Tag Archives: donald-trump

Assuming your political opponents are just “misinformed” only guarantees that you won’t win them over

A bit more streamsofconsciousness than other posts, because I’m writing late at night. But here goes:

I don’t know much about the right-of-center political shibboleths, but it’s been a shibboleth on the left that people only vote conservative because they “don’t know any better.” They’re “misinformed,” they’re “voting against their own interests,” they’re “low-information voters,” these are the only reason anyone votes for the GOP. Nevermind that the “low-information voters” tag was first (accurately) applied to the *Obama* coalition before Trump upset the political balance of power.

Remember that in the 2012 matchup, Obama voters consumed less news than Romney voters, and were less informed on the issues at large. But in those days calling someone a low-information voter was nothing less than a racist dog-whistle (at least among the left-of-center). By 2016, Trump had upended American politics by appealing to many voters of the Obama coalition, and now this racist dog-whistle was an accurate statement of fact on the left.

“Yes some voters just don’t know any better. They don’t know the facts, they don’t know right from wrong, they just don’t know. And if they don’t know, the quickest solution is to teach them, because once we give them the knowledge that “we” (the right thinking people) have, they’ll vote just like we do.”

But attacking liberals (in 2012) and conservatives (in 2016 and 2024) as “low-information” is old hat, what about attacking leftists?

That’s what the Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait has done in a recent article. Now, he doesn’t directly state “leftists are misinformed” like he would say about conservatives. It’s obvious Chait still wants leftists in his coalition and doesn’t want to insult them too badly. But he’s laying out the well-worn left-of-center narrative that his political opponents do not understand things, and that he needs to teach them how the government actually works so they can agree with his positions and support his favorite policies.

In Chait’s view, leftists just don’t get that the government is too restrictive, and that these restrictions are the cause of the housing crisis. They don’t realize it’s too regulatory, and those regulations harm growth. And they don’t get that government red tape is the reason all our infrastructure is dying and nothing new can be built. Chait attacks California High Speed Rail and Biden’s Infrastructure bill as hallmarks of this red tape. California HSR is 10 times over budget and still not a single foot of track laid down, while Biden signed the Infrastructure bill in 2021 and wrongly believed that he could have photo-ops in front of new bridges, factories, and ports in time for 2024.

The fruits of Biden’s infrastructure bills are still almost entirely unbuilt, their money still mostly unspent. And this lets Republicans make calls to overturn those bills and zero-out Biden’s spending. If his projects were actually finished on-time and during his presidency, Biden’s enemies could never attack his legacy like that. But government red tape stood in the way.

See, with claims like these, Chait is arguing in favor of the Abundance Agenda. I’m not entirely opposed to it. See my many posts on de-regulation.

But Chait is once again missing the mark here. He claims that Leftists don’t *understand* abundance, and that’s half of why they oppose it. He claims the other half is that they’ve built their power base as being the people who “hold government accountable” and oppose its over-reach. But Chait is mostly arguing that Leftists don’t realize that their crusade against Big Government is a “bad thing” that has made our economy worse. And I don’t think Leftists are misinformed at all, I think they just have different priorities than me and Jonathan Chait.

Let me explain though a specific example: Josh Shapiro is well-loved for repairing an I-95 overpass in rapid time. He did so by suspending all the red tape that usually slows down such infrastructure projects. Chait then argues, if we know we need to suspend the rules to get things done quickly, then why do we need to have these rules in the first place? They’re slowing us down and preventing us from building what’s needed, so shouldn’t we just remove some of them?

But here’s the red tape that Shapiro suspended:

  • There was no bidding process for procurement, contractors were selected quickly based on the Govenor’s office’s recommendations
  • There were no impact studies for the building process
  • On-site managers were empowered to make decisions without consulting their superiors or headquarters
  • Pennsylvania waived detailed financial reporting processes
  • Pennsylvania waived most environmental reviews
  • Pennsylvania waived the requirement to notify locals of the construction, and to gain local approval for that construction

I don’t exactly have a problem with these ideas, and if Chait wants to make these de-regulations a central part of the Democratic brand, more power to him. But Chait is wrong that leftists are simply misinformed, I think many leftists would say that while these waivers are fine in an emergency, we should not support this deregulation for all projects, even if it saves us time and money. The reasons (for a leftist) are obvious.

