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Moving this here (rather late) on suggestion of the mods, with some added expansion:
Does anyone else see the way various people on the American left, particularly left leaning media, have been doubling down on "Trump is Hitler," "Harris ran a flawless campaign," "the voters are just sexist, racist, stupid, and evil," and so on, and that they shouldn't change policies to win over voters, except maybe by moving even further leftward (again, I'm on Tumblr, so I get plenty of this from ordinary D voters coming across my dash; there's also the Youtubers seen in this video for one) as part of an overall "strategy" by the left that strongly parallels the behaviors in recent years of "woke Hollywood" and game studios? That is, use identity politics as a tool to paint critics and opponents as bigots ('you don't hate our all-female reboot because it's a soulless cash grab with lousy writing and acting, you're just a sexist', 'you didn't vote for Kamala only because you hate blacks and/or women,' etc). "Schrödinger's critics": your opposition is just a few unimportant bigots who don't represent the audience/electorate and don't really matter; but when your movie/game/candidate flops, it's because of the immense power those same opponents have over the viewers/players/voters. The problem is that too many people are listening to fringe voices (whether that's YouTube movie critics, video game reviewers on Twitch, or 'purveyors of right wing misinformation' like Fox News and x.com), instead of professional, establishment movie critics/game journalists/political commentators; and we need to figure out how to mute those fringe voices. Taking your established fanbase/demographics for granted, and excoriate them if their support starts to wane ('how can you call yourself a Tolkien fan and not watch Rings of Power?' 'Sure, the Democrat party's policies do nothing for you, but you have to vote blue no matter who anyway' [a position I've seen left-wing YouTubers state in response to the election]).
Sure, the idea that "the customer is always right" — even if you append the qualifier "…in matters of taste" — is one that the "creative industries" have always struggled with. The purity of one's artistic vision versus "selling out" in order to make a living is a perennial tension. And similarly with electoral politics. Parties abandoning all principles in naked pursuit of the median voter turns electoral politics into a modern spectator sport, with the parties reduced to different colored jerseys with different mascots, and all that matters is that "your" team win the next game. ("Who will win the trophy this year, Team Elephant, or Team Donkey?") But, on the other hand, if a party wants to actually accomplish things in line with those principles, they have to win elections. Movie studios need to have people pay to watch their movies, so they can afford to make more, or else they'll go out of business.
In short, that you, the filmmaker/game studio/Democratic party, don't answer to your audience/voters, the audience/voters answer to you. You do not have to earn their dollars/votes, you are entitled to them, and if they aren't buying what you're selling, then they're wrong, and the strategy is to lecture them on what horrible bigots they are until they start watching your movie/playing your game/voting Democrat. And calling anyone who disagrees with you a fascist. (That "Unfortunately, this decision affects the wrong people" bit is wild coming from those making the decision in question — as if they have no agency over this decision, but it is instead somehow just a natural consequence somehow emerging automatically.) As Jim put it: "Doing an audit of federal government expenditures is the death of democracy, and doing a customer survey is openly fascist."
Even shorter: it's treating that Simpsons bit with Principal Skinner that's become a meme — "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong." — as a marketing/campaign strategy.
I don't intend this to sound condescending, but this parallel has been so obvious to me for probably the better part of a decade by now, that I'm surprised that someone on TheMotte would only notice it now. Though perhaps it actually speaks ill of me and my hobby of paying attention to the culture wars around popular media that I noticed the parallels so early and found it so obvious.
The all-woman Ghostbusters remake came out in 2016, almost a full decade ago, and that was one of the earlier big examples of the whole "we didn't fail the audience; the sexist, misogynistic audience failed us by not giving us money to spend 2 hours watching our film" narrative being made. That was 2 years after Gamergate, which wasn't quite that specifically, but it was a major flashpoint in video game culture where major video game journalists, devs, and commentators were explicitly telling their customers that their tastes were wrong, and that they had a responsibility to submit to the enlightened, correct tastes of the then "social justice" (equivalent to "woke" today) crowd. This knocked over some dominoes that resulted in many video games designed to appeal to that SocJus crowd being released 5-10 years later, i.e. the last 5 years. Examples of these include failures like Concord or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League from last year, as well as successes like The Last of Us: Part 2 and God of War: Ragnarok (I suspect that it's not a coincidence that these successes were both sequels to hugely popular games that built on a strong base).
