James Rogers articulates the Democrats’ gamble pretty well at the Library of Liberty and Law:
Trump is poison for many in the Democratic base. Many have moved from the normal condescension with which Democrats treat Republicans, into pure hatred. They make GOP “Never Trumpers†look like subscribers to American Greatness.
Demoralizing the rabidly anti-Trump portion of the Democratic base means some won’t turn out to vote.
but
In turn, decreased turnout among the Democratic base would mean that the location of the median voter moves to the right. On the other hand, if Democrats become even more extreme, then it moves the party even further away from the median voter, making it easier for GOP candidates to position themselves to win the critical pivotal voter. In either case, this is good news for the Republicans.
To be sure, a more-pure leftwing Democratic Party might articulate a cleaner, less muddled ideological message, and so persuade the respective medians to move left with them.
Much depends on what you think the mythical median American voter believes. If you think that most Americans are farther to the the left than one might gather from the outcomes of, say, Congressional elections, then it’s no gamble at all. It’s a sure thing. If you think, as Mr. Rogers apparently does, in the “moderately center-right median American voter”, then it’s brain dead. The idea that most Americans don’t really care and what’s really important is energizing your base however small it may be is the key idea behind the gamble.
What occurred to me as I read the piece is that whoever you are and whatever you think, you probably can’t tell what most Americans think. We are all Pauline Kael now.
If you’ve heard of Pauline Kael at all, it’s probably in connection with her most famous quote which is that she didn’t understand how Richard Nixon won the 1968 election because she didn’t know anybody who voted for him which, as it turns out, she never said. What she actually said was:
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.
which is hardly exculpatory.
Today most of us live in “rather special worlds”. It is more than likely that most of the people we know and with whom we associate whether digitally or in the flesh think pretty much as we do and it is becoming more so, both because the middle is eroding in favor of the extremes and due to assortative mating and patterns of residence.
From Rick Wilson’s Twitter feed, I picked up the following article:
https://niskanencenter.org/blog/trump-voters-economic-grievances-media-stupid/
Key points:
I’m not totally convinced about living in “rather special worlds.” I’ve got two rather dis-joint issues here.
Point one is, I hit an awful lot of websites — or maybe a lot of awful websites — and while I shy away from the extremes, it gets me exposed to liberal and conservative views, and what strikes me after a while is that there is a great range of voices out there, young to old, and dumb to bright, and that age and intelligence separate us more than pure political orientation. (And maybe certain moral qualities. I could live in the same small town as Guarneri, I expect, and see him every day and say Hello cheerfully, without reaching for a pistol, even though we’d probably differ on politics high and low. I doubt I’d be so friendly if I shared the place with Mitch McConnell.)
I run into a bunch of young stupid conservatives, I’m trying to say, and a fair number of older brighter conservatives. I react differently.
The other thing, from observation twenty years ago, before “the internet” meant “the World Wide Web”, is that the typical internet trauma recovery period is under two days. Get in an argument with someone on some passionately IMPORTANT issue — like how ignorant the English upper classes were of Irish living conditions in the 1840s — and half an hour of typing could bring one to a frenzy of rage, and a firm resolution to never again address the ignorant troll who belittled one’s argument. And two days, you’d be addressing the weaknesses of the arguments in some 1890’s treatise on the political economy and the very same chap would be expanding on your opinions with some very sage observations of his own!
How amazing. My thought is, it could be in some circumstances we might recover from the insanity instilled in us by the internet. A world wide power failure, perhaps.
I’d love to see what people returning to the internet after Harvey and Irma and Marie have to say when their power is restored. Do they feel different? Of course, if they’re all on iPhones using Twitter, I guess it won’t matter.