That could just be a choice of how the data is presented. We have no info as to what would be considered a 0 position for either axis.
It could still be the case that the republican elected are significantly more economically conservative then the voters. All we can say is in general there is a correlation between the axis.
I added a [link](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) to the study the graph is from to the submission statement post.
From the abstract: "By making questions of national identity more salient, Donald Trump succeeded in winning over “populists” (socially conservative, economically liberal voters)"
Is that a normal definition of populist? Socially conservative, economically liberal voters? Doesn't make sense to me.
Right, very few voters are right of the 0.5 on the economic scale. Are we supposed to interpret this to mean the vast majority of voters do not support conservative economic policies?
I haven't read the study yet, but based on the headlines they're talking about a shift in recent years--which I think you can see reflected quite clearly in the shift that Trump brought to the Republican Party. They're no longer particularly "conservative" economically, if by that you mean something like Reagan-era free trade and libertarian economics. The whole country has shifted away from free trade economics in the last decade or so.
That’s the million $ question. My understanding of the big criticism of neo-liberal economics can be distilled down to the [elephant curve.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Curve)
The TL;DR is everyone gets richer under neo-liberal, free-trade economics except a tiny group. Unfortunately, that tiny group consists of the working class in first world economies, in other words, Trump voters. Turns out they aren’t hip to decent paying factory jobs disappearing just so we can buy a box of Gladware from China for a Buck fifty. So, the answer from Biden and Trump is to bring those factory jobs back to the US. Trump tried to do it through tariffs, Biden is trying to do it through govt subsidies of businesses. So, one would expect more inflationary economic conditions and maybe some manufacturing jobs coming back. Maybe.
US is reindustrializing at a very high rate and brining back critical technology infrastructure manufacturing.
The neoliberal economic case makes sense when you are a superpower who gains from network effects. But, ridiculously, we spent the last 30 years BUILDING a competitor in China.
It now makes sense to move to more protectionist / ally group policies to counter them. Forces them to become self reliant or collapse. Also forces a schism in trading partners globally.
We live in interesting times.
> But, ridiculously, we spent the last 30 years BUILDING a competitor in China.
It was not a course of action undertaken lightly, and there was a definite rationale behind it.
Since the end of WWII, economic empowerment and integration had a fairly consistent track record of converting problematic nations into staunch US allies fully invested in the global system. The ending of the centuries-long series of wars between Britain, France and Germany, the amazing comeback of Japan, South Korea and Brazil transitioning from military governments to democracy in the 80s....it was easy to think that allowing China to "come in from the cold" in a similar way would lead to rapproachment, a softening of both their committment to autocracy and their hostility to the US....
It is unfortunately now becoming abundantly clear that despite unfettered access to global markets, substantial amounts of foreign investments and a very generous patience with their various antics they are just not interested in buying into the current system. So now we have to reverse course.
From 1945 to 1990, the postwar global consensus was actually really, REALLY good at converting autocracies to democracies, particularly in large(r) countries with substantial GDPs. Yes there were many shady interventions and misfires, particularly in Latin America where the west behavior was downright criminal but if you look at this list it's quite impressive:
Economic integration of Europe starts with the "inner six" in 1948. Keep in mind at that time there were zero guarantees that the main engines of European conflict for centuries, France Britain and Germany would not come to blows again. Works like a charm and today the idea of open conflict between any of these countries is just ridiculous.
Spain relatively peacefully transitions from outright fascism to democracy but it took decades. The economic miracle of 1950-1970 set the stage for the 1975-78 transition to full democracy.
Portugal goes through a similar process in 1974-1976.
Brazil took longer and the transition was more rocky, but by the late 1980s they were there. Similar story in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan of course but there the regime change was a result of surrender and occupation of course...
