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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.

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Jun 8, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Thank you. Really well said.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.)

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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

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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.

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> 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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?

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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...

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