Politico has a story up about infighting in Democratic party politics, Drinking Enemies: Two Cocktail Parties that Reveal the Schism in the Millennial Left. It’s pretty interesting. On the merits, I think Sean McElwee and David Shor are probably correct, and their critics are wrong. The author is clearly trying implicitly and explicitly put up a demographic divide here: Shor* and McElwee are “white dudes,” while their critics are a black woman and a white woman (the latter of whom is a Becky-heiress who rose through Occupy Wall Street).
There’s lots of talk about polling and focus groups, but both sides could benefit from a little history. Contrary to what the critics of Shorism assert in the piece, racism is not just a tool of the powerful to divide the masses. In some cases, like with the Bourbon Democrat elites of the South, it was used crudely, but strong ethnoracial identitarianism was always more salient among the masses. Elites tend toward global affinities and cosmopolitanism, and their adherence to strong local identities is often part of a quid pro quo. The critics of Shorism who believe that racial division is false consciousness that can be overcome with messaging are ignorant.
Second, there is an idea that the arc of history always moves toward cultural and social radicalism. This is just not true, though it may seem to be so. For example, the period between the late 18th century and the Victorian Age saw a shift back toward more puritan moral standards and expectations. The norm around the age of sexual consent that collapsed in radical circles in the late 1960s and into the 1970s faded, and those who espoused radical views were expelled from activist movements in the 1980s. Similarly, attitudes to abortion have remained relatively stable for nearly 50 years, shifting only with the recent collapse of organized religion in the younger age cohorts.
Some on the cultural Left may not believe this, but at some point, radicalism runs up against human nature, the eternal war against normality takes pauses, and the forces of change retreat. What we now call “polyamory” was practiced in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York in the early 19th century and again in the late 1960s and 1970s. Both times the enthusiasm disappeared in the face of the persistence of universal human instincts. Conversely, the culturally liberal “inclusive” attempt to foster racial identitarianism will not lead us anywhere good. Either we’ll pull back, or chaos and conflict will ensue.
* Shor’s parents are Sephardic Jews. His mother has a Latinx surname. So he “presents” as white, but he could claim PoC identity if he wanted.
Why do you always say Latinx?
irony
On parallel lines, University of Colorado Political Science Professor, by Roger Pielke Jr. wrote:
“Why Democrats will Lose the House: Voters indicate that the Democratic Party favors the interests of the wealthy and highly educated and that’s a losing formula” Nov 3
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-democrats-will-lose-the-house
“Expectations that Democrats will lose control of the House (and maybe also the Senate) next week involve much more than simply a repeat of the longstanding pattern of the President’s party losing seats in midterm elections
“In this post I share some thoughts on why we appear to be in an era of Republican dominance of the House, and why that dominance looks well-positioned to continue.
“The core problem facing Democrats, in my view, is that they have become a party of the wealthy and the highly educated. This is not my opinion, nor is it based on any analysis of what particular Democrats say or what policies they support. This view is based entirely on how people actually vote. And those votes indicate that the wealthy and highly educated prefer Democrats and everyone else prefers Republicans.
“There are 67 congressional districts where median incomes is greater than $86,000, but 147 where it is less than $58,000. Similarly, there are 33 districts that have a majority of residents with bachelor’s degree but 198 where that number is less than 30%. There are a lot more congressional districts in the United States with less wealthy and less educated people, than more.
“In a future post, I’ll take a look at how the Democrats came to seemingly deemphasize the values and politics of a majority of Americans in favor of those of a wealthy, educated elite. To preview where I’m headed: It’s the economy, stupid.”
“* Shor’s parents are Sephardic Jews. His mother has a Latinx surname. So he “presents” as white, but he could claim PoC identity if he wanted.”
Ah, a shapeshifter, then. How privileged.
The problem is not that elites manipulate the masses, that’s an eternal, it’s that our elites are incompetent.
@ Walter Sobchak, that’s the same Roger Pielke Jr. who I read during the Climate Wars of the 2010s. He continues to be a rational guy with moderate views. Whether he’s right or wrong, the world would be a better place if his adversaries emulated his respectful, forgiving online persona.
That said, the analysis you linked seems most notable for what Pielke doesn’t discuss. The 800 pound gorilla perched on that third rail is race (or ethnicity).
Yes, less-educated and poorer voters (and thus Congressional districts) lean Republican. Pielke, Razib, and Razib’s readers know that this is a thing for the 60% of the electorate that is white. It’s not the case for Asian or Hispanic voters, and decidedly not for black voters.
Notably, Pielke’s commenters don’t seem to be aware of this crosscutting trend.
Find it quite difficult to respond to these sorts of things without it being projection. To me it seems like there just isn’t the constituency for the vision of the Progressive Activists who seem to be coming into power in the Democratic Party, younger Millennials who are skipping a generation. This vision where the state is much more involved in trying to eliminate really, inequities founded on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and involved in a lot of redistribution via funding urbanism and higher education, but which is not really otherwise particularly egalitarian. Very few people want to pay the taxes for this, and it’s just not credible that it can be achieved through borrowing (particularly with the return of high interest rates) or taxes on the wealthy and on business. Even the constituency they wanted to rely on – younger Hispanics – probably would prefer to keep their money in their pockets.
But who knows? This may just be my projection; I’m not American and I don’t know.
