Mass Behavior v. Individual Action
Part of an ongoing conversation.
I want to flesh out an important underlying reality about the outcomes of mass behavior.
The outcomes of mass-level human behavior should not be understood as simply the sum total of atomistic behaviors made by individuals. While, yes, mass behavior is the collection of many individuals acting, it is not simply an issue of adding up all the actions and getting the results. Individuals make choices as constrained by the structures in which they operate.
The funny thing is that I expect that a large number of regular commenters (especially the ones who argue with me about this specific topic) fully accept that economic outcomes (i.e., the distribution of wealth and power) in the United States are not a simplistic result of people making right/wrong choices and then ending up where they are. On this issue, there tends to be an understanding of how context and, dare I note, structural conditions, shape outcomes.
I recognize that electoral outcomes and economic ones are not the same in nature and process, but the general principles are identical in the sense that any number of factors, including regional, racial, and familial backgrounds, as well as prevailing rules of the game, shape both economic outcomes and partisan identification (and therefore electoral behavior).
Clearly, I am not fleshing out a full version of these concepts in this short post but hopefully, the basic notion is clear.
As I have noted before, many times, there is a high probability that I can predict how everyone reading this sentence will vote in 2028 (or 2032, etc). All I would need is your voting history to date and the prediction could likely be solidified by some other misc. bits of information (race, religion, region of residence, economic status, etc.). The prediction would not be ironclad, because humans (and conditions) can change, but the likely accuracy, especially of a large enough group of voters, would be pretty good.
Certainly, on a mass level, we can make certain predictions that still allow individuals to vary. Part of the ongoing point of how the structures of US politics are permissive enough (not causative, but permissive) for someone like Trump, is that it is not at all unreasonable to state that a demagogue from the left could find a way to win the nomination via our very porous primary system and then have a takeover of the Democratic Party similar to that which we have seen on the Republican side.*
Is it really so hard to imagine a future circumstance in which a demagogic Democratic, who promises protection of abortion rights, universal healthcare, and appropriate taxation of the rich couldn’t gain traction, especially if MAGA continues to control the GOP?
Here we come to a structural reality: if 2028 is a contest between Demagogic Dem (DD) and MAGA, who are you voting for? What kind of rationalizations will you have to make?**
If 2032 is a contest between the re-election of DD and Normal Republican (NR), but DD was able to get universal healthcare passed, and NR promises to do away with it, who are you voting for? What if the likelihood is that the next president will get to reorder SCOTUS?
The system structurally limits the number of viable candidates to two. This is just reality, and it shapes behavior because it limits choices. Most people (again, we are talking about mass behavior) do not pay intense attention to politics and, instead, rely on things like partisan cues and other factors to make decisions.
Certainly, some of you would vote third party or abstain if the choice was DD v. MAGA (or even DD v. NR). I think a lot of you would find it a lot harder to vote NR over DD, let alone be vocal about it, than you think. Although, again, specific individuals could do any number of things.
Note, as I have before, my point has never been to absolve voters of their responsibility. I am trying to explain the outcomes we get,*** rather than simply being outraged that outcomes I don’t like have occurred (the difference, which often gets lost in the comment threads, between an analysis versus a normative assessment).
Indeed, it is wholly possible that any one of you reading this would refuse to vote for whatever version of a Bad Democrat might be nominated.
I will note that there is zero reason to assume, based on the whole of human history, especially the history of politics, that the Democratic Party is utterly immune from choosing a bad candidate.
At a bare minimum, I would suggest that commenters think in terms of their own behavior versus their party. Maybe you would never vote for a DD, but the notion that the Democratic electorate as a mass of humans would not do so is not as certain a prediction as many here in the OTB comment thread would like to argue.
*As I have repeatedly noted, it may be that right-ward parties are more prone to this kind of behavior, but I have my doubts that that is empirically true over time. I do think that current global conditions are favoring right-wing populism and nationalism. Again, the problem for the US is that the permissive nature of our institutions has made it easier for that faction of the GOP to take over the party, and therefore to control the House and maybe be able to gain the presidency and the Senate in the 2024 elections.
**In my view, I think most commenters tend to discount the power of rationalization (especially in the context of humans making rank-ordered choices) plays in these discussions.
**I will go to my grave insisting that problems can’t be fixed if the underlying cause of the problem is not understood. And, to be specific, that we, as a country, do not understand the way in which our political institutions are a major part of the problem. Note that I said “part” because, rather obviously, there are a lot of variables here.