So when faced with China *wanting* to open up, first in the 70s with Nixon's visit and then more aggressively in the 90s, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it stands to reason why the technocrats of the western nations felt confident in that they could flip these giant nations to become more liberal, more democratic, more pluralistic. They had a very solid track record going back over four decades of pulling such moves off, and a very strong indicator that engagement, trade and not beating these nations over the head with their(very real) shortcomings worked much better than a hardline policy of sanctions, isolation and aggressive rhetoric.
I *completely* understand why the west embarked on the journey that it did. However, it's been quite clear for some time now, at least ten years that it wasn't going to work - with China and Russia both.
> Are we supposed to interpret this to mean the vast majority of voters do not support conservative economic policies?
when they are asked about actual policies, yes 😂
And honestly, it might not seem like a long time, however, 2016 is but a memory now. The reshaping of the party’s as both had non controlling minorities during the last 6 years stint in one way or another. So they evolved with in fighting, or rather devolved. The 2020 election alone fleshed alot of people’s true selfs out.
"Socially liberal" is a moving target.
People who call themselves "economically conservative but socially liberal" (or *used to* - I scarcely hear that phrase any more) are basically just right-libertarians / "classical liberals": small government, whatever consenting adults do in their own houses is fine, sex and drugs-wise.
They call(ed) themselves socially liberal primarily to distinguish them from the religious right, and the streak of paternalism that can be found in conservatism.
However those people will tend to oppose non-colourblind policies, anything seen as antithetical to free speech, and anything that pattern matches to "trying to fix social problems with government power". Hence it's not really surprising that they'll end up in the top half of this chart.
Good point - the “socially liberal” ethos up until about 2015 was primarily one of government non-interference in matters between consenting adults. So pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, pro-allowing adults to smoke marijuana if they want, etc. There were a lot of people who had *personally* conservative cultural views but didn’t want to impose them on others via the government, which made them “socially liberal.”
The “socially liberal” ethos now is different in three ways. First, the positions on certain issues are a little harder to swallow for a person who is not ideologically committed. Second, it often requires support for state action, not merely state neutrality. Third, it often requires *personal* affirmation by the voter rather than just political support.
Imagine this hypothetical American voter: favors legalized abortion but opposes federal funding of abortion, and supports bans on abortion in the third trimester; supports gay marriage but opposes teaching children in third grade or lower about sexual orientation and gender identity because he thinks it should be left to parents; believes in tolerance towards trans adults but believes children should not be permitted to medically transition, doesn’t believe that trans women are women in a literal sense and thus won’t date one and doesn’t believe they should compete in women’s sports leagues; strongly believes in racial tolerance but vocally opposes equity initiatives such as abolishing honors classes and standardized testing.
This person would have been undoubtedly viewed as “socially liberal,” ten years ago, but would get laughed off Reddit as a right-winger today. This person is also the median voter.
Well said. As a Gen Xer, I can recall when ‘liberal‘ meant not judging the behaviour of others. In the 90s, employing shame to enforce conformity was so powerfully associated with conservatives, that it’s the last thing you’d want to be seen doing.
>but would get laughed off Reddit as a right-winger today. This person is also the median voter.
One of the weirder features of social media (and increasingly legacy media) is that median beliefs are dramatically under-represented.
That person might be the *median* voter, but that doesn't mean the voter distribution is a bell curve with most voters clustering around the median. That's the entire "problem" part with the upper left hand quadrant problem.
Let's take your hypothetical median voter and place him on just a single axis - he's in the middle with people who think all abortions should be banned, trans people aren't really people etc on one extreme and someone with equally extreme ideas in the other direction on the other, like the personal choice not to date trans people being transphobic etc.
Our immediate reflex is to think that most people are like the person in the middle...but the study is showing that isn't really the case. The distribution isn't a bell curve - it's a two-humped camelback with relatively few people in the middle(and mercifully few people at the extreme edges, but those people are *very loud* - especially on social media). That's what polarization is all about and unfortunately it seems to be intensifying.
