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Will Stancil Profile picture
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5 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
All you people suddenly coming around to the idea that “it’s all vibes” - welcome to main signal theory
One of the many reasons I get so frustrated with "popularism" and similarly policy-driven electoral proposals is that the solutions they propose are just going to be bugs on the windshield of the main signal.
Trying to parry and feint your way through politics as if it's a fencing match is not going to work when you're caught up in a hurricane-force main signal
Don't make me tap the sign

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More from @whstancil

Will Stancil Profile picture
7 Nov
We are living through a reactionary panic among white elites. They have convinced themselves that all this racial inequality talk has gone too far and must be squelched. They’re hiding it (barely) behind a new vocabulary of “wokeness” and claims of political pragmatism.
What’s remarkable about this is that almost every single person complaining about “wokeness,” “cancel culture,” or “left-wing cultural politics” would argue that they are PERSONALLY in favor of an egalitarian, colorblind society in which race is irrelevant.
The reason I feel comfortable identifying what’s happening as reactionary backlash is that, as Perry suggests, there’s no specific left-wing idea that has gained a strong foothold. Instead, the problem is implicitly understood to be the mere EXISTENCE of progressive ideas on race
Read 7 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
7 Nov
If the exact same infrastructure bill had passed in June with only Dem votes, something that was totally possible, it would have been regarded as a minor win for Biden and quickly forgotten. But nobody in DC seems capable of keeping perspective on anything.
The reasons this infrastructure started to seem like a big deal are that:
1. Biden hasn't been able to pass anything else, and
2. It got bottled up for ages.
But the reason it got bottled up for ages isn't because this bill is particularly significant! It's because this bill was being held back by people who basically supported it, because they were afraid if they DID pass it, Biden wouldn't be able to pass anything else.
Read 4 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
5 Nov
So here's why I think "vibes" matter.

First picture: how most analysis imagines elections work

Second picture: how elections actually seem to work

Think of voters as particles. The main thing affecting them isn't a bunch of little forces, it's just one big vibey main signal. ImageImage
Why do I think this is how elections seem to work? Because we see consistent kinds of shifts across many groups and geographies. Unless everyone's responding to the same thing, that's very unlikely.
That's not to say the shifts are always in the same direction! For instance, 2016-2020 consistently saw suburbanites move left and white rural areas move right. The key here is that whatever force was causing that change (Trump) was operating on pretty much everyone.
Read 13 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
5 Nov
The sustained ideological controversy is "white people mad about race" and the reason it's newly roiling institutions is that people like you have found a new language and pretext to repackage the same resentments that have been around for a century.
"Get [X] out of our schools!"

You found a new word for X, congratulations. We all know what the X really is, though.
The people who are LEAST confused what the X is, by the way, are the people raging on the ground. It's the intelligentsia who have deluded themselves into thinking that what these people are REALLY angry about is some hard-to-define set of subtle shifts in institutional ideology.
Read 4 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
5 Nov
"What constituency is this even supposed to be for?"
Barro is heaving himself into the same moral abyss that contains internment, segregation, Jim Crow, and genocide, and doing it with a knowing smirk.
If you're a member of a sufficiently unpopular minority, these monsters will happily sacrifice you at the altar of political expediency, too.
Read 4 tweets
Will Stancil Profile picture
5 Nov
This is the endgame, right? They're sure racial justice advocates are destroying the Democratic Party, even when the racial justice advocates are nowhere near actual campaigns or power. The only logical next step is to proactively purge them from the party.
It's really simple to see why this idea is so appealing to moderate white male liberals: it drives the people who they feel most threatened by into the wilderness, and makes the Democratic Party into an organization dedicated to their ideals, where they're effectively in charge.
The response to this is always to point to "working class people of color" or Eric Adams, but that misses the point: they still want to create a sieve that filters out anyone whose ideas are too threatening to people like them.
Read 5 tweets

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