The moderate majority still votes, and delivers shock waves at the ballot box. The ‘woke twitter‘ minority lectures Americans from their perch inside major media platforms. I don’t know if Persuasion will reach the majority, but I welcome it nonetheless!
Indeed. Derail in the sense that candidates are pulled further left by the noisy mob which disenfranchises centrist voters and empowers the right. Which I suppose is the central theme of the article. If there is one quality I admire in Biden it is that he seems to understand or surrounds himself with people who understand how to speak to the center of the country despite the chaotic voices urging self-defeating radicalism.
Thanks, I joined Persuasion for exactly this kind of sensibility: articulating a positive vision of where we can go rather than taking cheap shots at those who disagree. I hope soon to see a conservative analog to this kind of reasoning. We collectively need some brainstorming on how a healthy conservative party can re-make itself post-Trump.
In my view David French and the Dispatch offer a pretty sensible view of how to take Republicanism out of the mud. More conservative and religious than I am but I still like their perspective. Definitely better than what passes for mainstream these days.
Thanks Roland. I’m a daily listener of The Bulwark, and I’ve heard French appear on that show once or twice. Perhaps I should give the Dispatch a try. It’s funny: even though I tend to lean left I feel the never-Trump conservatives offer the strongest criticisms of the president. I wonder if it is because opposing the undermining of independent institutions is more natural if you have a well developed conservative side...
Another plug for The Dispatch. I’ve been a subscriber from their earliest days, and it only gets better. I’m here because of them.
I spin through the Bulwark every so often as well, but I think there’s a bit more depth to Dispatch in many cases. Bulwark is reflexively anti-Trump, which doesn’t bother me but does tend to lead to a focus on the tweet-of-the-day and other Trump antics.
The folks at Dispatch are more “non-Trump” and tend towards traditionally center-right principles. They tend to take it slow and often avoid the controversy-of-the-week to talk about more substantive things. They’re also pretty heavy on foreign policy coverage.
David French is one of the current thinkers for whom I have just extraordinary respect, even though I am not personally devout. He is also a deeply kind person. Jonah is the slightly curmudgeonly bearer of the secular conservative torch who mixes erudition with pique, Steve is a down-the-fairway realist, and Sarah is a brilliant legal nerd who keeps the guys in check. It’s a great crew.
Yes, as others suggest, check out The Dispatch. I think they feel like they’re a Hail Mary pass to rescue conservative politics from the Trump cesspit, but there’s a lot of substance there. Plus, David and Sarah between them have managed, in their podcast, to make complicated legal and Supreme Court stuff kind of understandable and actually interesting. That’s gotta be some kind of magic.
Just dropping in to agree that this kind of thoughtful and searching content is exactly why I’m here. Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with any given contributor, I’m delighted to be a member of this community.
I assume that the above essay is not addressed at the likes of me, those of us who did not regard Clinton's loss as "tragic" and who, with due respect to the author, find the notion that the Democratic party has a claim to "the soul of America" rather silly.
Clinton was a repellent candidate who ran as a technocrat's technocrat in the midst of a bipartisan populist uprising, one that was thwarted on the Democrat side by internecine skullduggery. As Secretary of State she oversaw an incomprehensible foreign policy stance, brokering weapons to the House of Saud that they continue to use on the Yemeni, and orchestrating a collapse of Lybia that re-introduced the slavery of black Africans to the region. While Trump ran on a ridiculous platform of economic nationalism spelled out by Steve Bannon, Clinton pushed weak-sauce ideas like taxing the rich and raising the minimum wage, which are equally ridiculous but don't enjoy broad support. Her attempts to appear personable were cringe-inducing. While Trump appealed to racists, Clinton's supporters tarred everyone who supported Trump for any other reasons as equally racist, thus scattering the moderates.
Biden undoubtedly stands near the psephological center in a way that Sanders does not. Even so, his position on gun control is quite far from that center, his having promised among other things to appoint the fatuous Robert "Beto" O'Rourke to deal with the issue. He wants to throw even more money into an education system that deservedly has no credibility. He has promised to restore Title IX guidance to the destructive form it took under Obama.