  • Deregulating procurement is central to the Trump/DOGE agenda, and opponents say this opens the door to government graft as those in power can dole out contracts to their favorites.
  • Impact studies were also deregulated under Trump in two different executive orders. Biden revoked both orders at the start of his term because of his focus on health and the environment. I think most leftists would assert that protecting the environment and health is more important than other government priorities.
  • On-site vs HQ is less of an emotive topic, but the need for “oversight” is still a driving idea any time the government Does Stuff
  • Waiving of financial reporting opens up accusations of fraud
  • Waiving environmental reviews, see point 2
  • Waiving local notification and buy-in. You can probably get away with this when “re-“building, but will ANY democrat stick their neck out and say locals shouldn’t have a say in new highway construction? I doubt it. Highways change communities, and any change needs community buy-in (so they say). This focus on localism is very popular on the right, left and center, no matter how much I and the Abudance-crats may oppose it.

So Chait, do the leftists not understand Abundance? Or do they have strongly-held beliefs which are incompatible with Abundance?

This whole theory of “low-information voters” is always appealing to democracies biggest losers. It’s why the GOP liked it in 2012, and it’s why Democrats like it in 2024. The idea cocoons us in a comforting lie that we alone have Truth and Knowledge, and that if only everyone was As Smart As Me, everyone would Vote Like Me.

It also seems Obviously True on the face of it. “The best argument against Democracy is a conversation with the average voter,” so the saying goes. And when you see any of your opponent’s voters interviewed directly, you can’t help but notice how much information they are *lacking*. And it’s obviously true, most people don’t know how government works, they don’t understand permitting, they don’t get that environmental impact reviews cost so much money and time. So obviously if we gave them that knowledge, they’d start voting “correctly,” right?

This misses an important point about political coalitions and humans in general: the wisdom of the crowds. Most people don’t know most things, but we all (mostly) take our cues from those who do know.

Think about the leftist coalition in America, the Berniecrats, the AOC stans, the DSA and the WFP. Most of the voters in this coalition don’t have a clue how environmental review works. But there are some in the coalition (probably including Bernie and AOC) who do know how it works, and the rest of the coalition takes its cues from those people.

There are certainly some people who have looked long and hard at the Abundance Agenda, and they have concluded that (for instance) removing environmental reviews would lead to Americans being exposed to more pollution and harmful chemicals. It was only because of environmental reviews that the EPA took action against PFAS, for instance.

So Chait is arguing that we need to reduce regulatory burden and reduce the ability of locals and activists to halt projects with their red tape and environmental reviews. I agree with this.

But Chait then argues that the only reason leftists don’t agree with us is because they don’t understand how harmful red tape and reviews are, and thus leftists have lead a wrong-headed campaign of being the people who say “no” to new buildings. I disagree with this.

I think the evidence shows that leftists simply have different beliefs than me and Chait. Leftists believe that red tape and reviews are necessary to protect the environment. And a leftist might argue that Chait complaining about environmental reviews is like a conservative complaining that “cars would be cheaper if they weren’t forced to have seatbelts and useless safety stuff.” Chait says environmental review doesn’t help us. Well I’ve never needed my seltbelt either, because I’ve never crashed.

I’m sure you can see how stupid the seatbelt argument is, well that’s probably how stupid leftists would see Chait. Yes 99% of the time an environmental review finds nothing objectionable about a project, but what about those few times when they do? Do we scrap the whole system because it’s usually a waste of time? I say again: without environmental review, the EPA would not yet have taken action on PFAS. A leftist could seriously say to Chait: do you support allowing PFAS in the water? Because it might still be allowed without environmental review.

I don’t know what Chait’s response would be, I’m sure he’d try to say “well that’s different,” because any review that *found* something was clearly a good review. But you don’t know beforehand which reviews will find something dangerous and which won’t. To a leftist, that means you have to do them all.

Now, most leftists *do not understand environmental review* just like most liberals, moderates, conservatives, and reactionaries. Most people don’t understand most things. But the leftist coalition includes people who *do* understand it, and they’ve weighed the costs and benefits and come out with a different stance than Chait has. The rest of the coalition takes its cues from the understanders, just like the every other coalition does.

But Chait’s thesis is built on a lie that because most leftists don’t understand, they’ll side with him and Abundance once they *do* understand. I disagree strongly. Most leftists will continue taking their cues from the informed leftists, and Chait is not saying anything new to inform those informed leftists. The coalition will only modify its position on this issue once the majority loses faith in the understanders (and thus seeks new ones with new positions), or when enough of the current understanders retire and are replaced by new ones. Coalitions, like science, advance one funeral at a time.

But this idea that people are misinformed and just need a smart guy like *me* to set them straight, this is a central tenant of politics that I think needs to die. You shouldn’t assume your opponents are just misinformed, you need to understand that they *actually have different ideas than you do*, and try to win them over by finding common ground. Otherwise you’ll continue to be the Loser Coalition just like Rush Limbaugh and the Romney-ites of 2012.

