No centrist who understands the current moment has ever truly laid out their case to the Democratic Party base in the context of a serious political campaign. It’s time to change that.
In my capacity as a local precinct committeeman, let me officially welcome you to the Democratic Party! We need more thoughtful and insightful people like you, and we also need your sort of skeptical centrists that to have a place within our party. And as you say, we need an intellectual counterweight to the more progressive wing of the party. That doesn’t mean that I agree with you on everything. I share your views on a lot of social issues and on meritocracy, but I likely embrace a far more interventionist government role in the economy than you would on most issues. (Although I draw a line at price controls.) One of the challenges of operating within a party framework, at least in a two party system like ours, is that the party is broad and will never represent your vision in full. (In a multiparty proportional parliamentary system, you always have the option of just leaving and starting a new party that better suits your vision.) I’m a staunch longtime democrat… and I kind hate at least a third of the dems in elected office: some because they’re too far left on an issue that’s important to me, some because they’re too far right on an issue that’s important to me, some because they’re corrupt, or stupid, or incompetent. That’s the risk of remaining intellectually honest - you still see all the flaws on your own side. But I agree with enough of my fellow party members on enough of the policy that the Democrats are the better home for me, despite sundry imperfections. And on the issues where I disagree with the party consensus, I aspire to use my voice (and my vote in primaries) as one of many pushing to nudge things in the right direction.
So be prepared that you won’t win every argument on every policy. But with persuasive skills and a little luck, you and people like you can shift the trajectory of the party. I can’t promise I’ll agree on everything, but I’ll be thrilled to have you in the conversation. And any Democrat who actually wants to win elections should welcome you with open arms.
"Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. We may ask what is relevant but anything beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don't listen to him. Remember that - do not listen."
- Father Merrin, "The Exorcist"
I'm only teasing you Jersey. But TWoodgrains is too valuable to be lost!
I think you’re too quick to write off the Republican Party. Yes, they are as you said, “controlled by Trump for the next four years,” but after that he’ll be too old and term limited to keep control. His heir apparent is JD Vance, who actually seems like the most likely currently prominent politician to implement the techno-humanism you mentioned. He’s Silicon Valley through and through, and is known to read Scott Alexander and Hanania. I would in general consider him fairly more on economic issues. By no means is he perfect, but he’s just one example of how the Republican Party could lean in a more centrist direction in 4 years.
Yeah Vance seems wildly more likely as a vehicle for real reform and centrism than anything the Democrats are offering. Even with the Trump taint all over him.
Interesting read. I think centrism is ultimately a dead-letter though. At least use a different term because identifying your political movement as “the middle of the road” centrists inspires nobody to show up to the polls to vote for you.
But aside from that and the specific policies being talked about, I’d get back at the Democrat party itself.
It is a machine for getting votes, but you also need specific elite personnel in the party to make that pivot to what you want. The more center-left wing of that party were the boomers. You can see that in Biden and the Clintons. Those guys are shuffling off the stage as they age out and die off. The younger generation of Democrat leadership are anything but interested in center-left politics. They have had their entire education and formative political ideas seeped in left-progressive politics.
Funny to see techno-humanism ideas with how it is mainstream to shit on any technologists in left-wing circles as Silicon Valley “tech bros” have become coded as suspicious to them. Years of being propagandized that their alternative platforms to mainstream ones were what lost them political battles will keep them suspicious if not outright hostile.
While a positive environmentalism is just impossible for any leadership to grasp when they have been terrorized since elementary school of impending apocalyptic conditions from climate change.
A great deal of the center left liberal types shifted into the Trump camp because of their own optimism from his administration. They aren’t loyalists to Trump or MAGA by any means, but they are not going to find themselves in Democrat party leadership as a result either. So the slimmer and slimmer margin of center-left types in the Democrat party will find themselves both powerless and leaderless in the party.
It probably would be best for the party to go in that direction, but they have institutionally set themselves up to resist it. Give it a few months, especially after the Trump inauguration. The shock of the defeat will wither away and #resistance will resume with the younger part of the party. There is a very possible purging of the center-right neocons that joined them if the aging boomer leadership goes away.
Identifying as the "middle of the road" has kept the People's Action Party in charge in Singapore for fifty years. Done right, it's a potent message. Some have been siphoned off the Democratic Party to Trump; many others have been siphoned off the Republican Party due to Trump. The time is right.
“Middle of the road” works with political stability, not chaos. People are comfortable with centrist parties when they are comfortable with the status quo. The rest of the democratic world has seen a collapse of centrist parties and coalitions such as in France, Germany, or the UK for this very reason that the voters are feeling less secure.
I’ll differ to forum poster with the contextual analysis on PAP. But I can’t say I’m familiar with them much.
I think that in the context of current American politics, LKY would be seen as beyond the pale and clearly associated with the right.
On culture this is obvious.
On economics he's not an anarcho-capitalist or anything, but neither is the modern Republican Party. He'd probably be in favor or lower taxes and lower spending than the Democratic Party today would support, and he'd be a red line for certain leftist constituency groups.
I should say, I’ve heard plenty about politics in Singapore, I just don’t have a refined enough view to discuss it at length. Chatting with people who lived there, they definitely remind me to not try to replicate it as it is a very unique place. (My understanding is a lot of the bizarre authoritarian rules are just incredibly difficult to communicate to other cities)
If the PAP ran in America if would be considered literally the Nazi's and that's not hyperbole.
Remember when LKY went on Charlie Rose and called brown immigrants worthless fruit pickers nobody would want to be citizens of their country (Trump before Trump!)
Or when he said America was a crime ridden hellhole because black people are allowed to run wild.
I love the guy, best statemen ever, but he could only come to power in a majority Chinese country benefiting from geographically blessed city state context. Let's learn what we can learn, but the Democratic Party ain't turning out like some Man of Iron.
Instead of laying out your goals for the Democratic party - while laudable and I certainly think accurate - why not skip the "and then somehow some Democratic party members read this and... incorporate it sufficiently into their campaign" step and find someone who agrees with them, and work together from there?
Elon and Vivek and JD objectively disagree with Trump on a lot of things (especially on "actual solutions"), but are holding their tongues because they think they can manipulate someone they obviously think is... very manipulatable... into doing what they think is right (and I certainly am much closer to their views than Trump's). You absolutely know that if they had a competitor candidate (explicitly in Vivek's case, from the primary) who actually believed what they believe, instead of performatively waving the flag to get votes, they would be trashing Trump and boosting that person.
The question everyone had for Harris was: "in a country where 100m people are Democrats, where you say that the opponent is literally the end of our democracy, this was the best candidate/platform you could come up with?" She genuinely seems like a nice person! But no one believed that she would do the things that would make their lives better off, partly because she was in the White House for 4 years and didn't do them. So let's short cut all that silly party/electability/identity politics stuff, and * start * with a candidate who has policies (almost all of which enjoy majority support from democratic - and often Republican - voters) that will literally just make people's lives better off, which is what every voter seems to actually want. There's hundreds of millions of people in the country! Surely one of them is over 35, supports these milquetoast, centrist, wealth-enhancing policies, and hasn't (allegedly) murdered 17 puppies!
Well, that’s a large chunk of my point and my goal. My appeal is for centrists to make a pitch to Democratic Party voters, not politicians. I want candidates who share these goals in the primaries, up on stage, where their views can be heard and public support can properly be gauged. If it happens to catch the ear of Democratic Party members in the meantime, great, but the key is that this sort of thing needs its time in the sun.
That makes sense, but a big feature of "reasonable centrism" is that we all know the policies/goals already! We don't need to gauge popular support for them, we know they're basically overwhelmingly positive, and indeed people supporting them is why they didn't like lots of the left wing stuff from H (or right wing stuff from T).
"I want candidates who share these goals in the primaries,"
If nothing else, Trump is the example for this. You don't need to persuade (while certainly accurate persuasion is always admirable) Democratic voters or Democratic politicians or the Democratic Party to go out and * find * that person, you (and all the other people who support your nice beneficial centrist platform) need to find that person (who truly believes and agrees) and is electable-ish and * then * get them up on a stage - long before the primary - making the case for those things. Binding the platform and the person together, like Trump did with "crankiness about immigration" in 2015. All the other Rs were aware of it, but it never became something they thought they would lose a primary over until some extra-party candidate came in and put all his chips on it.
Just increasing awareness and persuading is very good, but by definition the coordination/Schelling point for elections is the candidate. If you successfully Raise the Center, that is good, but you need more than "all of the D primary candidates in 2027 definitely say they'll support Trace's Centrist Platform" because they make those promises all the time (often to those Groups!) and no one believes that they'll follow thru and actually * do * them successfully, because they have all kinds of politician incentives that work against it. You need someone who can credibly convey that they would follow through, because they don't have those incentives/baggage. And maybe gives you really good blackmail options, so you can enforce after they get elected!
Edit: the vast majority of the online Dems, "Groups" or special interests absolutely still want to win, or at least feel like they are winning. (just like all the anti-Trump people in 2015 who somehow have come around) If you have a candidate who is obviously getting lots of support from all the normal people NOT in those 3 groups, then most of them will happily revise their demands to fit the candidate, and go support them. They won't do it the other way around, though. The hardliners who demand the D candidate support self-defeating policies (you know who they are) will just provide an opportunity to demonstrate your centrist credentials by loudly denouncing them.
Right, that’s what I mean. This is basically an open pitch to find that candidate. I agree the goals are broadly popular in the abstract, the question is finding someone who can execute on them and describe them in a way that inspires public passion.
COMPLETELY HYPOTHETICALLY: what would the script of a 30s campaign ad for this COMPLETELY HYPOTHETICAL candidate look like? In a way to maximize the points you mention: 1) the broad appeal of the policies 2) cogently describe them and their inevitable benefits and 3) inspires public passion from yourself and other voters?
reduce anti-density laws in major cities > more housing > lower housing costs for millions
reduce anti-energy regulation > more power plants (nukes?) > lower energy costs for millions
actually reform immigration to allow in peaceful productive people, strictly keep out those who aren't > everyone becomes better off because more peaceful productive people is good
establish better fed policy (NGDP targeting?) > prevent both inflation and unemployment > everyone better off because they hate inflation and unemployment
redirect federal research money away from anything that isn't health or productivity enhancing > new treatments, medicines, technologies > everyone richer/more alive
reform FDA, allow reciprocal approval, compassionate use, choice > everyone remains more alive, drugs cost less
All of these things (I personally have a bunch of others, but these felt like the easiest/most appealing to direct voter benefit) are easily within the centrist umbrella and would enjoy majority support if presented by a candidate as "goals" rather than specific policy changes. i.e. the public doesn't have real opinions on "reciprocal approval at the FDA!" but if you say "we will make it so you can have effective and safe drugs that will make you healthier, that everyone in Europe uses and is fine"
People talk about all these motivations for why people didn't vote for H or why they did vote for T, but the end logic is this: the people (the swing voting bloc that decides elections) have a few numbers in their head (costs, income, their health status, amount of problems they see around them) and they felt like those numbers went down (or not up enough) from 2020-2024, so they voted for the non-incumbent (Trump). Just like they felt that way about 2016-2020, so they voted for the non-incumbent (Biden).
To win elections you must make those numbers (in their head) go up.
Absolutely, which is 100% part of the point. A D party that does not adopt policy goals (and directly disavow the policies that drove them away) that win back those switchers is one that doesn't succeed at all, or at least only succeeds if the GOP messes up and becomes the "hated status quo."
The key is actually delivering the positive results, which is the main reason the switchers stopped supporting the D party. Sure, if the GOP manages to execute and deliver actual positive outcomes over the next 4 years, the D's won't have much of a chance, but then I'm perfectly happy with that outcome too, because I'm not a D or an R, I'm a "I wish good things would happen to Americans" Party member.
Who needs to think piece it when Musk just did it ? The whole problem with T is getting him to actually execute on whatever you “nudged” him into temporarily saying. Is your goal Partisan Equality of Harangueing Thinkpieces or getting things done?
I am not sure "anti-density" laws are the thing causing housing shortages in big cities.
Consider these bad management cities and their population densities:
NYC 28.2, SF 18.6, Chicago 11.9, Philly 11.7, LA 8.4
Now compare these to these Sunbelt cities seen as good examples:
Dallas 3.9, Houston, 3.8, San Antonio 3.2, Phoenix 3.1, Austin 3.2
The least-dense in the first list more than twice as dense as the most dense in the second list.
Consider the population growth since 1930 (%)
NYC 24, SF 37, Chicago -20, Philly -20, LA 220 and
Dallas 410, Houston, 670, San Antonio 550, Phoenix 3100 Austin 1250
Seems to me, the most anti-density places are the Sunbelt cities that people are moving to.
As a process engineer, I know it is harder and more expensive to put new processes into existing production facilities than it is to build new on a green site adjacent to your plant and then hook it into your utilities. I suspect this is what the sunbelt cities (who did most of their growing when the car was ubiquitous) did; they probably built out onto adjacent green field.
