1) The thing about “popularism” is that voters respond to authenticity and narrative a lot more than most polls capture. People favor candidates whose policy platforms reflect the authentic concerns of the candidate and the electorate. (Context: nytimes.com/2021/10/08/opi…)
2) Polling is often quite sensitive to question wording and weird context. A question about the age of the Earth preceded by questions about math and gravity will get different result than one preceded by questions about prayer or religious doctrine.
3) More people say the world was created *by god* less than 10,000 years ago than say the world is less than 10,000 years ago. It isn’t logical! You can’t just add up poll percentages and learn what people think!
4) John Kerry in 2004 had a lot of popular ideas, but he lost in part because people didn’t believe he’d actually do them. The “flip-flopper” label stuck because people had concerns and that message crystallized a narrative. Voters want candidates who stand for something.
5) If you adopt policies because they’re popular, it opens the possibility that you’ll abandon the constituencies they benefit if those policies or groups get less popular. Why should I entrust you with my proxy to vote in Congress if your views will change with the next poll?
6) Having some unpopular positions actually helps sell that. It shows what you believe and will fight for. Especially if those unpopular views represent what you think your electorate is becoming, or tells a coherent story with other stances.
7) So, obsessing over half a point in differences among polling on two variants on a policy issue, or even a six point margin, is harmful relative to using your policy stances to enhance the narrative of a candidate and a party.
8) Even if a means-test is slightly more popular than a universal program, imposing the test says something about your view of the world and what problem you’re solving. A means test says that some people don’t deserve nice things and it’s government’s job to decide.
9) Leaving a child tax credit universal says “we know parenting is hard and expensive and we want to help.” Means testing it says “we know parenting is hard and some people can’t take care of their kids without help.” Really different!
10) You can run a campaign on both grounds and you can probably win both ways. But one of those is the Democratic party I want to be part of, one isn’t.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Josh Rosenau

Josh Rosenau Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @JoshRosenau

13 Oct
Leakers are very bothered by the @washingtonpost article showing wildlife farms serving Wuhan at the mouths of bat caves. Their response is to dismiss it. washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac… Image
They want to insist (Alina has done two separate threads on this theme) that the failure of farmers, scientists, or the Chinese government to brick up bat caves and quarantine farmed wildlife is proof that those parties don’t *really* believe SARS-CoV-2 is zoonotic.
But here’s the thing. In 2002, civets infected with a bat virus were brought to a market in China. The civet-bat virus jumped to humans, causing a major epidemic that nearly spread globally. We know this. The Chinese government knows this. Chinese farmers know this.
Read 11 tweets
13 Oct
I think sometimes about the different way we handle public health and electrical codes. When I bought a house and started futzing with it, I learned how fiddly electrical codes can be. And I that every rule basically comes from investigation of a fire.
Not from investigation of some trend in fires, but one fire caused by a wire that wasn’t stapled in enough places, or that got out of control because holes through beams weren’t filled with the right kind of foam. A million rules, each a product of perhaps one investigation.
The goal of the people writing building codes is to have zero fires. And zero fatalities from fires (hence rules about how large windows have to be). Sorry your AFCI breakers are more expensive, but they keep you from dying.
Read 7 tweets
12 Oct
The thing about childcare is that it can basically cost as much as college, making it a financial burden for everyone, regardless of means. It costs as much as a middle class salary, and that’s part of why some may not be rushing back to the workforce.
I never met another parent of a toddler with whom there wasn’t some discussion of whether it was wiser to sign up for preschool or just give up a salary and stay home for a few years. The US job market doesn’t reward that choice, so you burn the salary.
During the pandemic, people who were laid off maybe saved money on childcare. Lost salary maybe balanced out. Now, returning to in-person work just to pay it all in childcare doesn’t sound so great, and you can explain a gap in the résumé.
Read 5 tweets
11 Oct
Sometimes the #OriginsOfCOVID gang (@Ayjchan etc) decide that the Chinese government’s reticence about sharing information from research centers is evidence for a #LabLeak. By that standard, is this evidence for spillover? washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac… ImageImageImageImage
More. The Chinese government and regional governments have made it extremely hard to get any data on fur farms, exotic meat farms, and wild meat hunters. The *existence* of those products for sale in Wuhan is still being covered up within China. ImageImageImage
Enshi is far closer to Wuhan than Yunnan, where the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 in China has been found. But it appears no one has sampled the viromes of Rhinolophus in Enshi. Practices there clearly warrant investigation. ImageImage
Read 5 tweets
30 Aug
This is an interesting up ultimately misleading analogy by Chan. Misleading, alas, in ways she knows are misleading. A virus is not a butterfly. A virus collection is not a butterfly aviary.
Rearing butterflies in a greenhouse is actually quite rare. Some species must undergo long migrations, or have a complex mutualism with one or more host plants, or with other insects (and other critters). Most butterfly houses use the same set of fairly tractable species.
Viruses *require* a host to survive. Often a really specific host. And the host and the virus evolve together over time, and viruses cross over. So such a menagerie would be incredibly complex to maintain, and ineffective at its main goal of cataloging viral diversity.
Read 12 tweets
29 Aug
If indeed the FBI is the only agency willing to tote the lab escape line on the origin of COVID, it's worth reviewing all the ways they screwed up the investigation of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, and misled the public about that investigation. pbs.org/wgbh/frontline…
I mean, in the naughties, the FBI realized they lacked expertise in microbiological investigations. They turned to the Army’s biowarfare lab for advice. A while later, the exact expert who they first turned to at USAMRIID, was the guy they fingered as the murderer.
First they let op-ed columnists and political pressure manipulate them into blaming another guy, a virologist (!) who ultimately sued and got a $5.6 million settlement out of their harassment and false accusations. (He now touts hydroxychloroquine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(