Why Walker Will Win a Lot of Votes
Voting isn't just about candidates.
Let me start by noting that apart from anything to do with partisan politics I think that Herschel Walker has demonstrated himself to be qualified to be a US Senator only in the sense that he is a citizen of the United States and he is over thirty years of age. In that sense, he is constitituionally qualified to be a US Senator. In all other ways, he has demonstrated himself to be a poor candidate for the job. He has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of knowledge of basic policy issues, has poor communication skills, and has been proven to be untruthful about his past in a panoply of ways. On top of all of that he has lived outside of Georgia, the state he seeks to represent, for decades, and there is now a credible allegation that he paid for an abortion (not to mention veiled criticism from one of his sons on Twitter this week).*
If one were evaluating this applicant for most jobs, he wouldn’t get an interview, let alone employment, but we stand on the precipice of the very real possibility he will become one of 100 US Senators for at least the next six years (likely longer).
Of course, all that above assumes that things like character and capacity matter. A very real counterpoint is that the main job of a member of a legislative body is to vote for the leadership of the party to which they belong and to reliably vote with their party.
On those counts, Walker can be be relied upon to function pretty well as a US Senator, which really gets to the heart of the matter.
Without getting further into Walker’s myriad flaws, if one is a Republican or Republican-leaning voter in Georgia what are the real options here given current conditions?
- Hold your nose and vote for Walker.
- Don’t vote in the Senate contest (leave it blank).
- Vote third party as a protest.
- Vote for the Democratic incumbent, Warnock.
As a voter on the Republican side of the ledger, the top priority is to flip the US Senate to Republican control, with the follow-on goal of either forwarding a Republican legislative agenda (especially as it pertains to judicial nominees)** or blocking Democratic goals.
Option 2 through 4 all reward the Democrats and could lead to them retaining power. The rational option for a Georgia Republican (at this stage of the process***) is to vote for Walker (by either ignoring the litany of problems or, more likely than not doing the human thing and rationalizing them away).
Put another way, the consequences of not voting for a bad co-partisan is not punishing the bad co-partisan. The consequences of not voting for the bad co-partisan is rewarding the other party.
Not voting for Walker helps Warnock.
Not voting helps Warnock.
Voting third party helps Warnock.
And, of course, voting for Warnock to punch Walker helps Warnock.
If you are worried about taxes, or abortion, or court appointees, or whatnot, it is perfectly rational for a Republican to vote for Walker even if they think he is unqualified and dishonest.
Really, the reality is despite my view that a person who doesn’t understand policy at all, who cannot articulate a coherent string of sentences on the issues, and who has been demonstrably dishonest (on multiple locations) should not be in office, none of those things actually stop a candidate from performing basic representational functions of voting the way a constituency wants them to vote. This is an unpleasant truth but a truth nonetheless.
Now, I will note that in a close race, which we have here, revelations such as we have seen in recent days could be enough to depress Republican turnout or to make some less-strident partisan to make another choice, so it could matter. But I cannot see it making a major difference.
All of this links directly to various themes I write about frequently.
First, the importance of partisanship is clear and is baked into electoral behavior. Candidate quality matters, but not as much as people think it does because, ultimately, people are voting for reasons that actually aren’t just about the candidate.
Second, nomination processes matter and ours does a lousy job of vetting candidates. Again, people can blame “The Republican Party” for Walker, but there was no centralized process that decided he was the best candidate for Georgia.**** No, he essentially self-selected and then rode his celebrity to a win in a low-information, low-turnout process.***** Since most people only have vague ideas about the candidates in primaries, it is hardly a shock that one of the most famous athletes from the state in the last 50 years won.
We simply do not have a nomination process that is designed to produce qualified candidates if “qualified” means meeting some set predetermined criteria. Instead, voters get what they get and are then faced with the partisan choice noted above. Worse, when voters are faced with that choice (or, more accurately, when voters behave as we know they will behave), the result is often the pushing of a given party is a negative direction due to poor candidate selection.
Third, we see here the consequences of only two viable choices in terms of parties. Voters faced with a bad choice within their own party have no other viable place to go with their vote, which simply means they are likely to vote for the bad candidate, which over time can reshape a party in a negative direction. It also means that partisans will likely stick with their own team even as it degenerates because switching teams is an unlikely behavior en masse.
(There is much that could be amplified, but the post has already gotten much longer than expected).
Update: I had a thought that occurred after I posted. What I am saying here, and elsewhere over time, is not that process/the system are solely responsible for this kind of outcome, nor that reforms would utterly prevent them. But I am saying that our system increases the odds of these kinds of outcomes and that reforms could decrease the odds of these kinds of outcomes.
I would note, too, that what we are seeing from a lot of GOP mouthpieces, i.e., rationalization of these revelations, is normal human behavior, for good or ill (ok, for ill–but it is normal).
*I could hyperlink all of those charges, but I simply don’t have the time. But it would not be hard to Google all the things if one is so inclined.
**For example there is a non-zero chance that Biden will be able to name a SCOTUS Justice in the next two years. A rational Republican would be willing to tolerate a Walker win if it meant blocking a Biden SCOTUS nominee a la the way McConnell handled the Scalia seat. It is an utterly reasonable calculation.
***But that does not let anyone off the hook for voting for him in the primary, which is a different calculation.
****This statement is not, as many people seem to take it when I say things like this, some absolution of the GOP writ large. But it is to point out that there simply is no centralized actor making these decisions. There are various competing forces and factors, but there is no one you can say “it’s all your fault” the same way you can blame a manager for hiring Dave despite the fact that Dave was clearly a terrible choice. These are all collective action problems, meaning central responsibility does not exist. And, to my broader point, the institutional mechanisms used to manage collective action (e.g., primary elections) become all the more important when we realize this.
*****I cannot find a definitive number but would guesstimate turnout for the May primaries was around 28ish%. That is high for a primary (and press coverage suggests that it was a high for a primary). But still, that means over 70% of Georgians did not participate. About 1.1 million Republicans voted in the GOP Senate primary, roughly 800,000 of whom voted for Walker–in a state with a population of ~10.7 million.
This is something I’ve noted over the years, that this seems to be a perpetual motion machine. Poor choices lead to poor turnout, which leads to poor choices, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
Civic duty to be a responsible educated voter aside, I wish I could offer solutions. But I’m a simple Luddite. Although the idea that I’m arguably more qualified for office than Mr. Walker sure ought to scare the snot outta all y’all.
You left off – Enthusiastically vote for Walker because you favor rightist authoritarianism.
I might have also added, Vote for Warnock to save democracy, but YMMV.
If you are a Republican genuinely “worried about taxes, or abortion, or court appointees, or whatnot, it is perfectly rational for a Republican when their public policy positions are coherent on taxes, or abortion, or court appointees, or whatnot. But the GOP platform (or absence thereof) is not coherent on these issues. It’s power of the libs who are evil and nothing else.
I’m with you on character doesn’t matter – sadly that’s been true since at least when Reagan beat Carter.
I’m with you on the power of the tribe – it’s natural for team loyalty to overmatch quality of the candidate considerations.
But, a rational person with even a modicum of integrity gives up on their team when it’s proven their team is corrupt. You did that. James did that. I don’t think it’s irrational to think that others could – and should – follow your lead.