In film, besides 2016's Ghostbusters, 2017's The Last Jedi, as well as most Star Wars works that followed, and 2019's Captain Marvel, as well as most Marvel movies that followed, were major examples of this phenomenon. And though many of these films did fine or even great in the box office, they had plenty of controversy around more old-school fans reacting negatively to various plot points and characterizations, and then being called bigots in return both by filmmakers and commentators. There were smaller examples as well, such as Terminator: Dark Fate or the Charlie's Angels remake-remake, both of which bombed in 2019.
A big part of it, I think, is that SocJus mentality, of all of reality being dominated by power differentials, and as such, each individual of [demographic] is necessarily disadvantaged compared to each individual of [some other demographic]. This means that if that individual of [demographic] fails or just doesn't succeed as much as they imagine an individual of [some other demographic] would have, then their failure is due to the bigoted society that created these power dynamics that made them disadvantaged, rather than due to that individual's own flaws. This, of course, is how millionaire stars can claim to be lacking in "privilege" - the claim isn't that they're not wildly successful, but rather that they aren't as wildly successful as an equivalent person of [some other demographic] would have been. Also of course, this is completely unfalsifiable.
And if you approach things with that mindset, that belonging to [demographic] means that any failure is due to the structural bigotry that reinforces the power dynamics of society, then naturally, when your film/video game/electoral candidate fails, you're going to blame structural bigotry. I.e. your audience, the gamers, the voters.
Also of course, if you just blame external factors, it hampers your ability to self-improve. But you can still succeed as long as all those external factors submit to your demands; if calling someone racist can get them to buy your game, then that's just as good as just making a better game. In practice, this doesn't really work. But the people making these decisions seem to be in echo chambers where calling people racist does get them to submit to their demands. And while everyone lives in echo chambers to some extent, the left/progressive/Democratic crowd has been very openly and very explicitly calling for strengthening the boundaries of their own echo chambers through censorship of opposing voices. Which leads them to model the general audience very poorly. Which costs you money. If you have a big bankroll, you can keep going with that for a while, but eventually, that money runs out. I think 2024 was a big year for when many of these decision makers finally recognized that they were able to see the bottom of the barrel of money they've been feeding their projects. In video games, we might see an actual closure of Ubisoft this year, depending on how their next Assassin's Creed game - one that had direct inspiration from the BLM riots of 2020 according to a developer, IIRC - does, after the mediocre reception of their Star Wars game last year.
I wonder if the Democrats will eventually have a moment when the stark reality of their failures simply can't be tolerated anymore, resulting in a change in tact. I was hopeful right after the election last year, but most signs since then have made me pessimistic. I just hope it comes sooner than later, because, as bad as SocJus is, I fully expect Republicans to be just as bad if they find that they have nearly unchecked power without a strong opposition party.
I've lost all capacity to steelman the DNC. I can barely form a notion of what motivates them that doesn't come across has a hateful parody. And yet clips like this exist and I find myself going "What else am I supposed to think?"
I know left leaning people want a DNC that improves their quality of life, some form of socialized health care, living wages. I'm not hating on them.
But the DNC, the organization that tries to develop a bench of candidates and spend scarce political capital and state capacity on it's top priorities seems absolutely insane. All we got was infinity immigrants, trans kids and censorship. Oh, and lots and lots of graft for a DNC patronage network. I can only possibly model these as top priorities for people that are stupid, evil, or both. They don't even attempt to explain a through line from open borders, trans kids and censorship to living wages and health care for their base.
Say what you want about Trump, he can at least tell a story about how deportations will lower crime and cost of living, how tariffs with improve wages, how DOGE will lower your taxes. I get that people will claim those are all lies and there is no causation between one or the other, but the case is at least made by Trump about what he's going to do, and how it's going to improve people's lives. And then he actually is seen to be doing the things he said he was going to do. If everything goes to shit and none of it works... well... at least he was honest about what he was going to do.
All I see in the DNC is weird ideological crusades, corruption, and zero sum power jockeying.
That's the error in your model. If you think supporting trans kids is good, or open borders is good then whether it costs money or makes money is not the relevant distinction if you are not a consequentialist.