The obvious rejoinder is that voting is not like most things people have problems with stopping. It’s easy to say you will eat better and start exercising. It’s much harder for many to follow through. Personally, I find to easy to empathize with this problem. Substitute voting for eating well and exercise and my empathy vanishes.
Thanks! Good comment. I was about to say “discussion,” but that will depend on how many deaf ears the comment falls on.
The far more common choice made is voting versus not voting, I think.
I hope you didn’t take my own comments from yesterday to mean I didn’t think a demagogic takeover of the Democratic ticket was possible. I do think though, that the “immune system” analogy has some weight. In particular, the internet has made a whole new class of grift/populism/advocacy possible, and we as a culture are only beginning to learn how to defend against the sort of maladies that are transmitted by it, and we will get better.
Also, I don’t think a populist Democrat makes sense as an opponent to a populist demogogue Republican, because in these times, people are looking for contrast. I’m not as sure about this, though. However, I would ask how much Biden looks like a “populist demogogue”?
And yes, oh, yes, I have seen similar behavior in Democrats as far as demonizing the opposition as I have seen in rank-and-file Republicans. Not a big fan, but I’m not King Canute. I have no illusion that I can command it to stop.
Steven, I agree with you 100% that the Democratic Party could have gone down a similar pathway, and might well do so in the future. I mean, hell, the Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party was once the main power base for Jim Crow racism and that is within the lifetime of some our older commenters.
So I’m not arguing against you when I say that certain structural things make it unlikely to happen soon. Specifically, the crazification of the Republican Party is driving away its sane, politically active and aware members and inevitably some of these will end up in the Democratic Party. By this mechanism the Republican Party has become a magnet for the crazies and the nihilists and the Democratic for the “adults in the room”.
It strikes me that there is a disconnect between my world view and that of many others here. We have a lot of academics and people whose outlook was formed in academia. That’s not a diss, we need the big brains to contemplate big brain issues. The virtue I most identify with is truth, and a lot of truth comes out of universities.
But when it comes to politics I’m playing a game, and the object is to win, specifically to win power. I accept everything Professor Steven wrote above. Let’s posit that it is 100% true. But in my game knowledge is not the end goal, power is. In order to make the world do what I want it to do, I need levers, things which can be manipulated in order to bring about my desired result. ‘System’ or ‘structure’ are not levers. Humans are.
It’s not just in this discussion that I run into this disconnect. When we talk about all things woke, for instance, people will argue that this or that thing is correct, just and proper. They’ll be right. But I’ll counter that it’s politically stupid, self-defeating. Should trans women be allowed to play competitive sports? I DGAF, but it’s a political loser that burns capital for a very minor issue. Ditto pronouns, and silly neologisms, and debates over grocery bags, or the insistence on analyzing every issue in terms of its effects on minorities. None of that is helpful in winning the game. None of it brings power.
Of course this tracks with my job, which is plotting stories. I don’t get paid to study, I get paid to put characters in terrible situations, and then get them out. In world-building (another part of my job) I create systems which characters must find ways to find a way around. As a good, disciplined author I obey the rules of my created systems within which characters act.
There are a lot of instances in history where a person, a character, manages despite the constraints of existing systems, to prevail and alter the system, bend it to their will or redefine it. Napoleon and Newton. One remade Europe, the other changed the way we see the world. Individual actions matter, individuals can cause dramatic changes. They can exercise power.
No one person can do much of anything about systemic racism, for example. But one person can change his mind, and cause others to change their minds, and if enough people change their minds, systems change. You can’t alter the history of racism, you can’t undo the systemic disadvantages of being Black, but you can be Rosa Parks. And you can choose not to be the person telling Rosa Parks that nothing can be done.
@Michael Reynolds: “And you can choose not to be the person telling Rosa Parks that nothing can be done.”
Sure… but there were plenty of good people back then saying that it’s a political loser that wastes political capital to worry about a woman refusing to sit in the back.
It’s easy to say that it was both morally and politically right to rally around her cause — because people did and they ultimately won. But at the time?
Not disagreeing over the need to pick one’s battles… just the constant hectoring of people who choose battles that differ from yours…
I think you are strawmanning the issue.
There isn’t a serious argument to be made that structural conditions don’t shape outcomes.
But that doesn’t mean that someone can’t argue that you are (in their opinion) overstating the importance of structural issues compared to non-structural ones (e.g., moral differences between two distinct electorates).