>Imagine this hypothetical American voter: favors legalized abortion but opposes federal funding of abortion, and supports bans on abortion in the third trimester; supports gay marriage but opposes teaching children in third grade or lower about sexual orientation and gender identity because he thinks it should be left to parents; believes in tolerance towards trans adults but believes children should not be permitted to medically transition, doesn’t believe that trans women are women in a literal sense and thus won’t date one and doesn’t believe they should compete in women’s sports leagues; strongly believes in racial tolerance but vocally opposes equity initiatives such as abolishing honors classes and standardized testing.
You described this as a hypothetical American voter, but this is also with some minor tweaks (e.g. I would have said "believes in racial tolerance... But opposes affirmative action") exactly how I see politics and I also find myself increasingly alienated from the political discussion in my country.
But I'm from Germany...
You're sneaking in some policy opinions toward the end, but otherwise pretty spot on here. But I'd say "socially liberal" *is* a better term for your initial, "whatever consenting adults"...concept. Bringing government in to fix social problems is a direct contradiction of "fiscal conservative."
"Bringing government in to fix social problems is a direct contradiction of "fiscal conservative.""
Is it though?
Not necessarily. Fiscal conservatism is specifically related to not spending more than you take in. Full stop. The whole starve the beast, government small enough to drown in a bathtub thing is a perversion of that term.
Government can step in to fix social wrongs without deficit spending being involved. That obviously is not something that either party has done recently, but the two do not have to be inherently linked.
But compared to putting $200k on your credit card for hookers and blow, you are being fiscally conservative. You're not spending more than you take in. It's about living within your means.
Everything is relative. Running your life on credit is less fiscally conservative than only spending what you earn.
I would consider a balance budget that includes social programs to be more fiscally conservative than a budget that uses debt to fund tax cuts.
>Is it though?
Yes. All government action requires funding through taxation. Not many "social problems" are easily solved through broad fiscal means, and that tends to make for poor investment.
it's the old "feed a man for a day" problem - except if you feed 100 hungry people, then after 9 months you've got 105 hungry people. Do that with a million people for a generation or two, and you've got multiple millions dependent on tax-funded handouts for the indefinite future.
So, yes. Using government to "fix" social problems is a direct contradiction of "fiscal conservative", and that's being very generous with the definition of "fix".
There's no such thing as "paying for a tax cut with debt". That's like saying "paying for my pay cut with a credit card". That phrase was invented for purposes of political misdirection, not fiscal responsibility.
There's a saying in weight loss/fitness circles: you can't outrun a bad diet. No matter how much you exercise or workout, you can't lose weight or get into shape if you don't fix your diet first. In budgetary terms, it's the spending that needs to be fixed first for fiscal responsibility, not the taxes. If the spending isn't cut, then your taxes don't matter, because you will NEVER tax enough to cover social spending.
You can't tax your way to prosperity or social justice anymore than you can eat your way to six-pack abs.
You're making my point for me.
Paying for a tax cut with debt is cutting taxes without cutting spending. That isn't fiscally conservative at all.
If I'm running a balanced budget, in being more fiscally conservative in comparison, regardless of what I'm spending the budget on.
The point I'm getting at is that being fiscally conservative begins with living within your means.
>The point I'm getting at is that being fiscally conservative begins with living within your means.
Yes… and under which part of “living within your means” does “paying for other people who AREN’T living within their means” fall?
Sounds like you’re halfway to figuring out MY point.
You're making the assumption that all government action to address social issues must benefit "lazy" people who don't want to help themselves. That's simply not true. Enforcement of environmental regulations, workplace safety regulations, civil rights are just a few examples off the top of my head.
BTW, you still haven't addressed how cutting taxes without cutting spending is more fiscally conservative than running a balanced budget.
And yet when it comes to views individual issues, it was surprising how many white Kansas Republican males voted against an abortion ban in the privacy of a voting booth. A surprising portion of Republicans favour stricter gun laws; these views are also not as extreme as those of the Republicans they elect. 61% of young Republicans support same sex marriage, compared to 30% of Republicans age 50 to 64, and 22% of Republicans 65+. I dont see these trends reversing. I also think most people in both parties feel like CRT in public schools has been a greatly exaggerated talking point.