Perception and Reality

Well it’s been one of the most tumultuous 3 and a half weeks in politics, ever since the June debate between Biden and Trump. Since that debate:

  • The media perception of Biden has degraded from “frail but sharp old man” to “doesn’t always know what’s happening around him”
  • The Democratic Party line has gone from “Biden is the nominee, we can’t change him or it will cause chaos” to “Harris is the nominee”
  • Every Democrat in congress seemed to be calling for Biden to step down, and
  • Biden has stepped down as candidate, endorsing Harris

Some Democrats have (as they have all year) said that this was nothing more than an overblown media circus, that would have never caught fire if the lyin’ press hadn’t been so desperate for clicks that they cooked up a scandal. There’s a strong current among the Stancilite wing of the party to claim that every voter is an automaton who believes nothing except what the media says. So if the media says Biden is old, that’s what they believe. But the media *should* have said Biden was sharp as a tack and steering the ship of state, because then everyone would have believed that.

The idea that “The Media” (capital T capital M) is always against the Democrats is part and parcel of liberal mythmaking. Nevermind that it’s also part and parcel of *conservative* mythmaking, I encountered this liberal mythmaking first-hand in the aftermath of the Howard Dean campaign.

The liberal myth goes something like this: Howard Dean was a threat to the Establishment with powerful grassroots organization and nationwide appeal. But one night when trying to give a triumphant yell, he instead gave a weird-sounding scream. The Media repeated the “Dean Scream” endlessly, making a mockery of him to the voters and torching his campaign. In his stead, the underwelming, flip-flopping John Kerry was sent to lose against George W Bush. If *only* we’d stuck with Dean!

The problem with the “Dean Scream” myth is that it reverses cause and effect: it says that The Media used the Dean Scream to discredit him in the eyes of the voters. Yet looking at the record, the Dean Scream happened as he was trying to gin up his supporters after a dismal showing in the Iowa caucus, in which he vastly underperformed expectations and got just 18% of the vote, less than half of front-runner John Kerry and a very distant third behind the ascendant John Edwards.

Taken in context, The Media didn’t discredit Dean, the voters had already turned their backs on him. Dean was supposed to be a front-runner going into the caucus but his very poor showing put paid to that idea hours before his historic scream.

Kerry and Edwards would go on to be presidential and vice presidential nominees for that year.

Yet the idea that the Media creates perception (and therefore reality) still has power among the twitterati. When Biden was dealing with the fallout of the debate, many liberal commentators tore into The Media, claiming that if anyone was suffering from dementia it was rambly, half-awake Donald Trump. And since Biden has now dropped out, liberal commentators are trying to will a “Trump has dementia” angle into existence.

This seems like an insane take to me because *we all saw the debate*. No matter how much Trump lied and deflected, he said real words and you could understand them, Biden sounded like he was barely awake! The line of the night was Trump’s terrifyingly accurate quip of “I don’t know what he just said, and I don’t think he does either.”

And we can all see that Trump has done rally after rally after rally while Biden really *hasn’t*, and team Biden did everything in their power to prevent even a single off-script moment from ever being seen. All the while reports are coming in from allies all across congress and *across the Atlantic* that Biden hasn’t been all there for a really long time, and is confusing people and places left and right.

Meanwhile the curious voter can tune into any one of the many rallies that Trump holds, or just watch Fox News and see a man doing twice as many rallies, interviews and the like than Biden. As well as doing infinitely many more unscipted spots since Biden didn’t seem to do any.

Saying Trump is too old will certainly resonate, half the country already thought he was while 80% of the country thought Biden was. But trying to tar Trump with the same brush Biden got will not work I think because the reality doesn’t look like what the Democrats want out of a narrative. Like the Dean Scream myth, Democrats have taken away the idea that The Media creates reality, and if they can just *will* a narrative into existence, they can say anything about their opponents that their opponents say about them. I don’t think that works any more than Republicans trying to call Democrats election deniers works, because people have eyes.

At the end of the day The Media can certainly amplify stories and let narratives run away with things, but the idea that they can create something out of nothing is a myth. And Democrats trying to say *the media needs to be saying this” ie “Trump has dementia, Trump can’t speak straight,” trying to demand The Media simply reverse the story and put all of Biden’s flaws on Trump, well that isn’t going to work. They’d do a lot better hammering on things which are real instead of trying to create something out of nothing.

That may have been part of the problem for Democrats these past 3 weeks. While they were doing damage control for Biden, the most common rejoinder I saw was “Trump is just as old and just as senile!” The first is false, but at least close to true, Trump is very old. The second is an outright lie, 50 million people saw the debate, and you can’t lie to their face like that.

If Democrats lose, I think The Debate will enter the hall of myths alongside the Dean Scream, as a moment when The Media sharpened their knives and took out the strongest Democratic candidate available because (laughably) they were in the tank for Republican. And I think myths like that will make the party far weaker than it would otherwise be.