Eliminating anti-density laws is unlikely to do all that much and if pursued by itself might make things worse. Suppose you eliminated anti-density laws to encourage more residential construction. When you increase the residential density of people, you also increase the density of their cars, requiring more roads, which are zero density of course. So you don't really get density that way. It seems this is more or less what the Sunbelt cities have done, extending moderate density land utilization by expanding into rural areas, rather than building vertically in central cities.
You cannot make the roads bigger in already built-up areas. But if you build more housing with existing roads, you get hellish traffic, and nobody wants to live there. Developers know this. The solution is building dense high-income residences. You then have high density in terms of tax base. But that makes the affordability problem worse.
There is physics as well as politics involved here.
Physics is also an issue with energy. If we got rid of all the regulations, nuclear might be competitive with coal. But coal is being displaced by gas because gas is cheaper. There is no way nuclear can compete with gas, not here in America where we have abundant cheap gas ever since we mastered horizontal drilling tech.
re: density, you are comparing cities over nearly 100 years, with radically different zoning/density policies, history, technology and social factors across that timespan. I'm not saying you're wrong, but that data won't let you tease out cause and effect.
I appreciate your willingness to dig into the details, but I wasn't trying to actually make the case, as you asked for "what those policies were" not "what is the detailed case for them" - I was mostly handwaving "whatever stops us from building sufficiently high density residential in places where current rent is skyhigh and obviously should have them (urban centers)". I am 100% open to whatever specific policy details you think would help that goal.
My focus was more on "if the cost of housing comes down, the large number of people who are angry about the high cost of housing will be happy and likely to vote for the candidate most likely to make that happen."
Re: nuclear/gas/coal - sure, if gas turns out to be better than nuclear, great, go for it. But all are highly regulated and discincentivized by regulation (none moreso than nuclear). But remember that cost in this sector is almost always heavily downstream of regulation. That is the reason nuclear costs so much.
Plus, while I don't think we're near peak coal or oil or gas, ideally I think Americans would actually (via the implied wants of the centrist majority) prefer a world where we burn insanely more coal/oil/gas to fund lower energy costs, new construction/technology that allows remedying the negative green effects, such that we DO run out of them, and can then use higher-tech, cheaper nuke power. I think it's actually a great example of why you should ignore what pollsters ask voters (Do you approve of CHERNOBYL-STYLE-NUCLEAR-DEATH-PLANTS?) and instead focus on the actual wants: cheap energy, amazing new tech powered by vast amounts of energy and the development of green tech to remediate, without declines in quality of life.
I mostly pointed out that the cities that people are moving top are *not* high density, even after tremendous population growth that you would think would boost density. Why hasn't it? The obvious answer is the policy used to construct housing there is biased against density, otherwise they would be high density as Northern cities of similar size are.
Now it is possible that Texas and Arizona cities have all sort of anti-density laws that you mention, but I speculated that what is true for construction of process equipment holds for construction of residential units, that it is easier and cheaper to build on undeveloped land than to build new residential prosperities is already-built-up areas, and a different pattern of development happened in the sunbelt that in the older northern cities due to *when* the growth happened.
Just the sort of hand-waving you did, but one based on *physical* thinking since I come from a natural science background.
And the same is true for energy. Nuclear energy IS hobbled by excessive regulation. But is this the reason why nuke plants are not built? Well look at the *timing*. When did scores of plans to build nuke plants get canceled. Early 1970's, mostly because rising interest rates made the cost of capital-intensive projects like nuke plants go up a lot. Regulation also played a role.
Regulations continued to tighten in the 1970's and 1980's until nuke construction pretty much ended. I noted that from 1969 through 1992, pro-business, anti-regulation Republicans were in power for 20 of 24 years and the one Democratic administration engaged in major deregulation (see link).
And yet, we stopped building nukes (presumably because of regulation) over this same period. Why didn't the nuke industry object to sympathetic Republican administrations. From what little I've read about it; they didn't really do so. Why not?
Time to think physically. To generate electricity, you need a generator. This is the same for any energy source except solar. To drive the generator you need a heat engine. With gas you use a gas turbine and you are done--two components
With coal and nuclear you use a steam turbine as your heat engine. With coal you use a coal-fired boiler to generate the steam to power the turbine--three components--50% more than you need for gas.
With nuclear you use a nuclear reactor to generate heat, which you then use in a boiler to generate the steam along with the heat engine and generator--four components--twice as many as coal and one-third more than coal.
Now the effect of regulation is to drive up the cost of the nuclear-reactor and boiler components. But you are going to have these two components that you don't have with gas, and one of which you don't have with coal.
Now back in the day I was a big fan of nuclear because the fuel cost of nuclear was less than coal, and this was enough to make up for the greater capital cost of the nuke plant over the coal plant that I am representing as this extra component. And since gas was much more expensive than coal. Coal was competitive with gas despite its extra component because of the lower fuel and nuke could be competitive with both, but for regulations.
But then came the fracking revolution, and gas got cheap. Now coal can't complete and it is going away (coal consumption had fallen in half since 2007). And since coal can't compete neither can nuclear.
You write: " I think Americans would actually (via the implied wants of the centrist majority) prefer a world where we burn insanely more coal/oil/gas to fund lower energy costs,"
I see this a lot from progress studies people. Global warming is no big deal apparently.
Typically a gesture is made to magical thinking:
"new construction/technology that allows remedying the negative green effects"
What do you think solar and wind are? Technologists have known about the need for new energy technology for fifty years now. Everything people talk about now, advanced nuclear, geothermal, fracking of shale old and gas, wind power, biofuels etc. was all known in the 1970's. I thought nuclear, wind, fracking, and biofuels made sense, with geothermal a possibility. One thing that was surely a joke was solar power.
So what happened. Biofuels and geothermal went tits up, while wind and fracking got rolled out, and surprise! solar got cheap, WTF? There's your amazing new tech.
What you are proposing is unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions going forward, which will be emulated by other counties. You suggest technology will arrive as if by magic to deal with this problem. I find that hard to believe since we have been aware if this problem since 1967 and so far, no magic has shown up. Maybe if we wait another fifty years?
I would say that your method of analysis, while mostly accurate and based on true facts, is part of the problem that Trace is identifying: that Democratic policy is too focused on harms, costs and roadblocks, while ignoring the science/logic/data that says that wealth and abundance can work, and therefore hamstrings itself electorally by publicly associating themselves with denying everyone that wealth and abundance.
Your analysis is not wrong. It just has bad weights in the cost-benefit analysis that lead to over-conservatism, and therefore makes us poorer and worse off (not absolutely, but relative to what voters reasonably expect), and therefore voters don't like the status quo that they believe imposed that on them, and vote for the anti-status quo.
Higher urban density can work to reduce housing costs, because we see it in other dense cities around the world. Therefore we can do it too, and should because it makes people better off when housing doesn't bankrupt them.
Mass nuclear (or some other power source) can work, because France did it, and today we have better tech and more wealth, and more demand for energy, so therefore we can and should prioritize removing the barriers to doing so.
Global warming is not an existential threat, and is not going to kill (or even largely inconvenience) your grandkids. The costs are well modeled in IPCC estimates - trust the science - and are not particularly large compared to GDP at the time, and again remember, my preference is "go full nuclear" which is even greener per kwh than solar or wind. Plus, and this isn't nice to hear, but the cost of global geo-engineering to completely undo global warming (perhaps with bad consequences) is unilaterally easily within the budget of ~50 nations or so, and far more in the 20/30/50 years when global warming starts to bite. In their bones, and in their actions, voters know this.
Are there details and costs and issues with all that? Would maybe it end up that some other solution/thing works even better? Sure. But the net benefit is positive and high, allows for changing path as new information arrives, and most importantly: when you are trying to get voters to vote for you, pointing out all the potential flaws in policies that give them what they repeatedly have demanded - is perhaps not the best strategy? Particularly when the truth is, objectively, that the flaws are outweighed by the benefits?
For example, if you are debating starting an airline, it is probably not a great idea to focus on the fact that yes, sometimes plane crash, or are hijacked, or have insufficient overhead luggage space. Those things are true, and you should not deny that they are, but the net cost-benefit of flying is still positive, and we should be clear-eyed about both the costs AND benefits, and start the airline and take people to new and wonderful places.
Wow, I want to agree with this, but you claim Elon and Vivek are “manipulating” Trump.
Occam’s Razor suggests an even simpler answer: they are aligning with Trump on areas where they agree with him, and simply leaving alone areas where they disagree.
if you listened to Musk on Rogan, he is not pro-tariff. He surely doesn’t agree with Trump on everything. Most people don’t agree with others on everything.
you don't have to read any malice or trickery into it, you could replace the term with "persuaded" or "convinced."
But given that Trump was president in the past, and Musk didn't seem to have any influence at the time, and he did not do certain things, and now, M does seem to have influence, and T says "I am going to do these certain things because my good buddy Musk suggested them" then yeah, I think that's M influencing T. You can replace "influence" with "manipulate" or whatever term you like, I'm not married to any one in particular. T is very influenceable, if you can convince him that doing it Your Way gets him votes.
Since most people - certainly including this Substack’s author - are not and in fact are highly judgemental about personalities, utterances, etc., and make pronouncements on fitness and utterances far more than they do on policy, to me such words matter.
But I suppose if you are a Pragmatic D (or a NeverTrumper centrist) playing to your base, using the word “manipulated” might be helpful…
Not a consequentialist, but I just don't think there's much info (or much riding on) which term we use. If people are partisanly devoted/opposed to Elon or Donald in such a way that they object to my use of potentially pejorative terms, then I would much rather get that out of the way early. :)
It's not true that the anti-Trump Republicans have left the party. They still control the Senate. McConnell's right hand man just became the new Senate majority leader.
They do, but they've lost the base and it's not coming back to them. The base wants Trump, and I suspect many of McConnell's goals will die with him. He took their party from them, won it by right of conquest, and even as they continue to put up a semblance of a fight, they're bending the knee and kissing the ring one by one, or they're leaving the party. It's simply not a place for anti-Trump people right now. They lost; he won.
In 2028 when Donald Trump leaves office, John Thune will still be in power. There’s a reason Senators have 6 year terms. The Senate was designed to constrain a populist executive. Also, McConnell won a fight against Trump as recently as the 2022 Alaska senate primary.
The base loves Trump now, but the masses are fickle. The McConnell Thune faction isn’t going to be totally purged.
“Pro-Trump” and anti-Trump are *not* the only two choices.
Most in the Senate are in the third camp of neither. How can you not recognize this?
As with anything in politics, there are numerous shifting alliances of convenience.
Trump will get some of what he wants (that the majority of GOP Senators don’t, that is), because he won and elections have consequences.
Most of what he wants in fact correlates highly with what the average GOP Senator - or GOP voter circa 2014 - wants.
[Rhetorical question: do you think the average Dem voter of the last 10 years or today really is against school choice for inner-city youth?]
I am a conservative-leaning libertarian decidedly in the 3rd camp. I’m thrilled that the anti-Trumpers are mostly gone. But the corollary is not that the GOP is pure Trump supplicants. You need only look at the Gaetz withdrawal for an example of this.
You make a lot of good points, and I bet we'd broadly agree on most policy issues, though I think I'm probably a bit to your left. That said I'm not really sure your vision of centrism is something that will appeal to the mass public, at least not on its own. Frankly, it's a very Online, very Educated form of centrism (I say as someone who is Online and Educated myself).
The typical swing voter these days is a middle-aged white or Latino person without a college degree living in the Midwest or Sun Belt. I don't think very many of these folks would feel spoken to and inspired by a candidate running on educating the best and brightest, regulating AI, techno-optimism, humane environmentalism, and championing "the role of America as a melting pot for the best and brightest from around the world". On some of these issues, like humane environmentalism and AI regulation, I don't think they care very much. And others, like America being a melting pot for the best and brightest, might actively turn them off. After all, 55% of Americans now say they want less immigration, and only 16% say they want more.* Sure, getting away from the extremes of environmentalism and social justice will surely help, but that's not sufficient on its own.
The kind of centrism that resonates with swing voters is more focused on pocketbook issues, inflation, law and order, skepticism of big business, and anti-corruption/reform. While the kind of centrism you advocate could play a role in a future center-left coalition, especially in certain policy areas, I don't think it will be in the leading role.
Good thoughts. I don’t disagree with your points, exactly, but I don’t think they’re incompatible with my frame. Anti-corruption/reform is a huge target, perfect within the “institutional crisis” focus. Law and order & inflation are good fits for technocratic centrism. Pushing back against alienating socjus stuff is at once an easy sort of red meat and a potent tool.
The other elements—Dems have a relatively educated base at this point, and I think there’s a lot of potential in at once taking advantage of that by preparing serious policy-wonk stuff and pairing it with a populist sentiment of “The institutions are broken and the establishment has lost trust. Here’s how we can fix that.” Excellence in schools carried a lot of electoral force in eg Virginia, NY, and SF—I think it cuts across traditional political lines but has a broad base of support.