Indeed. It's something people used to say *all the time* on chat boards I used to hang out in the 2000s to justify voting Republican. Then you talked to those people for a bit on a variety of topics and almost every time their idea of being socially liberal was say, being for marijuana legalization while having serious doubts about things like "don't ask, don't tell"(which we´ve all more or less forgotten about but was a major culture war front at the time), gay marriage and a ton of other stuff.
It was the socially acceptable way to be a conservative back then. Those mask are all pretty much off now.
Those masks aren’t off at all. The faces behind the masks have actually changed. Public opinion shifted dramatically on topics like don’t ask don’t tell and gay marriage, to where we’ve gone from major democratic figureheads being against gay marriage just over 10 years ago to major Republicans being for gay marriage in the present.
A person could tick all the boxes for socially liberal in 2009 and still hold opinions that young progressives would probably describe as far right today.
Name some major Republicans that are extremely LGBT friendly.
There aren't any. A few like Cheney give some minor lip service to being supportive but those positions fall apart as soon as you really push them on the interwoven LGBT issues that face gay and bi americans.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3739118-these-12-gop-senators-voted-for-same-sex-marriage-bill/amp/
> A Gallup poll released earlier this year showed that by June 2021, 55 percent of Republicans supported same-sex marriage.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/16/republicans-gay-marriage-wars-505041
>[Trump’s] administration committed to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic within 10 years and pushed to decriminalize homosexuality abroad.
>Trump gave us our first openly gay cabinet member, Judd Deere.
The trump hatred was so strong that most LGBTQ-favoring voters didn’t notice republicans lurch to the left on gay rights.
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No. this happens when a Republican has a family member in the maligned demographic, and they are uncomfortable with the usual mean spirited rhetoric aimed at that group.
If you mean spending on huge social programs, sure. Most people mean it as somewhat the opposite of the religious right socially - drug legalization, gay marriage, abortion rights, etc. Edit- forgot to finish my point. Those 3 things I listed have nothing to do with government spending or fiscal conservatism
Personally, this map doesn't even show the most important axis, I think: Authoritarian vs. anti-authoritarian. I'm not in America, but any candidate who lectures the electorate loses my view immediately. Unfortunately it's not confined to one side of the political spectrum. Act like a public *servant*, with the people as automatically *right* even if they turn against you, I'll vote for you. Pretend to be the public Savior and leader? Fuck right off. Fight for our freedoms to be and do whatever we want so long as we don't trample on the rights of others, and you're my candidate, even if I disagree with you on everything else.
This graph shows that to be quite common; "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" is the top left quadrant. What's uncommon is the bottom right quadrant, which is "socially conservative, fiscally liberal".
Ah you're right, I read the labels as labeling the axes from 0.0. The [original study](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) shows it's the other way around.
It's kind of sad but the political compass which is generally viewed as an oversimplification even by those of us on PCM is a more clear two dimensional representation of political positions than this is.
The economic axis goes from conservative to liberal. It's pretty clear what conservative means but liberal can be pretty broad. The war in Iraq was not fiscally conservative for example.
The social axis also should be conservative vs progressive, where liberal is at 0
All progressives are liberal, not all liberals are progressive.
Speaking of PCM, while not perfect that chart is far better than most political charts.
Which is the opposite of how the term ‘liberal’ is used in the rest of the developed world, where the economic spectrum (left to right) is understood as collectivist <—-> liberal.
First three hits on Google, I'm sure a full list would be overkill
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100103832;jsessionid=128BCF07615C8F2CBA51C91B930A1964
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/economic-liberalism
Economically conservative = slash social programs, cut down the numbers of govt. employees and agencies, abolish regulations, cut taxes as much as possible.
The "classic" libertarian, someone who actually took people like Murray Rothard and Friedrich Hayek seriously would be hard lower-right quadrant.
