Some background on popularism. Everyone has things they want to accomplish politically that they can achieve and things that they can't achieve. Perceptions over what can be achieved for any given political group or party differ both within and outside those groups and parties.
You’re absolutely correct but the problem is increasing civic engagement on the local level. Without a community commitment to local news sources, that’s gonna be a harder sell than it ever was. Which is why one of my local news channels recently did a piece on edible tape that holds burritos closed: it’s a universal issue.
"...the question of whether Democrats can win by appealing to nonvoters to come out to the polls or whether they must appeal to swing voters, likely moderating their policies and rhetoric in doing so. Unfortunately, this is an empirical question and not a question that can be solved through abstract debate, as well as one that likely varies from election to election and issue to issue."
Analysts like David Shor and Ruy Texeira would argue, I believe, that "turnout is bullshit". Given political polarization whipping one side into a frenzy also whips the other side into a frenzy so that the numbers cancel out. 2020 was the perfect example: Trump lost by 44,000 votes out of over 100,000,000 cast--essentially a tie. That led pundits like Zaid Jilani to declare that the liberal dream that most Americans agree with them and they outnumber the other side had been revealed to be nonsense.
I've gravitated over the years from ultra-left progressivism toward popularism b/c going after low-hanging fruit (problems whose solutions have popular support) is more compelling to me than advocating for things that are either unpopular or barely even on the radar outside of the online left. In the back of my mind, "tyranny of the majority" misgivings lurk, but I've also become attuned to the danger of the Left trying to impose a "tryranny of the minority" (or at least appearing to be trying to do that by acting censorious and judgmental though in reality we lack the power).
I basically agree with the post but think the crux of the debate all comes down to point 7. The tactical questions, while very relevant, also tend to hide the real contradictions in values, and ideas of what a better society would look like among the Democratic coalition.
I think it would be more productive if people would just put their cards on the table and straighten out alliances accordingly. For example, I think the core issue with the intersectional woke social justice political movement that shall not be named isn't only that it's unpopular, it's that followed to its natural conclusion, it's destination is a country that looks more like Lebanon or South Africa or the Balkans in the 90s. That IMO is not a more just world where people aren't held back by accident of birth, but an ethnic/group based spoils system uglier, more cynical, and fundamentally less capable of progress than what we have today.
Others of course vehemently disagree with my opinion, which is fair enough, but the issue goes a lot deeper than the fact that the approach will probably never win enough votes in some strategic district in the midwest.
If you go for the low hanging fruit that enjoys widespread appeal does that necessarily bring you into conflict with the other side? I mean there will always be beltway conflicts about who gets to take credit but Tucker Carlson made news a while back for bemoaning growing income inequality and falling blue collar wages. It may not even be necessary to coopt the middle simply because no real faction opposed to issues like blue collar wage growth exists.
I think one important thing this piece ignores is that "what do you do?" vs "what do you talk about?" question, and that question seems really important to a lot of popularist types. Talk about things that are very popular so that you can get elected and do things that aren't so popular. This doesn't obligate you to compromise on your morals or your goals at all, it only requires you to shut up about the parts no one outside the staffer/donor class likes.
I think this gets to something you talk about frequently, a materialist approach to left politics. A lot of the material policies of the left are very popular. Politicians should talk about them more. A lot of the very symbolic, naval gazing exercises are only popular among the highly educated staffs of politicians. They should talk about those a lot less.
Politics is the art of compromise. As we find in Bari's space today, about 10% of the voters want to end all abortion. About 8% of voters want abortion legalized to 39 weeks. Most European countries allow abortion to around 15 weeks.
Democrats despite owning the Senate, House, & White House had 5 weeks to push an emergency abortion bill through. What do they do instead? Blame lack of abortion rights on: the electoral college; the filibuster; the Supreme Court ... Democrat politicians are not doing what their constituents want done, instead, they're allowing women to twist in the wind, in order to prolong the problem, wring more money out of scared, mad, and irritated people who have been duped into following these psychopaths. Why do I call the politicians psychopaths? These politicians revel in the pain and suffering of their constituencies for fun & profit.
Its clear that if only 10% of the people want to block all abortion, then 90% of the people want something reasonable. And what do we have? Nothing.
