for anyone who wants to succeed politically in the United States.
I'm not sure what your point is. Has racism been *eliminated*? No, not here, not anywhere, not likely any time soon.
But this country incomparably less racist than it was 50 years ago. Your race, religion and sexual orientation limits the possible trajectories of your life much, much less than it did in 1960.
You're right, of course, that since the late '90s, income growth has all but stopped for a large chunk of the country, unless you're in the top 1-5%. I suspect that's due to globalization pitting US labor against the rest of the world, while US capital still gets a good return.
By most measures, the economic quality of life of Blacks has not moved much since the death of MLK. Home ownership, median wealth, family income are all about the same, especially compared to society as a whole. Incarceration rates and the percentage born out of wedlock are higher, though incarceration has come down from the highs in the 90s.
High school and college graduation rates are higher though. Maybe you mean that the ceiling is much higher than it used to be. We had a Black President right? But for the vast majority of Black citizens, not much has changed in 50 years.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/08/the-black-white-wealth-gap-left-black-households-more-vulnerable/
What is not clear is how pretending that a white girl wearing cornrows or dreadlocks is a crime against humanity on par with slavery or the Holocaust will actually help Black people victims of institutional racism/institutional laziness.
Looking at
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1086359/median-household-income-race-us/
you can see that median Black household income has moved from 60% of the US median household income in 1967 to about 69% today. I wouldn't call that "about the same," but it isn't great, either, especially considering that it's across 50+ years.
Some of that difference is due to the vast increase in single parent households in the Black community from 1970 to 2000. I'm still looking for the right figures for that, but I suspect it is significant.
The bottom 50% of whites and the bottom 50% of blacks have not moved much at all since the 60s. The issue we have is economic, not racial. Unfortunately, Democrats make political hay by confusing class with race.
While trying to refine my stats below, trying to take into effect the difference in workers per household, I realized that I really just wanted to compare the change in median worker income. Of course, the census bureau has all this:
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-people.html
Cut to the chase: in 1967, median Black income was 57% of median US income.
In 2020, median Black income was 74% of median US income.
So, the gap dropped 17 percentage points, going from 43% down to 26%. That's a significant improvement on Black economic quality of life.
Now, you can view other stats: household income will look worse because the number of Black households headed by a single parent grew significantly during this period, and a household with only one wage earner will be poorer.
Wealth, of course, takes a couple of generations to accumulate, so looking at wealth is a good way to hide the impact of more recent changes.
But I have to disagree with the statement that the financial position of Blacks hasn't improved since MLK.
I mean sure, you are right. But so what? Far more Black families live in poverty. Generational wealth has not increased (Black families still have 1/10 the wealth of White families), etc.
17% in 50 years is not nothing but it is very little. It will take another 70 to get to parity at this rate?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/04/economic-divide-black-households/
A big part of this is no doubt all the out of wedlock births and the single parent households. But again, so what? Black men are far more likely to be in jail or with felony records: about 1/3 of all Black men under 35 are one or the other. So there is a shortage of men, at least in part due to the system racism in the criminal justice system. Blacks are more likely to be policed, more likely to be stopped when policed, more likely to be arrested when stopped, more likely to be charged when arrested, more likely to be convicted when charged and more likely to be sentenced to longer prison terms. For the same crimes. So there is that.
But on the other hand I follow Glenn Loury's substack and he persuasively argues that the Black community is ultimately going to have to come to its own rescue, and that efforts, even by well meaning Whites, are not going to fix the problems Black people in general face.
They can both be true at the same time. I am not Black and cannot possibly solve Black problems. But I can try and help the police (and all the other parts of the system) that are biased to do better.
I wasn't trying to make a stronger claim other than that the economic situation of Black Americans *has* improved significantly since the late '60s.
If you look at it on a log scale, that 17% is essentially half the gap, so I'd guess another 50 years to parity at the same rate. Now, I expect there are some non-linearities that will cause the gap to close faster, but I'm 65, so you'll have to let me know via ouija board.
