Beutler & Yglesias on Strategy
I am going to comment on two smart guys who believe that they disagree about the optimal political strategy for Democrats.
Brian Beutler wrote an interesting essay criticizing what he calls “issue polling essentialism”. It includes the text
The topic occurred to me after I recorded last week’s Rubicon with my friend Matt Yglesias, where we took different sides on the question of how determinative issue polling should be in setting progressive priorities. We are no longer friends. (Just kidding. Unless…? Better listen to the episode!)
I trust they are still friends, but Yglesias is a bit peeved. He wrote this Thread beginning “I think this piece does not describe the position it is critiquing accurately.”
In fact, after mentioning Yglesias, Beutler goes on to critique a poll obsessed straw man. I trust they are still friends, but that was sloppy.
I have comments on both.
I agree with Yglesias’s non obvious tweet “2) Issue activists associated with the Democratic Party (and more to the point, those who fund their activities) should care more about raising the salience of topics that are likely to help Democrats win, and less about raising the salience of the specific issue they work on.”
The implicit claim is that, whatever they care most about, they won’t get if Republicans are elected, so issue activists should help Democratic party candidates by sticking to the party line *then* press them on the specific issue they work on (with implicit threat to make trouble ?). I agree. This is psychologically difficult — people talk about things they care most about and it involves other than complete frankness and being a hack. There is a conflict of material interests as advocacy groups which echo the party line don’t get attention and donations. That’s why the appeal is directed at “those who fund them”. The tweet is cynical (Yglesias introduced the phrase “the hack gap”). Also, I find it very convincing.
I have criticisms of Beutler after the jump.
Beutler knocks down the poll obsessed consultant who advises politicians to bend with the wind and demonstrate hypocrisy. He correctly notes that people like people who believe in something, who have values, and who act on them. All of this is definitely true. Flip flopping is politically costly. Honesty is often the best policy.
On the other hand he spends a lot of time with the straw man (or 1980s theoretical political scientist) who bases everything on the median voter theorem. I guess there may have been people who argued that getting between the median voter and one’s opponent guaranteed victory, but refuting them is beating a dead horse(race commentary).
Beutler does not discuss sincere hippy punching. It is not clear to me if it is good strategy (it angers activists who would otherwise be valuable volunteers). He considers only advocating unpopular policies which he considers good policy and assumes that the candidates consider to be good policy. I’d say dumping on the slogan “defund the police” is good politics and fine policy (if one goes on to say one supports more money for unarmed health professionals to deal with mentally ill people having trouble without shooting them). The slogan was badly chosen and people who didn’t mean “reduce police budgets to zero” should have dropped it.
I think he makes very good points about Manchin and Synema. They are dividing Democrats insisting on unpopular positions. I think it is more about ego or sincere belief than political strategy. More generally blude dogs and conservadems do not appear to me to have even the normal level of willingness to look at polls. The fact that almost all the blue dogs are no longer in Congress tends to support this view.
Then he wrote
Sherrod Brown represents a much redder state than Sinema at this point, but he’s a vocal, pugilistic progressive, and outperforms mushier Dems in his state. I’m not sure how long his appeal will be viable enough to overcome the rapid reddening of Ohio, but it’s worked out so far because he has a great brand, not because he’s figured out some algorithmically correct set of policies.
I trust Brown’s sincerity and do not think he used a cynical algorithm to choose his policy positions. However, I am going to give a hostage to fortune and assert that each and every one of his stated policy positions corresponds to the output of a popularity maximizing algorithm. In particular, he is an egalitarian populist (redundent really the original populists were leftists and “right wing populism” means either “racism” or being right wing loud and rude). So are most US adults.
In particular, one signatutre Sherrod Brown issue is suspicion of free trade. Here there is a clear longstanding division of elite and public opinion with the elite supporting free trade (as I do) and the public being much more open to protectionism. Brown wants to help US workers. There are a lot of US workers. They are not totally immune to xenophobia. I think that the issue where Brown broke with Clinton and Obama is exactly the main issue where they took unpopular opinions. Again, I am sure he is sincere. But the poll driven algorithm would have suggested exactly his stated position.
OK having given a hostage to fortune, I will check his web page. I will report if I find something bold and unpopular. I am going to guess it will be bold and popular (bold as in controversial inside the beltway but not outside of it)).
Robert:
I guess if Dems had done “BETTER” in the 2020 national election for the Senate, you would not be having this post.
Marvel has or had a series called the “Legends of Tomorrow.” It is a varying cast of people and I would say it is not rated well for anyone under 18. Different point there. They go around looking for disruptions in the time line impacting the future and fix them so as to correct the future to what it should be.