I mean isn't the sort of boring truth that you can swing for the fences on a limited number of things, so you should pick the ones that matter most to you and then just go for the most popular stances (within your ideology) on the others? I feel like the left always wants some sort of massive instant overhaul of the entire structure of society, while some centrists wind up arguing against swinging for the fences at all. Let's just pick a few things that matter the most, go with truly principled and transformative stances on those, and then be boring median-common-sense-voter people on the others.
The question, of course, is who gets to pick. But the right seems to be better at this doesn't it? How does that get sorted out internally with them? They seem more willing to jettison previously-important positions to focus on getting a few huge wins, as they just did with abortion.
I think another point worth mentioning is that even though Democrats in deep-blue districts don't pay an electoral price for taking maximalist positions, the nationalization of Americans' political awareness means they can make Democrats in swing districts pay a price.
Yes, this is equally true for Republicans. But that's part of the problem. The public is *already* aware of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and it doesn't seem to prevent other Republicans from winning in purple areas, as long as they present themselves more normally than she does.
So there seems to be an asymmetry in what people will tolerate in a party's public image. AOC is a perfectly nice person even if you don't like her policy ideas, but she seems to turn off moderates more effectively than MTG does. That doesn't reflect well on American voters but at any rate, someone needs to figure out why it works that way.
>The left critics of popularism are correct in arguing that many of the basic observations of that school of thought are banal and unhelpful in untangling the immediate questions of what Democrats should do now. They are also correct that reflexive deference to what appears currently possible can lead to supporting straightforwardly immoral policies.
Reminds me of one of those types of snark comics that proliferated a short while ago which featured a 'centrist'/'moderate' next to Hitler saying something like "I think we should compromise and genocide only HALF the minorities", or something to that effect.
I used to be of the school of thought that a lot of extremes (on both sides, for the record) are either just "virtue signaling" or saying things just to troll their political enemies (and get engagement). And indeed there is no shortage of people like that on the internet.
But, if you genuinely believe your opponent's policies are equivalent to the Holocaust, or slavery, or state-sponsored chid marriage, or what have you, it becomes a lot clearer where the anti-popularist arguments and vitriol stem from, and why so many people insist on holding positions that to outside observers like me look like political harakiri. They genuinely, unironically believe that popularism is just the comic centrist guy going "I think we should compromise and genocide half the minorities."
(Indeed, I suspect that for many of those people, their internal logic is: well, at some point, many countries genuinely DID have populations that believed in the majority that slavery, child marriage, spousal abuse, eugenics, and all those things were morally good...in essence, they are basically playing "would you be against the Nazis if you were born in Germany in the 1920s game" that many ethics and sociology professors play with their 101 classes.
Of course, call me old fashioned, but I think the issue is that the only things you should literally compare to the Holocaust and slavery are...the Holocaust and slavery.)
Politics is ultimately about political power. The goal in a democracy is supposed to be to win elections so that one can exercise that power. That is the reason political parties exist. Too much constraint on the ability to win in the name of ideological purity will just turn one into something like the libertarians or the Libertarian party - a niche faction with a small voice and not much else.
There is also a big difference in terms of time horizons particularly incremental change vs large, quick changes. The historical record is pretty clear that incremental change is the norm the vast majority of the time, which favors the popularist argument.
Process is important. I think a major defect with the progressive left critics of popularism is that they are ends-justify-the-means thinkers and reject incrementalism out of hand.
Related to all of this is strategy. The right had a four-plus decade strategy to defeat Roe, they followed that strategy effectively and it worked and they won! The progressive left doesn't seem to have a strategy, and has no real counter to the right's strategy. Instead the progressive left seems to focus on gimmicky quick fixes that are mostly fantasies and would also be counterproductive, such as "reforming" the Senate, packing the court(s), ending the filibuster, primarying moderates, etc. None of those is going to achieve the desired ends. Their strategy instead should be to model the successful movements of the past, to include the anti-abortion movement. But that would require more long term thinking and would also require prioritizing winning and small victories over ideology in the short-term.
In short, popularism will move the needle toward the goals the progressive left wants - the problem seems to be that the progressive left wants faster progress than is politically possible and they seem perfectly willing to prevent incremental gains in the service of ideological purity.