@Scott F.:
Trust me, I take the point.
But you are also basically saying: “vote like I would vote” which is a value judgment, not an assessment of human behavior.
I could easily write a normative essay on why people shouldn’t vote for Walker, but this is about explaining outcomes, not wishing what those outcomes should be.
If you are a diehard pro-lifer, you certainly don’t think this is true. Indeed, objective reality suggests that all those decades of voting GOP paid off, and paid off big.
Forget platform. Forget coherence. What are the results?
It is likely that SCOTUS could scuttle the administrative state–which is something the GOP has wanted since Reagan, at least, and since Goldwater for a wing of the party (if not since the New Deal dawned).
@Scott F.:
I simply can’t stress enough to difference between micro-level behavior and macro-level behavior.
And, moreover, I cannot stress enough that if you are a person who prioritizes certain outcomes (abortion being the easiest example at the moment) it simply isn’t irrational to vote for the GOP.
Rational does not mean “makes sense to me” it means “making a calculation to maximize my preferences, which are rank-ordered”.
I think Warnock has a better chance against Walker than Jones had against Moore in Alabama in 2017.
@Kathy: For sure. But that is because we are talking about two very different partisan environments. Alabama is starkly Republican while GA is close to 50-50.
It also means that partisans will likely stick with their own team even as it degenerates because switching teams is an unlikely behavior en masse.
The Democrats are not doing what the Republicans are doing and structural partisanship doesn’t explain how Herschel Walker and Donald Trump are being lifted up by pro-life mostly white evangelical Christians. You might as well claim that structural partisanship explains metoo and cancel culture along with values voters defending Herschel Walker paying for his girlfriend getting an abortion.
I think this argument is just a fig leaf for the fact that white evangelical Christians are pretty degenerate and expect nothing else from the world except Walkers and Trumps and the president of Bob Jones U being a swinger and every anti-gay ideology crusader residing in the same closet as Rod Dreher. White evangelical Christianity is not a good fit for human beings, and nobody even bothers to deal with how terrible it is.
To not have created the current conditions in the first place by spending forty years attacking the educated and empathetic to instead sellout the conservative movement out to racism, homophobia, hypocrisy, extremism, fascism, and science-denial.
This can’t be true, because the Democratic Party operates by the same processes and does a very good job of vetting candidates. The difference is too many modern Republicans are lousy people: too many liars, bigots, hypocrites, lunatics, and selfish scumbags among them. Lousy people are more prone to nominating lousy people.
As a Georgia-born Democrat, I am confident Georgia Democrats will never nominate for statewide office a candidate as illiterate, ignorant, insane, and unqualified Herschel Walker just because he’s a celebrity or a star athlete. Unlike Republicans, Democrats gave not have spent years trashing higher education, intelligence, science, and knowledge. Republicans have created for themselves an ignorant, deluded base. That’s why they are more likely to nominate ignorant, deluded candidates.
Democrats have warned Republicans for decades that playing footsie with the crazies for power would not end well. Heck, Barry Goldwater forsaw it. Sometimes it’s as simple as reaping what you’ve sown.
Also, I suspect that the GOP is able to stoke fears about teachers turning kids against their parents because however logical partisanship is for a disillusioned adult, you can’t, as an adult, remotely justify being pro-life and then vote for Herschel Walker to your kids. You just can’t. Kids see through self-righteous bs all the time.
I do really how much of the rationalizations of Trump, of conservatives, of Putin and Russia’s existential stake in the Ukraine come from having been taught to rationalize the most obvious hypocrisies by parents, or worse, i.e. dad beating mom and everyone being silent about it.
@Modulo Myself:
I think rather it is actually taking that, or a version of that, as a given and working onwards from that premise. That’s not to defend the behavior of Republican elites and voters, evangelicals, etc. rather it’s an attempt to explain that behavior by placing it in the appropriate context.
GIVEN THAT these folks are morally and ethically incoherent and outcome driven, the moral failings of their candidates are just not the most important driver of voting behavior.
@Scott F.:
Don’t fall for this red herring, which is literal, textbook rationalization down to the root word.
Rational vs irrational is not the important question. Amoral vs moral, decent vs indecent, right vs wrong, honest vs dishonest, etc. These are the questions that matter here.
Almost any scummy behavior can be rationalized. But behaving rationally vs behaving irrationally (and I don’t think helping to destroy democracy and your party with candidates like Walker is rational, but I digress) is not the only nor even the most salient way to weigh Republican voter behavior. They also have a choice between behaving ethically and behaving unethically, as much as they abhor being confronted with that choice and held to account for the inevitable outcomes their unethical slide.
@Steven L. Taylor:
This. This to me is more pernicious than Walker. Walker is what he is and anyone who cares to can see it. Your argument is basically they do see it and are willing to ignore it in the name of a greater good, Mitch McConnell controlling the Senate. (Gawd help us.) But the problem is not that they may vote tactically for what they want, it’s that they’re being lied to and what they’re going to get is not what they voted for. Except for, maybe, a few bones thrown to the base.
Nobody voted to destroy the administrative state. Nobody voted to cut taxes for corporations and billionaires. And for gawd sakes nobody voted to destroy SS. And except in very veiled terms nobody ran on those issues. The problem isn’t Herschel Walker, or Scott Walker, or Ron Johnson, or John Kennedy or… The problem is the fraud that is the foundation of the Republican Party.A fraud supported by money, mostly dark.
And see my comment in today’s Forum, we’ve exported this to the UK. Also to Hungary and many other potential autarkies.
@Flat Earth Luddite:..Although the idea that I’m arguably more qualified for office than Mr. Walker sure ought to scare the snot outta all y’all.
I don’t know where you live but if it’s not Georgia you need to get there quick if you want to be as qualified as Herschel Walker to be a Senator for the Peach State.
Inhabitant. Does that mean a room at the Motel 6 on Election Day?
(55 bucks a night. I’m sure your campaign can afford it.)
@Jon:
GIVEN THAT these folks are morally and ethically incoherent and outcome driven, the moral failings of their candidates are just not the most important driver of voting behavior.
Everybody is kind of incoherent. It’s the lack of ability to handle incoherence which evangelical Christianity promotes as a positive and that is why liars and frauds prey so easily on white evangelical Christians. Same goes with climate-change denialism or anti-vax hysteria–if you don’t know how to handle your own ambiguities you will fall for some fraud.
@Modulo Myself:
Perhaps you have heard of the ruling in Dobbs?
This is the evil genius of the modern Republican Party in a nutshell. In recent history it was widely accepted that the main job was to represent the interests of their State and/or district. But for 50 years the Republican Party has publicly beaten the drum of “if government tries to fix something it can only cause harm, so our raison d’etre has to be: “PREVENT ANYONE FROM TRYING TO USE GOVERNMENT FROM IMPROVING ANYTHING”. And this works. I hear all kinds of reasonably intelligent people who assume that government intervention should be the last resort, that minimizing government is always a good in and of itself. Sure, there are people on the other side who rail against capitalism and private industry as inherently evil, but much, much fewer and I can’t think of a single one that has meaningful power. (Bernie Sanders talks the talk but has accomplished nothing to show for all his years in government.)