I won’t claim something like that is a guaranteed election winner, but it’s not obvious to me that wide appeal would be impossible with it.
Even if Democrats listened to you, you're not providing any real "vision" or message that will inspire anyone. Fence-sitting doesn't motivate people at the mass level. Policy wonk analyses bore people to tears. Any sort of "techno-futurist" vibes belong to Elon Musk, who has thrown in his lot with Trump. What's the message here? "We're Republicans on policy, but we hate Trump and Elon Musk?" Good luck with that.
Like I said on Twitter -- I wish you luck, but also foresee a future registration in the Republican party. Democrats aren't interested in what you're selling -- even if it would be good for them.
I think you're making a major tactical mistake. To be clear I think of all the online political personalities I align with you specifically more than anyone - if I could vote here I'd probably also have split my ticket with Kamala and a Senate Republican. We agree on the biggest weaknesses of both sides of the aisle ("wokeness"-related institutional crisis on the left and Trump's unfitness on the right).
What you're missing (and I think everyone in the commentariat is to some degree) is that we're about to enter the final act of the Trump Era. I have no idea how well or badly it'll go but thanks to the Constitution (and Trump being an octogenarian who's in no position to stage some fascist takeover) his time in control of the party is coming to an end. If you're vaguely sympathetic to some aspects of the right but heavily despise Trumpism in particular, this is exactly the wrong time to dismiss the Republican Party as a lost cause.
I don't know how the Democratic Party is going to evolve in the 4 years. My hope is of course that it'll move more towards positions I like and that the activist stranglehold on the party will loosen and it'll actively confront the left-wing institutional crisis. But for the Republican Party I can essentially guarantee that it will evolve more towards something I like. Because whatever happens it'll be forced to jettison Donald Trump, who is himself by far the biggest issue with the party. There's of course a possibility he is succeeded by someone as bad or worse but just given how uniquely and aggressively anti-democratic he is that possibility is slim.
And the reason why I think you're making a tactical mistake here is that you specifically may have a lot more power to influence the future of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. The overwhelmingly most likely 2028 Republican nominee (and thus the plurality-most-likely 2029 POTUS) is a fellow Too Online Weirdo and nerd who casually cites Slate Star Codex. And - I'm willing to bet - he's probably come across and privately agreed with something you've written on Twitter at some point.
I don't personally like JD Vance because he's been a shameless liar and Trump sycophant and hitched his wagon to Trump in the worst ways...but sadly that's just politics. He's obviously played the game well and done what he had to do to get within stone's throw of the presidency. But his own instincts are obviously very different from Trump's. If and when he becomes his own political force you will have the most Grey Tribe-adjacent politician in US history. I doubt he'll do everything you want but if you and other online libertarian-centrist-ish characters keep an open mind towards him, I think there's a very real chance he'll (a) notice and (b) reciprocate. This chance is non-existent with Trump or Harris or most established politicians because - to the extent they're on Twitter - they're there to rally the troops, mock their enemies and signal-boost their fellow partisan hacks. Vance on the other hand is a genuine honest-to-goodness Debate Bro who likes engaging in back-and-forths with people he disagrees with on the internet. I don't know that these are "good" qualities for a politician but I'm certain that they make him far more susceptible to influence from people like you.
Tldr Trump Era is 2/3 over so Rs (especially with Too Online Grey Tribe-adjacent Weirdo Vance as his likely successor) are a much better bet for us libertarian-adjacent centrists than Ds
So, as I might've mentioned, I don't particularly like JD Vance and think he's a liar and a coward and a Trump sycophant... None of which changes the fact that he's probably the only remotely credible presidential candidate who's ever read a word of Trace's writing. To my he was the first politician to publicly bring up the FAA hiring scandal that Trace brought to light.
Do they agree on everything? Of course not. Unlike JDV, JDZ isn't into telling lies about how great Trump is in order to get power. But they have a million points of commonality and I think there's literally no other politician that is more susceptible to influence through writing and vibes that spread through the online rationalist-adjacent sphere.
And while "shameless shapeshifting liar who happens to read and consider your words" might seem like a low bar I'm honestly incredibly skeptical that the Democrats will produce anyone who remotely approaches this as their 2024 nominee. The Republican Party is a hot mess where a guy who called Trump Hitler and has bounced through every faction of the conservative movement (from milquetoast David Frenchism to die-hard MAGA) can quickly rise to prominence by sucking up to the Orange Man well enough a few years later. But the Democratic Party is a well-oiled machine where your staffers will mutinee if you show the slightest ideological dissent on social issues.
Fair enough! This is all speculative and none of us knows for sure how politics in either party will evolve through 2024 so I could well be wrong on many levels here.
Just think we should all keep in mind that the question is never "is JD Vance (or Kamala Harris or Ron DeSantis or Pete Buttigieg) a good guy" in absolute terms but always "is this person more likely to reflect my priorities than the alternatives". And I def think ppl who are vaguely close to Trace's politics (like me and maybe you?) should be cognizant of how MASSIVE an upgrade he is over Trump.
Any discussion of “left” “right” or “center” that does not at minimum distinguish between social and economic issues is entirely vacuous. Some “progressive” ideas are widely popular and some are not; some “conservative” ideas are widely popular and some are not. The leftmost position on healthcare is Medicare for All; the leftmost position on gender is free sex reassignment surgery for minors without parental consent after minimal counseling; everyone lumps these together as “what progressives want” as though they are of equal reasonableness or popularity or anything at all.
I acknowledge a different between class-first economic leftists and identitarian progressives (though there's a lot of overlap), and I agree with the value of taking an issue-by-issue look. If handled pragmatically and effectively, I'm not opposed to free-at-point-of-service health care, but I certainly don't trust economic leftists to handle it effectively. Abundance is the starting point; redistribution is appropriate within a strong market economy, but class warfare and socialist economics are not the way.
Obvious risk with free-at-point-of-service anything is misaligned incentives.
So, how would you feel about any medical care the patient had no real choice in - such as emergency treatment for a life-threatening injury, or follow-up to deal with unexpected complications of some other procedure, or whatever a doctor might get in trouble for negligently failing to insist on - being free, as in 100% paid for by the hospital and/or government, but then "restaurant pricing" for all the more voluntary stuff?
By restaurant pricing I mean, any given hospital or clinic has a publicly viewable list of available services, with fixed prices for each, and no slack for private haggling by HMOs. Seems like that might go a long way toward clearing out rent-seeking administrative bloat, and refocus preventative measures on actual patient welfare rather than lawsuits.
Broadly good, but special attention would need to be paid to the “5% (or so) repeat customers take 50% of the time/energy” phenomenon. Small prices are good incentives. Singapore’s system makes the most sense to me but that’s predictable.
Could encourage hospitals to build a lot more beds than they expect to need, rent the excess to anyone who asks, at a flat per-day rate, with an explicit "we'll kick you out if anyone comes along who needs it more" clause.
That way, hypochondriacs, frustratingly nonspecific complaints, and even folks who just prefer a little bit more professionally-monitored convalescence after some other procedure than the doc thinks is strictly necessary, can all get what they want - at fair market prices, matched to the marginal costs involved - while, from an administrator's perspective, subsidizing surge capacity which might someday be critically important for a large-scale public health crisis, but is hard to justify to accountants the rest of the time.
America's got a lot more wide-open spaces, and bored anxious rich people, than Singapore started out with. Ought to fine-tune strategies accordingly.
“Abundance is the starting point; redistribution is appropriate within a strong market economy, but class warfare and socialist economics are not the way.”
You are right about this, of course.
Just as LKY is.
Given this, I predict you will eventually return to the GOP.
Because the chances of getting 60%+ of Dem voters to agree with you on this proposition might not be zero, but it’s awfully darn close.
This popped up on my feed today after I posted a similar article yesterday. It is nice to see some similar minded people writing and promoting the center! The center definitely needs to start banding together better and getting more active. We have let the clowns run the show for too long.
> to the damage ideologically motivated bad actors have done to Wikipedia
It's a credit to your writing style and how you take a full measure of your subject, because I came away with largely sympathetic feelings towards Gerard!
Glad to hear it could have that effect. I came away with more sympathy while writing it than I had expected I’d find, and I’m glad that came through in the article.
Sigh, so much here. In general, those on the Progressive Left (which note, by saying that, I'm not placing myself) don't like having these discussions with other people, even well-intentioned ones such as you, because often it's like banging one's head against a wall. There's so much difference in worldview that the amount of effort is exhausting.
Remember what I talked about a little bit earlier, what I call the "The Right-Wing Ranter Veto". It's not much of "center" to have "across the entire world, all policies and discussions are to be subject to the veto of ranting right-wingers". By definition, there's got to be something somewhere in centrism that ranty right-wingers want to rant about (i.e. they can't veto). But then the lying-hate machine can spin up: "You bad people, that thing is an abomination, THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON!".
That is, if your political program is basically "The Republican Party, but politely without slurs, and no crazy Christian theocrats", well, I suppose it's a "center" of a sort, but that's not really very appealing to much of the Democratic Party. Okay, it's appealing those who want to be the old cliche of "Republicans, but smoke pot", but that's just one faction.
What might be described as the "class" versus "identity" conflict has consumed the Democratic Party. People know it. This was blatant e.g. during the Bernie versus Hillary primary fight. There's reasons for it. Forgive my bluntness, but it's absurd to think it can be solved or even made irrelevant by championing an almost mythical nice technocratic Republicanism.
I appreciate the comment! Some articles, by necessity, are "rallying the base," while others are aimed at reaching out more broadly, with different levels of context entailed in each case. This was more of the former: a lot of people like me are somewhat disorganized and underrepresented in politics, and now is the time to figure out who they are and to be explicit about working with them and figuring out how to properly relate with, interact with, and argue with other factions. So I hear you about the difference in worldview—there's a lot of translation work and a lot of patience from each side to have a productive conversation across the gap. Articles focused on doing so would be valuable, but other times, you have to plant a flag and see who's game to work with it.
I certainly wouldn't describe my goal as "Republicans who smoke pot," but I recognize why progressives would see it that way. I recognize that people eager for class conflict won't find all that much that's appetizing in my goals -- I'm pretty wary of class conflict as a political goal! But "nice technocratic centrism" is the politics of the world I want to live in, and I'm more optimistic than you are about the base for it, even as it means brawls with both the identitarian faction of progressives and the class-first Sanders sort.
Pass some bi-partisan bills with the Trump administration. Pretend it's the 1990s.
Elon wants people to have more kids, do a giant child tax credit funded by the SALT deduction.
Trump wants to use tariffs to reduce income taxes, change that to payroll taxes and moderate the size and its literally the policy of Abraham Lincoln.
I could parrot off some more. The bitter single lady who watch MSNBC demographic will hate it, but fuck em. They literally closed our fucking schools because Trump said they should be open.
I'm hoping Trump's term won't be disastrous, but I'm not at all enthusiastic about it, and I'm more interested in picking up the pieces after he's shattered things than acting as if I expect sane bipartisan policy to be possible under his oversight. His tariffs are terrible policy; his broad approach is inimical to my own. If he wants to adopt more of my agenda, great (and if Republicans properly get on board with the child tax credit ideas many Democrats have been pushing, fantastic), but my goal for the next few years is to build a credible center with Democrats, not cheerlead a destructive admin.
If I called the tariffs a VAT, economist would fall over themselves to endorse it. They just don't like the nationalist/racist vibes.
The bottom line is you've got to stop viewing every policy through the lens of TDS. It's fine to institute a tariff when you've got a huge current account deficit including with a geopolitical rival. It's fine to curb immigration when foreign born % is at an all time high. It's fine to tax rich childless blue staters when you're in a fertility death spiral.
Passing some decent legislation together would be very healing for the county.
Economists have been talking about the harms of tariffs for many years before Trump came into the picture. "TDS," as you call it, is acting as if bad policy becomes good because your leader blessed it. I decline to humor those impulses.
Tariffs on intermediate goods are unequivocally a bad idea.
HIGH tariffs are unequivocally a bad idea.
Low-moderate tariffs on consumer goods are in fact just a VAT by another name. I’m personally still not in favor, because I’m not in favor of adding another tax source unless we constitutionally eliminate or cap another one (e.g. high income tax rates).
But he’s right about the VAT analogy for the most part. And that Democrats who want government to spend and redistribute more *are* in favor of VAT.
"Economists" also said inflation was transitory when they wanted it to be to spend money. Look, I'm an "expert" too and I've been around long enough to know the game.
I doubt I'll persuade you in the comment section but at least consider that for most of America's history its been a pretty successful way to fund the government.
"Libertarian (3.8 percent): Lower right, conservative on economics, liberal on identity issues"
Thus it's actually untrue that "a lot of people like me are somewhat ... underrepresented in politics" (3.8%!). In fact, such people are way over-represented in politics in a way, because while proportionally quite small in terms of voters, it is the predominant ideology of many media people.