Consider the evangelical wing of the Republican party, they were still pushing for further abortion restrictions even though much of the polling was showing that was a position that might cost votes. Why? Because they really truly believe that it is wrong, and they should not compromise on that even if it means losing. They are not utilitarian. But they did not hold enough power within the party to force that decision and so Trump backed off it somewhat. Pragmatism won there. De-emphasize and move away from policies that are unpopular.
Supporting kids who want to transition will not help the economy or help people with healthcare in general, in fact it will probably cost money that could be used in other healthcare. But if you think those kids need that help badly ,then you should do it (from this point of view to be clear!) even if it costs votes and/or money.
They are NOT being pragmatic, so if you try to judge them by that measure their choices will look crazy.
"Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, ‘No, you move.'”"
In other words currently the ideologues hold sway within the DNC. Usually in a political party you'll have wings that are more pragmatic and vice versa and the power will move between them. Often a defeat will cause a realignment. Like New Labour moving towards the center in order to get away from all the "Winter of Discontent" strikes in the past which doomed them electorally against Thatcher. Pragmatically (or cynically!) abandoning some core Labour principles in order to become more electable. But those wings don't go away (see the resurgence under Corbyn for example).
It's too soon to know whether this loss will allow a more pragmatic core of the DNC to maneuver into power. A lot will depend on who the next flagbearer (Newsome?, AOC?, Someone new?) is going to be, and what direction they decide to go. Right now things are still shaking out, but within the next 6-10 months we'll have a better idea. I think there is some early evidence it might, as the more extreme left is already complaining about Democrats not fighting back enough, and that the handover of power was straightforward and peaceful. That indicates that the adults at the table have some understanding that Trumps popularity is based upon actual positional support at least privately.
To be clear I think that political parties need to be pragmatic, a lot of my job back in the day was to advise them on what areas should be de-emphasized because public support was low, and I think that the Democratic Party is going to struggle once again in 2028 unless they are able to shed some of the more ideological components (though if the economy tanks that will still be the biggest factor).
The problem of course is it is often your most committed ideologues which are willing to volunteer significant amounts of time and effort to your cause. Keeping them on side while transitioning (hah!) to a more pragmatic approach can be tricky.
It can be argued that a lot of these things actually suit the class interests of the symbolic capitalist class.
Immigration, for example, is defended by the business elite on economic grounds. These people are not overly rich but they often work to manage these corporations and are not directly threatened by Uber drivers and can in fact make use of them to benefit from services that are far cheaper than they would be in a tighter labour market.
Censorship isn't even hard. It's a demand that power be taken from unaccountable social media billionaires (or just the general public) and placed in the hands of another group of allied bureaucrats in an organization filled with people they went to school with. Journalists and other groups demand outsized respect in the name of the special role they play in a democracy: informing people and, now, fighting "hate".
It's a noble lie. But a noble lie with some value.
This doesn't mean that they're actually purely pragmatic. In a more responsive system they would have tossed the worst excesses like trans nonsense overboard. But a religion acts on the elites who coopt it just as the elites act on it. The Saudis lived under some constraints too.
Well all ideologies do, not just religions, but regardless of that in politics you will inevitably have a mix of true believers, slightly less true believers all the way down to people who don't believe at all and are just in it for advantage. And you will also have a mix of exactly what ideology or what part of the ideology they believe or value most. So it's certainly more complicated than just pragmatists vs ideologues, I agree. You'll also have your alliance of groups (Evangelicals, business neo-liberals etc.) who also have their own internal balance of pragmatists vs ideologues.
You will have people who do not in fact care about the ideology whatsoever, but are in it for the power. They will push the most pragmatic approach (do whatever we can to win) and will be in tension with the truest believers (maintain our principles at all costs), and they will have varying webs of people who are on the scale at different levels and in different parts of the coalition to convince. That's why pivots are generally not immediate until an internal tipping point is reached.
In my direct experience at a national level most politicians are closer to the pragmatist end and will pretty happily jettison any principle they can get away with for power. It interests me that the Democrats may have accrued more true believers (or at the least truer believers) as it stands, because I think that generally makes it harder to win.
Until just recently there was no need for this kind of hard discussion between pragmatists and true believers because both were winning. It didn’t really start to conflict in a big way until after the October 7 attack. Even during the first Trump administration the strategies to resist it were still more or less in sync.
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