As an immigration lawyer & advocate, I'm very sensitive to this. Every ounce of me believes in its benefits (economic, cultural, demographic, etc.) and the need to de-criminalize border crossings, reduce interior enforcement, increase numbers, etc. etc.
And yet I know that, even if the statutes don't change, elections matter massively in a way that the average person, just can't understand; the administrative apparatus and import of the judiciary is just beyond the comprehension of anyone who doesn't practice or follow this for a living. The lives of millions are significantly affected, some in the most drastic way imaginable.
I cannot explain how much damage (materially, psychologically, financially, and in every other sense) was caused during Trump years; it would take several very focused, progressive administrations to simply unwind that.
When I see apathy or stridency, when I hear "there's no difference between X moderate and Trump" or "abolish ICE," I know what the dramatic effect this will have on real individuals, families, and communities if it shifts an election to the wrong side––and it both saddens and infuriates me.
Though the only way out of this trap is to shift public opinion through advocacy, and at some level you have to speak your truth and push for the better world!
I love this piece (in both form and substance) and very much agree that it is only resolved through specificity, collaboration, and diligent, detailed work. Unfortunately I have no idea how to facilitate that as every cultural & political impulse appears to be flying the opposite direction, still.
#10 seems to be a much bigger problem than it used to be.
In the olden days, Democrats could take moderate positions without much consequence if they were relatively young and had the right vibe. We thought Clinton would be great for gay and Black people because he fucks and plays the saxophone. Same with Obama. “Oh, he can’t say anything, but we know he’s secretly for gay marriage…. Hmmm, he’s lecturing Black parents, but it’s just to get elected….”
I don’t know if it’s Twitter or what, but those days are over. Candidates can’t get through the primary without taking certain lefty positions that are unpopular with general election voters (plus DOA in the Senate anyway). It seems tough to navigate.
This was a great read for me because is helped expand my thinking of the ideological battle.
With respect the goals of the left not being achievable and their insistence otherwise is resulting in easy wins for the GOP... I think this is both understated and in need of deeper analysis.
First, the left-side popularists exploited and embraced the left to defeat Trump And then the Biden Democrats have been rewarding that alignment by adopting much of the radical agenda of the left. Biden clearly lied to the voters in claiming he would govern from the center.
Second, the education system has become an indoctrination factory of primarily upper-class female social justice warriors who are radicalized by their malcontent teachers and professors to adopt the postmodernist Marxist critical theory cultism. Millions of these sleepwalking clones of rage have infested the mainstream media and corporate HR departments where they have cemented their EDI Nazi controls and terrorize management and owners to comply or else be destroyed. This has created an alternative universe outside of where real people live and interact. We know it. We have recognized that since the first diversity and inclusion training was forced on us in our corporate lives. But we tolerated it because we could virtue signal that we care.
That radical power battery is propping up the left to think that they can just keep pushing more of their crap. That is starting to unravel. But we have a mess of millions of these corrupted radical muffin heads in need of cognitive behavior therapy.
I blame the popularist Democrats for this in that they embraced these radical kids to help them win power and wealth instead of being adults and rejecting all the nonsense. As is often the case throughout history, the Republicans are left to clean up the mess that the Democrats cause.
"Rather, they must check their intuitions against high-quality opinion polling and unblinkered analysis of election results, and allow such data to inform the Democratic Party’s campaign messaging and policy prioritization."
This is from the original linked Intelligencer article. The context was a description of Shor's argument (or the author's argument -- it wasn't entirely clear) for what the culture class of the Democrats should do. I cannot emphasize enough how horribly mistaken this approach is. Not that it is without value, but that it fundamentally misunderstands the problem the cultural elites have.
The problem is that cultural elites rarely even talk to working class voters of any race. The thing needed most is not paying more attention to opinion polling or better analysis of results (though those things are good in their own right, they will not solve the problem). The thing needed most is to get to know the people whose votes you want; what do care about, *and why*. That is the information that can help one craft persuasive messages.
And who knows? Maybe in the process you'll find that working class values indeed have value, even to you.
(I'd have thought leftists would say it, in opposition to centrist tendencies.)