The phrase "Republicans who smoke pot" might need updating these days, it was coined before the Republican party went completely MAGA. The idea is to describe the group who hated government social services, didn't want to deal with fighting racism, sexism, etc, but were ok with sex, drugs, rock-and-roll. "Republicans but with psychotropics and pansexual polyamory"? It's really something like "non-theocrat laissez-faire capitalists", but that's too unwieldy.
Class conflict is a political reality, not a "goal".
But anyway, for your project, I really suggest having some familiarity with the main beliefs of major factions of the Democratic Party. Not the silly idea of "Intellectual Turing Test" (which is more about jargon), not even so much "steelman", rather some sense of the history and background. Do not think you are the first person to ever come up with "The Center!" as a pitch. It makes for popular articles, but those just have to sound good, not be good.
That’s all very interesting, but I’m not actually a libertarian and have never claimed to be one. For someone so eager to suggest I learn about other factions, you are clueless as to my own. Of course I’m not the first person to pitch “the center”—and you’re not the first to plead for more focus on class. We each play our roles in this dance; my job is to see to it that my faction wins the war of persuasion.
I would not have considered you to be a libertarian, but as someone who appreciates the benefits of the free market and the burdens of many forms of regulation, I would broadly consider you to be in the “economically conservative, socially liberal” quadrant of this two-dimensional graph, relative to the median member of the American public. (The two-axis graph is not especially helpful for categorizing this heterodox, non-Trumpy pro-growth pro-progress faction).
For what it’s worth I broadly share a lot of your political values, but it is not obvious to me that we are an especially large group - we are probably smaller than the “very progressive liberals + leftists” that we often clash with. I suspect Matt Yglesias’s proposal, while more modest, is a better way to create a coalition that appeals to us somewhat while not alienating the left flank of the party more than necessary
The word "Libertarian" was what was used in the article, not my term. It's clearly being used in a broader sense than the specific political party or its associated ideology (e.g. democrat vs Democrat, or rationalist vs Rationalist). It's simply denoting the quadrant "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" (of which, empirically, there just aren't that many), not fanatical capitalist. We really need a commonly recognized term to talk about this broad category. There's so many of the type of post where the writer basically goes on about how they don't believe in government social services, the Welfare State, they don't want to deal with racism, sexism, etc, but could they please not be in a political party full of anti-vaccination lunatics, crude racist slurs, "bible-bangers", etc. These writers often get very upset when called "right-wing", because they say that should require social conservatives, which they oppose, not them, they are a special breed (the Center, or "Grey Tribe" or some such). I wish there was some way to avoid going around this point all the time. We get it, you don't want to impose Christianity in a Klan hood. On the hand, please get it, what you want is the near-mythical sane polite Republican politician. And there's reasons that's near-mythical.
Whatever your full political views, if you want to persuade Democrats, I suggest understanding the above dynamic is an absolute prerequisite. There are some core philosophical ideas which drive the Democratic party, and blithely proposing abandoning them is not going to be received kindly among other than that 3.8% quadrant (whatever you call it).
Yeah, and I have no particular problem with government social services, I don't like pot, I'm sympathetic to social conservatism on a range of points, I'm fundamentally not what you're picturing and the reason we're going around this point is because you're mentally slotting me into a category you've already dismissed and then demanding I understand categories you imagine I'm missing. Think Singapore, not Rogan, and you'll have a much better idea of the frame I come from.
The libertarian claim you make is incredibly misleading.
In fact for forever 60% of the country has been economically conservative (or moderate leaning conservative).
And until a few years ago - and probably still today, depending on the definition - 60% of the country describes itself as socially liberal (I used to, but now describe myself as socially moderate, because I don’t agree with the woke left on *anything*, even though I disagree with social conservatives on several things).
Once again, the word "libertarian" is from the text, not my own phrasing, and clearly meant as descriptive of a quadrant. The analysis is detailed, and much more extensive than simple overall self-description. I do recommend looking it over. Of course you're not required to agree with it. But it does represent an effort which seems worthy of respect, and perhaps insightful as to overall how Very Online people (which by definition includes everyone participating in this discussion) differ from the broad electorate.
“ Democracy Fund is a foundation working to build an inclusive, multiracial democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy.’
Given that the organization uses all the leftist buzzwords (plus to its credit at least throws in “trustworthy”) to describe who they are, you’ll forgive me that I don’t consider “the text” you keep citing authoritative at all.
Nor does it change my claim that clear majorities in the country are economically conservative leaning and socially non-social-conservative leaning. I.e. issue by issue, majorities of the country agree broadly with libertarians.
For a link showing a far larger number of voters than 3.8% who are fiscally conservative, socially liberal, see here:
To me it looks like figure 2 is skewed down and right. If you put the center of the axes there would be a lot more people in the lower right. Since the data spread is based on a subjectivity determined set of questions there’s no reason for the mid point to be where it is other than reflecting the bias of the study’s author.
In fact, the Libertarian party usually gets 3 to 4 percent of the popular vote in presidential elections despite running candidates with zero political experience.
But it is interesting that there are only two notable clusters—and two parties.
I wasn't sure to like this comment, its got many problems but some insight.
"Republicans, but smoke pot"
I mean that's literally Elon Musk and Joe Rogan taking a toke on their podcast. They are 90s Democrats, but looking at literally the entire new Republican Party they are 90s Democrats including Trump.
Look, let me summarize the Democratic Party.
"We are going to take huge legacy assets and loot them because brown people will let us loot them in exchange for a portion of the loot. Also, we are literally insane but its OK because Trumpler." Take away the propaganda and that is the pitch from 2016-2024 (some hints in 2012).
This was so egregious and poorly executed that even their ostensible junior clients rejected it in favor of Trump!
And of course the assets being looted (think PayPal Mafia, etc) also revolted despite genuinely wanting to be on the team.
I really really wanted to like your comment, but I cannot because of the “brown people will let us loot” part. Even if there is some truth to what you say re: blacks, imo there never was truth to it re: Hispanics.
Now if you’d replaced “brown people” with “childless cat ladies”, I would indeed endorse it.
Though it was heartening that even those single ladies moved from over 2-1 Dem down to 60-40 Dem in this month’s election.
I just want a single Democrat that can give a straight answer as to why the hell Richard Leland Levine is still in office. It's really not that complicated. I don't think I'm alone, either.
If you want an honest answer it’s that the WPATH age story didn’t blow up to the extent that it was thought that her remaining in office wasn’t a political liability compared to firing her (Sam Brinton was fired and was still in ads with Levine).
The thinking was that ignoring the issue would make it go away. This turned out not to be true.
That's an answer from *you* as to why *they* don't have an answer. I'm tired half to death of hearing "risk management" as a catchall for these people's decisions. I know they're "managing risk." They've managed risk right into the fricking ground. Literally zero elected Democrats have the guts to say that the empress has a penis and literally everyone can smell the cowardice. It's a bitterly embarrassing situation; my only consolation is that it's such a perfect farce to entertain future generations.
See comment above yours & stop pretending you have no clue. Also, stop engaging with delusion. You can look at kandybarre.substack.com if you want to see me in drag but it's very, very important to keep fantasy & reality separate. Nobody should be performing a government role "in character" unless it's at PBS.
I'm reasonably confident that I know what you mean, but when someone levels serious accusations I would - as a matter of principle - prefer to see them spelled out plainly, for the record, rather than through a maze of deflection and insinuation which leaves the accuser free to backpedal if evidence someday turns against them.
Bubba won because he offered and achieved centrist policies like welfare reform and a balanced budget. Any centrist Democrat could offer similar. It's going to take someone like Shapiro with a proven centrist record. BUT... they'll also need th backbone to tell the hard left GFY. No one has the guts to do that because they all know the hard left feasts on centrist Democrats.
Until recently I’ve pretty much always considered myself a liberal/progressive. I supported gay marriage long before it was legal, opposed the Iraq war, I’ve never voted for a republican, etc. And while progressivism has led to some good things, like the legalization of gay marriage, when I look at things critically, especially issues I used to support in areas of economics, crime, drug legalization, etc, I can’t help but feel that the vast majority of progressive policies have failed. And while I still can’t see myself voting for these buffoons on the right, those on the left really need to look inward and reckon with the fact that many of their ideas, as well-intentioned as they were, have failed, and the best path forward is to understand why they failed and chart a new course. But at this point it really seems they are going to keep doing the insane thing—repeating their errors endlessly whilst expecting a different result, and calling everyone who disagrees with them a bigot in the meantime.
Everyone makes the assumption that if I don’t like trump I must like Biden and Harris. I don’t like Biden and Harris. This is nonsense. Donald Trump tried to steal an election by installing fake electors. He refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power even before the 2020 election. That alone is disqualifying. Whatever you think about any candidate, the peaceful transfer of power and conceding one’s loss is the foundation of our democracy. When Trump won, Biden invited him to the White House. When Biden won, Trump pouted, didn’t help with the transition, and refused to attend biden’s inauguration. That tells me all I need to know about these two people.
You should try aligning with those “buffoons on the right”; they are not nearly as bad as the image you have in your head (no doubt thanks to leftist media, and perhaps leftist social media too, idk).
Hard disagree. Trump's election denialism and constant spewing of lies about nonsense like crowd sizes and his efforts to censor the media are bright red lines in my book. His administrations are always stacked with people who have been accused of criminal activity, many of them convicted. The harrowing anti-intellectualism, the religious fervor...uh uh...no thanks.
I’m not the world’s biggest Trump fan, but the single best thing I ever read about the man was:
“People who hate Trump take him literally but not seriously. People who love Trump take him seriously not literally”.
I get that you’re in the first camp. I get that you prefer the (also convicted, but not for several things) Clinton and (mostly unconvicted) Biden crime families instead.
And that you prefer the “intellectualism” you got from Biden and Harris. 🙄😏
The “religious fervor” bit more than anything else is clear indication you’ve been brainwashed.
Maybe as a toe in the water go listen to the Rogan interview with Trump. I’d never listened to Rogan before, and only checked it out last week after the election.
At any rate, just friendly suggestions to open your mind. I didn’t expect you to take the idea up. Took me about 8 years to shift from being a moderate Dem to to moderate GOPer myself. Then another 8-ish to actually become a conservative-leaning libertarian. Of course, the two parties were much more similar back then.
I'd rather drift around in my aura of independence being neither right nor left. Both sides are pretty solidly detached from reality, just in different ways. Rather than make a game of team sports out of it, I'd rather applaud when the right does something I like, and then also applaud when the left does something I like.
Oh I definitely don't make a game of team sports of it. I deeply hate both sides, but I absolutely am getting more and more alienated form the left over time.
> If you do not want to follow Trump and you want any hope of political influence in
> the United States, there is one option and one option only: the Democratic Party.
I think that's the core of the problem: that there are only two parties that have any power. Voters feel stuck choosing the lesser of two evils.
That's why my pet cause is voting reform: changing election laws so that, instead of 2 parties that represent ~50% of the population, there could be (say) 4 parties that represent ~25% of the population.
When I was a teenager, voting reform seemed very pie-in-the-sky, but causes like ranked choice voting have actually won a string of victories in the past decade!
I need to write it up, but I've become increasingly skeptical about RCV as the missing piece to enable new parties to get their candidates elected. It also took a beating in the states where it was on the ballot this year. Fusion voting seems much more promising.
I thought, "9A is increasingly skeptical of RCV, and supports fusion voting? Lee Drutman, is that you?" ;-) I can tell from your linked article that you know his work.
I'm also cautiously optimistic about fusion voting. I check in on https://centerforballotfreedom.substack.com/ every so often, just to see if there's any news. Seems to be slow going, though.
In my capacity as a local precinct committeeman, let me officially welcome you to the Democratic Party! We need more thoughtful and insightful people like you, and we also need your sort of skeptical centrists that to have a place within our party. And as you say, we need an intellectual counterweight to the more progressive wing of the party. That doesn’t mean that I agree with you on everything. I share your views on a lot of social issues and on meritocracy, but I likely embrace a far more interventionist government role in the economy than you would on most issues. (Although I draw a line at price controls.) One of the challenges of operating within a party framework, at least in a two party system like ours, is that the party is broad and will never represent your vision in full. (In a multiparty proportional parliamentary system, you always have the option of just leaving and starting a new party that better suits your vision.) I’m a staunch longtime democrat… and I kind hate at least a third of the dems in elected office: some because they’re too far left on an issue that’s important to me, some because they’re too far right on an issue that’s important to me, some because they’re corrupt, or stupid, or incompetent. That’s the risk of remaining intellectually honest - you still see all the flaws on your own side. But I agree with enough of my fellow party members on enough of the policy that the Democrats are the better home for me, despite sundry imperfections. And on the issues where I disagree with the party consensus, I aspire to use my voice (and my vote in primaries) as one of many pushing to nudge things in the right direction.
So be prepared that you won’t win every argument on every policy. But with persuasive skills and a little luck, you and people like you can shift the trajectory of the party. I can’t promise I’ll agree on everything, but I’ll be thrilled to have you in the conversation. And any Democrat who actually wants to win elections should welcome you with open arms.
I appreciate it! I look forward to working alongside you and having spirited arguments as appropriate.
"Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. We may ask what is relevant but anything beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don't listen to him. Remember that - do not listen."
- Father Merrin, "The Exorcist"
I'm only teasing you Jersey. But TWoodgrains is too valuable to be lost!
I think you’re too quick to write off the Republican Party. Yes, they are as you said, “controlled by Trump for the next four years,” but after that he’ll be too old and term limited to keep control. His heir apparent is JD Vance, who actually seems like the most likely currently prominent politician to implement the techno-humanism you mentioned. He’s Silicon Valley through and through, and is known to read Scott Alexander and Hanania. I would in general consider him fairly more on economic issues. By no means is he perfect, but he’s just one example of how the Republican Party could lean in a more centrist direction in 4 years.
Yeah Vance seems wildly more likely as a vehicle for real reform and centrism than anything the Democrats are offering. Even with the Trump taint all over him.
Interesting read. I think centrism is ultimately a dead-letter though. At least use a different term because identifying your political movement as “the middle of the road” centrists inspires nobody to show up to the polls to vote for you.
But aside from that and the specific policies being talked about, I’d get back at the Democrat party itself.
It is a machine for getting votes, but you also need specific elite personnel in the party to make that pivot to what you want. The more center-left wing of that party were the boomers. You can see that in Biden and the Clintons. Those guys are shuffling off the stage as they age out and die off. The younger generation of Democrat leadership are anything but interested in center-left politics. They have had their entire education and formative political ideas seeped in left-progressive politics.
Funny to see techno-humanism ideas with how it is mainstream to shit on any technologists in left-wing circles as Silicon Valley “tech bros” have become coded as suspicious to them. Years of being propagandized that their alternative platforms to mainstream ones were what lost them political battles will keep them suspicious if not outright hostile.
While a positive environmentalism is just impossible for any leadership to grasp when they have been terrorized since elementary school of impending apocalyptic conditions from climate change.
A great deal of the center left liberal types shifted into the Trump camp because of their own optimism from his administration. They aren’t loyalists to Trump or MAGA by any means, but they are not going to find themselves in Democrat party leadership as a result either. So the slimmer and slimmer margin of center-left types in the Democrat party will find themselves both powerless and leaderless in the party.
It probably would be best for the party to go in that direction, but they have institutionally set themselves up to resist it. Give it a few months, especially after the Trump inauguration. The shock of the defeat will wither away and #resistance will resume with the younger part of the party. There is a very possible purging of the center-right neocons that joined them if the aging boomer leadership goes away.
Identifying as the "middle of the road" has kept the People's Action Party in charge in Singapore for fifty years. Done right, it's a potent message. Some have been siphoned off the Democratic Party to Trump; many others have been siphoned off the Republican Party due to Trump. The time is right.
“Middle of the road” works with political stability, not chaos. People are comfortable with centrist parties when they are comfortable with the status quo. The rest of the democratic world has seen a collapse of centrist parties and coalitions such as in France, Germany, or the UK for this very reason that the voters are feeling less secure.
I’ll differ to forum poster with the contextual analysis on PAP. But I can’t say I’m familiar with them much.
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/book-review-from-third-world-to-first?s=w
This should provide an idea. I strongly dispute forumposter's frame.
I read your write up and its nice.
I think that in the context of current American politics, LKY would be seen as beyond the pale and clearly associated with the right.
On culture this is obvious.
On economics he's not an anarcho-capitalist or anything, but neither is the modern Republican Party. He'd probably be in favor or lower taxes and lower spending than the Democratic Party today would support, and he'd be a red line for certain leftist constituency groups.
I should say, I’ve heard plenty about politics in Singapore, I just don’t have a refined enough view to discuss it at length. Chatting with people who lived there, they definitely remind me to not try to replicate it as it is a very unique place. (My understanding is a lot of the bizarre authoritarian rules are just incredibly difficult to communicate to other cities)
But I’ll give your link a view.
I don't think a city state is a useful model for a transcontinental empire.
If the PAP ran in America if would be considered literally the Nazi's and that's not hyperbole.
Remember when LKY went on Charlie Rose and called brown immigrants worthless fruit pickers nobody would want to be citizens of their country (Trump before Trump!)
Or when he said America was a crime ridden hellhole because black people are allowed to run wild.
I love the guy, best statemen ever, but he could only come to power in a majority Chinese country benefiting from geographically blessed city state context. Let's learn what we can learn, but the Democratic Party ain't turning out like some Man of Iron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGDqLeRuyCA
You're right, this seems like a bad guy
Instead of laying out your goals for the Democratic party - while laudable and I certainly think accurate - why not skip the "and then somehow some Democratic party members read this and... incorporate it sufficiently into their campaign" step and find someone who agrees with them, and work together from there?
Elon and Vivek and JD objectively disagree with Trump on a lot of things (especially on "actual solutions"), but are holding their tongues because they think they can manipulate someone they obviously think is... very manipulatable... into doing what they think is right (and I certainly am much closer to their views than Trump's). You absolutely know that if they had a competitor candidate (explicitly in Vivek's case, from the primary) who actually believed what they believe, instead of performatively waving the flag to get votes, they would be trashing Trump and boosting that person.
The question everyone had for Harris was: "in a country where 100m people are Democrats, where you say that the opponent is literally the end of our democracy, this was the best candidate/platform you could come up with?" She genuinely seems like a nice person! But no one believed that she would do the things that would make their lives better off, partly because she was in the White House for 4 years and didn't do them. So let's short cut all that silly party/electability/identity politics stuff, and * start * with a candidate who has policies (almost all of which enjoy majority support from democratic - and often Republican - voters) that will literally just make people's lives better off, which is what every voter seems to actually want. There's hundreds of millions of people in the country! Surely one of them is over 35, supports these milquetoast, centrist, wealth-enhancing policies, and hasn't (allegedly) murdered 17 puppies!
Well, that’s a large chunk of my point and my goal. My appeal is for centrists to make a pitch to Democratic Party voters, not politicians. I want candidates who share these goals in the primaries, up on stage, where their views can be heard and public support can properly be gauged. If it happens to catch the ear of Democratic Party members in the meantime, great, but the key is that this sort of thing needs its time in the sun.
That makes sense, but a big feature of "reasonable centrism" is that we all know the policies/goals already! We don't need to gauge popular support for them, we know they're basically overwhelmingly positive, and indeed people supporting them is why they didn't like lots of the left wing stuff from H (or right wing stuff from T).
"I want candidates who share these goals in the primaries,"
If nothing else, Trump is the example for this. You don't need to persuade (while certainly accurate persuasion is always admirable) Democratic voters or Democratic politicians or the Democratic Party to go out and * find * that person, you (and all the other people who support your nice beneficial centrist platform) need to find that person (who truly believes and agrees) and is electable-ish and * then * get them up on a stage - long before the primary - making the case for those things. Binding the platform and the person together, like Trump did with "crankiness about immigration" in 2015. All the other Rs were aware of it, but it never became something they thought they would lose a primary over until some extra-party candidate came in and put all his chips on it.
Just increasing awareness and persuading is very good, but by definition the coordination/Schelling point for elections is the candidate. If you successfully Raise the Center, that is good, but you need more than "all of the D primary candidates in 2027 definitely say they'll support Trace's Centrist Platform" because they make those promises all the time (often to those Groups!) and no one believes that they'll follow thru and actually * do * them successfully, because they have all kinds of politician incentives that work against it. You need someone who can credibly convey that they would follow through, because they don't have those incentives/baggage. And maybe gives you really good blackmail options, so you can enforce after they get elected!
Edit: the vast majority of the online Dems, "Groups" or special interests absolutely still want to win, or at least feel like they are winning. (just like all the anti-Trump people in 2015 who somehow have come around) If you have a candidate who is obviously getting lots of support from all the normal people NOT in those 3 groups, then most of them will happily revise their demands to fit the candidate, and go support them. They won't do it the other way around, though. The hardliners who demand the D candidate support self-defeating policies (you know who they are) will just provide an opportunity to demonstrate your centrist credentials by loudly denouncing them.
Right, that’s what I mean. This is basically an open pitch to find that candidate. I agree the goals are broadly popular in the abstract, the question is finding someone who can execute on them and describe them in a way that inspires public passion.
Ok, well - perfect! You wanna run?
Ha, maybe for a more local position sometime
COMPLETELY HYPOTHETICALLY: what would the script of a 30s campaign ad for this COMPLETELY HYPOTHETICAL candidate look like? In a way to maximize the points you mention: 1) the broad appeal of the policies 2) cogently describe them and their inevitable benefits and 3) inspires public passion from yourself and other voters?
What policies that will make people's lives better are you referring to?
reduce anti-density laws in major cities > more housing > lower housing costs for millions
reduce anti-energy regulation > more power plants (nukes?) > lower energy costs for millions
actually reform immigration to allow in peaceful productive people, strictly keep out those who aren't > everyone becomes better off because more peaceful productive people is good
establish better fed policy (NGDP targeting?) > prevent both inflation and unemployment > everyone better off because they hate inflation and unemployment
redirect federal research money away from anything that isn't health or productivity enhancing > new treatments, medicines, technologies > everyone richer/more alive
reform FDA, allow reciprocal approval, compassionate use, choice > everyone remains more alive, drugs cost less
All of these things (I personally have a bunch of others, but these felt like the easiest/most appealing to direct voter benefit) are easily within the centrist umbrella and would enjoy majority support if presented by a candidate as "goals" rather than specific policy changes. i.e. the public doesn't have real opinions on "reciprocal approval at the FDA!" but if you say "we will make it so you can have effective and safe drugs that will make you healthier, that everyone in Europe uses and is fine"
People talk about all these motivations for why people didn't vote for H or why they did vote for T, but the end logic is this: the people (the swing voting bloc that decides elections) have a few numbers in their head (costs, income, their health status, amount of problems they see around them) and they felt like those numbers went down (or not up enough) from 2020-2024, so they voted for the non-incumbent (Trump). Just like they felt that way about 2016-2020, so they voted for the non-incumbent (Biden).
To win elections you must make those numbers (in their head) go up.
Nice piece. I agree with almost all of your suggestions
You do realize that these align much more with both GOP politicians and GOP voters than with Dem politicians *or* Dem voters in 2024, yes?
And if you think changing only things like these, but leaving in place the rest of the Dem agenda, is gonna bring over a lot of folks, well…
Imo the number of NeverTrumpers and Tracing Woodgrains - especially who haven’t already switched - simply isn’t that large.
Absolutely, which is 100% part of the point. A D party that does not adopt policy goals (and directly disavow the policies that drove them away) that win back those switchers is one that doesn't succeed at all, or at least only succeeds if the GOP messes up and becomes the "hated status quo."
The key is actually delivering the positive results, which is the main reason the switchers stopped supporting the D party. Sure, if the GOP manages to execute and deliver actual positive outcomes over the next 4 years, the D's won't have much of a chance, but then I'm perfectly happy with that outcome too, because I'm not a D or an R, I'm a "I wish good things would happen to Americans" Party member.
Who needs to think piece it when Musk just did it ? The whole problem with T is getting him to actually execute on whatever you “nudged” him into temporarily saying. Is your goal Partisan Equality of Harangueing Thinkpieces or getting things done?
I am not sure "anti-density" laws are the thing causing housing shortages in big cities.
Consider these bad management cities and their population densities:
NYC 28.2, SF 18.6, Chicago 11.9, Philly 11.7, LA 8.4
Now compare these to these Sunbelt cities seen as good examples:
Dallas 3.9, Houston, 3.8, San Antonio 3.2, Phoenix 3.1, Austin 3.2
The least-dense in the first list more than twice as dense as the most dense in the second list.
Consider the population growth since 1930 (%)
NYC 24, SF 37, Chicago -20, Philly -20, LA 220 and
Dallas 410, Houston, 670, San Antonio 550, Phoenix 3100 Austin 1250
Seems to me, the most anti-density places are the Sunbelt cities that people are moving to.
As a process engineer, I know it is harder and more expensive to put new processes into existing production facilities than it is to build new on a green site adjacent to your plant and then hook it into your utilities. I suspect this is what the sunbelt cities (who did most of their growing when the car was ubiquitous) did; they probably built out onto adjacent green field.
Eliminating anti-density laws is unlikely to do all that much and if pursued by itself might make things worse. Suppose you eliminated anti-density laws to encourage more residential construction. When you increase the residential density of people, you also increase the density of their cars, requiring more roads, which are zero density of course. So you don't really get density that way. It seems this is more or less what the Sunbelt cities have done, extending moderate density land utilization by expanding into rural areas, rather than building vertically in central cities.
You cannot make the roads bigger in already built-up areas. But if you build more housing with existing roads, you get hellish traffic, and nobody wants to live there. Developers know this. The solution is building dense high-income residences. You then have high density in terms of tax base. But that makes the affordability problem worse.
There is physics as well as politics involved here.
