The Delusion Caucuses

The paradox of our political age is that we access to more information than ever before, but we don't know what to do with it or how to read it.

Starting with the Bernie Bros, we can see that they believe - absent any empirical evidence - that Sanders is the future of American politics.  They believe - again, falsely - that Sanders had more voter support than Clinton in the primaries.  Sanders did capture the imagine of the Left, and he captured the votes of those who simply didn't like Clinton.  Together, that probably doesn't add up to 50%+1 of the overall electorate. 

This contagion is much more powerful of the Right.  While the Left suffers from the Pauline Kael Problem, the Right suffers from Roger Ailes Syndrome.  The Pauline Kael Problem refers to an anecdote from 1972, when New Yorker film critic Kael was shocked that Nixon won.  "How did he win?  No one I know voted for him."  This is a form of geographic bias.  Her Upper West Side friends were not voting for Nixon, so no one was.  The recognition of this bias is what leads the leading news organizations to go on their continuous Cleetus Safaris to interview Trump supporters in decaying Rust Belt towns.  They don't want to fall victim to the "Coastal Elite" blinkered viewpoint.

The Right has no such compunction.  The Roger Ailes Syndrome is the epistemological closure brought about by Fox News, and now additional sites like Breitbart.  While the Left doesn't want to fall into a closed information system, the Right depends on it.  As this piece nicely lays out, the GOP has abandoned the idea of objective reality.  This has been an ongoing process since 1981.  Reagan sold pleasing lies with a smile, but there was a sense that at least the men around him knew they were lies.  Politicians lie, the feeling went.  As Fox News took off under Bill Clinton, who himself had a problem with honesty, the whole information ecosystem on the Right took on a Hot House quality.  Any outside air would destroy it. 

Every year, the GOP moved further from the sly truth bending or partisan subjectivity of William Safire or even William Buckley and towards the unhinged lunacy of Sean Hannity and Alex Jones.  The end result was Donald Trump, a man congenitally incapable of recognizing the truth.

As we get closer to these critical midterm elections, the polls will get more accurate.  Right now, Five-Thirtyeight has the most likely outcome at a 34 seat gain in the House.  The Hill sees a potential wipeout.  Since the Trumpenproletariat thinks the polls were wrong in 2016, they don't trust the polls now.  Of course, the polls were largely on target in 2016.  Clinton was up about 6 points when the Comey letter came out, then she fell to about 2-3 points...which is where she finished.

But since the GOP has rejected any information outside their bubble, they won't be prepared for a Blue Wave.  Trump is predicting a Red Wave, because he's stupid, narcissistic and brittle.  A Blue Wave would be a rejection of him, and that can't enter his tiny brain.  So the Deplorables will believe they are headed for a vindication of them and their Dear Leader.

Your job, I presume if you read this, is to make damned sure that everyone you know is registered to vote and votes.  That's especially true in suburbs with GOP reps, but it's also true in states like Tennessee, Georgia, Arizona, Texas and even Mississippi who could elect Democrats to state-wide office.