<< They are further correct to say that, taken to a certain extreme, insisting that moderate/centrist/swing voters cannot be persuaded to endorse left-wing goals amounts to a kind of nihilism and giving up on the basic work of politics. >>
You’re absolutely correct but the problem is increasing civic engagement on the local level. Without a community commitment to local news sources, that’s gonna be a harder sell than it ever was. Which is why one of my local news channels recently did a piece on edible tape that holds burritos closed: it’s a universal issue.
"...the question of whether Democrats can win by appealing to nonvoters to come out to the polls or whether they must appeal to swing voters, likely moderating their policies and rhetoric in doing so. Unfortunately, this is an empirical question and not a question that can be solved through abstract debate, as well as one that likely varies from election to election and issue to issue."
Analysts like David Shor and Ruy Texeira would argue, I believe, that "turnout is bullshit". Given political polarization whipping one side into a frenzy also whips the other side into a frenzy so that the numbers cancel out. 2020 was the perfect example: Trump lost by 44,000 votes out of over 100,000,000 cast--essentially a tie. That led pundits like Zaid Jilani to declare that the liberal dream that most Americans agree with them and they outnumber the other side had been revealed to be nonsense.
I've gravitated over the years from ultra-left progressivism toward popularism b/c going after low-hanging fruit (problems whose solutions have popular support) is more compelling to me than advocating for things that are either unpopular or barely even on the radar outside of the online left. In the back of my mind, "tyranny of the majority" misgivings lurk, but I've also become attuned to the danger of the Left trying to impose a "tryranny of the minority" (or at least appearing to be trying to do that by acting censorious and judgmental though in reality we lack the power).
I basically agree with the post but think the crux of the debate all comes down to point 7. The tactical questions, while very relevant, also tend to hide the real contradictions in values, and ideas of what a better society would look like among the Democratic coalition.
I think it would be more productive if people would just put their cards on the table and straighten out alliances accordingly. For example, I think the core issue with the intersectional woke social justice political movement that shall not be named isn't only that it's unpopular, it's that followed to its natural conclusion, it's destination is a country that looks more like Lebanon or South Africa or the Balkans in the 90s. That IMO is not a more just world where people aren't held back by accident of birth, but an ethnic/group based spoils system uglier, more cynical, and fundamentally less capable of progress than what we have today.
Others of course vehemently disagree with my opinion, which is fair enough, but the issue goes a lot deeper than the fact that the approach will probably never win enough votes in some strategic district in the midwest.
If you go for the low hanging fruit that enjoys widespread appeal does that necessarily bring you into conflict with the other side? I mean there will always be beltway conflicts about who gets to take credit but Tucker Carlson made news a while back for bemoaning growing income inequality and falling blue collar wages. It may not even be necessary to coopt the middle simply because no real faction opposed to issues like blue collar wage growth exists.
I think one important thing this piece ignores is that "what do you do?" vs "what do you talk about?" question, and that question seems really important to a lot of popularist types. Talk about things that are very popular so that you can get elected and do things that aren't so popular. This doesn't obligate you to compromise on your morals or your goals at all, it only requires you to shut up about the parts no one outside the staffer/donor class likes.
I think this gets to something you talk about frequently, a materialist approach to left politics. A lot of the material policies of the left are very popular. Politicians should talk about them more. A lot of the very symbolic, naval gazing exercises are only popular among the highly educated staffs of politicians. They should talk about those a lot less.
Politics is the art of compromise. As we find in Bari's space today, about 10% of the voters want to end all abortion. About 8% of voters want abortion legalized to 39 weeks. Most European countries allow abortion to around 15 weeks.
Democrats despite owning the Senate, House, & White House had 5 weeks to push an emergency abortion bill through. What do they do instead? Blame lack of abortion rights on: the electoral college; the filibuster; the Supreme Court ... Democrat politicians are not doing what their constituents want done, instead, they're allowing women to twist in the wind, in order to prolong the problem, wring more money out of scared, mad, and irritated people who have been duped into following these psychopaths. Why do I call the politicians psychopaths? These politicians revel in the pain and suffering of their constituencies for fun & profit.
Its clear that if only 10% of the people want to block all abortion, then 90% of the people want something reasonable. And what do we have? Nothing.