In theory: sure. In practice: no way.
Which means that this:
is a classic case of begging the question.
It is a more certain prediction than that pushed by those insisting, based on ???, that the Democratic electorate would back a monstrous Trumplike prick. Because the evidence is thus: the Democratic electorate has declined to do so. The data are, what the data are.
It is incumbent upon those arguing a speculative negative from a set of facts that do not exist to provide the evidence to prove their point.
I suppose unicorns and fairies could potentially one day appear or evolve. But they haven’t, and I have no reason to believe they will. So based on the existing reality, that position is more certain than a speculative one reliant on philosophical ‘anything is possible’ conjecture. Theoretically, yeah. But also, unlikely.
I think it make sense to form opinions from what is likely, from the known facts. Then, as Keynes famously said, when the facts change, you change your opinions.
@drj:
And, of course, as a political scientist you (i.e., Steven) were trained to primarily look for structural explanations, to prioritize the necessity (of certain outcomes) over contingency.
But political science isn’t the only lens through which we can look at the world. And also, I would argue, not necessarily the most suitable lens for every situation.
Yes, everyone thinks tribalism, ingroup/outgroup bias, and rationalization affect the baddies in the other tribe/outgroup much more than you. It’s the human condition.
My choices are always rational, well-informed, and motivated by the best of intentions, while the views of the other guys obviously make no sense, are clearly not well-informed, and are either stupid and/or motivated by the worst intentions. After all, only someone of dubious moral character or suffering from stupidity or ignorance could not see things the way I do. Since this analysis is obviously true because I believe it to be true, then it follows the other guys are the ones who need to change their views and behavior, not me. The only way those other guys can redeem themselves to to essentially adopt my premises and worldview.
And any unaffiliated or other critics should always aim their fire only at those guys, not me, because they are obviously so much worse, and apportioning any criticism at all on me would be “bothsidesing” and would suggest there is false equivalence when clearly there is not.
Over the years, I’ve asked here and in other forums what it would actually take to get a partisan to vote for someone on the other party. And 90% of the time, the answer is that they never would. A few would in very unusual circumstances. The most they would do is not vote, but many admit they would vote for a sack of potatoes with their party letter next to it before ever considering a vote for the other party. Yet many of these same people think it’s easy, moral and righteous for partisans from the other side to defect and vote for their candidate.
Just another day on the Internet!
There has been so much cognitive research on these individual and group dynamics that it’s pretty silly for anyone to deny they exist, especially on the basis of something as arbitrary as ideology or political brand identity across groups composed of many tens-of-millions of people.
@Andy:
Have you been paying attention lately? We aren’t exactly arguing about the most suitable top marginal tax rate nowadays.
@DK:
In the absence of an example of Democratic voters specifically refusing to support a DD, this strikes me as an argument in absence of evidence, but I’m sure you simply neglected to include the rejection of candidate you were thinking of.
Actually, that’s not the case. A hypothetical arguing any sort of speculative, negative or positive, is simply hypothesizing about a similar occurrence happening in similar circumstances to a different group and can simply be rejected at the peril of the members of the group in question. But if it did require evidence, the evidence would be that things that have happened in the past to some people can happen in the future to others under similar circumstances. We’re looking at the thing right now, it makes its own evidence.
Still in all, accroche-toi a ton reve. If a person’s reach doesn’t exceed their grasp, what’s a world for?
It’s funny to see Rosa Parks mentioned here because, in many ways, she’s a perfect example of how structural forces shape agency.
Several other Black women before her did the exact same thing, with the same personal results. But their actions didn’t spark a boycott, even though most were involved in the local civil rights movement. And there had been a desire to fight that law by activists for years.
However, all of the previous women were seen as not being sympathetic enough or had other baggage that made them poor standard bearers (i.e., being an unwed mother, too young, or skin too dark).
Rosa Parks’s identity–a little oldish church-going, hard working middle-class aspiring Black woman–made her the perfect person to turn into the face of the movement. It also meant we don’t talk about her fierce life-long activism work, because that would have made her more suspect and less of a righteous victim. She was just an every-woman on the bus who was tired after a long day of work.
Right person in the right place at the right time (with the right preparation).
BTW, that phrase, in particular place and time–not to mention “right”–is as much an acknowledgment of the importance of structure as it is agency.