Hopefully for one 1 midterm election, not several in a row. I'd prefer not to have Fascism in the US.
That's my hope, too. The only thing that makes me think I could be too pessimistic is that the Republicans seem to be determined to make abortion at any stage, for any reason, a crime.
And if they make progress along that path, suburbanites might rebel.
We really don't have a choice.
Well, in hindsight I got the election results wrong, because of the Dobbs decision. Dobbs is the Right's answer to the question "How stupid can we be? How about declaring that women count as nothing but vessels for growing babies, with no right to even medical care to save their lives?"
I agree with your last paragraph, but I don't think that a lot of the stuff before it really matters. Dems got a big opportunity to try progressive fiscal policy and pass an infrastructure bill after decades of austerity. There was inflation because of decades of built-up underinvestment in fixed capital and useful production in the United States, with a big, BIG component being the energy austerity we've suffered from the government being totally captive to oil companies.
As a result of the underinvestment in the base, you get a superstructure of "progressive" politics that consists of finding reasons to take from one social group and redistribute to another (but never actually along the lines of class!). Again, this is the ideological superstructure people associate with high inflation, a possible recession, and high crime, so oh well, it gets its ass kicked in midterm elections.
The question is whether progressives want to continue focusing on superstructural bullshit or actually address the issue in the base: investing to increase what American workers can produce for American consumers.
I don't believe that gas prices have driven inflation -- to do that, they'd have to be rising faster than inflation,and they just haven't been (see https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/ )
What seems clear to me is that returns on capital have come at the expense of most workers. The top 5-10% perhaps are seeing good salary increases, often linked to stock grants in their companies. But significant stock compensation isn't available to most employees. Some of this is due to manufacturing moving off shore, and some is due to automation. Just look at the car factory in the film Koyaanisqaatsi from the '70s and compare it with scenes of a car factory today, with robots doing most of the work.
To paraphrase Willie Sutton, yet again, you're going to have to move money from those who have it to those who don't. This probably involves increasing the minimum wage for large companies, increased corporate taxes, increased personal taxes on the very rich, and increased social services, such as increasing subsidies for health insurance (which is unaffordable to those making above 400% FPL).
Hi, are you on Twitter? I’d like to follow you.
No, I never post anything on twitter.
Thank you. Really well said.
You should consider popularism. "Dealing with matters of substance," which you rightly value, requires winning elections. Popularism the way Yglesias frames it doesn't require you to change your opinions about which policies are good on the merits. Only to consider the trade-offs between merit vs. popularity and to prioritize.
Agreed.
"Nor have I ever been a popularist; I think Democrats should use rhetoric that appeals to people (including patriotic rhetoric), but on matters of substance, doing the right thing is more important than winning elections."
There is no "doing", it's only shouting into the wind if you don't have the votes.
I remember how gay marriage was a non-starter for a generation until suddenly it wasn't. The Civil Rights movement took even longer. Sometimes it takes a while to convince people.
In the longer run I agree with you, but I suspect all the social wedge issues being used to divide us will seem like nothing in a generation.
Remember that Obama ran on a platform opposing gay marriage, only to nominate the judges who made it legal.
You don’t convince people by immediately taking the most radical position and calling anyone who disagrees a bigot.
You start with decriminalization of sodomy.
Then you move on to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Then you push for civil unions.
Then for gay marriage.
And then for antidiscrimination.
If you jump all the way to antidiscrimination, you just lose. Convincing people requires meeting them where they are and pulling them a few feet in the right direction. Try to pull them a mile and they’ll reject you.
Convincing people never means calling them a bigot or any other name. I agree with you there.
In my heart of hearts I hold many radical positions but when I talk to my mostly conservative family I smile and nod and don’t budge on what I believe. Facts work with some people but not most.
Changing minds is a multi-generational project. My kids are way ahead of me on most things.
Not true in general; it's possible to effect political change even "if you don't have the votes".
