Understanding The Problem

David Wallace-Wells writes more or less the post I have been sketching in my head. So let’s let him do the work in this gift link. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but a lot of it.

We need to understand the problem before we try to construct solutions. The problem is that we lost the election and need to persuade more people to vote for the party that will give them the policies they say they like. There are a lot of ways to interpret that, but actual facts can constrain the universe of solutions.

Wallace-Wells provides 13 conclusions that can be drawn from what we know now. The demographics of the election will continue to be analyzed, but I think these are reasonably durable. They also contradict some of the solutions that are being presented. I have reworded some for clarity. Of course, Wallace-Wells expands on them in his article.

1. This was not a landslide.
2. This is a country in remarkable electoral balance, in which neither party is ever really more than a few inches from power.
3. In very blue places, the much-hyped red shift reflected Harris losses rather than Trump gains.
4. Demographically, the parties are starting to look more and more similar.
5. Harris did not run a “woke” campaign.
6. The left’s culture-war problem may be less about Democratic politicians than about Democratic voters.
7. Trump’s closing argument was a culture-war complaint about something incredibly rare.
8. Biden’s invisibility as president may have been more costly than his delay in dropping out.
9. The most pro-labor administration in memory didn’t move unions or their voters.
10. Coalition management is important.
11. We still don’t have a very clear picture of the state of the economy, which is a bit strange given its centrality in our politics.
12. But given what we do know, it is perhaps notable how little Democratic soul-searching has focused on the problem of inflation and how to manage it better next time.
13. Astroturfing a “liberal” Joe Rogan probably isn’t the answer.

His points number 6 and 10 are vague and need sharpening. The two are related; the Democratic Party is much more heterogeneous than the Republican Party, and the Republicans pick out some of its elements, like support for trans people, to make their culture war. This has been a focus of a fair bit of commentary since the election, with too many people proposing that elements of the coalition be thrown overboard. Solutions will have to incorporate both ways to push back the Republican culture war and to improve relations within the Democratic Party.

I won’t go through all the other points. There’s a lot to say about them, but I think that a list not too different from this can define the problems we should be looking at.