So in that environment it doesn’t matter if Walker is an incompetent buffoon incapable of representing Georgia’s interests in Washington. The voters there don’t feel there is anything positive to be done for their interests in Washington by anyone.
@DK:
There is no centralized vetting on Democratic candidates.
That the two parties are behaving differently is true, but I honestly don’t think you understand the underlying issue of how the process works or does not.
And I will note, to the discussion writ large, that the behavior of feminist Democrats vis-a-vis Bill Clinton is likewise instructive on the issue of candidate personal behavior v. party expectations despite said behavior.
@gVOR08:
I won’t disagree with this. But, of course, it doesn’t change what they believe their preferences to be.
I mean, I think almost all of the GOP rhetoric on taxes is inaccurate as it pertains to most taxpayers, but that doesn’t stop a lot of folks from buying it and thinking that the GOP’s views are in their interest.
Also to the broader conversation: I still think a lot of the folks who comment on these kinds of posts confuse and/or conflate an empirical analysis of human behavior (i.e., explaining why people are doing what they are doing) with a normative evaluation of what they should do (i.e., a value judgment).
And look, I get it: reality frequently does not conform to the way any given individual might think that it should work.
@Steven L. Taylor: One more thought on this: a structure being permissive is not the same as a structure being determinative.
I am not saying that the primary process has caused the current state of the GOP. I am saying that that primary process has been quite permissive of this evolution.
Something similar could happen in the Democratic Party. The fact that is hasn’t doesn’t prove that it can’t.
@Modulo Myself:
Indeed–especially people who only play passing attention to politics, which is to say most people. And the main way most people sort out political decisions is party label. And there are only two to choose from in any real sense, and so here we are.
@Steven L. Taylor:
The pro-life movement was built by people with the same values as Donald Trump. That is my point. You are trying to argue that there’s an incongruity which can be explained by partisanship, and I’m saying that there’s no incongruity. Pro-life voters are comfortable with men who commit domestic violence and pay for their girlfriend’s abortions and sexually assault countless women. They are not holding their noses and voting for the lesser evil.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I understand the difference, I truly do. But, there’s a reason canvassers go door to door during election season and why candidates visit county fairs to press the flesh. There’s a reason for partisan individuals to share their personal political evolution on a blog. In tight races, micro-level behaviors – one vote at a time – can flip the balance.
@Modulo Myself: I don’t think most pro-life voters are saying “what I want is a domestic abuser and liar, so Walker is my man!”
That there a lot of hypocrites involved in undoubtedly true, but I think you are bending over backwards to reach the conclusion you are reaching.
@Scott F.: Sure. I don’t disagree. It is just unlikely to prevail on a mass level in terms of the behavior I am describing.
I am with you here. The GOP could pretty much run Beelzebub and Republicans would vote for him just to keep a Democrat out of office. Its all tribal and the tribe must be supported. There will be a tiny percentage of Republicans who will reach some limit and not be able to support one of their awful candidates, but that will be a small number. The only reason to point out how awful Walker has turned out is to energize Democrats and because you are going after some of the independents who actually are independents. I am pretty negative on this right now. I firmly believe that if you let someone who despises Republicans pick out the worst possible candidate for a Republican running for office they would still end up with a huge majority of the GOP vote.
Steve
@Mister Bluster:
Oooh, oooh, oooh, just realized that in GA the bar’s set at
So I can chase Herschel ‘s spot. I can picture my campaign slogans now:
Unfortunately, I can’t compete with a brain damaged washed up football player. Alas.
@MarkedMan: You know, it’s interesting. I am a guy who thinks government intervention should be a last resort.
AND, I think we’ve got to that last resort in several areas. Markets aren’t handling health care. Markets don’t handle retirement all that well, either. There will be bankers and investment and corporate CEOs who will cheat (also many who don’t but the problem remains), if we didn’t have the SEC.
And so on.
Government intervention is always going to be clunky and a bit of a blunt instrument, because it has to follow very strict rules and procedures.
That said, I think it’s worth it in specific cases.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yep. And the last chance of any party vetting occurring was killed by ol’ Bernie Sanders after he lost by every metric to Hillary Clinton but he decided the real reason he lost was because of Super Delegates (i.e. the proportionally small number of voting delegates chosen by the party.) After he lost he spent pretty much all of his political capital on getting them eliminated. In the meantime he was absent on supporting like-minded candidates when they were running, or negotiating any meaningful legislation in support of his purported values, etc.
In all his years in Congress, I think Bernie got one moderately meaningful piece of legislation passed and, if I remember correctly, it was in his first term. Since then? Well, there are a few Vermont Post Offices that got named. But despite that, he will have a legacy. When the Dem primary voters get around to nominating someone as completely incompetent as Trump (and it will eventually happen), it will be because Bernie eliminated the Super Delegates.
@Jay L Gischer:
If I could ask, why? There are many things best handled by the market. But there are many things that if left to the market will result in human misery and lost opportunities. Why should the default be the market? Why can’t we look at each case individually?
@MarkedMan: [So much poor wording and grammar errors in that post but, alas, seemingly no chance of an edit button]
@Steven L. Taylor:
I honestly don’t think you are capable of facing the truth about how personally awful many Republican voters have become. When a young Iraqi has been radicalized into Islamfascist terror, the operative question is not whether or not he’s behaving rationally. Trying to shift blame to “the process” is just another lame attempt to rationalize shitty behavior from certain white people.
Centralized or decentralized, Democrats do a perfectly reasonable job of weeding out truly awful people.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Flying pigs could one day appear. Just because we haven’t seen one yet doesn’t mean they might not one day evolve into true.
Both true and irrelevant. Red herring after red herring. Fairies dancing on heads of pins everywhere, but it’s cool. Academicians gonna academic.
@Steven L. Taylor:
And yet the Democratic party consistently nominates higher quality candidates in the primary process. If it was primarily a result of “the process”, you would expect both parties would face similar issues. When it only happens to the Republicans, is it really “the process” or is it something about Republican voters themselves?
@MarkedMan: Ok, why do you think “there are many things that if left to the market will result in human misery and lost opportunities”? Could it be because we tried that and observed the results, and only then developed the capacity for government to take on the job? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be fair to characterize that as “last resort”?
Really, to me what you are saying is a difference in rhetoric, not in substance. But maybe not.
I like the idea of “doing by not doing”. If you can get away with doing nothing, it’s always the best thing to do. But you can’t (at least, I can’t and remain consistent with my other values) always do that. And then the question is, what’s the minimal change that might work?
I’m sorry, I don’t really understand these sentences at all. Why should making the market the default preclude looking at individual cases? I don’t think it does that at all.
What it does is it allows us to focus our attention on those things that seem the most important to address.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Or the American establishment finds it difficult to hold white people accountable and responsible. Similar to why we’re still not calling Trump’s Jan 6 thugs “terrorists,” like we would have since day one if they were brown.
An empirical behavioral analysis is being given, it’s just many Americans don’t want to accept the truth of it: many, I daresay most, Georgia Republicans are racists, liars, hypocrites, phonies, and very selfish, unethical fake-Christian dirtbags. They were like that when I was a kid growing up in what was then farmland on the outskirts of DeKalb County, GA and they’ve gotten worse since.