Physics is also an issue with energy. If we got rid of all the regulations, nuclear might be competitive with coal. But coal is being displaced by gas because gas is cheaper. There is no way nuclear can compete with gas, not here in America where we have abundant cheap gas ever since we mastered horizontal drilling tech.
re: density, you are comparing cities over nearly 100 years, with radically different zoning/density policies, history, technology and social factors across that timespan. I'm not saying you're wrong, but that data won't let you tease out cause and effect.
I appreciate your willingness to dig into the details, but I wasn't trying to actually make the case, as you asked for "what those policies were" not "what is the detailed case for them" - I was mostly handwaving "whatever stops us from building sufficiently high density residential in places where current rent is skyhigh and obviously should have them (urban centers)". I am 100% open to whatever specific policy details you think would help that goal.
My focus was more on "if the cost of housing comes down, the large number of people who are angry about the high cost of housing will be happy and likely to vote for the candidate most likely to make that happen."
Re: nuclear/gas/coal - sure, if gas turns out to be better than nuclear, great, go for it. But all are highly regulated and discincentivized by regulation (none moreso than nuclear). But remember that cost in this sector is almost always heavily downstream of regulation. That is the reason nuclear costs so much.
Plus, while I don't think we're near peak coal or oil or gas, ideally I think Americans would actually (via the implied wants of the centrist majority) prefer a world where we burn insanely more coal/oil/gas to fund lower energy costs, new construction/technology that allows remedying the negative green effects, such that we DO run out of them, and can then use higher-tech, cheaper nuke power. I think it's actually a great example of why you should ignore what pollsters ask voters (Do you approve of CHERNOBYL-STYLE-NUCLEAR-DEATH-PLANTS?) and instead focus on the actual wants: cheap energy, amazing new tech powered by vast amounts of energy and the development of green tech to remediate, without declines in quality of life.
I mostly pointed out that the cities that people are moving top are *not* high density, even after tremendous population growth that you would think would boost density. Why hasn't it? The obvious answer is the policy used to construct housing there is biased against density, otherwise they would be high density as Northern cities of similar size are.
Now it is possible that Texas and Arizona cities have all sort of anti-density laws that you mention, but I speculated that what is true for construction of process equipment holds for construction of residential units, that it is easier and cheaper to build on undeveloped land than to build new residential prosperities is already-built-up areas, and a different pattern of development happened in the sunbelt that in the older northern cities due to *when* the growth happened.
Just the sort of hand-waving you did, but one based on *physical* thinking since I come from a natural science background.
And the same is true for energy. Nuclear energy IS hobbled by excessive regulation. But is this the reason why nuke plants are not built? Well look at the *timing*. When did scores of plans to build nuke plants get canceled. Early 1970's, mostly because rising interest rates made the cost of capital-intensive projects like nuke plants go up a lot. Regulation also played a role.
Regulations continued to tighten in the 1970's and 1980's until nuke construction pretty much ended. I noted that from 1969 through 1992, pro-business, anti-regulation Republicans were in power for 20 of 24 years and the one Democratic administration engaged in major deregulation (see link).
And yet, we stopped building nukes (presumably because of regulation) over this same period. Why didn't the nuke industry object to sympathetic Republican administrations. From what little I've read about it; they didn't really do so. Why not?
Time to think physically. To generate electricity, you need a generator. This is the same for any energy source except solar. To drive the generator you need a heat engine. With gas you use a gas turbine and you are done--two components
With coal and nuclear you use a steam turbine as your heat engine. With coal you use a coal-fired boiler to generate the steam to power the turbine--three components--50% more than you need for gas.
With nuclear you use a nuclear reactor to generate heat, which you then use in a boiler to generate the steam along with the heat engine and generator--four components--twice as many as coal and one-third more than coal.
Now the effect of regulation is to drive up the cost of the nuclear-reactor and boiler components. But you are going to have these two components that you don't have with gas, and one of which you don't have with coal.
Now back in the day I was a big fan of nuclear because the fuel cost of nuclear was less than coal, and this was enough to make up for the greater capital cost of the nuke plant over the coal plant that I am representing as this extra component. And since gas was much more expensive than coal. Coal was competitive with gas despite its extra component because of the lower fuel and nuke could be competitive with both, but for regulations.
But then came the fracking revolution, and gas got cheap. Now coal can't complete and it is going away (coal consumption had fallen in half since 2007). And since coal can't compete neither can nuclear.
You write: " I think Americans would actually (via the implied wants of the centrist majority) prefer a world where we burn insanely more coal/oil/gas to fund lower energy costs,"
I see this a lot from progress studies people. Global warming is no big deal apparently.
Typically a gesture is made to magical thinking:
"new construction/technology that allows remedying the negative green effects"
What do you think solar and wind are? Technologists have known about the need for new energy technology for fifty years now. Everything people talk about now, advanced nuclear, geothermal, fracking of shale old and gas, wind power, biofuels etc. was all known in the 1970's. I thought nuclear, wind, fracking, and biofuels made sense, with geothermal a possibility. One thing that was surely a joke was solar power.
So what happened. Biofuels and geothermal went tits up, while wind and fracking got rolled out, and surprise! solar got cheap, WTF? There's your amazing new tech.
What you are proposing is unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions going forward, which will be emulated by other counties. You suggest technology will arrive as if by magic to deal with this problem. I find that hard to believe since we have been aware if this problem since 1967 and so far, no magic has shown up. Maybe if we wait another fifty years?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briandomitrovic/2023/03/03/jimmy-carter-deregulator-extraordinaire/.
I would say that your method of analysis, while mostly accurate and based on true facts, is part of the problem that Trace is identifying: that Democratic policy is too focused on harms, costs and roadblocks, while ignoring the science/logic/data that says that wealth and abundance can work, and therefore hamstrings itself electorally by publicly associating themselves with denying everyone that wealth and abundance.
Your analysis is not wrong. It just has bad weights in the cost-benefit analysis that lead to over-conservatism, and therefore makes us poorer and worse off (not absolutely, but relative to what voters reasonably expect), and therefore voters don't like the status quo that they believe imposed that on them, and vote for the anti-status quo.
Higher urban density can work to reduce housing costs, because we see it in other dense cities around the world. Therefore we can do it too, and should because it makes people better off when housing doesn't bankrupt them.
Mass nuclear (or some other power source) can work, because France did it, and today we have better tech and more wealth, and more demand for energy, so therefore we can and should prioritize removing the barriers to doing so.
Global warming is not an existential threat, and is not going to kill (or even largely inconvenience) your grandkids. The costs are well modeled in IPCC estimates - trust the science - and are not particularly large compared to GDP at the time, and again remember, my preference is "go full nuclear" which is even greener per kwh than solar or wind. Plus, and this isn't nice to hear, but the cost of global geo-engineering to completely undo global warming (perhaps with bad consequences) is unilaterally easily within the budget of ~50 nations or so, and far more in the 20/30/50 years when global warming starts to bite. In their bones, and in their actions, voters know this.
Are there details and costs and issues with all that? Would maybe it end up that some other solution/thing works even better? Sure. But the net benefit is positive and high, allows for changing path as new information arrives, and most importantly: when you are trying to get voters to vote for you, pointing out all the potential flaws in policies that give them what they repeatedly have demanded - is perhaps not the best strategy? Particularly when the truth is, objectively, that the flaws are outweighed by the benefits?
For example, if you are debating starting an airline, it is probably not a great idea to focus on the fact that yes, sometimes plane crash, or are hijacked, or have insufficient overhead luggage space. Those things are true, and you should not deny that they are, but the net cost-benefit of flying is still positive, and we should be clear-eyed about both the costs AND benefits, and start the airline and take people to new and wonderful places.
Wow, I want to agree with this, but you claim Elon and Vivek are “manipulating” Trump.
Occam’s Razor suggests an even simpler answer: they are aligning with Trump on areas where they agree with him, and simply leaving alone areas where they disagree.
if you listened to Musk on Rogan, he is not pro-tariff. He surely doesn’t agree with Trump on everything. Most people don’t agree with others on everything.
But that doesn’t mean Musk is manipulating Trump.
you don't have to read any malice or trickery into it, you could replace the term with "persuaded" or "convinced."
But given that Trump was president in the past, and Musk didn't seem to have any influence at the time, and he did not do certain things, and now, M does seem to have influence, and T says "I am going to do these certain things because my good buddy Musk suggested them" then yeah, I think that's M influencing T. You can replace "influence" with "manipulate" or whatever term you like, I'm not married to any one in particular. T is very influenceable, if you can convince him that doing it Your Way gets him votes.
Ok, now perhaps we agree more than disagree.
Remember Musk was literally a Democrat back in 2016!
Musk hasn’t changed Trump’s views.
I do agree that Musk can, and perhaps has, changed Trump’s relative priorities. And if so, great.
A leader who can be influenced is a *good* thing.
A leader who can be *manipulated* is not.
sure, I just don't think there's a difference in this context between:
"influenced"
"manipulated"
"changed [someone's] relative priorities"
If one is a consequentialist only, I agree.
Since most people - certainly including this Substack’s author - are not and in fact are highly judgemental about personalities, utterances, etc., and make pronouncements on fitness and utterances far more than they do on policy, to me such words matter.
But I suppose if you are a Pragmatic D (or a NeverTrumper centrist) playing to your base, using the word “manipulated” might be helpful…
Not a consequentialist, but I just don't think there's much info (or much riding on) which term we use. If people are partisanly devoted/opposed to Elon or Donald in such a way that they object to my use of potentially pejorative terms, then I would much rather get that out of the way early. :)
It's not true that the anti-Trump Republicans have left the party. They still control the Senate. McConnell's right hand man just became the new Senate majority leader.
They do, but they've lost the base and it's not coming back to them. The base wants Trump, and I suspect many of McConnell's goals will die with him. He took their party from them, won it by right of conquest, and even as they continue to put up a semblance of a fight, they're bending the knee and kissing the ring one by one, or they're leaving the party. It's simply not a place for anti-Trump people right now. They lost; he won.
In 2028 when Donald Trump leaves office, John Thune will still be in power. There’s a reason Senators have 6 year terms. The Senate was designed to constrain a populist executive. Also, McConnell won a fight against Trump as recently as the 2022 Alaska senate primary.
The base loves Trump now, but the masses are fickle. The McConnell Thune faction isn’t going to be totally purged.
I agree.
Even if I wish that the far more conservative faction of Lee/Cruz/Scott/Ron Johnson were the ones who had the controlling power.
Claiming that they are Trump supplicants is absurd and unfactual. But it fits the leftist media narrative. And Trace’s too, it seems.
Trump has captured a lot of the party, but he hasn't captured the whole thing.
Agreed.
But he hasn’t “captured” all that many Senators.
Partisan suggestions to the contrary notwithstanding.
You present a false dichotomy.
“Pro-Trump” and anti-Trump are *not* the only two choices.
Most in the Senate are in the third camp of neither. How can you not recognize this?
As with anything in politics, there are numerous shifting alliances of convenience.
Trump will get some of what he wants (that the majority of GOP Senators don’t, that is), because he won and elections have consequences.
Most of what he wants in fact correlates highly with what the average GOP Senator - or GOP voter circa 2014 - wants.
[Rhetorical question: do you think the average Dem voter of the last 10 years or today really is against school choice for inner-city youth?]
I am a conservative-leaning libertarian decidedly in the 3rd camp. I’m thrilled that the anti-Trumpers are mostly gone. But the corollary is not that the GOP is pure Trump supplicants. You need only look at the Gaetz withdrawal for an example of this.
You make a lot of good points, and I bet we'd broadly agree on most policy issues, though I think I'm probably a bit to your left. That said I'm not really sure your vision of centrism is something that will appeal to the mass public, at least not on its own. Frankly, it's a very Online, very Educated form of centrism (I say as someone who is Online and Educated myself).
The typical swing voter these days is a middle-aged white or Latino person without a college degree living in the Midwest or Sun Belt. I don't think very many of these folks would feel spoken to and inspired by a candidate running on educating the best and brightest, regulating AI, techno-optimism, humane environmentalism, and championing "the role of America as a melting pot for the best and brightest from around the world". On some of these issues, like humane environmentalism and AI regulation, I don't think they care very much. And others, like America being a melting pot for the best and brightest, might actively turn them off. After all, 55% of Americans now say they want less immigration, and only 16% say they want more.* Sure, getting away from the extremes of environmentalism and social justice will surely help, but that's not sufficient on its own.
The kind of centrism that resonates with swing voters is more focused on pocketbook issues, inflation, law and order, skepticism of big business, and anti-corruption/reform. While the kind of centrism you advocate could play a role in a future center-left coalition, especially in certain policy areas, I don't think it will be in the leading role.
* https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx
Good thoughts. I don’t disagree with your points, exactly, but I don’t think they’re incompatible with my frame. Anti-corruption/reform is a huge target, perfect within the “institutional crisis” focus. Law and order & inflation are good fits for technocratic centrism. Pushing back against alienating socjus stuff is at once an easy sort of red meat and a potent tool.
