Where's Our Advice?
Andrew Gelman conjectures offhand that "For most of the TPM audience, I suspect that the main appeal of Red State, Blue State is the potential to better understand why some people vote Republican, and what positions the Democrats should take, or need to take, in order to win elections" whereas his readers at New Majority are looking for help in the reverse quest. I, personally, picked up Red State, Blue State months and months ago mostly hoping to achieve a smug sense of superiority vis-a-vis other pundits.
But I think he's basically right. Mostly people care about understanding voter behavior because they want to understand how to influence election outcomes. But unless I'm reading the book wrongly, his disappointing thesis is that you basically can't. That kind of nihilistic point of view is pretty common among political scientists, but it's disappointing to political activists who like to think that sharper arguments or exciting new facts are likely to swing things. But that's the way it is. Or do I have this wrong? Is there electoral advice for, say, the now-out-of-power Republicans lurking somewhere in this book?
Matt,
I realize that you took a sworn oath to devote your career to partisan hackery (no doubt for the idealistic motive of more effectively countering GOP partisan hacks), but you've got to look at the big picture: in the long run, science makes technology much more feasible.
April 22, 2009 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even if that's what you honestly believe, do you really think comments like that promote productive discussion? I was pleasantly surprised when I found you were invited to participate here, are you trying to ensure that doesn't happen again? Or am I a squish for imagining that partisan hacks can enter a coversation without issues of partisanship & hackery dominating?
April 22, 2009 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Intelligent political decisions, for voters and office holders, require three things; accurately understanding your own self interest (or that of the voters you represent), accurately understanding the conflicting and competing interests of others, and, furthermore, understanding both within the context of the greater interest of society as a whole. Without such understanding, necessary and effective political compromise is impossible. Without compromise democracy is impossible. (As the writer Michael Ventura once wrote, "Freedom doesn't mean you get everything you want. Freedom means no one gets everything they want.")
April 22, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mostly people care about understanding voter behavior because they want to understand how to influence election outcomes.
For years, Democratic operatives and statisticians obsessed about current voter attitudes and behavior so that they could advise politicians on how to change their messages to get more people to vote for them. This orientation propelled a long self-degenerating, "can't do" spiral into milquetoast mediocrity, with each manufactured candidate an even less inspiring xeroxed version of the one coming before. Many of these operatives themselves seem possessed of a bleak, bland and shallow moral response to the world in which they live. With their atrophied and complacent post-historical vision of the world, they can conceive of little worth struggling for beyond quantifiable notches on their career success belts, mainly as measured by victories for their insignificant little political machines in the next election.
I hope there are at least some people on the left who still want to understand voter attitudes and behavior so they can figure out how to change people's minds and get them to support more vigorously left-wing policies and candidates, and maybe ... you know ... change the world in the process!
Democratic fatalism and passivity about the beliefs of voters is in part a result of a certain form of debased liberalism - which I believe is thankfully dying - according to which nobody is entitled to encourage anyone else to live one way rather than another, and everyone is imbued with a sacred "right" to the ignorant misconceptions, self-destructive biases, antisocial pathologies and nutjob theories that are rattling around inside their heads. People who look at the world this way, as do our pomo technocrats of the just concluded era, tend to think it unseemly or wrong to seek to change what's in someone's head, so that that person's mind might become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
April 22, 2009 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
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