Also, just to be clear, I see this as an “AND” situation. It’s never purely structural.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I did not. That no such Trumplike candidate exists for Democrats merely reinforces the point that no evidence exists to support the claim — whether the claim is called hypothesis or conjecture or speculation or wishcasting or whatever. Yes, it is true that this is an attempt to argue a negative.
The conversation is extraordinary one to be having on a day when a very conservative Republican speaker trying to pass rote national security bills just had to rely on more votes from those famously unreasonable, demagougic, uncompromising liberal Democrats to do so. An inevitable outcome of American conservatives’ decades-long downward spiral into Birchrerism, extremism, and bigotry.
This is the reality — the set of existing facts and known knowns — shaping my opinions, rather than nonexistent candidates and nonexistent behaviors that may or may not exist in some speculative future. The same reality that informed my choice to stop voting Republican, a choice well within reach of many other adults who have personal agency and no serious or valid excuse to vote for fascism. (And who are accountable and responsible for their political decisions, despite ongoing attempts to infantilize them and blame somethinhg else.)
@Andy: You and I often disagree, so I just want to say that I think you got this right.
I will nitpick with your example though. I’m someone who used to vote, at least on the local level, for Republicans as well as Democrats. I really did just look at their record and what they wanted to accomplish and vote according to that. But this was at a time when politicians made cross aisle coalitions on a routine basis. But the Republicans put an end to that. They do not cross party lines. They do not negotiate in any meaningful way and haven’t for maybe 15 years. So, counterintuitively, in today’s reality voting for any Republican means voting against cross aisle cooperation. It’s why I think Johnson’s maneuver may (hopefully) become so much more meaningful than this one vote – for the first time in a political generation a Republican has negotiated with Democrats rather than with the crazy 3% of his own party. Whatever drove him to this, I hope it has driven him to the “sticking point” and it becomes a routine thing.
I have a thought exercise that might help, especially given that thinking about this extremes is difficult for the reasons Steven laid out.
Imagine for a moment that instead of happening in the 1990’s Bill Clinton was currently the President and the Lewinski scandal had broken during his first time. Despite calls for him to step down from office, especially given rumors that had been circulating about past affairs and questions about consent.
Let’s also say that Bob Dole is also alive at the time and running against him (essentially a 1996 rerun).
What do you do in that election?
(Especially if we are applying modern views on what is and isn’t appropriate behavior for men in positions of power.)
@Michael Reynolds:
This is like saying that you want to win in football (or name your sport) and you don’t care what the rules of the game are.
The rules structure the game. If you don’t account for the rules, and how they shape your options, you are likely to lose.
@Michael Reynolds:
Sure. But, in all seriousness, what does that have to do with what I am describing?
I mean, yes, heroic individual action is important, but that’s an entirely different conversation.
@drj:
Methinks that if you are going to make that accusation, you need to do more than assert.
Why? Because you feel that way about it? Honestly, this is part of this whole conversation that I do not understand. The whole of human history is rife with any number of groups and persons from a variety of philosophical and ideological persuasions going off the rails in any number of unpleasant ways. Why are people so convinced that this is impossible for the Democratic Party?
@drj:
Certainly not for analyzing politics š
@Andy:
I spend a lot of time in the ocean surfing, and when the topic comes up, I meet people who are irrationally afraid of sharks. I get why people are afraid. I’ve surfed in sharkier places than my home break where occasionally in the summer a board will get bumped or someone will get lightly nicked. Sometimes I’ve paddled in after a sighting rather than hang out like other surfers. But a day later I’m not afraid, and it’s hilarious to turn that inside-out into me being a match of being a person who can’t get into the water. We’re both biased, apparently.
Basically, if you’re afraid like Republicans are afraid of crime or wokeness or trans people you are afraid of sharks. Talking about bias or ingroup/outgroup–what are we even doing with this? The ingroup of parents who think they will be probably at fault for any potential problems with kids vs the outgroup who thinks that the schools, gender ideology, and wokeness are the real culprits for their kids playing video games 24/7? Or the ingroup of people who ride the subway and can handle things vs the outgroup who shoots up on Facebook Grandpa articles about crime?
Some people are cool regarding their place and their world and some are not. The Democrats are somewhat the party of those who are and the Republicans are definitely the party of those who aren’t.
@Matt Bernius:
What did Democratic electeds and voters do with Al Franken and with Cal Cunningham?
What happened to Bob Mendendez’s planned re-election campaign?
So much speculation is for lulz and giggles when we have modern and present realities to work from and focus on.
