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Notes -
Might arguing with opposing alter egos of yourself make for rhetorically compelling reading for issues relating to the culture war or otherwise?
Nate Silver, of the political analysis publication 538, recently posted two articles ahead of the US midterms:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-case-for-a-republican-sweep-on-election-night/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-case-for-a-democratic-surprise-on-election-night/
The articles were formatted as transcripts of imaginary conversations between the author and "Nate Redd", his Republican alter ego, and then the author and "Nate Bleu", the Democratic version. Both alter egos suffer from prejudiced priors in favor of their political leanings, whereas the author, a Silver (which coincidentally might approximate gray?!) tribe spokesman, is presumed rational.
I'm sure partisans can pick apart plenty of issues big and small from their preferred versions, and I personally thought the Democratic version was substantially better written, and you can decipher what that might reveal about Silver's social circles and private beliefs (or mine, especially if you disagree with my take). Still, on the whole, I found the rhetorical exercise to be a productive deconstruction and rendition of how the average politically engaged reader thinks. The conversational format makes it easier to digest for the masses. It also has the bonus of being funnier, in particular in the Dem version where Silver took plenty of shots in poking fun of Mr. Bleu.
Back to my original question. Should more nonpartisan or rational bloggers/essayists/substack writers attempt something akin to this format every so often as they try to advance sophisticated takes on controversial subjects?
For Nate Redd, Silver is "Have you talked to any of your female friends about abortion?"
Insert eyeroll from me. Because of course every single woman is pro-abortion, of course a Republican-voting guy is not going to know any women who might be pro-life, of course no woman picked at random in the USA is going to be "I think the Supreme Court decision was great".
It is clear which side Silver is naturally on, but I suppose credit for at least trying, even feebly, to imagine what the bad horrible people might think.
Sure there are, just like there are blacks who are against BLM and pro-police funding and Latinos who want tougher immigration controls. But probabilistically, you can predict (a) whether most of them are pro or anti (b) whether it's the pro or antis who will be most strongly motivated to come out and vote on that issue.
Abortion is absolutely a losing issue with women voters. That does not mean 0% of women voters are anti-abortion.
(Personally, however, I suspect that just as there are "shy MAGAs" in blue circles, there are a not-insignificant number of "shy pro-choicers" in red circles, people who will vote differently than they'll admit to their friends.)
Silver may be biased, but this "conversation" is basically summarizing the issues that will actually affect the vote, and I don't think the fictional Silvers are wrong that abortion is going to weigh more negatively than positively for the Republicans.
I don't believe this at all. There are far too many conservative women (who are, almost to a woman, going to be pro-life) for this to be a plausible statement in my eyes.
It's baffling when people see a statement like "|X| > |not-X|" and object that this cannot be true because |not-X| > 0.
Now if you actually have evidence that pro-life women voters outnumber pro-choice women voters, I'd be interested to see it.
You're somewhat underselling it there. It's not (not-X) > 0, it's (not-X) is massively > 0. The way people talk about abortion, you would get the idea that women who are pro-life are a rounding error. But in reality, there are a shit ton of pro-life women.
Sure, but what percentage of women voters (especially those who are actually going to go out and vote after the SC decision) are pro-life?
I agree there is a frequent assumption in the Blue Tribe that basically every woman is pro-abortion if not angrily so. But angry pro-choice women voters do outnumber pro-life women voters.
There is the disagreement over relative numbers, and then there is the disagreement as @FarNearEverywhere presented it, where pollsters who think abortion represents a minus in the Republican column are unaware that prolife women exist.
How many angry pro-choice women voters are there, though? A lot of the protesting is by young women, and the young famously do not go out and vote.
Maybe they will this time, if they do think abortion rights are that important. But it's not as slam-dunk as I think some are assuming, and there are many more issues that the electorate are concerned about when it comes to who they'll vote for.
If there was a national vote on abortion alone, you might be right. But the mid-terms are not a vote on abortion alone, they're a vote on gas prices and the economy and China and a heap of other things.
This Brookings piece is inclined to the view that women voting about abortion will make a big difference in the elections. But my word of caution is this: the reliable Democratic vote is the black vote, and while black women may turn out in force to vote for Democrats (including abortion as a concern) - will it be enough? It wasn't enough for Hillary, when part of the fall-out was black feminists blaming white women for not voting in sufficient numbers.
What may decide it is the white college-educated cohort of women, and that gets us back to the angriest are the youngest, and the youngest don't vote. We'll know one way or the other after Tuesday.
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