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Notes -
Are you telling me the Dems don’t advertise racial spoils?
Uh, I don’t think I said such.
Botond described Sailer’s model as
I think this is wrong, and that more or less none of those categories matter if the guy runs on vibes. Democrats have awful, cringe-inducing vibes. They need to present an aura of charismatic competency to contrast with the Trump campaign. No, I don’t have much confidence that will happen.
But I guess I think claims of racialist spoils are overstated, too. Shit’s still politically toxic.
Which is why there's an entire industry to manufacture consent for it - the entire battle against "systemic racism" is a justification to provide racial spoils even when it doesn't make sense. It's why "white supremacy" never ends even as white hegemony is ending and there's always a new calumny - like the claim that black babies are more likely to die under/because of white doctors, which was then cited by KBJ in a SCOTUS judgment on affirmative action - to allow calls for more "justice"
That or deny it's happening. I suspect this is part of the reason affirmative action is both pervasive and polls very badly: the public dislikes it, and they don't know enough to know how much of a finger is on the scale (so they take claims like "it's a tie-breaker" seriously). As a result, they don't think it's necessary. Admins know better.
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You said: Sailer plays to his audience, which is very much inclined to frame everything as racialist spoils systems. He’s going to ascribe that to the Democrats no matter what they say.
The last sentence implies that the democrats don’t do racial spoils systems.
But they do. What do you think supporting affirmative action is? Or saying you will pick a certain color for scotus or VP? Why defend minority majority districts? There use euphemisms but at its core it is racial spoils
I chose “say” in hopes of avoiding this exact conversation. What people say and do are not, in fact, the same thing.
But I suppose that was foolish of me. If I claim Sailer’s audience is wrong about Democrats, I’m basically signing up to defend anything Democrats have done since LBJ. I think this is a dirty motte and bailey, but one that sees a lot of use, so I ought to be more explicit.
The motte is that Democrats absolutely do things which implement or at least hint at a racial spoils system. This is obviously true.
The bailey comes when using those things as evidence for a specific model of the Democratic Party, one where the minorities are all ganging up to shake down white Americans. This is senseless and hyperbolic. It assumes away the prospect of white people choosing to benefit non-whites, because that’s how Sailer thinks.
I actually think Sailer would include white people (women specifically) that have a large out group favorable bias as consistent with dem racial spoils
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Democrats do not need to project charismatic competency. That shit seems fake. Look at Trump- he changed national politics by seeming like your drunk uncle at thanksgiving(after he won the powerball), because that's what Trump is. Bill Clinton seemed like your mildly sleazy brother in law you who always had a beer for when the women were getting too overbearing. These guys are recognizable as real- but not especially competent. Our politics don't reward that. If we cared about competence there'd be a bunch of accountants and engineers getting elected, instead of lawyers and car dealership owners.
That’s exactly why.
A long time ago, one of our users wrote about a sneer-state-debate theory of politics. The idea was that high-level bureaucrats are pretty good at debating. That works against other bureaucrats and against their natural prey, the idealists. But it leaves them completely unprepared for a sufficiently charismatic asshole. Somebody who can just show up, ignore the home turf, and shove that nerd in a locker.
This is how Trump wiped the Republican field and eventually Hillary. In doing so, he basically realigned the party under his “sneer” strategy. It didn’t matter if they had a working plan so long as the other guy’s plan looked worse.
The Democrats absolutely walked into it, too. First they tried debating Trump on his policies. Loser move. Then they experimented with sneering, which was never particularly convincing. They didn’t have the charisma, and Trump had a serious first-mover advantage, anyway.
So what actually works against a “sneer” strategy? AshLael suggested it was back to the idealists. Run somebody with a winning smile who can just “state” a simple position. It doesn’t have to be well-considered; the other guy is never going to call you on it.
I always thought this was plausible. Maybe that was just a sense that Obama would have wiped the floor with Trump, but I felt like a positive vision would preempt a lot of Trump’s support. Frame him as the grumpy old fossil instead of the dynamic one.
But then the Democrats shambled over to Biden. If there was a central vision for 2020, it was “anything but Trump.” COVID made that extra-appealing, winning exactly one election. By the time Trump got back from Butler, it was completely out of gas.
Thing is, Trump will be out of the picture in ‘28. He has no obvious successor, but there is a bumper crop of populists and pundits who want to sneer their way into politics. I think Democrats could clean house if they dug up someone with enough style to play the “state” card. Ditch the baggage, pretend it’s not about Trump. Campaign on single-payer healthcare or UBI. Something else with a one-line explanation. Take no questions on the details.
Each day I find it slightly less likely that they’ll manage it.
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