@Matt Bernius:
Can’t say for certain. But didn’t a great number of liberals go down in the MeToo era because of similar accusations? And the blowback against this came from people who seem to be convinced that Democrats are all like Republicans.
This is always what’s the oddest aspect of these conversations here. Wokeness or whatever you want to call it was a circular firing squad. It is an example of the exact opposite of mass conformity and bias. Interestingly, it was portrayed as conformity at a Cultural Revolution-level. (Substituting a guy losing his job for millions of dead, naturally.) But you have the evidence of the opposite type of behavior, some of which was outside the political mainstream and all of which was based on ethical principles, and it ended up being pegged as lockstep obedience to party organs.
Meaning that if Bill Clinton went down now for sexual harassment would those who took him down be treated as heretics who bucked the party or as even greater conformists unable to look outside their ideological rigidity? I’m guessing the latter.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Who besides you used the word “impossible” (the strawmanning to which @drj refers)? Why are you so convinced that it is possible for the Democratic Party? Just because, theoretically, anything is possible?
And, more salient, does it matter? It seems bad actors come and go in politics. Future electorates will handle that situation, if they need to.
@DK:
Al Frankin resigned. Cunningham was running for election.
Neither one was President, and I think that matters.
So do you think Democrats as a whole would have demanded that Clinton resign the Presidency? As recently as 2016 there was a lot of reluctance to acknowledge that he did anything wrong. Granted MeTo happened after that, but I’m unconvinced that would have been enough in this particular case.
And what if he didn’t resign? I specifically chose the reelection because historically–at least since Carter–sitting presidents (even Democrats) haven’t had a serious primary opponent.
@Modulo Myself:
If Democrats were all like where Republicans have inevitably landed — as myopic, amoral, unwilling to compromise, and prone to extremism — the Progressive Caucus would today be loudly threatening to remove Hakeem Jeffries as Minority Leader over the House Democrats having to provide the votes for a MAGA-acolyte speaker to pass Israel aid.
If Democrats were like Republicans, Democrats would not have stood ready to provide the votes necessary to pass a border security bill negotiated by a conservative Oklahoma senator and endorsed by Border Patrol, calling MAGA’s bluff.
But as irritating and wrongheaded as the Democratic Party’s left flank can be, Democrats are not like Republicans no matter how much the bothesiders can’t stand it. There is a fundamental compassion and decency in the Democratic platform currently missing from the GOP — due to the right’s long embrace of greed, religion extremism, selfish individualism, and bigotry. Hence why former Republicans like me were able to find a place in the Democratic Party.
That devolution is the story here. The Republican Party was long warned it was on a destructive road policywise. MAGA didn’t come out spontaneously, from nowhere, less about ideological principles and more about systems.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Because an essential part of the current coalition of Democratic primary voters would not stand for it. (And without these voters, there is no route to power.)
Maybe a different coalition of voters could take over the Democratic label in twenty years or so. But that’s different from the current party going off the rails.
It’s not its ideology that protects the current Democratic Party, but rather its current voters.
People with low scores on an authoritarianism scale would rather switch parties rather than become more authoritarian themselves – and vice versa.
Isn’t this exactly what the Southern strategy was based on? Offering a home to those who would rather switch parties than become less authoritarian (especially with regard to racial hierarchies)?
@DK:
I wish I had more than one upvote to give this.
@drj:
Another way of putting is that you can look at structure all day long, but that doesn’t invalidate the fact that some people are far more inclined to authoritarianism than others.
Personality traits matter, too.
Yes and.
Cognition, decision-making, etc does not occur in a vacuum. It is shaped and constrained by context.* This is a fact.
And it’s a fact that leaves lots of room for maneuvering. This is where the fundamental attribution error (among other things) says hello.
We often over-attribute the thoughts and behaviors of others to innate, personality factors. And we often under-attribute their thoughts and behaviors to contextual factors. The inverse for ourselves, natch.
But context matters here too. The above holds when “bad” thoughts and behaviors are expressed. And, of course, “bad” is context dependent too.**
Thus, in the OTB context, “bad” = voting Republican, hence people who vote Republican do so for (mostly? entirely?) “bad” characterological reasons.*** Context be damned. And by doing so, they reinforce their innate “badness.”
When Republican-voting (ie, “bad”) people do something “good,” it is often attributed to context (“they had no other choice,” “they were up for re-election in a purple district,” etc).