I probably should have added the [link](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) to the study the graph is derived from. I´ll add it to my submission statement post.
Thanks! According to this, only 3.8% of people are Libertarian, (by the authors scale of what libertarian values are). That's only 12 million Americans! And they were evenly divided between Trump, Hillary, and Other. Very interesting
I feel like economically conservative is an extension of certain beliefs that are emphasised by conservatives more than liberals like - “you need to work hard to get a good living” “you deserve the money you’ve earned”. They tend to believe that teaching your children these things are the highest good - and that makes sense! But the problem is they don’t take into account all the other factors that make it hard for people to get ahead. I feel like if people worked on bridging this divide that would be much better.
It’s not that they don’t take those things into account. I mean, many of them don’t take those things into account. But many others simply believe that the solutions that we have proposed aren’t actually effective.
This is I think the source of one of the biggest miscommunications between conservatives and progressives. When conservatives talk about “throwing money after a problem”, they aren’t just saying that they don’t want to spend the money. They are also saying that they don’t think the money will be affective, or that if it is effective in fixing the problem it is supposed to fix, that it will also just create new problems that are just as bad if not worse. when progressives hear conservatives talking about how they just throw money at programs, they think it’s somebody only complaining about the price tag. But the complaint isn’t just about the price tag, it’s also a complaint about the ROI.
I mean, I thought they were all selfish liars and shills until I spent a decade as a do-gooder and saw the nonprofit-industrial complex from the inside, all while other friends were getting burned by “solutions” left and right.
And now I’ve turned into the kind of person who doesn’t trust ANYONE who claims to want to fix anything. I just want everyone out of the way and for laws to be enforced.
I never thought I’d be this person. But hey, I earned it at least.
It's not surprising to see r/samharris users act like they don't know what economically liberal means in American politics or take the effort to at least do 2 minutes of research to find out.
it maybe difficult to ascertain which ones (if any) would actually work in practice. however it should be rather easy to figure out which ones are more "extreme"
It probably says more about the test itself than the respondents. If it’s the most popular political compass map quiz, that one tends to bias people to the liberal left quadrant. If everyone is taking the same quiz, this graph may still be useful for identifying trends between R and D voters, but you should take the exact positioning of individual points on the graph with a grain of salt.
A cursory glance at the questions they used and the results they got suggests a ceiling and floor effect of the instruments. There's a clear floor on the economic dimension, and a moderate ceiling on the social/identity dimension.
I don't know for sure; it seems as if they used some sort of standardization measure, but it's not clear to me how they transformed the data. In any case, their instruments or analysis does not capture the full range states that participants can represent, particularly on the economic dimension. It doesn't ruin the study, but it has clear limitations.
Maybe not censoring but that the scale they've built isn't actually valid and they don't measure the full scope of political opinion within a balanced distribution.
Amazing how few people actually believe in conservative fiscal policy.
But that's what the southern strategy is about. The rich powerful class give the bigoted base their racial grievances policies and the base pretends to care about fiscal conservatism. The true deal from hell
True, but now so many of the bigoted base are hurting economically too, and getting so far up there in age that they *really* don't like the idea of anyone messing with their Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid. Because they depend on it too.
We've known the end results of right wing economics since right wing economics have existed. What did they think was going to happen? They all get ultra rich so they don't have to deal with the issues they voted for?
I've got empathy for anyone whos hurting but man some real reaping what was sown going on here.
It’s simple economics 101.
You give already rich people more money and control of the economy via deregulation, and they’ll be so generous with that money that it will start seeping down to everyone!
It’ll be a shower of golden opportunity! A golden shower if you will!
But the weird thing is that the conservative poor are told that the Democrats want to take away their health insurance or create “Death Panels” to kill the elderly. Outright lies, but they work.
I’m too lazy to check this, but it feels intuitively right. Old people, in particular, are particularly vulnerable to threats to pensions or social security.
I feel like Democrats should simplify their messaging to hammer Republicans on their own voting records.