This last item touches (sorry) on a related one - Biden appears to have committed an act of sexual assault that Trump merely described as being in the realm of the possible. (To think otherwise requires a double standard about "believing women" that's hypocritical even for politics.) Having pushed the idea of Trump's mental unsoundness for the whole of his presidency, the Democrats have nominated a man exhibiting obvious senile decline. This is all to say that there's more than one way to lose an election.
Franklin, you make some interesting assumptions about the views that the majority of Americans support. For instance, there plenty of polling that shows a significant majority of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases, as well as other gun control measures. Same can be said for graduated income taxes aimed at the wealthy. What's popular to you and your circle isn't always what's popular nationwide. There is also some pretty credible reads showing the very large gaping holes in Tara Reade's sexual assault allegation, although I will admit it's not an open and shut case.
Speaking of "obvious senile decline," did you see Trump's remarks in the Rose Garden on Tuesday?
Taxing the rich and minimum wages poll well (at least until they implement them, RIP Seattle) but they did not compare to the attraction of economic nationalism circa 2016. O'Rourke was pushing not just for background checks, but for confiscation, which doesn't even poll well.
My point about Biden's mental decline and the accusations against him was that his party's supporters just spent the last four years accusing Trump and his appointees of worse failings based on flimsier evidence. That effort has now been revealed as a sham in every respect. This and my comment overhead pertain to the OP because I question how closely Biden's positions reflect the actual psephological center of the United States, and to what extent that even matters if the whole process is leaking credibility.
Joe certainly has flaws. But on balance he'll be a better steward of our Republic. I don't buy the personal smears (assault or senility). If you could pick someone else, would it be fresh thinkers like Yang or Justin Amash?
At the very least. Even healthier would be a reduction in the scope of the state so that every election and SCOTUS appointment did not turn into a cage match.
Scope is one issue - competence is another. I'm half German, and think a *smart* Federal system can do a lot of good. My German cousins are solidly middle class and enjoy a quality of life we haven't seen here in the US in many decades.
I have one objection to this very reasonable analysis: it overemphasizes the role of messaging and underemphasizes the role of policy proposals, particularly economic ones.
Hillary Clinton's policies were rightly interpreted as a defense of the current economic structure, making her vulnerable to attack on her economic policy from the left. Trump's promises to protect and expand social security and medicare helped separate him from his GOP cohort during the 2016 primary and allowed him to hold his own on that front in the general election. Moreover, the part of the Democratic base that endorses identity politics is also largely interested in truly progressive economic policies. In other words, identity politics alone was insufficient to mobilize even the base it explicitly targeted. Thus Hillary Clinton both alienated disaffected, white swing voters and also failed to energize the mythic "base": the worst of both worlds.
I would also like to caution against the facile interpretation of Biden's success in the primary. Interestingly, black people are the only racial demographic in the US with a more favorable impression of socialism than capitalism. [1] As to why South Carolina (and Super Tuesday broadly) delivered Biden such a landslide win, there are many explanations, but the voters themselves make the case plainly: they thought he was the most "electable." [2] All in all, it would be reductive to conclude that a candidate who won explicitly on "electability" accurately represents voters' true policy preferences.
None of this is to undermine the evenhanded story the authors tell. I simply believe there is an important parallel story grounded in policy and not merely the ephemeral interpretations of political messaging.
Good article. Much appreciated. I come from that large white working class mix. Raised by a single mom working at two jobs. At times, along with siblings, farmed out to live with other family members able to provide support. Always will believe Clinton’s elitist “basket of deplorables” remark was the end of her campaign. It was a tragic mistake that will not be forgotten by some but most, I hope, will forgive. Odd, but it seems at times that many in this country don’t understand the white working class any better than they do people of color.
Yes. And publications like this are critical to preventing the loud radical minority from derailing the silent moderate majority. Thank you.
The moderate majority still votes, and delivers shock waves at the ballot box. The ‘woke twitter‘ minority lectures Americans from their perch inside major media platforms. I don’t know if Persuasion will reach the majority, but I welcome it nonetheless!