I mean isn't the sort of boring truth that you can swing for the fences on a limited number of things, so you should pick the ones that matter most to you and then just go for the most popular stances (within your ideology) on the others? I feel like the left always wants some sort of massive instant overhaul of the entire structure of society, while some centrists wind up arguing against swinging for the fences at all. Let's just pick a few things that matter the most, go with truly principled and transformative stances on those, and then be boring median-common-sense-voter people on the others.
The question, of course, is who gets to pick. But the right seems to be better at this doesn't it? How does that get sorted out internally with them? They seem more willing to jettison previously-important positions to focus on getting a few huge wins, as they just did with abortion.
I think another point worth mentioning is that even though Democrats in deep-blue districts don't pay an electoral price for taking maximalist positions, the nationalization of Americans' political awareness means they can make Democrats in swing districts pay a price.
Yes, this is equally true for Republicans. But that's part of the problem. The public is *already* aware of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and it doesn't seem to prevent other Republicans from winning in purple areas, as long as they present themselves more normally than she does.
So there seems to be an asymmetry in what people will tolerate in a party's public image. AOC is a perfectly nice person even if you don't like her policy ideas, but she seems to turn off moderates more effectively than MTG does. That doesn't reflect well on American voters but at any rate, someone needs to figure out why it works that way.
>The left critics of popularism are correct in arguing that many of the basic observations of that school of thought are banal and unhelpful in untangling the immediate questions of what Democrats should do now. They are also correct that reflexive deference to what appears currently possible can lead to supporting straightforwardly immoral policies.
Reminds me of one of those types of snark comics that proliferated a short while ago which featured a 'centrist'/'moderate' next to Hitler saying something like "I think we should compromise and genocide only HALF the minorities", or something to that effect.
I used to be of the school of thought that a lot of extremes (on both sides, for the record) are either just "virtue signaling" or saying things just to troll their political enemies (and get engagement). And indeed there is no shortage of people like that on the internet.
But, if you genuinely believe your opponent's policies are equivalent to the Holocaust, or slavery, or state-sponsored chid marriage, or what have you, it becomes a lot clearer where the anti-popularist arguments and vitriol stem from, and why so many people insist on holding positions that to outside observers like me look like political harakiri. They genuinely, unironically believe that popularism is just the comic centrist guy going "I think we should compromise and genocide half the minorities."
(Indeed, I suspect that for many of those people, their internal logic is: well, at some point, many countries genuinely DID have populations that believed in the majority that slavery, child marriage, spousal abuse, eugenics, and all those things were morally good...in essence, they are basically playing "would you be against the Nazis if you were born in Germany in the 1920s game" that many ethics and sociology professors play with their 101 classes.
Of course, call me old fashioned, but I think the issue is that the only things you should literally compare to the Holocaust and slavery are...the Holocaust and slavery.)
Interesting post, a few thoughts:
Politics is ultimately about political power. The goal in a democracy is supposed to be to win elections so that one can exercise that power. That is the reason political parties exist. Too much constraint on the ability to win in the name of ideological purity will just turn one into something like the libertarians or the Libertarian party - a niche faction with a small voice and not much else.
There is also a big difference in terms of time horizons particularly incremental change vs large, quick changes. The historical record is pretty clear that incremental change is the norm the vast majority of the time, which favors the popularist argument.
Process is important. I think a major defect with the progressive left critics of popularism is that they are ends-justify-the-means thinkers and reject incrementalism out of hand.
Related to all of this is strategy. The right had a four-plus decade strategy to defeat Roe, they followed that strategy effectively and it worked and they won! The progressive left doesn't seem to have a strategy, and has no real counter to the right's strategy. Instead the progressive left seems to focus on gimmicky quick fixes that are mostly fantasies and would also be counterproductive, such as "reforming" the Senate, packing the court(s), ending the filibuster, primarying moderates, etc. None of those is going to achieve the desired ends. Their strategy instead should be to model the successful movements of the past, to include the anti-abortion movement. But that would require more long term thinking and would also require prioritizing winning and small victories over ideology in the short-term.
In short, popularism will move the needle toward the goals the progressive left wants - the problem seems to be that the progressive left wants faster progress than is politically possible and they seem perfectly willing to prevent incremental gains in the service of ideological purity.
As an immigration lawyer & advocate, I'm very sensitive to this. Every ounce of me believes in its benefits (economic, cultural, demographic, etc.) and the need to de-criminalize border crossings, reduce interior enforcement, increase numbers, etc. etc.