That’s why my elementary school music teacher — once a genteel, Republican moderate — was last week Facebooking memes hoping Ian would destroy Mar-a-Lago. Not gonna find her playing games and pretending. She, like I, knows the reality of why those she’s left behind do what they do. They suck politically. Too many of them are trash. And that’s why they increasingly embrace trash politicians. That’s why she left and is not voting for Herschel Walker. Not because her policy preferences changed overnight or because she’s irrational. But because she has decency, morals, and is not trash.
Just because we don’t want to accept the elegant simplicity of this empircal analysis of human behavior doesn’t mean said analysis hasn’t been proffered.
@MarkedMan:..edit button…
I think that it should be noted that the errant edit key is not a creation of the state.
@Stormy Dragon:
This keeps coming up (although I can’t recall if you are the one who does so), but you are conflating the presidential side with pretty much every other office (while also inflating the role of the “Superdelegates”). I cannot stress enough (indeed, since I stress it all the time and I still don’t think people grok it): we have used primaries for well over a century for most offices, especially for Congress (the presidential system is newer, i.e., the 70s). The way in which primaries shape parties over time is observable for this period of time.
In simple terms, yes, this tells a lot about Republicans.
But the reason, for example, the Democratic Party was the party of segregation in the 1940s, for example, was because primaries allowed all the southern conservatives to be Democrats instead of having to form their own party whilst avoiding the Party of Lincoln.
There are long-term patterns that fit what I am talking about and at the moment that pattern is amplifying Trumpism.
If he wins it will be because Christians are liars and hypocrites.
@DK: If you just want me to type “People bad” over and over, that is certainly less work on my end.
@DK:
The polite way to say what I am tempted to say is: no one is requiring you to read nor to comment.
@Jay L Gischer: Examples
– Unregulated monopolies who use their power to enforce technological and commercial status quo, stifling innovation
– Rent seeking behavior, which left unchecked leads to things like 50+ year old drugs skyrocketing in price
– Letting the market decide where undesirable facilities and wastes are sited, as well as just how toxic/fetid/unsightly these things can be. See Cancer Alley in Louisiana.
– Letting the market decide where we invest in drug development (answer: yet another cholesterol or blood pressure medication that is marginally “better” in one tiny detail, and that the patients will have to take for the rest of their lives)
– Letting the market decide where to site hospitals, surgery centers, etc
– Letting the market determine who should get access to fast internet and how much they should pay
I don’t think market forces are inherently evil, but they ARE inherently amoral and unjust absent government intervention. I just don’t see why the starting point should be, de facto, let’s let business behave in any way they want until and unless they cause so much misery we should intervene. There is a reason why we didn’t end up lining the rich and powerful up against a wall and shooting them in the 1920’s like they did in Russia, and then descending into despotism and chaos. It’s because of the decisions that were made to intervene in markets before they got out of control through anti-trust and fair-labor practices.
The idea that unregulated markets are usually or even often a pure benefit to society unless proven otherwise flies in the face of millennia of human history.
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
~ George Washington
@Scott F.:
I’m not sure your proposition is relevant. If my “team” is accomplishing its goals–and by extension my goals–the corruptness of the team members is secondary. Martin Luther is attributed to have said that it is better to be ruled by a wise Saracen than a foolish cleric even though everyone in that time knew that people with integrity don’t vote for Saracens. Closer to the present day, applying the same standard in an admittedly less serious context, anyone with a modicum of integrity would have refused to buy tickets to see the NE Patriots after they were caught cheating in the wake of the “Deflategate” scandal,* but how many did?
*Additionally, a coach with even a modicum of integrity wouldn’t have kept a cheater on his team, nor would any other coach have hired said cheater. No matter what benefit would have accrued from doing it.
Is that really your position? How do you vote at all?
@Just nutha ignint cracker: ETA: Indeed, a rational person will weigh the competing interests and decide what course of action best advances their goals. A Manichaean might decide as you are suggesting, but Manichaeanism is considered a heresy and as a consequence exists outside of rational thought.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Hate the NE Patriots, but Deflategate was bogus… https://musketfire.com/2022/02/08/patriots-deflategate-report-proves-nfl-investigation-bogus/
@Scott F.:
BTW, what we actually see happen is that most humans will actually simply try to rationalize why their team is correct.
I am hardly an evolutionary biologist, but I suspect this is long-developed behavior. It stands to reason that it is safer for humans to rationalize staying with their tribe even when their tribe isn’t behaving as it should, since leaving the tribe can get you killed (or, at least, ostracized from your social support system).
I used to think that people would change based on evidence and rational discourse. But this is clearly not the main way people behave.
Ergo: we need to think about how institutions shape outcomes knowing what we know about human behavior.
@Modulo Myself: “I think this argument is just a fig leaf for the fact that white evangelical Christians are pretty degenerate…”
My inner Manichaean is jumping up and down, waving his arms and cheering you right now. But don’t get big headed, he believes that about everybody.
@DK: “To not have created the current conditions in the first place by spending forty years attacking the educated and empathetic to instead sellout the conservative movement out to racism, homophobia, hypocrisy, extremism, fascism, and science-denial.”
Oops! This horse has already jumped the fence. 🙁
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yes, it’s called loyalty. Not everybody grows up in an us vs them world. I didn’t. Right-wing evangelical Christians–in my experience–do grow up in this world, and not only that, they are told, 24/7, that everyone is exactly like them. For example, this is the backbone of every Intelligent Design/Creationist argument about how all science is faith-based and tribal and requires belief. The more the GOP has become beholden to evangelicals, the more it has absorbed this ideology. All you are doing is recapitulating it via political science.
@Steven L. Taylor: I think he wants you to type “Republicans bad” over and over again, so more work than you imagined. 😉
@Chris: Hate the Patriots? I don’t even watch the NFL. I was just reaching for an example of someone throwing aside “integrity” (however one defines it) in favor of a desired outcome. That one came to hand.
Still, I wouldn’t have gone to a Patriot’s fanboi cite for my rebuttal. Just sayin’…
@Modulo Myself: This take is somewhat confusing and perhaps insulting?
But perhaps I misunderstand.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: This is a clear demand for this, yes.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: You could swap out the sign-stealing Astros to avoid any litigation of deflategate.
Good post.
I’d just note that, over the years here, I’ve heard many left-of-center commenters categorically state that they would vote for any Democrat over any Republican for the same justifications you cite in the post. The theory that Democrats as a cohort are less prone to tribal ideology does not have any evidence.
IMO this is really an effect of the nationalization of politics. Even I remember when “bringing home the bacon” was a core element of campaigns for Congress and the Senate. Now it’s all about national issues and increasingly culture-war divides. This makes individual candidates and their characteristics and policies less important than what team they are on.
@Andy:
We threw Al Franken under the bus for actions which were not a fraction as heinous as those of this absolute moron and complete dick.
It’s our weakness, actually believing what we say we believe. Evangelical Christians with their get out of jail free card (Sorry, Jesus! Sad face emoji) apparently feel under no obligation to live the Christ-like life of humility and poverty and cheek-turning and all that. Despite claiming to be in continuous contact with the Almighty they seem to feel no need to reflect the values for which they endlessly claim undue credit.
It’s funny that the one thing Jesus seemed to hate worst was hypocrisy.
@Michael Reynolds: The Dems traded Al Franken for another Democrat. That’s kind of important in evaluating what it meant to toss Franken aside.