Indeed. Derail in the sense that candidates are pulled further left by the noisy mob which disenfranchises centrist voters and empowers the right. Which I suppose is the central theme of the article. If there is one quality I admire in Biden it is that he seems to understand or surrounds himself with people who understand how to speak to the center of the country despite the chaotic voices urging self-defeating radicalism.
Thanks, I joined Persuasion for exactly this kind of sensibility: articulating a positive vision of where we can go rather than taking cheap shots at those who disagree. I hope soon to see a conservative analog to this kind of reasoning. We collectively need some brainstorming on how a healthy conservative party can re-make itself post-Trump.
In my view David French and the Dispatch offer a pretty sensible view of how to take Republicanism out of the mud. More conservative and religious than I am but I still like their perspective. Definitely better than what passes for mainstream these days.
Thanks Roland. I’m a daily listener of The Bulwark, and I’ve heard French appear on that show once or twice. Perhaps I should give the Dispatch a try. It’s funny: even though I tend to lean left I feel the never-Trump conservatives offer the strongest criticisms of the president. I wonder if it is because opposing the undermining of independent institutions is more natural if you have a well developed conservative side...
Another plug for The Dispatch. I’ve been a subscriber from their earliest days, and it only gets better. I’m here because of them.
I spin through the Bulwark every so often as well, but I think there’s a bit more depth to Dispatch in many cases. Bulwark is reflexively anti-Trump, which doesn’t bother me but does tend to lead to a focus on the tweet-of-the-day and other Trump antics.
The folks at Dispatch are more “non-Trump” and tend towards traditionally center-right principles. They tend to take it slow and often avoid the controversy-of-the-week to talk about more substantive things. They’re also pretty heavy on foreign policy coverage.
David French is one of the current thinkers for whom I have just extraordinary respect, even though I am not personally devout. He is also a deeply kind person. Jonah is the slightly curmudgeonly bearer of the secular conservative torch who mixes erudition with pique, Steve is a down-the-fairway realist, and Sarah is a brilliant legal nerd who keeps the guys in check. It’s a great crew.
Another vote for the Dispatch. I subscribe to that as well. David French in particular is worth every penny.
And Andrew Sullivan is bringing back the Dish!
Yes, as others suggest, check out The Dispatch. I think they feel like they’re a Hail Mary pass to rescue conservative politics from the Trump cesspit, but there’s a lot of substance there. Plus, David and Sarah between them have managed, in their podcast, to make complicated legal and Supreme Court stuff kind of understandable and actually interesting. That’s gotta be some kind of magic.
Just dropping in to agree that this kind of thoughtful and searching content is exactly why I’m here. Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with any given contributor, I’m delighted to be a member of this community.
I assume that the above essay is not addressed at the likes of me, those of us who did not regard Clinton's loss as "tragic" and who, with due respect to the author, find the notion that the Democratic party has a claim to "the soul of America" rather silly.
Clinton was a repellent candidate who ran as a technocrat's technocrat in the midst of a bipartisan populist uprising, one that was thwarted on the Democrat side by internecine skullduggery. As Secretary of State she oversaw an incomprehensible foreign policy stance, brokering weapons to the House of Saud that they continue to use on the Yemeni, and orchestrating a collapse of Lybia that re-introduced the slavery of black Africans to the region. While Trump ran on a ridiculous platform of economic nationalism spelled out by Steve Bannon, Clinton pushed weak-sauce ideas like taxing the rich and raising the minimum wage, which are equally ridiculous but don't enjoy broad support. Her attempts to appear personable were cringe-inducing. While Trump appealed to racists, Clinton's supporters tarred everyone who supported Trump for any other reasons as equally racist, thus scattering the moderates.
Biden undoubtedly stands near the psephological center in a way that Sanders does not. Even so, his position on gun control is quite far from that center, his having promised among other things to appoint the fatuous Robert "Beto" O'Rourke to deal with the issue. He wants to throw even more money into an education system that deservedly has no credibility. He has promised to restore Title IX guidance to the destructive form it took under Obama.