When has political change happened without the votes? Social/cultural change leading to getting the votes/political change happens, but first you have you change the culture, not the politics.
Under the comment to which you replied are further comments from Jim #3 and me with examples that answer your question. And your second sentence is just a tautology!
I would concede some ground, but state it is as "true in general, not true in historically unusual or rare cases".
There's some wiggle room in what "historically unusual or rare" means precisely but I don't think it's historically unusual or rare for, say, striking workers to win concessions.
Hmm, I'm thinking differently here.
I was not considering strikes as part of "not having the votes". I suppose you can, say the "fight for $15" is an example here, but often a strike is company specific and outside the paradigm I'm thinking of here. Not that you're wrong.
I meant instances where something societal (eg., a law) could not pass legislatively but gained a favorable judicial ruling, typically but in line with emerging public opinion. So Loving, Roe, Obergefell, as opposed to any enacted legislation.
Sure, I'd also count favorable judicial rulings as examples of political change without Democratic politicians having the votes.
I disagree because Noah's comparative advantage is policy analysis. I think he has a lot to add in terms of identifying important problems and evaluating policies that could help those problems, both because of his training as an economist and his long-term engagement with policy. I don't think he'd have much to say about what messages are or are not popular.
And I think it's important for there to be voices focusing on arguing about what the *right* thing to do is, even if politicians and political operatives ought to ignore them sometimes in order to win elections.
This is pretty much the path taken by the Labour party in the UK under "New Labour" (Blair, Mandelson et al). The only problem is that it amounts to treating voters with great condescention. Long term it leads to a loss of trust. Voters assess both the policies and the politicians. It's rare for voters to trust a politician to enact a policy they believe to be directly against that politician's instincts or opinions. The problem is compounded when voters see politicians seeming to defer to activists on twitter etc and infer their opinions from that.
"Peter Mandelson said to me, 'your preoccupation with the working-class vote is wrong. They've got nowhere else to go.'" — Peter Hain
"I didn’t listen, or have to listen, to anything on the left in — while I was working in — the Democratic Party, because the left had nowhere to go." — Lawrence O'Donnell
Eh. Corbyn led Labour off a cliff. Starmer is poised to lead Labour back to power by winning back red wall districts.
I don't see how, even if you were correct, that would show I'd misquoted Hain and O'Donnell. And you're not correct: under Corbyn Labour's membership expanded and it won more of the electorate in general elections, twice, than under Brown and Miliband.
I'd think of it less as a "reactionary moment" (and saying such marks one as a far leftist) and more as a Thermidor where sane center-leftists decide to try and reel in their "allies" who have been allowed to throw temper tantrums by promoting idiotic and unpopular views in the name of "allyship" since the Trump years.
This was a beautiful article. But the truth is democrats make it easy to be fatalists. Each time the Democratic party gains power, they manage to do very little with it. And most of that good is often rolled back by much more aggressive republican governments.
Because democrats explicitly want to change the status quo on a lot of things, they have to overcome a lot more inertia than the republican government will deal with. But the ways they fight against that inertia is tellingly disappointing to say the least.
I would like to see a little more 'dirty fighting', a little more 'aggression', heck, a little more populism if that is what is required. The simple truth is we are mostly monkeys with smartphones. Most of the electorate are not intellectuals cognizant with statistical modelling and logical errors. Most people simply want to feel safe, they want to feel prosperous, they want to feel patriotic, sometimes even at the expense of actually being these things.
When people think of dictatorships, they think of massive instruments of rigid oppression. And that is true but most of the time, that always comes later. The other, more concealed, truth is the dictators often enjoy massive support to get there. They tell simple stories. They initially do the things people actually want done. Most people prefer prosperity to freedom.
And the democratic party has to come to terms with some of that and take that into account. The policies don't need to change. They are sound, sensible policies. But the approach needs to change. The left must become the party of the working people again. The ongoing unionization attempts and strikes represent an excellent chance to begin.