If Franken had been the difference between keeping or losing control of the Senate, the calculation would have been different.
Heck, Richard Shelby of Alabama rather consciously and publically threw Roy Moore under the bus, and that may have been the difference in that election.
How does that fit into this narrative?
(and my point is not to defend Republicans, per se, but to note that folks are making a lot of broad generalizations from single cases).
@Steven L. Taylor:
I’m saying that your argument is no different than saying real scientists are just as faith-based as creationists/intelligent designers or climate-deniers and that both sides are equal in their acts of rationalization.
@Steven L. Taylor: Was at the Orioles / Astros game last week in B’more and Altuve was booed every time he came to the plate. He’s having a great year, statistically but he will always be remembered as the guy who cheated his way to MVP and robbed it from Aaron Judge. I speculate that’s another reason that MLB is going along with the myth that the reason everyone was so excited about Judge’s 62nd home this year was because it was the American League record, when in reality no one was going to let Judge get robbed of his glory yet again by a bunch of cheaters.
My perception is that while both sides are incredibly tribal, the Dems haven’t yet sunk to the level of the Repubs. Maybe I am just not aware of them but who matches Walker and Oz on the left? And, I can think of anything on the left that is even remotely like that widespread belief that there was massive fraud so that the election was stolen from Trump, especially after so many court cases have found nothing and so many of the prominent theories have been blown up. To say nothing of the lawsuits from folks like the Dominion people who had everyone backtracking.
Steve
@Modulo Myself:
To me, Steven is pointing out that humans and human behavior are basically the same everywhere. There are certain behaviors that are built into our species, including tribalism, rationalization, etc. The notion that a group of people that identify to various degrees with the Democratic party is somehow immune to this or less susceptible as a group, just doesn’t have much evidence.
I don’t think your example addresses this point. First, political values are not the same thing as scientific questions. Secondly, scientists are humans and are subject to the same cognitive defects as other humans. Scientists succeed better at finding the truth not because they are special or have the correct ideology or political views, they succeed because they use analytical processes and methods (Science!) that are specifically designed to avoid human cognitive defects that affect scientists and everyone else.
@Modulo Myself:
Oh, so I was right to find it insulting 😉
I have no idea how you are drawing that conclusion from what I said. I mean, where did I say that scientists are faith-based?
@Scott F.:
It depends on the alternative though, doesn’t it?
I would sooner vote for a pedophile than a Republican. It would be the lesser of two evils, but that’s voting for less evil.
Someone who believes abortion is murder should vote for Walker, as a national abortion ban would “save” far more “babies” than Walker has killed. I can respect that — I think the premise is wrong, but it all makes sense after that.
@Steven L. Taylor: Thanks for the tip! I’ll store that away in my
sprungsteel trap-like mind. 😀@Andy: “The theory that Democrats as a cohort are less prone to tribal ideology does not have any evidence.”
My sense of the thread today isn’t that Democrats are less tribal, but rather that the Democratic tribe is more morally virtuous than the irrationally insane, hateful, authoritarian Republican tribe is. Less tribal may be a subpoint, but if it is, it’s whizzing by me too quickly for me to register.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I mean, I’d settle for some version of “Republican voters bad,” a reality you still seem to have a tough time admitting and reckoning with.
But, yes, I encourage everyone to work smarter, not harder for no reason. If a cigar is a just a cigar, of course one should just say so. Why not? Why do unnecessary busywork? Save yourself time and mental gymnastics + be clear, concise, and accurate…sounds like a win-win.
@MarkedMan: Let’s get down to basics in response to @Jay L Gischer:. Once we’re beyond a small population and barter, there’s no free market without government intervention: currency, enforcement of contracts, transportation and communication nets, weights and measures, etc.
@Andy:
Other than Republican Party catering to or being controlled by an increasing parade of flakes, loons, pathological liars, fascists, and fascism-enablers like Herschel Walker, CPAC, Donald Trump, Mike Lindell, Rudy Ghouliani, Ron DeFascist, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Dana Loesch, Ginni Thomas, Doug Mastriano, JD Vance, Blake Masters, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Lauren Boebert, yeah no evidence at all.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It’s a red herring attempt to change the subject, just like “is it rational or irrational?” canard.
Are your actions and choices moral or amoral? decent or vile? ethical or unethical? right or wrong? honorable? principled? These are the big questions a democracy on the brink needs to demand answers to, not small ball rationalizations.
A lot of men of a certain age and hue want to ignore these questions, because asking these questions may make for uncomfortable moments at the football watch party, golf outing, and Thanksgiving dinner. They can rationalize and make all the excuses they want: Republican voters are making choices that are unethical, unpatriotic, amoral right now because Republican voters are being radicalized and made terrible by right wing extremist propaganda. This is obvious to folks with a basic level of decency and integrity, which includes a not insignificant number of former (and future) Republicans.
Moral clarity is out of fashion these days. But it is still necessary. I voted for John McCain. Liz Cheney is deeply conservative. Some of us have what it takes to stand up, and some don’t. Partisan defenses of the indefensible won’t fly.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It fits into the narrative the same way exceptions always fit into the narrative. They don’t erase the rule.
The pretense Herschel Walker represents a “single case” not one of an increasing number of examples inevitably resultant from decades of awful behaviors explains a lot about why a majority of white male American voters are currently decompensating.
The millions of white voters — especially white men — who refuse to go along with, or stay silent about, this madness deserve praise. In the future, they will be viewed with the same admiration we now give to white abolitionists and civil rights activists of yore.
@Steven L. Taylor:
But this is precisely why behaviors should be challenged on a basis of values, ethics and morals — not just rational v irrational.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Sorry to crash your preferred echo chamber circle jerk lol
@Steven L. Taylor:
You’re not wrong.
However, as others have pointed out, the actual observed behavior of Democratic and Republican primary voters (i.e., partisans) is different.
At present, Democratic primary voters do not put people like MTG, Boebert, or Walker on the ballot. Additionally, it remains unproven that Democratic voters would actually turn out to the same extent that Republicans would for a left-wing equivalent of Boebert or “Jewish Space Lasers” Greene.
Which means that Republican partisanship is not the same thing at all as Democratic partisanship.
And this is exactly where your analysis falls short to some extent. As you said, you explain how a flawed system permits certain outcomes, but not why we end up with spectacularly bad outcomes predominantly on the Republican side.
“Partisanship” doesn’t cut it, IMO. Because Democrats are partisans, too.
So we need more. And it’s not entirely surprising IMO if people look to political scientists to provide answers.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Given the Democratic coalition — a much more random and disparate group of people with lots of tensions and some overlapping goals — I actually don’t think it could happen with the Democrats in the near future.
White revanchism for a mythical era is an easy sell. You got lots of white people, and one type of person can appeal to lots of them.
Multiculturalism, organized labor, women’s rights, progressive purity parades and people who find the progressives annoying? Good luck finding a leader that gets enough people to cling. There might be a few loons at the edges, but not when you’re trying to hold the whole coalition.
We would need a couple of serious shocks to the system to align all those people so tightly.
——
ETA: Looking at the Presidential level, in 2020, Bernie (not a loon, but the closest to a loon of the serious candidates) may have been the first choice of a plurality of Democratic primary voters, but he was basically no one’s second choice. He couldn’t take that plurality and build a majority.