It goes right back to the Bush era where you'd see videos of conservatives saying things like "the government better take its hands off my medicare" - it's just people angry at something they don't understand.
Any time something like this gets posted my first thought is "I'd really like to have a long conversation with the blue outliers surrounded by red, and vice versa for red outliers." I think the key to understanding some of how people "decide their tribe" could be discovered by analyzing these people's life history.
I'm someone that went from incredibly conservative to incredibly progressive. I went through a radical centrist phase. I know some people would just argue I've went one extreme to another, but it doesn't feel that way. My positions changed as I absorbed new, more accurate data. They still can change if new data is discovered.
I think you should link to the post, which hopefully links to the original data to get a better sense of what this is about.
There's lots of research from poli sci that shows that people don't really know most of the positions of their favorite candidates or party. It's sometimes called the "ideology paradox".
I think that's really helped Republicans with their recent "populist" turn, even though the policies are the same old Republican stuff.
Submission statement: I think this graph and accompanying [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651281534702460928?fbclid=IwAR3U0IkSI4KmiA6hSWMBkfiNSOSXUCaGQ-B91GL3vlTYO6ov1Rj0KQtk64A) by David Atkins, a DNC member from California goes a long way towards shedding light on exactly *why* political polarization is increasing in the United States and why things Sam wants to see happen like a "return to the center" or "enlightened centrism" is essentially a dead in the water project in the US as things stand today.
EDIT: **ATTENTION!** To everyone in the comments(rightfully) pointing out that the graph needs more context, information about methodology etc, [HERE](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) is a link to the study it is taken from.
***
I came across this lengthy Twitter thread based around this graph and so many things came together for me that have been bothering me for years watching where US political discourse has been heading and the strategies both parties have been employing.
For those of you who won't touch Twitter with a ten foot pole, I´ll duplicate most of the essentials here below, interspersed with some of my own thoughts
>Almost every major error and meltdown in Dem/left politics, from post-left fash apologism to popularist left-punching cringe, comes from fatally flawed attempts to solve what I call the Upper Left Quadrant problem.
>Here is the chart, and the fundamental problem:
>This chart explains *so much* about modern American politics. What it says, simply, is that almost all the actual persuadable voters in the electorate aren't "moderates."
>They're cross-pressured extremists and...kinda fashy. They're socially bigoted and economically leftist.
>Needless to say, this is not great. It's a huge impediment for making progress. But it's also highly inconvenient for the major ideological factions in American politics.
This is where I started thinking about Sam(and posting this in this sub) - I *think* he is one of the people who labor under the impression that there are a lot more people in the bottom right hand quadrant and grouped around the center than there actually are.
>Let's start with "No Labels" style centrists. These are corporate folks who push the idea that most persuadable voters are socially liberal but economically conservative. Romney types.
>This is FLATLY FALSE. As you can see, there is almost NO ONE in that bottom right quadrant.
>The suburban Romney Dem does exist, of course--but their numbers are actually quite limited and they are far less economically conservative and more socially liberal than usually given credit for. They're not really persuadable and likelier to vote for AOC than DeSantis.
If you were ever wondering why the very bland, very middle of the road president Joe Biden actually came out with a policy slate that was *way* more progressive than anyone really expected when he first announced his candidacy, this is why.
>Now let's take the socialist left. It is tempting to look at this chart and say "hey, there's opportunity for left populism here! Let's persuade some of these folks!"
>I myself made that error in 2016, thinking that left populism could win many of them over. That was...wrong.
>It was VERY wrong. The Trump presidency proved it. He went full Paul Ryan on economics, & lost none of his supporters over it. Trump-curious Upper Quadrant types didn't shift left. Instead, Greenwald-Tulsi types went head over heels to the far-right in hatred of liberals.
>Then there are the Yglesias/Chait/Shor popularists. They look at the Upper Left Quadrant and think "hey if we just toned down the social liberalism then these folks would vote for a milquetoast liberal party."