Refined Insights,
Although I must confess that I am a traveler of the Right, I think the problem for Democrats (as it is for Republicans) is that power is quite dissipated in the Federal system of the USA. To truly force through an agenda you need a supermajority in the House and Senate as well as the Presidency. You still have to contend with the court system and hope that state governments don’t nullify your agenda.
You cannot fault Democrats too much. You also need to consider that “Democrat” is a loose definition for a very broad coalition. Joe Manchin is a Democrat but not in the same way as Chesa.
Your point is valid. The problem is it applies to the republicans as well and it hasn't stopped them from largely enacting the policies they want even when they are barely reasonable.
If democrats need a super majority to have a meaningful impact, then we can as well conclude that america simply has two right-wing parties, because the chances of that happening are very slim.
That is true but I think where Republicans have an advantage is the inertia of the system. Generally, the Right tries to preserve the status quo versus enacting large scale changes—this is easier to do. I would also say that to many on the Right, Republican policies are reasonable.
Also, there are no left wing Republicans but there are conservative Democrats. I think most of the GOP’s agenda that gets enacted has partial support from conservative Dems.
The other thing I would say is that America really has three parties—a collection of center left and center right politicians who do most of the actual effective governing and then two extreme parties, one far left and the other far right which generate much of the toxic partisanship we have seen in recent years.
America's far left pretty much only exists on twitter threads and YouTube videos. They don't have any significant impact. America has never had any substantial far left position. The closest were probably the Roosevelts and it took the gilded age and the great depression to get them into power.
The far right, on the other hand, are well organized. They number in millions, and they are very active politically.
Most of the time, the centre is the best place to be. Because both the far right and the far left want some very extreme things. However, the times we are living in do not qualify as most of the time. Wealth inequality is skyrocketing, fraud and deception are institutionalized, crime rates are rising, the healthcare system has managed to become even more broken, America's infrastructure needs substantial repair, etc.
This is just not a good time to be centrist. It's a good time to be firmly leftist until some of those problems are fixed.
The times should dictate the politics, not the other way around.
I'd count the guy who brought in Medicare and Medicaid, too -- LBJ.
LBJ is a funny one. He's the complete opposite of Ronald Reagan. He was a great president but with bad optics in contrast to Reagan who was a bad president with great optics.
He could have been among the very best though. There is an intriguing panoply of reasons, most notably contained in Robert Caro's biography, behind his failures to do so.
Dude, you just described the '70's, and the US turned more right-wing in response.
Yes...the major problem is that the US, as the atomized and individualistic society it is, will always revert to the egoistical "base", as opposed to more communitarian countries, where this might lead to a revolution (usually left-wing)...
Yes, Agree. Here in Western Europe it is the left who is quite mainstream though, and I think their positions on most issues (e.g. Nuclear Power, GMOS, Climate Change mitigation, immigration and taxation) is farther from the "utilitarian centre" than is that of the right-wing parties in Europe...in the US and Canada, I feel it's the opposite, with the GOP and Cons being further way from the centre...
The same factors that make it difficult for Democrats the change things, also make it difficult for Republicans to change things back afterwards.
Which is something that Republicans collectively realized ~10 years ago, and led them to stop compromising and fight tooth-and-nail to prevent any 'progress'.
I agree. But I don't see the same amount of fight, I don't see the same quality of strategy, I don't see the same effort put into grassroots participation.
If the republicans push the country, say, five metres in the direction they want it to go, the democrats come in and then pull the country back five inches. That's the essence of the problem for the left.
I respectfully disagree, at least with respect to social issues.
As evidenced by the near complete rout of the GOP in that realm for most of the last 10-20 years.
They just recently regained their feet and have been able to resist (a little) in the last couple of years.
The "near complete rout of the GOP" on social issues like...guns? Policing? Abortion? Child marriage? Immigration?
I look at Chesa Boudin's attitude to hate crimes or Harvard administrators claiming Asian have a bad personality so should be discriminated against in admissions. I strikes me that the simplest explanation is that a lot of progressives have a burning hatred of Asians.