This last item touches (sorry) on a related one - Biden appears to have committed an act of sexual assault that Trump merely described as being in the realm of the possible. (To think otherwise requires a double standard about "believing women" that's hypocritical even for politics.) Having pushed the idea of Trump's mental unsoundness for the whole of his presidency, the Democrats have nominated a man exhibiting obvious senile decline. This is all to say that there's more than one way to lose an election.
Franklin, you make some interesting assumptions about the views that the majority of Americans support. For instance, there plenty of polling that shows a significant majority of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases, as well as other gun control measures. Same can be said for graduated income taxes aimed at the wealthy. What's popular to you and your circle isn't always what's popular nationwide. There is also some pretty credible reads showing the very large gaping holes in Tara Reade's sexual assault allegation, although I will admit it's not an open and shut case.
Speaking of "obvious senile decline," did you see Trump's remarks in the Rose Garden on Tuesday?
Taxing the rich and minimum wages poll well (at least until they implement them, RIP Seattle) but they did not compare to the attraction of economic nationalism circa 2016. O'Rourke was pushing not just for background checks, but for confiscation, which doesn't even poll well.
My point about Biden's mental decline and the accusations against him was that his party's supporters just spent the last four years accusing Trump and his appointees of worse failings based on flimsier evidence. That effort has now been revealed as a sham in every respect. This and my comment overhead pertain to the OP because I question how closely Biden's positions reflect the actual psephological center of the United States, and to what extent that even matters if the whole process is leaking credibility.
Joe certainly has flaws. But on balance he'll be a better steward of our Republic. I don't buy the personal smears (assault or senility). If you could pick someone else, would it be fresh thinkers like Yang or Justin Amash?
At the very least. Even healthier would be a reduction in the scope of the state so that every election and SCOTUS appointment did not turn into a cage match.
Scope is one issue - competence is another. I'm half German, and think a *smart* Federal system can do a lot of good. My German cousins are solidly middle class and enjoy a quality of life we haven't seen here in the US in many decades.
This is amazing. I agree with others who have commented-this kind of piece is why I am here.
I have one objection to this very reasonable analysis: it overemphasizes the role of messaging and underemphasizes the role of policy proposals, particularly economic ones.
Hillary Clinton's policies were rightly interpreted as a defense of the current economic structure, making her vulnerable to attack on her economic policy from the left. Trump's promises to protect and expand social security and medicare helped separate him from his GOP cohort during the 2016 primary and allowed him to hold his own on that front in the general election. Moreover, the part of the Democratic base that endorses identity politics is also largely interested in truly progressive economic policies. In other words, identity politics alone was insufficient to mobilize even the base it explicitly targeted. Thus Hillary Clinton both alienated disaffected, white swing voters and also failed to energize the mythic "base": the worst of both worlds.
I would also like to caution against the facile interpretation of Biden's success in the primary. Interestingly, black people are the only racial demographic in the US with a more favorable impression of socialism than capitalism. [1] As to why South Carolina (and Super Tuesday broadly) delivered Biden such a landslide win, there are many explanations, but the voters themselves make the case plainly: they thought he was the most "electable." [2] All in all, it would be reductive to conclude that a candidate who won explicitly on "electability" accurately represents voters' true policy preferences.
None of this is to undermine the evenhanded story the authors tell. I simply believe there is an important parallel story grounded in policy and not merely the ephemeral interpretations of political messaging.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/25/stark-partisan-divisions-in-americans-views-of-socialism-capitalism/
[2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/super-tuesday-democrats-picked-a-lane-pragmatism/
Great piece. Between the two parties, it seems like a choice between Scylla and Charybdis.
Good article. Much appreciated. I come from that large white working class mix. Raised by a single mom working at two jobs. At times, along with siblings, farmed out to live with other family members able to provide support. Always will believe Clinton’s elitist “basket of deplorables” remark was the end of her campaign. It was a tragic mistake that will not be forgotten by some but most, I hope, will forgive. Odd, but it seems at times that many in this country don’t understand the white working class any better than they do people of color.
I'm so grateful for this piece.
This kind of thoughtful analysis is why I'm here. Keep it coming.
In my humble opinion, the VP pick will decide how serious this group is about bringing in a broader demographic.