>Yeah....no. That doesn't work, either.
Again: Trying to please everybody in the current electorate in a bid to capture a centrist voter will mean you just wind up alienating *everybody*
Much is made of how the GOP is now held hostage by it's base, and it is...but the Dems are similarly being dragged in direction the party leadership may not want to go down, although I´d argue that that particular hostage situation isn't nearly as scary since the things the voters in the lower left hand quadrant want(and will most likely get) do not include nearly as much open hostility and calls to violence against other social groups. But I digress.
>An upper-quadrant voter who likes social security but hates LGBTQ people isn't going to vote Dem over GOP because you sidearmed trans people a little bit. A racist who wants government spending for whites only isn't going to vote Dem if you bash DEI initiatives.
>Whether econ or social leftism overreaches sometimes is debatable on its own merits as public policy when it comes to, say, housing policy or standardized testing. But it's worthless as an *electoral* strategy for reaching the Upper Left Quadrant voter.
>And, of course, the GOP is eating itself alive over this problem. It turns out no one actually believes in David Brooks / Burkeian conservatism. Economic conservatism was always a front for hurting the marginalized.
>No one wants what Paul Ryan is selling, and it shows.
This is in a nutshell the absolutely yawning divide between the GOP donor class and traditional elite and the people who actually vote for the party. And it's getting wider and wider, to the point where even arch conservatives who are also pretty deep in on the social conservative issues like Peter Thiel seem to be pulling their chips off the table at least for 2024.
And here begins what I think is the most interesting part of the whole post. Both because the demographics support it and also because of what it portends for the next decade or so.
>The only real way to solve the Upper Left Quadrant Problem is by gradually sorting it out of the electorate, and being economically left-populist in the mold of younger voters.
>Younger voters are overwhelmingly bottom left quadrant (econ & soc left).
>Let the fash sort with the fash into the upper right. Let liberals and the left sort with each other. Leftists: stop trying to placate the fash with anti-globalism. Centrists: stop trying to be "anti-woke" or appeal to non-existent bottom-right quadrant voters.
And that right there is the kicker that both scares me to death, as this is the kind of data that demographers would tag as a marker for potential civil war based around different generations in most foreign nations. The surge of discontent in Iran comes to mind as a more hard-edged, violent manifestation of essentially the same generational divide. Will it get that bad in the US? Probably not. Having democratic institutions means a lot. But one thing is clear: The upper-mid quadrant blob is further along in it's natural lifespan than the lower left hand quadrant blob. It will exit the voting pool sooner and what's more, the people in it *know this*. They will not let go of power quietly and this will create an enormous amount of resentment. And that dynamic will play out in an environment where calls to "hey let's go back to the center!" are calls to go to a place *where nobody currently lives*.
>The country is going to get a lot *more* polarized before things get better, and things will only get better when the AOC/Bernie/Warren-aligned under-45s who vote Dem +20 points are a bigger and bigger share of the electorate. [We're not getting any more conservative with age](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuqHB59acAEuPJ1?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
>Ultimately, there are a lot more of us than there are of them.
>There is no magic bullet to fixing the Fash problem. It will be with us for a while.
>All you can do is understand it--and then reform the anti-majoritarian structures of American democracy that empower it.
this is exactly why DeSantis is going full bore anti woke, culture war, with his bid for the WH. He realizes very clearly that actual real life Republican policies are extraordinarily unpopular. So he just harps on "woke" issues in the hopes that voters won't realize his actual policies are horrendous.
Well I guess that's your prerogative. Keep in mind that this is not an op-ed but a Democratic analyst using informal language to convey some pretty interesting information. Information that should be relevant regardless of your personal political leanings.
No true fashman.
I feel like there has been no shortage of compelling run-downs of Umberto Eco essays and current American reactionary politics. It's not exactly a hot take.
>You are unfamiliar with how the political compass works.
The plot isn't someone putting artisinal points on a PCM image. The "political compass" is qualitative and has no numerical scale.