We all do this. For good and adaptive reasons. It’s just that not all manifestations of this human brain superpower are good. Or adaptive. But, of course, what is good and adaptive is context dependent too.****
*Robert Sapolsky articulates the most extreme version of this.
**So many contextual layers.
***The tautology makes it all the more irresistible.
****I give up (note to self: try again to read Charles Howard Hinton).
I belong to the school of thought that humanity is divided between a very small number of heroes and saints on one end of the moral continuum, another minority of monsters and devils at the other end, and everyone else somewhere in the morally mediocre middle. We can’t ignore the threat that the monsters pose. Nor can we build a society that depends on everyone behaving in a saintly and heroic fashion. The big question of political philosophy and political science has been, what kind of society is needed to nudge the majority of humanity towards behaving in a fair, humane fashion, constraining the monsters, and rewarding the saints. Plato, Confucius, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and countless other thinkers had different answers about what formula of principles and practices have the best chance of creating a good society ā or one that’s at least decent and tolerable. Call that formula whatever you think makes the most sense: structure, context, or constitution (in the British sense of the word), or something else.
How one creates a better society is a different question. Again, we can’t depend on everyone being heroes and saints. (Nor, as tyrants and zealots often do, can we treat everyone, or the members of an identifiable subset of the populace, as an actual or potential monster.) As Matt Bernius pointed out, Rosa Parks didn’t refuse to get up her seat completely on her own. She had been an NAACP member since 1943. Not to diminish her bravery one bit, she was part of an organization that supported her defiance. The NAACP and allied organizations had been discussing how to confront the racism behind the Montgomery bus policies, eventually organizing a bus boycott. Rosa Parks wasn’t a lone, weaponless paladin on the field of moral battle. Thank goodness for that. Her example electrified the civil rights movement and cause many in the morally mediocre middle to re-think their support of the status quo. That being said, her brave example probably would not have had the effect that it did without an organization ready to organize boycotts, go to court to challenge a horrible legal regime, lobby politicians, encourage people to vote, organize further acts of resistance, and relentlessly make its case in person, in print, and on the airwaves.
As I said in a different thread yesterday, moral suasion is important, but it doesn’t work on its own. It’s necessary to harness it to change the structure or context that exists, or build one to replace it. Convincing people to share the same well-intentioned hashtags on social media accomplishes nothing on its own.
@Matt Bernius:
That’s an excellent point about Rosa Parks.
One of the themes I return to is strategy and the strategic genius of MLK and other movement leaders. They not only planned acts of civil disobedience as part of a larger strategy but were also able to take advantage of situations that emerged to propel the movement’s goals forward. This is a far cry from most activism today, where disruption and disobedience seem to be both the means and end, accomplishing nothing.
I guess it would depend on if he would have handled it any differently. I don’t think Presidents should be getting blowjobs from interns at work, but if you get caught, don’t lie about it and let your surrogates try to destroy the reputation of the intern to avoid the political fallout. It only makes it worse and the eventual fall a lot harder.
Bill Clinton was/is a very good politician, and I tend to think he would have acted differently, and probably would understand that in the age of the internet and social media that getting that blow job in the first place probably wouldn’t be worth the risk. And Lewinsky’s views and desire to participate likely would not be the same either. So my guess is that the incident probably wouldn’t have happened in the first place in a modern context.
I think political stakes matter a great deal. Al Franken was, ultimately, an expendable Senator. It’s easy to demand a sacrifice when there is no political price to pay in terms of the balance of power in the Senate. What if a Republican had replaced Franken? I think he suddenly would have found the wagons circled around him until he could be primaried.
@Modulo Myself:
I was 7 when Jaws came out in the theaters, and somehow, I forced/convinced/nagged my mom to take me to see it. Clearly, I realized later she relented to teach me a lesson. I got scared partway through and wanted to leave – she said no, but that I could wait in the lobby. Back then, theaters had double doors at the back with an aisle in the middle, so I stood behind those doors and looked through the crack to watch the rest of the movie.
That movie freaked a lot of Americans out about sharks and the ocean. I grew up in Colorado, so I didn’t have to face those fears.
Anyway, the ingroup/outgroup dynamic is well understood and researched. Over time, new members of a group tend to change their views to those of the group, not the other way around. I don’t think your examples really describe this.
