Pundit Brain

 I haven't "argued" with Yglesias in a while but today he committed a classic pundit brain fallacy. He uses as his jumping off point the meme Elon Musk was throwing around about how the "Left" moved away from him and the "Right" stayed in the same place. This is absurd, of course, but Yglesias focused on how the policy portfolio of the Republican party has, in fact, shifted rightwards. He then falls for the typical "Red-Brown" nonsense about how Trump was secretly to Hillary Clinton's left because he didn't explicitly run on killing Social Security and Medicare. He also focuses on how McCain was a relative moderate on climate compared to Bush or Trump.

This is nonsense on a number of levels, but maybe the idea that "platforms" matter is the most nonsensical. Let's look at McCain's climate moderation. Yes, he ran on cap-and-trade, which qualifies as moderation. That was part of his "maverick" branding. He and Bush were to Romney and Trump's center on immigration. Some of this is simple geography, Bush and McCain were from areas with large Hispanic populations, Romney lives in a bubble of extreme wealth.

Of course, the real tell is that Trump won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 without having a platform at all. Yglesias has focused on what he calls popularism, which is sort of "don't do things I think are unpopular" but does have some merit, in terms of not committing a bunch of political own goals, like "Defund the Police" or "Open Borders." However, the idea that Trump was some economic moderate gives him way too much credit for measured political calculation. He tried to kill ACA (McCain, Murkowski and Collins helped save it). He slapped tariffs on goods that have contributed to inflation. He passed a series of regressive tax cuts to help the wealthy. 

Mostly, of course, he was a huge fucking bigot. He wasn't the "didn't use Latinx" sort of strawman bigot, but "Mexican immigrants are rapists from a shithole country" sort of bigot. He was a Birther. He was a sexist. He was the guy who was going to let you make "Dumb Blonde" jokes at work again.

Oh, and he was probably the most corrupt president in history.

The idea that Trump won votes by moderating GOP positions like Paul Ryan's evisceration of the welfare state has...some merit? Trump certainly energized a type of WWC voter that typically sits out elections, but was turned off by the more plutocratic elements of the GOP. But the idea that Cletus was analyzing policy positions is absurd.

Mitt Romney lost, because he was personified - justifiably - as a vulture capitalist from Bain. Obama was weakened by the soft recovery, but also the huge racism typified by the Tea Party backlash. Obama gave a bunch of WWC people healthcare and they still hated him because...well, you know.

Trump has no policy positions beyond his instinctive grasp of his fellow racist's grievances. Trump is not programmatic, his splenetic. He's distracted by every chryon rolling underneath Sean Hannity's hate fest. 

It would be nice to believe that American voters vote because of a reasoned analysis of which candidate or party would most improve their lives and the lives of their fellow Americans. 

But that would be bullshit.

Wonky progressives believe that we are voting based on policy, but more often than not, we adopt policy positions based on our partisan identifiers. We prize coalitional politics (something Yglesias extols in other places) over factional preferences. 

People vote their feelings, which is why continued inflation is bad for Democrats, but it's also why overturning Roe is bad for Republicans.