Maybe they could correct the 2020 timeline so Manchin would not be as significant as a Lieberman (who was smarter) giving the finger to the party as a whole by having a few more Dems elected? Kennedy dying left us shy of a public option and LTC. Anybody but trump or clinton voters perhaps could have been swayed to vote for Clinton with blockage of a few alleged Clinton issues.
Think of where we would be. I think Repubs are on the ropes if trump drives the bus for repubs. We shall see.
Beutler does not discuss sincere hippy punching. It is not clear to me if it is good strategy…
[ Punching is always a terrible strategy, and hippy punching though boasted about for years by a prominent economics professor at the University of California has indeed undermined liberalism. Jeremy Corbyn was punched away in Britain and Labour when sorely needed has been ruined as a result.
“Sincere hippy punching” is an offensive expression for me. ]
The Democrats don’t have much experience in running the federal government. Since 1980 they have had unified control for only four years, 1993 to 1995 and 2009 to 2011.
The Republicans have a very solid think tank infrastructure with groups like American Enterprise, Cato, Heritage, etc. They have ALEC as well which can rollout out conservative ideas nationwide through various state legislatures. Republicans also have a massive PR infrastructure though outlets like Fox News and conservative radio. This allows them to craft an idea in one day and have it rollout the next day on a Sean Hanitty show.
The Democrats have a few think tanks but they have nowhere near the influence.
So now the Democrats once again are in power. Will they have learned any lessons from the past? Two glaring mistakes from the Obama era should be pondered. On tax policy Democrats knew for ten years that the Bush tax cuts were going to expire. Yet by the summer of 2011 they literally had no plan. They allowed a small group of conservative Democrats to torpedo any response; most of these Democrats lost in the 2010 Republican tsunami. On health care reform, Max Baucus dithered for months trying to line up Republican support, while tea partiers invaded Democratic town halls with no push back. Obama had a large contingent of activist Democrats from the Obama for America ranks, but they were never mobilized.
I hope that the Biden/Harris administration stay very focused on policies that are also good politics. The covid relief bill looks like a good start.
“…Here there is a clear longstanding division of elite and public opinion with the elite supporting free trade (as I do) and the public being much more open to protectionism…”
[When we brand this distinction as xenophobia rather than an instinctive comprehension of economics that places the interest of productive labor above the nuances of financial arbitrage, then we display our real problem loud and clear. Love of finance instead of love of land keeps our two major political parties on a level playing field. Neither is fit to lead those that would labor and die for their land.]
The Democrats don’t have much experience in running the federal government….
[ Poor Dears, lacking in experience and lacking in think tankers and lacking in Fox-like celebrities. Forgive me, but I take this as comical. ]
It is such
I had trouble following Waldmann’s essay. Maybe I just didn’t get the point. Maybe we just inhabit separate realities. On the other hand I agree with Ron Weakley and Jim Hannon (I think. If I understand them.)
I don’t support pFree Trade, perhaps I am not elite enough. But I supported it until I realized the argument that so swayed me in Econ 101 was bogus. Sure the math works, but it leaves out the facts. The usual problem with elite thinking.
And I think Jim Hannon is right. The Dems problem is poor politics… they don’t get their message out. Perhaps because their message is not quite honest about their true economic beliefs and interests, and their appeal to “identity politics” may win them some elections (may), but it seems ridiculous enough to some people who are not rabid haters of race and sex and sex-preference… and thus lose at least almost as many votes as they gain by appealing to mostly emotional (self) interest groups: those people need justice, but they don’t need “revenge” which is what they seem to be asking for, and being promised.
Then, when they do win an election, it turns out that just enough of their members are Republicans in Disguise that they can blame their failure to enact the policies they claim to favor on “moderates.”
In short, I don’t trust political “theorists” any more than I trust economic theorists. I do trust the practical politicians… to get what they want.
This is not to say that xenophobes and white supremacists do not grasp persistent US trade deficits as a convenient wedge issue for their own clandestine purposes, but that not everyone that is concerned over persistent trade deficits is a xenophobe or white supremacist.
Dents
does that suggest that being “red” has something to do with economic stress and is not primarily racist?
i think racism is latent in all human beings, but is easily roused to pernicious levels by economic stress and politicians willing to exploit that/
Ron
experimental thought; don’t be alarmed”: (actually much the same as what I said to Dents)
I don’t know that persistent trade deficits are a problem. Seems like they might be, but they might also be self correcting. If wages have stagnated in this country, we are also getting cheap products from overseas. I have no idea how this works out. Seems to me the problem for american workers is american bankers and american landlords and a certain amount of screw the customers as a normal business model. and, of course, a big amount of screw the environment as “progress”… which has gone on forever and only reaches crisis from time to time. (ending civilization as they knew it.)
i suspect the pernicious xenophobes and white supremacists are merely normal human responses to economic stress and political manipulation. the X and WS we worry about are dangerous, but only because they are led by people who are probably neither but know how to use hate-thy-neighbor as a wedge to power. it happens that trade deficits are advanateous to these people… not so much the trade deficits as the concentration of power in the hands of a small number of banks and international corporations (and the people who run them).
