But if we can’t reduce the structural biases that have appeared in the last ten years by changing the rules of the game, we will have to make the hard choice of changing our party so that we can appeal to these non-college-educated voters who are turning against us.
. . .
Turnout was up, but it was up for both parties. According to Nate Cohn’s estimates, Black turnout was probably up by around 8 percent, but non-Black turnout was up by something like 15 to 20 percent. So we had the highest-turnout election in a century, and despite that, we still only won because a bunch of people switched their votes in our direction.Well, a bunch of people switched a bunch of people's votes in his direction, but the question is, were they the same people?
So the median voter in the presidential election is about 50 years old, watches about six hours of TV a day, and mostly gets their news from mainstream sources. And that means that, if you want to influence what this person believes, you’re probably not going to get them at the door or even through a paid message. They’re going to form their opinions based on how the media reports on and characterizes the parties.Luckily, that generally works like a charm for the Party of Highly Intelligent College Types, but there is a dark undercurrent of doubt:
I think the reality now is that whenever any elected Democrat goes out and says something that’s unpopular, unless the rest of the party very forcefully pushes back — in a way that I think is actually very rare within the Democratic Party currently — every Democrat will face an electoral penalty. And that’s awkward. . . . I think that the only option that we have is to move toward the median voter. And I think that really comes down to embracing the popular parts of our agenda and making sure that no one in our party is vocally embracing unpopular things. I know that sounds reactionary.The upshot:
And we also still have a chance to limit how much we need to compromise by winning in Georgia and then passing sweeping structural reforms. But if we don’t, then the reality is that the median voter who gets to determine Senate control is going to remain a non-college-educated 55-year-old in a pretty Republican state who voted for Donald Trump. Probably twice. That’s who we’ll need to win over in order to govern.Good luck with that, unless you start lying a lot more effectively. And sure enough:
When you think through the optimization problem of, “How do we enact the most left-wing legislation possible without running over these trip wires that will make the public turn against us,” one part of it is that there are things that poll badly but are low salience. . . . And then there are also a lot of accounting gimmicks that are very promising. I will point out that we actually did finance a very large section of the ACA by nationalizing the entire student-loan industry.Apparently these lies have been successfully market-tested on the Smart Credentialed demographic.
I always thought I got a decent education--but my alma mater wasn't like this when I was there.
9 comments:
Ugh. I'm really starting to think that Larry McMurtry was correct when he said that the purpose of the D.C. Beltway was to prevent the wafting in of common sense from the country at large. (_Roads_, the essay on D. C.) Mr. Schor has spent too much time in the NPR offices.
As for Rice . . . double ugh. I've been trying to make myself read Frank Dikotter's book about the Cultural Revolution and I just can't do it, not right now. Things like this are part of the reason why.
LittleRed1
Interesting piece of anecdotal data, related to the face of the party. I live in the only blue Congressional district in the otherwise red state of Kentucky. We got a blizzard of material for the Presidential, Senate, and local races. Nothing for the Congressional race. I don't even think I saw any news reports related to his race.
So the median voter in the presidential election is about 50 years old, watches about six hours of TV a day,
What?
Never, ever, in my entire life, did I watch SIX HOURS of teeeeveee/day. Even now, retired, I can only cram in about 3 (largely recordings of Law & Order).
Does NPR actually believe this crap?
I’ll bet you my mother watches about that much. She’s way older than 50, but she’s not gone out hardly at all in months. The steady stream of tv news poisoned her completely in politics; she’s completely convinced of the good-noble-educated-worthy vs horrid-racist-monsters narrative.
A lot of people leave the cable news on all the time as background noise, or a pathetic form of companionship, unfortunately.
I found it amusing that the article's author says:
The most xenophobic Republican president in modern memory made large gains with Latino voters...
and it never occurs to him that perhaps this means his characterization of Trump is incorrect.
The interview itself is scary. Shor speaks casually of things like:
.. independent redistricting, adding new states, other changes to the rules of the game to make it easier for us to overcome these biases...
and simply assumes that if the Democrats can take the Senate seats in Georgia then they can do that. He sees that this means the red States and voters would essentially lose their say in how they are governed. Why does he think they will simply let this happen. This reminds me of the time after the 2016 election when there were ads and letters urging the electors pledged to Trump to vote for Clinton instead. Surely they couldn't actually have believed that those who voted for Trump would just say, "Oh, okay. Whatever."
Elise
If you begin with the notion that your opponents' political philosophy is reducible to irrational "biases," then of course you are justified in making whatever changes possible to reduce their influence. This is not the first time we've seen this. Recall that the democratically-enacted proposition on marriage in California was set aside by the elites as being merely irrational. The fact that no less than Immanuel Kant gave a rational account of that definition of marriage was no bar to their confidence that it was impossible for their opponents to give such an account.
People like this guy despise you, and their ancestors, and our whole tradition. They long to sweep it all away.
I understand that they feel justified in doing what they're doing. What I don't understand is why they think the States and voters they are doing it to will stand by while they do it. If the Republicans were advocating structural changes that would make it virtually impossible to ever again have a Democratic President or Democratic control of the Senate, would people like Shor stand by while it happened?
Elise
When the Founding Fathers started the American Revolution, they knew they wouldn't have the consent of England or the Tories in the colonies. They didn't have the option of making a substantial change by winning a majority of voters. But at least they acknowledged that this fundamental change wouldn't happen unless they fought for it, exposing their own lives to danger in the fight. They didn't try to sneak it through for everyone else's own good.
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