The idea that there is some ideological point outside of bigotry seems a less elegant explanation.
It's often barely concealed dislike of south and east asians from upper middle class white ex-hippies. Many of my Indian friends tell me stories about shit they deal with that you wouldn't believe.
I am Indian and this is very true. From being told to denounce Modi, to listening to woke idiots explain how their knowledge of Indian politics was greater than mine (they would sooner die than tell black people they knew what it was like to be black) and hearing that it's OK that Asians are discriminated against in college admissions and DEI (it's OK to disadvantage us for leftist racial patronage), what you described is palpable. Economically successful Asians are considered "white adjacent" and feel the wrath of the loony left because they don't feel like taking a back seat to the designated victims. I hear similar from my Chinese friends as well.
unbelievable?! I mean, I'm white and I really don't get this weirdly selective bigotry.
Discrimination in admissions would be one thing (it's naked self interest as far as white educated/liberal parents are concerned) but blaming Indians/Asians for not having been victimized enough?!? WTF.
Don't mention the tiger mom. Just far too unwilling to fit the role of victim. Also recent African Anerican immigrants, many of whom came to fulfil the American dream and do. Further longer African Americans who escape the ghetto to middle class.
The Asians self help and self motivation goes against all the American progressive now believes in. They are too American for American progressives.
Maybe, I am not that interested in the reason. There does seem genuine hatred for Asians and no one wants to talk about it.
Interesting...could it be similar to the dislike of Eastern Europeans by many left-wingers in the Western EU? After all, many Eastern Europeans are similar in many way to Asian-Americans: hard-working, relatively conservative on both social and economic issues, value education highly, capitalistic etc.?
I disagree, in western europe the dislike of easterners is just as newcomers with a different culture and sometimes accepting lower pay.
I have never seen anyone want then blocked from education or ignore/celebrate crime against them. The dislike of Asians seems to apply just as much to 3rd generation immigrants who speak perfect English and have always lived in San Francisco or NY.
This is honestly a huge problem for the Democrats/left-of-center, and it's turning off not just Asian-Americans but also working class Hispanics. A big problem is that those folks with the means and motivation to work unpaid/lowly paid in Dem/left-of-center NGOs/orgs tend to have the demographics of a good (but not top-tier-enough to reflect the US) liberal arts college: well-educated, generally well-off, wokists/progressive/leftist uber-lefty on social issues, and generally quite white.
Occam’s razor :)
While the practical part of me hopes that you are right, Noah, there's another part that has grown completely disillusioned with the progressive Left. Appalled, in fact. Perhaps a good ass kicking come the mid-terms will help stir something in the seat of memory, and remind Dems of what they used to stand for until just a few short years ago. Until that day dawns, I'm done. If enough "reactionaries" feel the same, perhaps a "silent majority" can take back control. I'm not hopeful. I'm not a single-issue voter, or concerned with the purity of my beliefs, or sympathetic with today's Right. But I'll not walk another step in the direction the Maoist Left would lead us. Basta!
I don't think the defeat in the midterm will necessarily change anything in terms of the wokes. They're just on Twitter. They're not elected officials and will lose nothing in the defeat. Indeed, they will gain something. Trump's return as the perfect villain.
What we may hope for is indeed elected Dems/politicians deciding that they need to be way more forceful on the topic and beat the wokes back in order to win. Though Matt Yglesias isn't very optimist b/c he says the wokes are all the unpaid interns and lefty think tanks and NGO workers who power the machine.
Shor says the same thing.
It's a huge problem for the Democrats/left of center. Basically, the folks with the means and motivation to work unpaid/lowly paid in positions of influence are almost all socially leftist wokists who are out of step (in so many ways) with the working class moderates who have the numbers and thus hold the balance of power at the ballot box (and also comprise a majority of even Democrats).
Just reacting on one topic:
A big problem I have with defund: it fully participates in the childishly simplistic Norquistisa falsehood:
If an institution is corrupt and/or incompetent, the solution is the eviscerate its funding. Simple. Twirl finger in cheek.
