The Median Voter

 Yglesias writes about how the median voter is a 50 year white person. Now, median is different from average, but his point still stands: there are a lot of voters who are not young, urban and college educated and most Democratic politics is done by people who are young, urban and college educated.

I think about this whenever I read Erik Loomis embrace some dumbass position like "abolish the Border Patrol". Defund the police was another one, but let's focus on "open borders" in the wake of the horrific images of Border Patrol agents on horses whipping Haitian refugees with their reins. The maximalist position of "defund the police" or "abolish the Border Patrol" fits in nicely with that "young, urban, college educated" class of people, but it's really not very popular with the median voter. There's pretty good evidence that "defund the police" hurt Biden - who never supported it - among some working class Black and especially Hispanic voters. Open Borders are not a hit with Hispanic voters, who feel - rightly or wrongly - that they came here "the right way."

Yglesias makes the seemingly self-evident point that Democrats should publicly embrace popular ideas and not unpopular ideas. He also makes the case that maybe you should work on necessary unpopular ideas behind closed doors, which makes sense. He then goes on to properly criticize Krysten Sinema for publicly opposing popular measures like negotiating for lower drug prices via Medicare.

The Right in the United States has descended into madness by first enclosing themselves in an epistemological bubble where reality never intrudes. Biden is a Socialist. Obama was really born in Africa. Climate change is a hoax. Covid is just like the flu. 

Democrats need to be wary - especially the activist and online groups - from falling into this same trap. In 1972, Pauline Kael said she didn't understand how Nixon won, none of her friends voted for him. This is the peril of epistemological closure.

The next two elections will determine whether America survives as a democracy, slides into authoritarianism or fractures. Now is not the time to trot out unpopular ideas.