The other elements—Dems have a relatively educated base at this point, and I think there’s a lot of potential in at once taking advantage of that by preparing serious policy-wonk stuff and pairing it with a populist sentiment of “The institutions are broken and the establishment has lost trust. Here’s how we can fix that.” Excellence in schools carried a lot of electoral force in eg Virginia, NY, and SF—I think it cuts across traditional political lines but has a broad base of support.
I won’t claim something like that is a guaranteed election winner, but it’s not obvious to me that wide appeal would be impossible with it.
Even if Democrats listened to you, you're not providing any real "vision" or message that will inspire anyone. Fence-sitting doesn't motivate people at the mass level. Policy wonk analyses bore people to tears. Any sort of "techno-futurist" vibes belong to Elon Musk, who has thrown in his lot with Trump. What's the message here? "We're Republicans on policy, but we hate Trump and Elon Musk?" Good luck with that.
Let him have his boring futurism.
He's bored himself of sci-fi visions.
Why else would such a haughty upjumped guy
be fingering our humble national pie?
Like I said on Twitter -- I wish you luck, but also foresee a future registration in the Republican party. Democrats aren't interested in what you're selling -- even if it would be good for them.
I think you're making a major tactical mistake. To be clear I think of all the online political personalities I align with you specifically more than anyone - if I could vote here I'd probably also have split my ticket with Kamala and a Senate Republican. We agree on the biggest weaknesses of both sides of the aisle ("wokeness"-related institutional crisis on the left and Trump's unfitness on the right).
What you're missing (and I think everyone in the commentariat is to some degree) is that we're about to enter the final act of the Trump Era. I have no idea how well or badly it'll go but thanks to the Constitution (and Trump being an octogenarian who's in no position to stage some fascist takeover) his time in control of the party is coming to an end. If you're vaguely sympathetic to some aspects of the right but heavily despise Trumpism in particular, this is exactly the wrong time to dismiss the Republican Party as a lost cause.
I don't know how the Democratic Party is going to evolve in the 4 years. My hope is of course that it'll move more towards positions I like and that the activist stranglehold on the party will loosen and it'll actively confront the left-wing institutional crisis. But for the Republican Party I can essentially guarantee that it will evolve more towards something I like. Because whatever happens it'll be forced to jettison Donald Trump, who is himself by far the biggest issue with the party. There's of course a possibility he is succeeded by someone as bad or worse but just given how uniquely and aggressively anti-democratic he is that possibility is slim.
And the reason why I think you're making a tactical mistake here is that you specifically may have a lot more power to influence the future of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. The overwhelmingly most likely 2028 Republican nominee (and thus the plurality-most-likely 2029 POTUS) is a fellow Too Online Weirdo and nerd who casually cites Slate Star Codex. And - I'm willing to bet - he's probably come across and privately agreed with something you've written on Twitter at some point.
I don't personally like JD Vance because he's been a shameless liar and Trump sycophant and hitched his wagon to Trump in the worst ways...but sadly that's just politics. He's obviously played the game well and done what he had to do to get within stone's throw of the presidency. But his own instincts are obviously very different from Trump's. If and when he becomes his own political force you will have the most Grey Tribe-adjacent politician in US history. I doubt he'll do everything you want but if you and other online libertarian-centrist-ish characters keep an open mind towards him, I think there's a very real chance he'll (a) notice and (b) reciprocate. This chance is non-existent with Trump or Harris or most established politicians because - to the extent they're on Twitter - they're there to rally the troops, mock their enemies and signal-boost their fellow partisan hacks. Vance on the other hand is a genuine honest-to-goodness Debate Bro who likes engaging in back-and-forths with people he disagrees with on the internet. I don't know that these are "good" qualities for a politician but I'm certain that they make him far more susceptible to influence from people like you.
Tldr Trump Era is 2/3 over so Rs (especially with Too Online Grey Tribe-adjacent Weirdo Vance as his likely successor) are a much better bet for us libertarian-adjacent centrists than Ds
100% agree.
So, as I might've mentioned, I don't particularly like JD Vance and think he's a liar and a coward and a Trump sycophant... None of which changes the fact that he's probably the only remotely credible presidential candidate who's ever read a word of Trace's writing. To my he was the first politician to publicly bring up the FAA hiring scandal that Trace brought to light.
Do they agree on everything? Of course not. Unlike JDV, JDZ isn't into telling lies about how great Trump is in order to get power. But they have a million points of commonality and I think there's literally no other politician that is more susceptible to influence through writing and vibes that spread through the online rationalist-adjacent sphere.
And while "shameless shapeshifting liar who happens to read and consider your words" might seem like a low bar I'm honestly incredibly skeptical that the Democrats will produce anyone who remotely approaches this as their 2024 nominee. The Republican Party is a hot mess where a guy who called Trump Hitler and has bounced through every faction of the conservative movement (from milquetoast David Frenchism to die-hard MAGA) can quickly rise to prominence by sucking up to the Orange Man well enough a few years later. But the Democratic Party is a well-oiled machine where your staffers will mutinee if you show the slightest ideological dissent on social issues.
Fair enough! This is all speculative and none of us knows for sure how politics in either party will evolve through 2024 so I could well be wrong on many levels here.
Just think we should all keep in mind that the question is never "is JD Vance (or Kamala Harris or Ron DeSantis or Pete Buttigieg) a good guy" in absolute terms but always "is this person more likely to reflect my priorities than the alternatives". And I def think ppl who are vaguely close to Trace's politics (like me and maybe you?) should be cognizant of how MASSIVE an upgrade he is over Trump.
Any discussion of “left” “right” or “center” that does not at minimum distinguish between social and economic issues is entirely vacuous. Some “progressive” ideas are widely popular and some are not; some “conservative” ideas are widely popular and some are not. The leftmost position on healthcare is Medicare for All; the leftmost position on gender is free sex reassignment surgery for minors without parental consent after minimal counseling; everyone lumps these together as “what progressives want” as though they are of equal reasonableness or popularity or anything at all.
I acknowledge a different between class-first economic leftists and identitarian progressives (though there's a lot of overlap), and I agree with the value of taking an issue-by-issue look. If handled pragmatically and effectively, I'm not opposed to free-at-point-of-service health care, but I certainly don't trust economic leftists to handle it effectively. Abundance is the starting point; redistribution is appropriate within a strong market economy, but class warfare and socialist economics are not the way.
Obvious risk with free-at-point-of-service anything is misaligned incentives.
So, how would you feel about any medical care the patient had no real choice in - such as emergency treatment for a life-threatening injury, or follow-up to deal with unexpected complications of some other procedure, or whatever a doctor might get in trouble for negligently failing to insist on - being free, as in 100% paid for by the hospital and/or government, but then "restaurant pricing" for all the more voluntary stuff?
By restaurant pricing I mean, any given hospital or clinic has a publicly viewable list of available services, with fixed prices for each, and no slack for private haggling by HMOs. Seems like that might go a long way toward clearing out rent-seeking administrative bloat, and refocus preventative measures on actual patient welfare rather than lawsuits.
Broadly good, but special attention would need to be paid to the “5% (or so) repeat customers take 50% of the time/energy” phenomenon. Small prices are good incentives. Singapore’s system makes the most sense to me but that’s predictable.
Could encourage hospitals to build a lot more beds than they expect to need, rent the excess to anyone who asks, at a flat per-day rate, with an explicit "we'll kick you out if anyone comes along who needs it more" clause.
That way, hypochondriacs, frustratingly nonspecific complaints, and even folks who just prefer a little bit more professionally-monitored convalescence after some other procedure than the doc thinks is strictly necessary, can all get what they want - at fair market prices, matched to the marginal costs involved - while, from an administrator's perspective, subsidizing surge capacity which might someday be critically important for a large-scale public health crisis, but is hard to justify to accountants the rest of the time.
America's got a lot more wide-open spaces, and bored anxious rich people, than Singapore started out with. Ought to fine-tune strategies accordingly.
“Abundance is the starting point; redistribution is appropriate within a strong market economy, but class warfare and socialist economics are not the way.”
You are right about this, of course.
Just as LKY is.
Given this, I predict you will eventually return to the GOP.
Because the chances of getting 60%+ of Dem voters to agree with you on this proposition might not be zero, but it’s awfully darn close.
This popped up on my feed today after I posted a similar article yesterday. It is nice to see some similar minded people writing and promoting the center! The center definitely needs to start banding together better and getting more active. We have let the clowns run the show for too long.
https://nbts.substack.com/p/colonoscopy-of-an-era-1?r=9ghy2
> to the damage ideologically motivated bad actors have done to Wikipedia
It's a credit to your writing style and how you take a full measure of your subject, because I came away with largely sympathetic feelings towards Gerard!
Glad to hear it could have that effect. I came away with more sympathy while writing it than I had expected I’d find, and I’m glad that came through in the article.
Sigh, so much here. In general, those on the Progressive Left (which note, by saying that, I'm not placing myself) don't like having these discussions with other people, even well-intentioned ones such as you, because often it's like banging one's head against a wall. There's so much difference in worldview that the amount of effort is exhausting.
Remember what I talked about a little bit earlier, what I call the "The Right-Wing Ranter Veto". It's not much of "center" to have "across the entire world, all policies and discussions are to be subject to the veto of ranting right-wingers". By definition, there's got to be something somewhere in centrism that ranty right-wingers want to rant about (i.e. they can't veto). But then the lying-hate machine can spin up: "You bad people, that thing is an abomination, THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON!".
That is, if your political program is basically "The Republican Party, but politely without slurs, and no crazy Christian theocrats", well, I suppose it's a "center" of a sort, but that's not really very appealing to much of the Democratic Party. Okay, it's appealing those who want to be the old cliche of "Republicans, but smoke pot", but that's just one faction.
What might be described as the "class" versus "identity" conflict has consumed the Democratic Party. People know it. This was blatant e.g. during the Bernie versus Hillary primary fight. There's reasons for it. Forgive my bluntness, but it's absurd to think it can be solved or even made irrelevant by championing an almost mythical nice technocratic Republicanism.
I appreciate the comment! Some articles, by necessity, are "rallying the base," while others are aimed at reaching out more broadly, with different levels of context entailed in each case. This was more of the former: a lot of people like me are somewhat disorganized and underrepresented in politics, and now is the time to figure out who they are and to be explicit about working with them and figuring out how to properly relate with, interact with, and argue with other factions. So I hear you about the difference in worldview—there's a lot of translation work and a lot of patience from each side to have a productive conversation across the gap. Articles focused on doing so would be valuable, but other times, you have to plant a flag and see who's game to work with it.
I certainly wouldn't describe my goal as "Republicans who smoke pot," but I recognize why progressives would see it that way. I recognize that people eager for class conflict won't find all that much that's appetizing in my goals -- I'm pretty wary of class conflict as a political goal! But "nice technocratic centrism" is the politics of the world I want to live in, and I'm more optimistic than you are about the base for it, even as it means brawls with both the identitarian faction of progressives and the class-first Sanders sort.
Here's a suggestion.
Pass some bi-partisan bills with the Trump administration. Pretend it's the 1990s.
Elon wants people to have more kids, do a giant child tax credit funded by the SALT deduction.
Trump wants to use tariffs to reduce income taxes, change that to payroll taxes and moderate the size and its literally the policy of Abraham Lincoln.
I could parrot off some more. The bitter single lady who watch MSNBC demographic will hate it, but fuck em. They literally closed our fucking schools because Trump said they should be open.
I'm hoping Trump's term won't be disastrous, but I'm not at all enthusiastic about it, and I'm more interested in picking up the pieces after he's shattered things than acting as if I expect sane bipartisan policy to be possible under his oversight. His tariffs are terrible policy; his broad approach is inimical to my own. If he wants to adopt more of my agenda, great (and if Republicans properly get on board with the child tax credit ideas many Democrats have been pushing, fantastic), but my goal for the next few years is to build a credible center with Democrats, not cheerlead a destructive admin.
If I called the tariffs a VAT, economist would fall over themselves to endorse it. They just don't like the nationalist/racist vibes.
The bottom line is you've got to stop viewing every policy through the lens of TDS. It's fine to institute a tariff when you've got a huge current account deficit including with a geopolitical rival. It's fine to curb immigration when foreign born % is at an all time high. It's fine to tax rich childless blue staters when you're in a fertility death spiral.
Passing some decent legislation together would be very healing for the county.
Economists have been talking about the harms of tariffs for many years before Trump came into the picture. "TDS," as you call it, is acting as if bad policy becomes good because your leader blessed it. I decline to humor those impulses.
Tariffs on intermediate goods are unequivocally a bad idea.
HIGH tariffs are unequivocally a bad idea.
Low-moderate tariffs on consumer goods are in fact just a VAT by another name. I’m personally still not in favor, because I’m not in favor of adding another tax source unless we constitutionally eliminate or cap another one (e.g. high income tax rates).
But he’s right about the VAT analogy for the most part. And that Democrats who want government to spend and redistribute more *are* in favor of VAT.
"Economists" also said inflation was transitory when they wanted it to be to spend money. Look, I'm an "expert" too and I've been around long enough to know the game.