When I see my fellow liberals embracing pernicious right-wing theories and talking points (not even realizing that they're doing so), I get very depressed.
(Don't even get me started on lefties defending, justifying, even embracing Putin's imperialistic military attack/invasion and the wacko Nazi storyline that goes with it, because America is and has been violently imperialistic, militarily and commercially.)
SF Progs have lost 2 recall elections + got their butt kicked in the Haney/Campos race. Maybe this time they’ll get the message that lecturing the 60+% of voters in very blue SF about how Republican they are for throwing out a DA who thinks DA stands for “Defense Attorney” isn’t going to win elections.
Or better, nah, let ‘em keep foot-gunning themselves
Progressives have an 8-3 advantage on the BoS. I am a YIMBY and like the way the wind is blowing but we have a long time before you can claim that Moderates and Conservatives are the dominant political force.
True. While progress feels good, nobody should be hanging "mission accomplished" banners. Next we vote out Preston, Peskin, and similar people who are the enablers of most of this.
This captures where I'm at too, for sure. Except I'm a little more peeved about some aspects of the culture stuff, because I think important freedoms are at stake. Like I buy the line that a senator saying to FB and Twitter "Regulate what your users say in the way we want or we'll come after you on antitrust" is a serious First Amendment violation.
> And there was the time Chesa reduced charges against the man who beat a 69-year-old Asian man with a bat in Chinatown.
This one seems to be a false (or at least misleading) accusation: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/update-san-francisco-district-attorney-refutes-claims-chinatown-attack-victim-lawsuit/
> The DA's office said that Tanner's [11 year old] son allegedly swung a plastic bat at Le several times. Additionally, the DA's office said Tanner intervened and made verbal threats against Le while holding a Snapple bottle, however the release noted that "photographs taken by police at the scene do not depict any physical injuries to Mr. Lê."
Although I'm not sure what to make of the defendant ultimately making a plea deal to a battery charge. Anyway, it seems that your quote is repeating claims that are at very least misleading, if not outright false. I'd support your summary here if it was actually true, but it does seem to me that a smear campaign was at least partly involved in Boudin's downfall.
Thanks for sticking to your principles despite criticism, which is another huge problem, lack of character and willful blindness due to partisanship. Truly the biggest problem we have now is partisanship. I think people are scared so they back into their tribal corners and turn their brains off.
Yeah, but the maor problem in the US and Canada is FPTP...not sure how to change that easily...
Absolutely true. I think partisanship corrupts people’s thinking. To the point that mild policy disagreements are viewed in absolutist terms.
Concerning demand-shock vs supply-chain problems as an inflation explanation, I have noticed in recent commentary on the point that EU inflation is quite high now as well, notwithstanding their relatively modest Covid stimulus compared to the US. So, it isn’t the same world now as it was at the time of your January 19 post to which you link in the above.
Is the hypothesis that EU inflation is solely the result of the fuel-price and Ukraine shocks? Clearly the fuel-price shock is affecting the US; I don’t know about the effect of the Russian wheat blockade in the US. This suggests to me at least that it is more difficult to tease out root causes of the current inflation than you seem to suggest.
Also, didn’t inflation take off in early 21, before the last Biden stimulus could have been the most significant driver?
Concerning demand shock and supply chain issues, I believe it was generally known in the 20-21 period that, on average, people were sitting on their Covid relief payments rather than spending them, which suggests that it was inevitable that they would start spending again once the immediate crisis passed or seemed to pass. The supply-side of the economy seems to have been woefully unprepared for this development. Why? And how is this the fault of the stimulus? The “just in time” supply chain is now more of a “not in time” supply chain.
Concerning your “center-left good, progressive left bad” analysis, what center-left priorities have been enacted under the current administration, or even introduced by leaders of the Democratic caucus? Not many. Where have the police actually been defunded?