I don’t have a link at the moment, but there have been some cases where groups of Republicans and Democrats have switched parties, usually because of one salient issue. But the interesting thing is that slowly, over time, they tend to adopt the other, less salient, issues of the party as their own. And the reason is that people generally start with political identities and then move to opinions to match those identities, not vice versa. The same thing happens with other group dynamics where there are ingroups and outgroups – nations/countries all the way down to sports. Sometimes it’s just fun – here in Colorado, we have endless jokes and insults about all the people from Texas and California moving here, because we know we are the best state, which is why so many people from lesser states want to move here. š
Kevin Drum read a (paywalled) piece at the Economist and has a plot (of course Drum does) of a key set of data that seem relevant to this discussion. The Economist has data for the G7 countries showing the change in trust in “national institutions” from 2006 to 2023. In Britain trust is fairly high, and essentially unchanged. (Why would it go up?) Trust has increased (reading Kevin’s chart) by about 12 percent in Germany to maybe 27 percent in Italy. Of the G7 nations, trust in institutions has declined only in the U. S., from about 65 percent to 48. Why? In Drum’s opinion – FOX.
Is FOX structural or moral (or whatever we’re calling not structural?) The Second Amendment is clearly structural. The press is an institution. The appetite for FOX’s faux populist crap is maybe not structural, but does seem to be a constant throughout world history. Apparently monsters like Murdoch are relatively rare in the G7. (He still has a presence in the UK, which may account for their failure to increase trust. That and the last many years of Tory rule.)
@MarkedMan:
I try to avoid painting with a broad brush. That’s why I still look at candidates on an individual basis. John Tester and Ilhan Ohmar are in the same party but they are very different politicians, for example.
And it’s simply a sad reality that one party dominates in state and local government in many parts of the country. In those cases, the actual election is decided in the primary. What should a person who lives in a de facto one-party area do?
I’ve described before an election a few years ago where the county coroner was up, and the incumbent – a Republican – was running for reelection. His Democratic opponent seemed to be some guy who had a grudge – he had no degree, much less a medical degree, no qualifications for the office at all. Well, sorry, I’m going to be a Pavlovian partisan voter and vote for the Democratic candidate in that case. A lot of people did, though! IIRC, he got like 35% of the vote, so either people wanted someone completely incompetent in that position, or else (more likely) it was party-line voters who knew nothing about the candidates.
Well, that’s not how I do things. I take my civic responsibilities seriously, and I try to make the effort to understand what I’m voting FOR because voting is inherently an affirmative act. It’s not that hard – a couple of hours every year is all it takes.
Having said all that, for the past many years, I’ve functionally been a Democrat in terms of my voting choices for most every major state and federal office because of how the GoP has gone off the rails. That doesn’t mean I’m super aligned with the Democratic partyāI’m not. It depends on the office, the candidate, and the issue. For example, I really like Colorado Democrats generally. I’m a huge fan of our Governor, Polis and liked his predecessor, now Senator Hickenlooper. I have a few big policy disagreements, but what I like is their governing philosophy and pragmatism, which is much less ideologically focused and more results-focused than many other Democrats.
Not all Democrats are the same; the differences matter a great deal – to me, at least.
And I do think there are good and honorable GoP candidates and politicians out there, and I am not going to categorically refuse to vote for them because much of the GoP has gone to crazy town. For one thing, if the GoP is ever going to be a sane party again, then sane candidates need votes to counter the crazys. It’s one reason I always strategically vote in GoP primaries here. And secondly, I think party-line voting is just bad and dumb in a system with extremely weak parties like we have. It makes sense in a system where parties actually control candidates, which is not the case here.
@Andy:
I think this is correct and again gets to how the surrounding structures shaped that decision.
@gVOR10: Whoops. First Amendment. Not Second, First. But please read the linked Drum piece.
@Kingdaddy: I may be wrong (after all, I’m only a cracker), but my reading of Locke specifically seems to show a bias toward believing that then “goodness” of the system will be mostly (I would go ahead and say “entirely,” but I allow for disagreement) dependent on the “goodness” of the people agreeing on the contract. I don’t recall seeing notions that consensus made the pact good, only effective and workable. (For an example, see references in a particularly famous and early contract document about 3/5th of persons.)
ETA: And, as far as that goes, only effective and workable to the extent that the consensus of the group doesn’t change. He might view our current contract void–and might well have thought the same thing in 1860 for that matter.
@mattbernius: And the Democratic voters in North Carolina who abandoned Cal Cunningham, allowing a Republican to narrowly win a Senate seat by 1.8%?
