I want to flesh out an important underlying reality about the outcomes of mass behavior.
The outcomes of mass-level human behavior should not be understood as simply the sum total of atomistic behaviors made by individuals. While, yes, mass behavior is the collection of many individuals acting, it is not simply an issue of adding up all the actions and getting the results. Individuals make choices as constrained by the structures in which they operate.
The funny thing is that I expect that a large number of regular commenters (especially the ones who argue with me about this specific topic) fully accept that economic outcomes (i.e., the distribution of wealth and power) in the United States are not a simplistic result of people making right/wrong choices and then ending up where they are. On this issue, there tends to be an understanding of how context and, dare I note, structural conditions, shape outcomes.
I recognize that electoral outcomes and economic ones are not the same in nature and process, but the general principles are identical in the sense that any number of factors, including regional, racial, and familial backgrounds, as well as prevailing rules of the game, shape both economic outcomes and partisan identification (and therefore electoral behavior).
Clearly, I am not fleshing out a full version of these concepts in this short post but hopefully, the basic notion is clear.
As I have noted before, many times, there is a high probability that I can predict how everyone reading this sentence will vote in 2028 (or 2032, etc). All I would need is your voting history to date and the prediction could likely be solidified by some other misc. bits of information (race, religion, region of residence, economic status, etc.). The prediction would not be ironclad, because humans (and conditions) can change, but the likely accuracy, especially of a large enough group of voters, would be pretty good.
Certainly, on a mass level, we can make certain predictions that still allow individuals to vary. Part of the ongoing point of how the structures of US politics are permissive enough (not causative, but permissive) for someone like Trump, is that it is not at all unreasonable to state that a demagogue from the left could find a way to win the nomination via our very porous primary system and then have a takeover of the Democratic Party similar to that which we have seen on the Republican side.*
Is it really so hard to imagine a future circumstance in which a demagogic Democratic, who promises protection of abortion rights, universal healthcare, and appropriate taxation of the rich couldn’t gain traction, especially if MAGA continues to control the GOP?
Here we come to a structural reality: if 2028 is a contest between Demagogic Dem (DD) and MAGA, who are you voting for? What kind of rationalizations will you have to make?**
If 2032 is a contest between the re-election of DD and Normal Republican (NR), but DD was able to get universal healthcare passed, and NR promises to do away with it, who are you voting for? What if the likelihood is that the next president will get to reorder SCOTUS?
The system structurally limits the number of viable candidates to two. This is just reality, and it shapes behavior because it limits choices. Most people (again, we are talking about mass behavior) do not pay intense attention to politics and, instead, rely on things like partisan cues and other factors to make decisions.
Certainly, some of you would vote third party or abstain if the choice was DD v. MAGA (or even DD v. NR). I think a lot of you would find it a lot harder to vote NR over DD, let alone be vocal about it, than you think. Although, again, specific individuals could do any number of things.
Note, as I have before, my point has never been to absolve voters of their responsibility. I am trying to explain the outcomes we get,*** rather than simply being outraged that outcomes I don’t like have occurred (the difference, which often gets lost in the comment threads, between an analysis versus a normative assessment).
Indeed, it is wholly possible that any one of you reading this would refuse to vote for whatever version of a Bad Democrat might be nominated.
I will note that there is zero reason to assume, based on the whole of human history, especially the history of politics, that the Democratic Party is utterly immune from choosing a bad candidate.
At a bare minimum, I would suggest that commenters think in terms of their own behavior versus their party. Maybe you would never vote for a DD, but the notion that the Democratic electorate as a mass of humans would not do so is not as certain a prediction as many here in the OTB comment thread would like to argue.
*As I have repeatedly noted, it may be that right-ward parties are more prone to this kind of behavior, but I have my doubts that that is empirically true over time. I do think that current global conditions are favoring right-wing populism and nationalism. Again, the problem for the US is that the permissive nature of our institutions has made it easier for that faction of the GOP to take over the party, and therefore to control the House and maybe be able to gain the presidency and the Senate in the 2024 elections.
**In my view, I think most commenters tend to discount the power of rationalization (especially in the context of humans making rank-ordered choices) plays in these discussions.
**I will go to my grave insisting that problems can’t be fixed if the underlying cause of the problem is not understood. And, to be specific, that we, as a country, do not understand the way in which our political institutions are a major part of the problem. Note that I said “part” because, rather obviously, there are a lot of variables here.
