Thread by @ezraklein

I subscribe to — and enjoy! — @DavidAFrench's Dispatch newsletter. But I think he gets something consequential wrong in yesterday's edition, "Doubling down on the yeehaw."

The phrase refers to politicians distracting from governance failures by leaning into the culture war. The first example is the entire Republican leadership in Texas. It's a great example.

David's second example, though, is the San Francisco school renaming debacle, and it's built around my recent column on California. And here I think David errs. There's a huge difference between these examples.

The difference is this: In Texas, the state's political leaders — up to and including both the current and former governors — went full culture war rather than deal with their governance failures.

In SF, the city's political leaders have been fighting like hell to focus on governance and downplay things like school renaming. SF Mayor London Breed repeatedly criticized the school board, and the city literally sued to reopen the schools.

This is a common form of false equivalence I see: it's true that there's wacky and counterproductive stuff swirling through the base on the left and the right.

But on the right, the top politicians — including governors and presidents — buy into it, and even drive it.

There's much less true on the left (note I am not saying it is *never* true). Top Democratic politicians are very interested in governance, and often try to pull their own base back from the brink on grievance fights and conspiracies.

You've really seen the difference across the Texas mess. President Trump routinely withheld disaster aid and cooperation from blue states: huffpost.com/entry/trump-di…

Ted Cruz mocked California during our fires and blackouts.

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1296134869320380419

What have top Democrats been doing during the Texas crisis? Biden declared a disaster. @AOC has raised millions of dollars for Texans. The leading Democrats have not used this as a moment to show they can help Texans, not prosecute a culture war against Texas.

This is a *big* difference between the coalitions. Top Democratic politicians and institutions have simply been more responsible and governance-oriented in recent years. Republican politicians have been much more culturally oriented.

You even see this in where the negative partisanship flows. Democrats obsess about Republican officeholders, and their perceived misdeed. Watch MSNBC and it's endless stuff about congressional Republicans,. Watch Fox News and it's college campuses and media organizations.

This is something Yuval Levin and I discuss in the podcast we did recently, but there's a huge difference in how responsible the institutions on the left and right have been, and how their politicians have acted in recent years. nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opi…

You can find weird stuff in both bases, but the key question is what those in power do.

The SF school board — opposed by the SF mayor! — and the *Governor of Texas* are not comparable examples. French's column is structured to suggest equivalence, but the interesting question is what accounts for difference.

I have structural theories for this in my book, related to differences in media ecosystems and electoral geography. But there's clearly more. Republican elites have so much less immune system against base nonsense than Democratic elites, and it's created a crisis for the system.