@DK:
Then I suggest you haven’t been paying attention.
@drj: The purpose of the post, quite explicitly, is to explain why Walker will likely not suffer consequences from his scandals.
That I don’t explain other things in let’s say 1000ish words above doesn’t seem unwarranted nor unexpected, yes?
@DK:
Somehow I don’t see the above thread as being much of a circle jerk.
But I will say that you come across as a jerk for constantly criticizing academics for being academics. It’s like reading a legal blog and criticizing lawyers for thinking and writing like lawyers.
I look at the behavior from a different angle–for all of the braying about being thinking people who “go with the science” and whatnot, liberals are just as likely to be anti-intellectual when said intellectuals are saying things the liberals don’t want to hear as any ignint rednect crackah you want to find.
@Steven L. Taylor: A larger point would be–your analysis as valuable as it is–falls short of incorporating organizational culture and psychology (perhaps that is outside of its scope?)
Syncretism of political science, organizational culture, and psychology would highlight the ways Ds and Rs both exist in the same systems but produce different outcomes.
One of the fundamental things I’ve learned about large organizations and culture is that they are best understood as multi-layer cakes. Most experts can explain the outer layers of the cake: the incentives, feedback loops, etc. But they don’t quite understand the base layer which is simply this:
The People ARE The System.
There is no way around this–the people are the the least common denominator that determine the richness, taste, moistness, mouth-feel, etc for the rest of the cake. At a certain point, you can make no further governance and management improvements to a system to change it–the people must change.
The psyche of the typical Republican is just as important and the political structures they interact with. The psyche that is always outraged and, although Christian, would vote for a Republican Satan against a Democrat Jesus–would skew ANY system of governance
@Steven L. Taylor: Only, the propensity to view a Political Party as a “tribe” is a fairly recent phenomenon–and frankly, not in keeping with the normal processes by which a person would view a larger group as their “tribe.”
Put another way, neither the Republican or Democratic party have behaved in a way that would make common laypeople view either as tribe
Walker is a dirt bag and really has no place serving any public service role, much less that of U.S. Senator for GA. Even still, he has a very good chance of being elected to do so anyway. How could that be? OP has offered a pretty thorough explanation. Institutions and the out outcomes produced from those systems matter. That some GOP voters are also total dirt bags doesn’t mean that others still, who may or may not pay any attention to politics, will vote according to partisan ID will not also vote for the same candidate. We should all take notice of a highly problematic system that produces candidates of this quality, should we not? In this example the candidate is a Republican but neither party is or could be immune under the current rules.
If Walker were the D candidate and a vote for Walker meant D’s took control of the Senate I suspect comments here would have a slightly different tenor
@Gustopher:
This. I think, at least reading this thread without any time for reflection, that people may be confusing this aspect of our two parties and the notion of general partisan behavior. (see: @Jim Brown 32‘s excellent comment.
Meaning that the differences between the composition of the respective GOP and Dem coalitions hold more influence on the differences between intra-party nomination results than base partisanship.
The bottom line is that the ideological composition of one party is almost as narrow as the other is wide. It should be no surprise that a small tent, mostly homogenous party is more susceptible to nominating woefully unqualified candidates than the one that has a more diverse pool from which to draw.
@Jim Brown 32: FWIW I don’t think it’s right to think of the tribe as being “Republicans”. There is a tribe, yes, and the Republican Party has embraced that tribe and developed them as their power base. But, collectively, I don’t think that tribe thinks of themselves as primarily Republicans. Rather, the Republicans are their go to political party. They most certainly do not look to establishment Republican officials for leadership but instead expect those officials to do as they are told.
@PT:
100%
@Jim Brown 32:
In fairness, I don’t typically use the word “tribe” which I think is more a colloquial than anything else (although as a side note when I try to use very precise language people complain that I am being too academic and when I relax my use of language I am dinged for being imprecise).
I will say that the importance of partisan identification/past voting behavior as a significant predictor of future behavior is not new–not by a long shot.
That the deepness of partisanship has intensified since the early 90s is incontrovertible–but I have written numerous posts on that as well.
A general comment about the thread: I never attempted in the OP to present a unified theory of American politics. I attempted to explain why Walker won’t suffer much in the way of electoral consequences for his antics. Moreover, I have noted how this is not irrational from a GOP voter POV.
I never suggested that I was attempted to explain why Republicans are behaving as they are as an overall issue nor have I suggested that the system has caused the Republicans to behave as they have.
I do not expect everyone to agree with me, but it would help me out if folks would engage with what I am talking about in a given post rather than pretending like I should be able to cover massive chunks of American politics in 800 to 1200 words.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Hey, the customer is always right. Given how much we pay to read this blog, maybe you should stop lashing out and make more of an effort.
Obviously, we are entitled to an explanation for the behavior of 300 million people spread across 3.5 million square miles in a single post that is free of grammatical error, typos, and edited to excise every unnecessary word.
And please, enough with your professorial tone. We are adults, not students. Also, please take any sharp criticism in stride because some of us read books whilst taking a shit, and some of us write for a living so many of us know more than you do about human behavior.
Sheesh, so whiny.
@Steven L. Taylor:
No, it would not have. We have our extremes, and they are actually sincere, actually believe what they say they believe. And they shame those of us who are less idealistic, more practically-minded. So, we would have thrown Franken under the bus because Democrats were not ready to be serious, not ready to understand that this is a low grade civil war and because we genuinely do not approve of immorality even when it’s ours.
The difference between religious voters and non-religious voters is that we create our own beliefs, and then we believe them. If even half of Christians ever started to behave like Christians, we’d be living in paradise. But in reality they’re entitled hypocrites who DGAF about right or wrong, and threw over Jesus in a heartbeat for a series of nasty pricks who do not promise them salvation, but power. Power to grind down their fellow Americans.
Don’t give me some both sides bullshit. We are obnoxious, entitled, addicted to outrage and often trivial. They are thugs.
@Kurtz:
Well done. Very well done.
@Michael Reynolds:
Franken made the mistake of having a Democratic Governor who could replace him with another Democrat. He was expendable, and was expended.
Had the Governor been a Republican, he would have been thrown under a light, soft, plush bus, which would have rolled over him gently, left a few performative tire marks, and that would be that.
He may have been urged not to run for re-election, but even that would have been tempered by the rest of his term.
Democrats rallied around Bill Clinton, after all. They basically still do.
(And let’s not forget that he chose to resign — the evil Social Justice Warriors had no way to force that. He could have stayed put, gone to the ethics committee, taken his lumps, and continued. Instead, he resigned. There was either more coming out (there were reports of other accusations), or he folded like wet cardboard — neither being a good thing)
@Steven L. Taylor:
Again, I see this as a function of saying things that people don’t want to hear more than a function of the words chosen to say it.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Look, I understand that you’re mainly interested in political systems and that’s fine.
All I was saying is that you shouldn’t be surprised – considering the ongoing trumpification of only the GOP – when people note (quite rightly) that “the system” and “partisanship” only go so far as explanations.
Perhaps readers like/agree with your explanation so much (as far as it goes) that they are already engaging with the obvious follow-up question why a single system has lead to divergent outcomes across the political spectrum.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to discourage such discussions. YMMV.