And yet I know that, even if the statutes don't change, elections matter massively in a way that the average person, just can't understand; the administrative apparatus and import of the judiciary is just beyond the comprehension of anyone who doesn't practice or follow this for a living. The lives of millions are significantly affected, some in the most drastic way imaginable.
I cannot explain how much damage (materially, psychologically, financially, and in every other sense) was caused during Trump years; it would take several very focused, progressive administrations to simply unwind that.
When I see apathy or stridency, when I hear "there's no difference between X moderate and Trump" or "abolish ICE," I know what the dramatic effect this will have on real individuals, families, and communities if it shifts an election to the wrong side––and it both saddens and infuriates me.
Though the only way out of this trap is to shift public opinion through advocacy, and at some level you have to speak your truth and push for the better world!
I love this piece (in both form and substance) and very much agree that it is only resolved through specificity, collaboration, and diligent, detailed work. Unfortunately I have no idea how to facilitate that as every cultural & political impulse appears to be flying the opposite direction, still.
#10 seems to be a much bigger problem than it used to be.
In the olden days, Democrats could take moderate positions without much consequence if they were relatively young and had the right vibe. We thought Clinton would be great for gay and Black people because he fucks and plays the saxophone. Same with Obama. “Oh, he can’t say anything, but we know he’s secretly for gay marriage…. Hmmm, he’s lecturing Black parents, but it’s just to get elected….”
I don’t know if it’s Twitter or what, but those days are over. Candidates can’t get through the primary without taking certain lefty positions that are unpopular with general election voters (plus DOA in the Senate anyway). It seems tough to navigate.
This was a great read for me because is helped expand my thinking of the ideological battle.
With respect the goals of the left not being achievable and their insistence otherwise is resulting in easy wins for the GOP... I think this is both understated and in need of deeper analysis.
First, the left-side popularists exploited and embraced the left to defeat Trump And then the Biden Democrats have been rewarding that alignment by adopting much of the radical agenda of the left. Biden clearly lied to the voters in claiming he would govern from the center.
Second, the education system has become an indoctrination factory of primarily upper-class female social justice warriors who are radicalized by their malcontent teachers and professors to adopt the postmodernist Marxist critical theory cultism. Millions of these sleepwalking clones of rage have infested the mainstream media and corporate HR departments where they have cemented their EDI Nazi controls and terrorize management and owners to comply or else be destroyed. This has created an alternative universe outside of where real people live and interact. We know it. We have recognized that since the first diversity and inclusion training was forced on us in our corporate lives. But we tolerated it because we could virtue signal that we care.
That radical power battery is propping up the left to think that they can just keep pushing more of their crap. That is starting to unravel. But we have a mess of millions of these corrupted radical muffin heads in need of cognitive behavior therapy.
I blame the popularist Democrats for this in that they embraced these radical kids to help them win power and wealth instead of being adults and rejecting all the nonsense. As is often the case throughout history, the Republicans are left to clean up the mess that the Democrats cause.
"Rather, they must check their intuitions against high-quality opinion polling and unblinkered analysis of election results, and allow such data to inform the Democratic Party’s campaign messaging and policy prioritization."
This is from the original linked Intelligencer article. The context was a description of Shor's argument (or the author's argument -- it wasn't entirely clear) for what the culture class of the Democrats should do. I cannot emphasize enough how horribly mistaken this approach is. Not that it is without value, but that it fundamentally misunderstands the problem the cultural elites have.
The problem is that cultural elites rarely even talk to working class voters of any race. The thing needed most is not paying more attention to opinion polling or better analysis of results (though those things are good in their own right, they will not solve the problem). The thing needed most is to get to know the people whose votes you want; what do care about, *and why*. That is the information that can help one craft persuasive messages.
And who knows? Maybe in the process you'll find that working class values indeed have value, even to you.
Wait. Popularists are the ones saying this?
(I'd have thought leftists would say it, in opposition to centrist tendencies.)
<< They are further correct to say that, taken to a certain extreme, insisting that moderate/centrist/swing voters cannot be persuaded to endorse left-wing goals amounts to a kind of nihilism and giving up on the basic work of politics. >>