@Andy: count me as another voter who has a record of voting for competence more then party. Of late I have noticed that I am finding that harder to do, at least in marginal cases, because voting for a slightly more competent Republican lends strength to all republicans. It is one more vote for, for example, a MAGA speaker, or support for a senate majority that will enable MAGA outcomes. So since the rise of MAGA (and really the Tea Party) I often vote for the Democrat even though I think they are a weaker candidate or have lower competence or preparation for the office. In a sense, itās like Iām voting for the party list and the party is filling that seat with an individual that I donāt like, not voting for the individual politician (yes I know this is not a perfect analogy)
@Andy:
My point was that fear of sharks equals fear of gender ideology/hellhole cities/college campuses. These fears are centered in out-groups who don’t have much experience with gender ideology, cities, and campuses. It’s like conservatives who focus on the one conservative who rants about NPR and some fake form of wokeness because NPR has a style guide versus liberals in the media who report really well to others in the media on how the Times actually did botch the Screams Without Words story. There’s a degree of total disconnect which goes with Republicans and what they focus on.
@Matt Bernius:
To run 2024 Bill Clinton’s exciting black or female vice-president as an incumbent against Bob Dole instead? You need not threaten me with a good time, sir lol
He’d probably lose his winnable election, like Mr. Cunningham did.
@Matt Bernius:
“And what if he didnāt resign? I specifically chose the reelection because historicallyāat least since Carterāsitting presidents (even Democrats) havenāt had a serious primary opponent.”
Pat Buchanan begs to differ.
And I do think it would have happened. Clinton would have faced a serious primary opponent, and likely would have lost.
@Michael Reynolds:
In 2o1o or thereabouts rightwingers were all aflutter about Saul Alinsky who I had never heard of.
So I got a copy of his book Rule For Radicals and realized why they were so aflutter.
He explicitly says that politics is about power and how to get it so as to effect change.
@Matt Bernius:
The truth is, Rosa Parks was not merely some tired old woman looking for a place to sit.
She was a trained social activist, and her confrontation was carefully planned and staged because the people she was working with were not stupid, they all had experienced the cruelty and injustice of Jim Crow south and knew that to defeat it took courage but also shrewdness and clever strategy.
A lot of times we like to romanticize the sort of “storm the Bastille” moment, imagining the spontaneous citoyen uprising but history shows it is patient methodical planning and strategy that wins the victory.
@Erik:
I generally agree – at least here in Colorado, there are few decent Republicans that I’m able to consider voting for above the county level. The state of the Colorado GoP is best described as a shit show. I feel fortunate that Colorado has a pragmatic and independent political culture, which means most of the Democrats here are pretty good (IMO).
@Modulo Myself:
My point is that everyone has their outgroups and fears – it’s certainly not something that only manifests among Republicans.
@DK:
I am reacting to the general tenor of some of the critiques. However, if you prefer a less strident word/phrase (“highly unlikely” or something else) it doesn’t change my position. Overly focusing on one modifier while ignoring a legion of other words is not a good way to argue.
Look, if the issue is solely 2024, then I suppose I understand why I get the pushback. But I have never, ever framed these conversations that way. Indeed, it feels (and I use that word deliberately because I can’t say for sure) that there has been a shift in this thread, and maybe the other one, to the notion that I am only talking about now. I’m not.
I would note that understanding how structural conditions led to Trump is important. Electorates did not solve that problem in 2016 and they may not in 2024.
And if there is a pathway for some Democratic version of a problematic candidate, that should matter.
The fact that the forest isn’t on fire today doesn’t mean we shouldn’t understand what might cause a massive conflagration in the future. Indeed, I don’t understand the pushback as if all that matters is right now. If we had fixed some of these issues decades ago, we wouldn’t have to have this conversation now.
I get it: people are worried about now. So am I, but just being mad at the other tribe is insufficient for either understanding or long-term solutions.
@DK:
Your zooming in on Cunningham seems to be missing out on critical context. For example it was 2020 and Trump also beat Biden in NC (a state which BTW has gone for the Republican Presidential candidate in 11 of the last 13 elections).
Granted Biden lost by a 1.4 margin versus Cunningham’d 1.8, but a .4 difference doesn’t feel like the great repudiation you seem to indicate.
Or are you blaming Biden losing the State on Democrats staying home (versus more Republicans turning out)? Because it seems to me the overwhelming majority of Dems voted for the flawed candidate.