I doubt I'll persuade you in the comment section but at least consider that for most of America's history its been a pretty successful way to fund the government.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Average_Tariff_Rates_in_USA_%281821-2016%29.png
You DO understand that child tax credit is an idea from the right, not the left.
The fact that Kamala’s campaign proposed it a few months ago notwithstanding.
The same campaign that purported to be pro-fracking and for no tax on tips.
Allow me to point you to the Figure 2 graph here:
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond
"Libertarian (3.8 percent): Lower right, conservative on economics, liberal on identity issues"
Thus it's actually untrue that "a lot of people like me are somewhat ... underrepresented in politics" (3.8%!). In fact, such people are way over-represented in politics in a way, because while proportionally quite small in terms of voters, it is the predominant ideology of many media people.
The phrase "Republicans who smoke pot" might need updating these days, it was coined before the Republican party went completely MAGA. The idea is to describe the group who hated government social services, didn't want to deal with fighting racism, sexism, etc, but were ok with sex, drugs, rock-and-roll. "Republicans but with psychotropics and pansexual polyamory"? It's really something like "non-theocrat laissez-faire capitalists", but that's too unwieldy.
Class conflict is a political reality, not a "goal".
But anyway, for your project, I really suggest having some familiarity with the main beliefs of major factions of the Democratic Party. Not the silly idea of "Intellectual Turing Test" (which is more about jargon), not even so much "steelman", rather some sense of the history and background. Do not think you are the first person to ever come up with "The Center!" as a pitch. It makes for popular articles, but those just have to sound good, not be good.
That’s all very interesting, but I’m not actually a libertarian and have never claimed to be one. For someone so eager to suggest I learn about other factions, you are clueless as to my own. Of course I’m not the first person to pitch “the center”—and you’re not the first to plead for more focus on class. We each play our roles in this dance; my job is to see to it that my faction wins the war of persuasion.
I would not have considered you to be a libertarian, but as someone who appreciates the benefits of the free market and the burdens of many forms of regulation, I would broadly consider you to be in the “economically conservative, socially liberal” quadrant of this two-dimensional graph, relative to the median member of the American public. (The two-axis graph is not especially helpful for categorizing this heterodox, non-Trumpy pro-growth pro-progress faction).
For what it’s worth I broadly share a lot of your political values, but it is not obvious to me that we are an especially large group - we are probably smaller than the “very progressive liberals + leftists” that we often clash with. I suspect Matt Yglesias’s proposal, while more modest, is a better way to create a coalition that appeals to us somewhat while not alienating the left flank of the party more than necessary
The word "Libertarian" was what was used in the article, not my term. It's clearly being used in a broader sense than the specific political party or its associated ideology (e.g. democrat vs Democrat, or rationalist vs Rationalist). It's simply denoting the quadrant "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" (of which, empirically, there just aren't that many), not fanatical capitalist. We really need a commonly recognized term to talk about this broad category. There's so many of the type of post where the writer basically goes on about how they don't believe in government social services, the Welfare State, they don't want to deal with racism, sexism, etc, but could they please not be in a political party full of anti-vaccination lunatics, crude racist slurs, "bible-bangers", etc. These writers often get very upset when called "right-wing", because they say that should require social conservatives, which they oppose, not them, they are a special breed (the Center, or "Grey Tribe" or some such). I wish there was some way to avoid going around this point all the time. We get it, you don't want to impose Christianity in a Klan hood. On the hand, please get it, what you want is the near-mythical sane polite Republican politician. And there's reasons that's near-mythical.
Whatever your full political views, if you want to persuade Democrats, I suggest understanding the above dynamic is an absolute prerequisite. There are some core philosophical ideas which drive the Democratic party, and blithely proposing abandoning them is not going to be received kindly among other than that 3.8% quadrant (whatever you call it).
Yeah, and I have no particular problem with government social services, I don't like pot, I'm sympathetic to social conservatism on a range of points, I'm fundamentally not what you're picturing and the reason we're going around this point is because you're mentally slotting me into a category you've already dismissed and then demanding I understand categories you imagine I'm missing. Think Singapore, not Rogan, and you'll have a much better idea of the frame I come from.
The libertarian claim you make is incredibly misleading.
In fact for forever 60% of the country has been economically conservative (or moderate leaning conservative).
And until a few years ago - and probably still today, depending on the definition - 60% of the country describes itself as socially liberal (I used to, but now describe myself as socially moderate, because I don’t agree with the woke left on *anything*, even though I disagree with social conservatives on several things).
Once again, the word "libertarian" is from the text, not my own phrasing, and clearly meant as descriptive of a quadrant. The analysis is detailed, and much more extensive than simple overall self-description. I do recommend looking it over. Of course you're not required to agree with it. But it does represent an effort which seems worthy of respect, and perhaps insightful as to overall how Very Online people (which by definition includes everyone participating in this discussion) differ from the broad electorate.
https://democracyfund.org/who-we-are/
“ Democracy Fund is a foundation working to build an inclusive, multiracial democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy.’
Given that the organization uses all the leftist buzzwords (plus to its credit at least throws in “trustworthy”) to describe who they are, you’ll forgive me that I don’t consider “the text” you keep citing authoritative at all.
Nor does it change my claim that clear majorities in the country are economically conservative leaning and socially non-social-conservative leaning. I.e. issue by issue, majorities of the country agree broadly with libertarians.
For a link showing a far larger number of voters than 3.8% who are fiscally conservative, socially liberal, see here:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/socially-liberal-fiscally-conservative-voters-preferred-trump-in-2016/
To me it looks like figure 2 is skewed down and right. If you put the center of the axes there would be a lot more people in the lower right. Since the data spread is based on a subjectivity determined set of questions there’s no reason for the mid point to be where it is other than reflecting the bias of the study’s author.
In fact, the Libertarian party usually gets 3 to 4 percent of the popular vote in presidential elections despite running candidates with zero political experience.
But it is interesting that there are only two notable clusters—and two parties.
I wasn't sure to like this comment, its got many problems but some insight.
"Republicans, but smoke pot"
I mean that's literally Elon Musk and Joe Rogan taking a toke on their podcast. They are 90s Democrats, but looking at literally the entire new Republican Party they are 90s Democrats including Trump.
Look, let me summarize the Democratic Party.
"We are going to take huge legacy assets and loot them because brown people will let us loot them in exchange for a portion of the loot. Also, we are literally insane but its OK because Trumpler." Take away the propaganda and that is the pitch from 2016-2024 (some hints in 2012).
This was so egregious and poorly executed that even their ostensible junior clients rejected it in favor of Trump!
And of course the assets being looted (think PayPal Mafia, etc) also revolted despite genuinely wanting to be on the team.
I really really wanted to like your comment, but I cannot because of the “brown people will let us loot” part. Even if there is some truth to what you say re: blacks, imo there never was truth to it re: Hispanics.
Now if you’d replaced “brown people” with “childless cat ladies”, I would indeed endorse it.
Though it was heartening that even those single ladies moved from over 2-1 Dem down to 60-40 Dem in this month’s election.
I just want a single Democrat that can give a straight answer as to why the hell Richard Leland Levine is still in office. It's really not that complicated. I don't think I'm alone, either.
If you want an honest answer it’s that the WPATH age story didn’t blow up to the extent that it was thought that her remaining in office wasn’t a political liability compared to firing her (Sam Brinton was fired and was still in ads with Levine).
The thinking was that ignoring the issue would make it go away. This turned out not to be true.
That's an answer from *you* as to why *they* don't have an answer. I'm tired half to death of hearing "risk management" as a catchall for these people's decisions. I know they're "managing risk." They've managed risk right into the fricking ground. Literally zero elected Democrats have the guts to say that the empress has a penis and literally everyone can smell the cowardice. It's a bitterly embarrassing situation; my only consolation is that it's such a perfect farce to entertain future generations.
What has Admiral Rachel Levine done that you consider a fireable offense?
See comment above yours & stop pretending you have no clue. Also, stop engaging with delusion. You can look at kandybarre.substack.com if you want to see me in drag but it's very, very important to keep fantasy & reality separate. Nobody should be performing a government role "in character" unless it's at PBS.
I'm reasonably confident that I know what you mean, but when someone levels serious accusations I would - as a matter of principle - prefer to see them spelled out plainly, for the record, rather than through a maze of deflection and insinuation which leaves the accuser free to backpedal if evidence someday turns against them.
One might speculate, perhaps very accurately, as to your thinking. But it seems better if you were to be straightforward about it.
"why nip when you can tuck??"
Bubba won because he offered and achieved centrist policies like welfare reform and a balanced budget. Any centrist Democrat could offer similar. It's going to take someone like Shapiro with a proven centrist record. BUT... they'll also need th backbone to tell the hard left GFY. No one has the guts to do that because they all know the hard left feasts on centrist Democrats.
Until recently I’ve pretty much always considered myself a liberal/progressive. I supported gay marriage long before it was legal, opposed the Iraq war, I’ve never voted for a republican, etc. And while progressivism has led to some good things, like the legalization of gay marriage, when I look at things critically, especially issues I used to support in areas of economics, crime, drug legalization, etc, I can’t help but feel that the vast majority of progressive policies have failed. And while I still can’t see myself voting for these buffoons on the right, those on the left really need to look inward and reckon with the fact that many of their ideas, as well-intentioned as they were, have failed, and the best path forward is to understand why they failed and chart a new course. But at this point it really seems they are going to keep doing the insane thing—repeating their errors endlessly whilst expecting a different result, and calling everyone who disagrees with them a bigot in the meantime.
Everyone makes the assumption that if I don’t like trump I must like Biden and Harris. I don’t like Biden and Harris. This is nonsense. Donald Trump tried to steal an election by installing fake electors. He refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power even before the 2020 election. That alone is disqualifying. Whatever you think about any candidate, the peaceful transfer of power and conceding one’s loss is the foundation of our democracy. When Trump won, Biden invited him to the White House. When Biden won, Trump pouted, didn’t help with the transition, and refused to attend biden’s inauguration. That tells me all I need to know about these two people.
You should try aligning with those “buffoons on the right”; they are not nearly as bad as the image you have in your head (no doubt thanks to leftist media, and perhaps leftist social media too, idk).
You’ll feel better.
Hard disagree. Trump's election denialism and constant spewing of lies about nonsense like crowd sizes and his efforts to censor the media are bright red lines in my book. His administrations are always stacked with people who have been accused of criminal activity, many of them convicted. The harrowing anti-intellectualism, the religious fervor...uh uh...no thanks.
I’m not the world’s biggest Trump fan, but the single best thing I ever read about the man was:
“People who hate Trump take him literally but not seriously. People who love Trump take him seriously not literally”.
I get that you’re in the first camp. I get that you prefer the (also convicted, but not for several things) Clinton and (mostly unconvicted) Biden crime families instead.
And that you prefer the “intellectualism” you got from Biden and Harris. 🙄😏
The “religious fervor” bit more than anything else is clear indication you’ve been brainwashed.
Maybe as a toe in the water go listen to the Rogan interview with Trump. I’d never listened to Rogan before, and only checked it out last week after the election.
At any rate, just friendly suggestions to open your mind. I didn’t expect you to take the idea up. Took me about 8 years to shift from being a moderate Dem to to moderate GOPer myself. Then another 8-ish to actually become a conservative-leaning libertarian. Of course, the two parties were much more similar back then.
This is me 5 years ago, have fun continuing to be disappointed and slowly drifting right as the left continues to be idiots detached from reality.
I'd rather drift around in my aura of independence being neither right nor left. Both sides are pretty solidly detached from reality, just in different ways. Rather than make a game of team sports out of it, I'd rather applaud when the right does something I like, and then also applaud when the left does something I like.
Oh I definitely don't make a game of team sports of it. I deeply hate both sides, but I absolutely am getting more and more alienated form the left over time.
Ha...yeah I feel you. I have a pretty deep loathing for both sides as well.
> If you do not want to follow Trump and you want any hope of political influence in
> the United States, there is one option and one option only: the Democratic Party.
I think that's the core of the problem: that there are only two parties that have any power. Voters feel stuck choosing the lesser of two evils.
That's why my pet cause is voting reform: changing election laws so that, instead of 2 parties that represent ~50% of the population, there could be (say) 4 parties that represent ~25% of the population.
When I was a teenager, voting reform seemed very pie-in-the-sky, but causes like ranked choice voting have actually won a string of victories in the past decade!
I just posted about the need for four parties! https://getthispartystarted.substack.com/p/we-dont-need-three-parties-we-need?r=1eolp
I need to write it up, but I've become increasingly skeptical about RCV as the missing piece to enable new parties to get their candidates elected. It also took a beating in the states where it was on the ballot this year. Fusion voting seems much more promising.
I thought, "9A is increasingly skeptical of RCV, and supports fusion voting? Lee Drutman, is that you?" ;-) I can tell from your linked article that you know his work.
I'm also cautiously optimistic about fusion voting. I check in on https://centerforballotfreedom.substack.com/ every so often, just to see if there's any news. Seems to be slow going, though.