Whether Shor or his critics are right… well, I suspect Shor is right, electorally, but I just can’t get behind his view that, taken from his socialist mum – “The public can be bad. It is very important to manage public opinion.”. That is why he is a Popularist but not a Populist (‘popularity’ not ‘the populus’. I think that is the root of the disagreement, which is that his opponents may look to try and impose this sort of class-conscious, universalist, activist worldview on their society, but to some extent they’re not trying to manage public opinion and then impose the policies they want but never publicly argued for once they have legislative majorities. Managing public opinion is not a public debate which you win and at root you will lack legitimacy and people who say you’ve managed society rather than engaged with it and won legitimacy will be correct. Now of course people will say “Oh, this is how politics is always done, and really the public will just forget that you didn’t argue for it, or the old people will die off and it won’t matter any more”, but I really do strongly feel that this sort of lack of public mandate is exactly why politics has polarized the way it has. Vast changes to society were accepted on basis that was never really put up to the electorate. What is democracy and why is it worth defence, if it’s just this? His critics at least seem more honest, and I’d rather they succeeded or failed.
“What is democracy and why is it worth defence, if it’s just this?”
My only retort: Because all other forms of governance besides democracy (managed or not) tend to be worse.
“all other forms of governance besides democracy”
I think we have to use some sort of time parameter. Dictatorships can and do work quite well for a length of time, that is, they can work until they don’t. And it is becoming more apparent each day that this applies to democracy as well.
1) A propos “Latinx”: Wouldn’t it be much more appropriate, on this site at least, to write His mother has a
LatinxLatinXX surname.)?2) What we now call “polyamory” was practiced in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York in the early 19th century and again in the late 1960s and 1970s.
What are you referring to here? In the 19th C, the Oneida Community? Anything else? I grew up in between the 2 parts of the Burned Over District in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was not aware of anything unusual, other than, perhaps, communes of the sort that were scattered all over the country at the time. Again, anything else in particular?
I worked in politics for a few years. Shor is dead on right – the median voter is much more culturally conservative than the Democratic activist and leadership class. They can manufacture consent up to a point (“gay marriage”), but eventually they are going to run into a hard wall (“Some boy dressed up in a skirt is going to the locker room with my little girl and rag doll her in an athletic competition?”).
So I hope the SoundCheckists win. Keep pushing those unpopular ideas.
On the other side of the aisle, the problem with the popular, nationalist right is that, while its ideas resonate well with the voters, it suffers from a human resources problem in the leadership class. Being a corporatist Republican is a lot more rewarding than being an icky popular-nationalist. Being the latter invites all kinds of public opprobrium and exclusion from polite society. So the movement tends to attract, by definition, malcontents, losers, and opportunists, rather than self-disciplined, smart, attractive people – the kind of people who do well in mainstream life.
So it ends up becoming a battle between those espousing unattractive views and those who are unattractive people. So Shor is right – if the left can disguise its true views, it can win all the time. That’s also why Trump’s success is so dangerous to the left and he’s been vilified hysterically – because he moved the Overton Window and showed that a political insurgency can win. This might attract, well, more attractive people to the popular-nationalist right (I’m not saying JD Vance is attractive, but could you imagine someone of his credentials as a popular, nationalist prior to Trump?).
GOP needs to find someone with brains who can connect to the masses. That man will be our Ceasar.
One counterpoint to Shorism, is that the Democrats are really only constrained in their unpopularism by the political stupidity of their opponents.
Imagine a world in which the same ascendency of Progressive Activists in the Democratic Party, and the unforced but contingent policy errors because of that had continued, and the culture war from the fringe Left on popular entertainment had also continued… but the Republicans hadn’t done/embraced/become a symbol of either 1) anti-vaxxing on Covid, 2) Trump’s election fraud claims, 3) the timing of the Supreme Court Roe vs Wade strikedown. These are all unpopularism of an intense sort that in the first two cases gained nothing at all. Same criticisms of Biden-Harris on foreign pol, on border pol, on crime, on inflation, just none of the really dumb stuff in 1-3.
Seems like you would easily have a skew in the Senate by significant margins at this point.
RE: Latino/Latina/(Latinx)
I realized last night that this refers not to people whose ancestors speak/spoke Spanish or Portuguese but to those with ties to Latin America (is Belize in that group?). Does Shor have ties to Latin America? His mother’s Sephardic ancestry would not make him LatinXY (or any of the other “Latins”) unless her family spent some time in Latin America before settling in the US.
I would say not really. It is in Central America, on the Caribbean Sea. A former British colony, it did not gain independence until 1981. The official language is English. I have met some citizens of Belize, including a very tall black woman who was the most beautiful woman (in every respect – face, figure, personality, manners) I have ever met in real life – I would be really interested in her ancestry. Her teenage daughter was even more beautiful. They both spoke perfect accentless English. If anything, it is a Caribbean country – it has no real ties to Latin America, and has a shared history with the Caribbean countries.
I imagine they would have a strong objection to being labelled as Latinos, and rightly so – that would make no sense at all.
@marcel proust the best argument for David Shor being Latin-adjacent is his upbringing in Miami and South Florida.
I disagree with Shor’s takes on how racial/ethnic/cultural groups vote (his analysis generally seems to ignore turnout differentials), but his unified theory on how the general voting population is polarized on ideology and educational attainment is correct. I came to that understanding during my undergrad as I interacted with a more racially, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse cohort of people than would be expected for someone of my field(s) of study and close friend group.