The conclusion I would draw from your political analysis is that the decisive slice of the electorate is constantly looking for some reason, any reason at all, to vote R rather than D, but there seems to be little evidence of voters who are put off by the extremism on the right. In other words, as has often been commented, swing voters are just squishy Republicans, not really gettable at all except under extraordinary circumstances. It isn’t even necessary for Republicans to have any kind of policy platform at all, as long as these voters are unhappy with the Democrats for one reason or another.
So, I guess the right can do no wrong, and the left can do no right.
Great post. The far Left’s rhetoric is approaching the event horizon of Doom. Post Covid social media is needlessly fatalistic and punitive. If you bring up even a remotely centrist POV (oftentimes what used to be considered Liberal), you will be flamed or excommunicated from your in-group; it’s an old time religion. It seems any parameter, rule, social contract, or boundary is right wing and must be replaced. No wonder we are all on edge--positivity has been replaced by online ideological clout chasing.
Further, my best friend is my suburb’s most popular pediatrician and he recently stated that mental health visits are now his and other’s #1 appointment. Teens preferring social media over spending time with friends in person are starting to forget emotional regulation skills and find it difficult to figure out how to “be” in real life with all of its normal awkwardness. This further exacerbates the problem. (This brings to mind Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and The Sun, but I digress...)
Compromising and working together seems old fashioned. When we can’t even agree on basic social parameters we lose votes.
(Don’t get me started on the condition of the Far Right.)
Yeah, I agree...main problem in terms of politics seems to be that in the US and Canada, FPTP discourages working together" across parties, so it's basically a zero-sum competition...that's why I would like to think a good analogy in terms of politics is to compare US/Canadian politics to sports, while Northern EU politics is more like a (collaborative) jam session...
Two questions:
1. A lot of "reactionaries," like Yglesias, seem to be saying that progressives' strategies aren't conducive to Democrats winning elections. Wouldn't this type of discussion become *more* important after the midterms (if Dems lose) rather than *less*?
2. Another strand of "reactionary" thinking is that the new norms adopted by the left are ill-suited to the purpose of knowledge creation. Given that these new norms have been adopted across the board by such institutions, this remains a concern even if Republicans return to political power. What do you think of this?
I wonder if perhaps another all-style-no-substance issue is at play. It seems to me at least you've used phrases like "leftist screechings" somewhat frequently of late, which perhaps comes across as hippie bashing...
You make that sound like it's a bad thing.
Sometimes it's just discovering one's boundaries as the issues develop greater resolution. And I'd estimate Noah's views are to the left of about 90% of the populace, so 10% are going to bear the same punch burden as the 90% to his right and feel targeted.
Indeed that's not the only thing of Noah's that might come across as bashing hippies. He's also
• alleged that "[the] American socialist worldview is just totally broken" in a post that started with Noah breathlessly clutching pearls about his overinterpretation of a snippet from a Noam Chomsky interview (https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-american-socialist-worldview);
• called for a US military build-up;
• hosted a guest post calling out "America's Top Environmental Groups" as having "Lost The Plot on Climate Change" (https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/americas-top-environmental-groups); and
• plugged a George Orwell essay, explaining why he agreed with the anti-socialist, anti-anti-patriotic parts (https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/orwells-the-lion-and-the-unicorn).
I think the bashing is extensive enough to qualify as substantive, not just a matter of style!
The 10% of the population to his left may not like it, but Noah is correct in all of those things. DSA and the socialists movement more broadly is broken, a lot of the environmental groups have lost the plot and are making large strategic mistakes (not to mention sometimes just being substantively wrong), and we do need a military build up to deal with rising authoritarian powers that want to remake the world order.
Yes, I agree...I wish that Noah, or another writer, would take the (even-worse) Western European leftists to task here, though...
In my view Noah isn't correct about all of those things, and I'm confident that my disagreement is substantially factual, not a touchy-feely psychological matter of whether I "like it" — but in any event, whatever one thinks of the issues themselves, there's patent hippie-bashing in Noah's back catalog.