@DK: “Sorry to crash your preferred echo chamber circle jerk lol”
Seriously? If you’re so desperate not to admit you’ve lost an argument, you could simply stop responding. Or post one of those haughty “clearly I’m right but I can’t waste anymore time on trying to educate you” messages. This is just pathetic, and if you had any self-respect you’d apologize not only to Dr. Taylor but to everyone on this site whose time you have wasted.
@Gustopher: “Democrats rallied around Bill Clinton, after all. They basically still do.”
I still do and see no reason not to. He had a consensual affair with an adult woman. In the history of presidential sins, this is about as close to the least important as I can remember.
@Gustopher: “There was either more coming out (there were reports of other accusations), or he folded like wet cardboard — neither being a good thing)”
Or maybe he thought he had lost his moral authority to lead and felt resigning was the right thing to do. In the immortal words of Mariel Hemingway’s Tracy: “Not everyone gets corrupted. Have a little faith in people.”
@drj:
As someone who has written at length in these threads about the very things pointed out in many comments on this post that are (currently) unique to the GOP;
As someone who also thinks that the simplest, most accurate way to separate right-wing from cautious skepticism (think: Joyner) is largely the former’s exercise of power to enforce what it considers natural hierarchy;
Taylor is not arguing system as cause. Think of it more as setting the rules for what is allowed and what isn’t. That is, a system with a poorly designed set of rules at least allows, if not incentivize, poor behavior on the part of political actors. But it isn’t one weird trick, it took decades of effort and money expended across various domains to get it there.
In brief: a system with a shaky structure is necessary, but not sufficient, to develop an institution like the current GOP.
It takes more than just a warm body of open water to allow a hurricane. It requires other parts of the weather system to be in specific states as well.
@wr: @Gustopher:
I had a hazy memories about other allegations and subsequent regret on the part of Franken wrt resignation. I looked it up and found the transcript/audio of a Fresh Air interview Terry Gross did with Jane Mayer.
Link to archive mirror of Mayer’s piece.
That situation was way too complicated for our media, our political system, our population and likely could only have happened to Franken at that particular moment.
One aspect of that particular moment was that he would be replaced by a Dem. Anyone who thinks that wasn’t a major factor in the pressure applied by Senators of Franken’s own party to push him toward resignation found a stash of Quaaludes.
(Also, if you are one of those people, hit me up.)
Individuals —–>>>> Institutions/Structures/etc.
Institutions/Structures/etc. —–>>>> Individuals
Which way does the causal arrow go? And how strong is the effect?
It’s interesting how selective we are in answering these questions.
It’s recursive of course. Which makes it all the more interesting to observe where one “starts” and “stops” along the chain.
@Mimai:
Yes. This.
If one’s idea of a problem or solution involves something like:
This one thing in a web of relations causes…
Or
If only [insert group/s] would just…
Then you don’t have any idea at all.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I am referring to the structure of the argument. People who get caught doing things justify what they do by saying everybody does it. Creationists create a theory because of their faith, and they say every theory comes from faith, scientists’ theories included. Your argument relies on the same principle. You want voters to be the same, as if there’s no connection between the Trumps and Walkers and the transphobes and the anti-vaxxers and the election deniers and the actual fucking voters.
@Kurtz: I will try and do better 😉
(Thanks–that gave me a good chuckle).
@Michael Reynolds: I simply think you are flat wrong about Franken. Consequences comes into play in these situations and the consequences for anyone other than Franken were almost nil. To pretend like it was a purely moral choice that would have happened regardless of the political consequences suggests to me that you do not understand politics, or human behavior, the way you claim to.
Indeed, not only were the consequences to the Senate zero, it gave Dems the chance to take the high road as a group (at Franken’s expense) at a high point in the #MeToo movement.
I’m not. While I am making some general claims about human behavior, I am decidedly not making a “both sides” argument. Indeed, to my amusement on this count, a lot of commenters in this thread have told me that several of the points I have made can’t be true because “Democrats don’t act that way” which inherently is asserting that since I am not making a both sides argument that I am wrong.
@Kurtz:
Exactly!
I have never started that the system caused the current GOP.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Taylor is not arguing system as cause. Think of it more as setting the rules for what is allowed and what isn’t. That is, a system with a poorly designed set of rules at least allows, if not incentivize, poor behavior on the part of political actors. But it isn’t one weird trick, it took decades of effort and money expended across various domains to get it there.
In brief: a system with a shaky structure is necessary, but not sufficient, to develop an institution like the current GOP.
Exactly!
I have never started that the system caused the current GOP.
Without trying drag this out more, I would add that the systems that left-leaning institutions are not the same. Academia does not seek to indoctrinate students and turn them into leftists. Clinicians are not trying to make kids trans. The left media is not out to undermine Red America. Mostly, these are liberal institutions which respond to the real world in different ways.
Whereas conservative institutions are built around advancing the conservative cause. That’s it. That’s all they do. They are top-down and not interested in anything other than political power. That is so glaringly clear with right-wing media. It’s all just politics and what the left is up to. There are no conservatives who write about other things. It’s culture war and politics. If somebody writes about art–like this idiot who rehashed the Guggenheim/Basquiat ordeal in The Atlantic–they aren’t an art critic who has spent time in galleries and looking at work and thinking about it, or who has some connection to the money and power and art in the big-time art world. And they are playing for an audience who doesn’t care about art either.
Translate this to white evangelical Christianity, and you have the Prosperity Gospel and people laying their hands on Trump and an organized indifference to anything other than winning. Even when it’s a goal they want–like overturning Roe–they don’t have any real interest in dealing with abortion in the real world. It’s just signs, politics, and culture.
@drj:
I will admit that I got a bit annoyed yesterday, but I am human. Keep in mind that I am trying, in good faith, to address a peppering of questions from various directions and it can get really frustrating when people base a critique on something that I simply didn’t even attempt to address.
I get especially frustrated when I feel like folks are missing my point entirely (far more than when people disagree with me). And the thing that honestly drives me nuts is when commenters (not you, in this case, DK) pull out the “academics gonna academic” bit because it just comes across as an attempt to invalidate (and in a way that makes no sense to me because of the nature of the site to start with).
I also get extremely frustrated with folks who clearly just want GOP bashing and Democrat hosannas. That’s not what I am here for (although, again, it seems pretty clear that I don’t think the two parties are morally equivalent these days in particular).
So, no, I am not trying to discourage conversations, but I am just asking for a bit more grace than I get on occasion in terms of what a given post can actually explain.
@Modulo Myself: When I write about “institutions” I am almost exclusively referring to the structures of the overall governing system. I am not talking about, say, the Federalist Society. If I am talking about those kinds of entities, I am explicit.
I think, as per your comment, there remains a great deal of misunderstanding about what I am talking about, despite my pedantic attempts at explaining (which does cause some level of frustration, both with myself for not explaining well enough and with readers whom I think are sometimes not taking the effort to understand).
@Steven L. Taylor:
Fair enough.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The thing is, members of a tribe always think they are morally virtuous while the members of the other tribe are not. This isn’t just political tribes, it’s a facet of tribalism generally.