Ron
i forgot to mention “screw the employee” as the shortcut to profits.
scr*w is the same as f*ck, less violent but longer lasting.
The book in question is on economic growth and social unrest, with relevance to Ohio:
http://harvardmagazine.com/2006/01/growth-is-good.htmlJanuary, 2006Growth is Good: An economist’s take on the moral consequences of material progressBy J. Bradfold DeLongThe Moral Consequences of Economic GrowthBy Benjamin M. Friedman
Ron I don’t think that is a fair representation of the two sides in this dispute, it is much more complicated than that. And besides, international capital flows are a completely different issue.
Tariffs help some producers, but they are a tax, they also will hurt consumers and some other producers. The truth is that the policy of tariff reduction was sold as “if you compensate the losers then everybody could be better off”, but then the first part was promptly forgotten. A classic case of bait and switch.
There are more subtle arguments for tariffs, that they can isolate the domestic economy from imported turbulence, that they can protect strategically important productive capacity and that they can channel resources in sectors that have better prospects for future growth, that we might actually care about how products are produced because of externalities etc. I’m inclined to believe that blocks like the EU are a net benefit – the benefits are less clear where the differences in wealth and economic systems are greater.
re Harvard article
I don’t know that the middle class lives better than they did in the 70’s, but I am reasonably sure they can buy more things.
and there seems to be fewer of them.
and it’s not clear how he wants us to measure “growth.”
i can remember when the best things n life were free. now they are extinct.
there has been material progress in the world, and up to a point it’s a good thing. but i wouldn’t credit it for what moral progress we have made. hard times can certainly make moral behavior an unaffordable luxury. but luxury doesn’t necessarily make moral behavior.
Reason
the argument “if you compensate the losers” was an argument FOR free trade.
there is not necessarily a zero sum with either taxes or no-taxes.
Coberly,
Well your thought experiment is not an either/or question. Also, it always makes good sense to listen to Reason. So, I agree with all you wrote and also what Reason wrote.
So, if my comments seem to be getting shorter and less complete then I am reassured that the longer detailed explanation is left in good hands.
Adam Smith’s comparative advantage was defined by competition between differences in the means of production. Free trade in such context might lift all ships as it avoids waste in productive processes. Contemporary international competition in productive processes is predicated upon comparative disadvantages in standard of living, environmental stewardship, and labor protections. Financialization of the means of production further facilitated by cheap global transportation subjects comparative disadvantages to financial arbitrage to extract economic rents.
The check is in the mail for those losers that will be compensated for jobs lost to free global price arbitrage trade.
Dents
interesting history
but tarriffs might have a new use… protecting american workers from competition with low wage workers and runaway industries abroad.
not sure what course capitalism is running.. toward a dictatorship of the international elite? anyway 200 years or more is a long course.
Ron
I hope your shorter comments mean you are doing someting more exciting. don’t count on me for good hands. i hadn’t thought of my thought experiment as either-or. And I did think Reason had got the “compensate the losers” argument on the wrong side.
as the comments do not appear on the page when i get here to try to answer them, it is hard for me to follow a train of thought. I am feeling like posting less, but i’s hate to abandon AB in its hour of need.
Coberly,
Dry weather now for the longest period since November, so hands are busy Mon-Fri after breakfast.
Reason had the “classic case of bait and switch” exactly correct on the compensate the losers deception. It was never going to happen, but he agreed with you that it was used to argue for free trade. My guess is that you read AB on an IPhone and probably type with your thumbs. So, it is your tech instead of your wits that fail you.
The narrow world of AB is fine for now. Of course, inquiring minds cannot help themselves when there is time to kill. Cat videos just do not do it for everyone. The next election is still a long time off and for now liberals each need to find their own true north and collectively their balanced center again and in appropriate proportion to each other. After the expiration of the Trump shock, then there is an equal and opposite post-Trump shock, an awakening of sorts. Take care. Let’s hope there is time to stack reality right side up before it turns upside down again.
Ron
more likely to be my bad eyes than my thumbs. There is a typo issue…sometimes just the fingers, but often enough it’s the synapses. Also, not being able to look at the comment i am commenting on makes it hard to check on what I am saying.
Good luck with the farm. I got fired from my farm job last year. Now I am my own private rust belt. Somehow I am still paying the taxes.
btw
the “typo” issue worries me because i did the work on SS when i still had a functioning brain. writing about it now i am likely to make mistakes that will damage my credibility with an unforgiving audience. too bad. i don’t care if anyone thinks i am smart or dumb, but it’s a shame to lose SS because the audience doesn’t bother to think in the first place.