Elections are complicated, as are shifting coalitions, but I think a lot of the preconditions for Trump's victory were in place in 2008/2012. The GOP just didn't realize it, nor had they found the right candidate. Their base was already the party of Palin/Trump, not McCain/Romney
I don't think white working class voters moved away from Dems after 2012 in substantial numbers b/c of specific policies. They were already moving away, but there were still some pockets of Blue Dogs in the Midwest who disliked GOP candidates more than the Democratic party.
Romney/Ryan were especially weak in this regard. The GOP base was not about conservative economics--they didn't really like these policies--they were already about culture wars. Trump as a candidate flipped a switch that was already years in the making.
Look at Palin. People don't believe me, but other Alaskans will back me up: She changed when she got to the national stage. Maybe she was always like that internally, but her outward behavior was influenced by the GOP audience. She didn't change the base, the base changed her.
2008 was an outlier for Democrats. Obama was a unique candidate. Yes, b/c as a Black man, he was making history. But also he is just a uniquely talented individual. Importantly, *young* voters--who are unreliable, but lean Dem--had never seen any politician speak like him.
In the meantime, Bush was not just uniquely unpopular, but he was hated *among the GOP base*. His politics were not their politics anymore. Nor were McCain's. Add a recession to that & more working class white people chose the Democrat, even though many were racist towards him.
So a lot did happen btwn 2008 & 2016, but I think we're missing a big piece of the puzzle when we ignore the nascent forces in the GOP. They were already Trump's party. Many factors--like a Black man in power--brought what lay beneath to the surface. We see that, again, w/ Palin.
White working class voters have been trending GOP since the 60's. There have been blips (Bill Clinton; Obama: 2008), but the trend is there.
What we forget is, while many of these white working class voters loved Reagan-types, they *hated* Romney types. In a forced choice between a Romney-Type & a Democrat, a sliver of these voters could go either way
Yet all of those voters love Trump. It's like he freed them.
Again, I talked a lot about 2008-2016, but all of this starts in the 60s. As party realignment was underway post-Civil Rights, George Wallace was strong in the midwest & Nixon & Humphrey were in direct competition for those 3rd party votes. These voters didn't like either party.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I wrote a piece for Foreign Policy about infectious disease control in a liberal society, in which I addressed two questions: 1. are mandates & other restrictions on individual behavior new? (no) & 2. can they justified within liberalism? (yes). foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/02/cov…
Vaccine mandates are not taking us down a dangerous new path to authoritarianism. They've been around for a long time, as have much stricter mandates on human behavior. But just because these restrictions aren't novel, doesn't mean they're justified. So I explored this Q as well
How we justify interfering in individuals' behavior is at the core of debates w/in liberal philosophy. One way to get at justification is through a careful examination of 1. burden to the individual, 2. benefit to the individual, 3. harm prevented to the broader community
In my latest for @johnastoehr, I wrote about three key problems with the press's coverage of Biden's Human Infrastructure Bill. Contrasting the coverage of Biden's bill w/ coverage of LBJ's Great Society is also quite revealing editorialboard.com/joe-bidens-pla…
Problem #1. Biden's bill wouldn't just be transformative policy. The philosophy underlying the bill is revolutionary, as it attempts to redefine what kinds of infrastructure render society stronger. The press has failed to clearly express this game-changing philosophical debate.
When I look at the bill through the lens of "infrastructure," here's what I see: the strengthening of a wide network of human connections. Aid for children. Aid for the parents of children. Aid for those children's grandparents. We reinforce these networks & we reinforce society.
I’m at a fair in rural PA and it is intense. For example, here is a game where you pay five dollars to break as many beer bottles as you can in a minute
The worst thing about Sinema is not that she is a moderate, but that she is a terrible civic servant who seems flippant about her duty to the public. My politics are closer to Sinema's than to Lisa Murkowski's, but at least Murkowski treats her position w/ gravity.
The 3-4 relatively more decent Republicans distinguish themselves from the rest of their party b/c they actually seem to have a sense of civic duty as representatives in a democracy. Sinema-& no other Democrat-not even Manchin--acts more like the rest of GOPers. No sense of duty
Alaskans can call Murkowski up and know that she will at least listen. Maybe she'll still toe the party line, but there is open communication between her & her constituents. That line of communication just doesn't seem to exist for Sinema. There's no sense of accountability.
My take: we should stop using the name of a specific logical fallacy to override linguistic usage & semantic change. Maybe we should say, "raising the question is how it's interpreted by natural language users" & employ one of the other available phrases for the fallacy.
It's not like "begs the question" is a particularly clear name for the fallacy. Nor is it a perfect translation of the original Greek
Aristotle used "asking the original point"/"assuming the original point," which was then translated to Latin as "petitio principii"
Then at some point English speakers started saying "beg the question" in variation w/ the fancier petitio principii. Maybe they were trying to be dramatic, who knows, but it's a lot less clear of a name for the fallacy than "assuming the original point."
This is a point that has too often been missed about Human Infrastructure. The bill is an ingenious pre-midterm piece of legislation because it is *only* additive. People will see new benefits, but no disruption to their personal lives. Fundamentally different than the ACA.
Now, I am not saying we shouldn't have passed the ACA. But the ACA, like much expansive progressive policy, was politically risky b/c, though it was a longterm good, it produced short-term disruption for many Americans, making it a prime target for backlash.
An overall power asymmetry exists between conservatives & progressives b/c conservative policy introduces little short term pain & may even include small benefits (tax cuts). The pain manifests later on (entightlement cuts). This produces 1. less backlash & 2. less accountability