I’ve always found it interesting how the most zealous members of one tribe are always self-appointed experts on the crimes and motivations of the other tribe. Partisans are supremely confident that the other side is not simply mistaken or prioritizing different values; instead, they are morally bad, motivated by bad intentions and bad faith, and are even evil.
And you see this all the time in partisan behavior that’s condemned when the other side does it but excused when their side does it – or even championed because it is “fighting back.” Like it or not, the reality is that a big part of tribal identity, including partisanship, is equivocating on the sins of your side but not the other side. And this creates a kind of creeping normalcy for bad behavior where one side breaks some norm, and then the other complains loudly but later does the same thing.
And note the response whenever this hypocrisy is pointed out there is a lot of shouting and complaining about “both sides” arguments which, conveniently, avoid core issues or having to address substance.
If you go to right-leaning sites and comment sections, you see this same behavior, only in the other direction. I think if you leave aside value judgments and just look at how people act, I find that partisans are very similar in terms of behavior.
This is one reason I try to operate based on first principles, not cui bono.
If X is bad or bad behavior, then X should be called out regardless of who does it. But that is not how humans are wired. Carving out convenient exceptions that align with tribal or partisan interests is the norm.
And I think that’s what Steven is basically describing when it comes to Walker, but using a different analysis. If Walker were a Democrat, Republicans would be savaging his character flaws and dodgy history. And the vast majority of Democrats would likely still vote for him because they aren’t going to vote for a Republican when control of the Senate is in play. At best, Democrats would simply not vote for that office (which is what happened in many places with Trump in 2020 – where a number of down-ballot Republicans got more votes than Trump as some Republicans chose not to vote at all in the Presidential contest).
Another example you could look at is the VA Governor Northam and his blackface history. A number of prominent Democrats wrote it off as a forgivable dumb mistake from four decades ago – does anyone really believe those Democrats would have been as forgiving if Northam was a Republican? Of course not, equivocation is built-in feature of how humans think about in-groups and out-groups, and we instinctively treat them differently, often without realizing it.
In my view, that is what explains GoP acceptance of a D-bag like Walker.
@Modulo Myself: I don’t think you understand what I am saying at if that is what you think I am saying.
@Andy: “And the vast majority of Democrats would likely still vote for him because they aren’t going to vote for a Republican when control of the Senate is in play. ”
And yet, just two short years ago it seemed that the Dems had a real shot at a senate seat in — one of the Carolinas, I think. Had a real hotshot candidate who was close or ahead in the polls. Then it came out he was having an affair, and he lost. That’s all, just an affair, but it pulled his support away. And it wasn’t Republicans who were supporting him in the first place.
So keep telling me there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans. It’s easy, and it absolves a party you seem inclined to. But it isn’t true.
@wr:
“And yet, just two short years ago it seemed that the Dems had a real shot at a senate seat in — one of the Carolinas, I think. Had a real hotshot candidate who was close or ahead in the polls. Then it came out he was having an affair, and he lost. That’s all, just an affair, but it pulled his support away. And it wasn’t Republicans who were supporting him in the first place.”
You are talking about Cal Cunningham:
“On October 3, the New York Times wrote that the race had fallen into “utter mayhem” within a period of a few hours after Tillis tested positive for COVID-19 and Cunningham admitted to exchanging sexual text messages with a woman who was not his wife, damaging an image that leaned heavily on his character and military service. Days later, the woman confirmed that she had a consensual physical relationship with Cunningham in 2020. The Army Reserve started an investigation into Cunningham. The husband of the woman who confirmed having an affair with Cunningham, himself an Army veteran, called on Cunningham to drop out of the Senate race. Asked repeatedly whether he had had other extramarital affairs, Cunningham declined to answer.”
Cunningham went into election day with a 2.6% lead in the Real Clear Politics aggregate, but lost by 1.7%.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t believe it is an adequate explanation. I think there are many other structural things you could focus on going back to ballot initiatives in California in the 70s but they all do tie into right-wing politics and single-issue voters. But overall, you just don’t see the same thing happening with Democrats. You just don’t. It’s like comparing Planned Parenthood to a crisis pregnancy center, or a bunch of environmental scientists to the Heartland Institute. Conservative institutions promote self-deception and lying for their greater good in ways that non-conservative institutions do not.
@Modulo Myself:
But the focus on this weird both-sides-must-do-it misses the point utterly.
I don’t know what else to say than that. While I can allow I am not explaining things adequately, I also think a lot of folks are just not really focusing on my point and want to have another discussion.
(Although I think support for Bill Clinton is a better counter to the argument you are making than you seem to want to admit).
@wr: So, if Walker loses narrowly, like Cunningham, will that redeem Republicans in your eyes? (I am not being snarky–I am trying to figure out how you interpret the NC results and what that interpretation would mean for GA).
@Modulo Myself:
Explanation for what?
What do you think I am trying to explain? What do you think I am failing to explain?
@Steven L. Taylor:
The first paragraph of your post is about how terrible Hershel Walker is as a candidate. I think you are trying to explain away this terribleness with an inadequate argument about structure and partisanship, rather than the fact that maybe most GOP voters don’t find his behavior all that
terrible. Being pro-life and paying for your girlfriend’s abortion is not an issue if you have power and are still pro-life after the abortion has been done.
@Modulo Myself: I am not trying to explain away his terribleness.
As such you are missing the point.
@wr:
That actually proves my point – it was a close race, and the affair cost him a couple of percentage points which was enough to lose. Or, said another way, the vast majority of Democrats voted for him despite the affair. In other words, the number of people from whom character and principle are actually important enough to overcome partisan loyalty is quite small, but in a close contest, it can be decisive.
I’m saying that human beings who happen to be Democrats (or Republicans, or Tories, or Liberal Democrats, or whatever) aren’t exceptions to what we know about human behavior. You and others here really do seem to believe that Democrats are not only morally better in terms of policy, but also somehow better when it comes to the built-in foibles of our species. I think that is self-delusion. Democrats aren’t more immune from human cognitive defects simply because they happen to be Democrats.
Secondly, the fact that you keep believing I’m “inclined” toward the GoP (a theme you often return to) really says more about you than it does about me. The truth is that I dislike the Republican party – such as it is – much more than the Democratic party, but I also don’t drink the Democratic kool-aid or imbibe MSNBC propaganda. My refusal to not be a good Democratic partisan leads tribal and binary thinkers to conclude that I must be a closet Republican. The irony is that partisan Republicans do the same thing and accuse me of being “inclined” toward Democrats because I don’t tow the party or ideological line there either.
@Andy: ” You and others here really do seem to believe that Democrats are not only morally better in terms of policy, but also somehow better when it comes to the built-in foibles of our species.”
I do think that. God knows I don’t think Dems are perfect, but yes, better.
@wr:
Oh your time was wasted by my random internet comments, how can you ever go on? You deserve an apology, and so does poor Dr. Taylor, what a victim lol Get over yourself, dearest.
You can attack me all you want. I don’t care because am right about this, and I will not apologize for telling the truth just because some white men don’t like hearing it.
White fragility is not my problem, and I do not need and did not ask for your approval or good word, or that of any of the good people here I don’t know and will never meet. I know some of y’all take this site very very seriously but at the end of the day, it’s still the internet. Who cares?
Whatever the opposite of apologizing is? Consider this that. Demanding apologies LMAO I mean really.