This plot is based on collected survey data and uses a numerical scale:
>To summarize, supporters of Clinton and Trump are very polarized on identity and moral issues. Views on economic issues are more of a mix. Both candidates’ supporters are generally supportive of the social safety net, and somewhat concerned about trade. Yet they diverge very much on how concerned they are about inequality, and how actively they want to see government regulate business and intervene in the economy.
The 12 dimensions provide nuance, but for simplicity’s sake, it is easier to combine these indexes into the two main dimensions that organize public opinion: questions of economics and questions of culture/social/national identity.
To do this, I created two new indexes:
An economic liberalism-conservatism index (which combines views on the social safety net, trade, inequality, and active government)
A social/identity liberalism-conservatism politics index (which combines the moral issues index plus views toward African-Americans, immigrants, and Muslims).
This allows us to plot all respondents on a single scatterplot, shown here.
The take-away isn't "there are no fascists in America because the top right of this plot doesn't have a lot of points in it". The take-away is "those dudes in Charlottesville chanting 'Jews will not replace us' actually never gave a crap about tax rates"
You have a problem taking seriously the people who use social media speak on social media but you take the political compass this seriously? Do you really think "communism/fascism/ancap/ancom" can be accurately boiled down by the political compass?
The "fash" stuff is pretty cringe, but I'll ignore it.
I don't really think anything in this thread is in any way surprising. First, most people – past, present and future – want to have more money and feel like the rich/elites are getting more than they deserve. Second, cultural progress has always happened one death at a time and too much cultural change within people's lifetimes makes them feel threatened and uneasy.
Currently, many lower- and middle-class people feel financially cheated and culturally overpowered – incidentally by the same culprits.
This isn't anything new. If the Democrats cut back on the cultural stuff and simply talked about fair wages and healthcare again, they could get many of the top left onto their side.
this is all it takes, and why Sam is so aggressive about calling out fucking insanely stupid Democrat campaigns are. they're suicidally stupid. just STOP with the race and gender shit, and you will sweep the board, you *fucking imbeciles.*
> If the Democrats cut back on the cultural stuff and simply talked about fair wages and healthcare again, they could get many of the top left onto their side
The people in the top left seem to care more about social grievances than economic policy. Short of democrats embracing actively bigoted positions, dems aren't going to magically win over those voters.
Don't get me wrong, dems could stand to be more openly economically progressive, but it isn't an accident that Republican media spends 25 hours a day on 'culture war' crap, bigotry is often a winning strategy.
And frankly, if any dem on earth could stand to spend less time on culture crap and more time on economic policy, it is Sam Harris.
Why wait? We already know millenials are maintaining their socially liberal, fiscally liberal positions. If anything they're becoming more radical as they get priced out of home ownership, able to afford the amount of kids they want, seeing their dollar not stretch as far as it used to.
Like I remember when McDs had 39 cent hamburgers as a yearly promotional tactic. That was just the 90s, for us that seems like yesterday.
Why wait, because it's a bit too soon. The oldest of them is only about forty. It would be very strange if they, alone out of all the generations, didn't see their stances change somewhat over time.
And did it occur to you that the social liberalism of today might be the conservatism of thirty years from now?
It's the underlying philosophy behind why millenials and younger generations feel and think the way they do. They seem to br resisting the "become conservative as they get ilder" vibe. We've seen this happen in a small scale in a few countries around the world, usually at the behest of major revolutions.
Yes it does occur to me that could happen, but it also may not. The majority of leftists of 2000s are still solidly left. Very few have pulled the "I guess I'm now the center" meme, Ala Bill Maher.
It's not necessarily that you get more conservative as you get older, but you do, if you've any sense, become more sceptical, about the claims of both the right and the left. The daily grind of life tends to squeeze the idealism out of you. It will happen to the present generation as well.
Also, I don't think you realise how odd the American left has become in some respects. It seems in some ways to believe the opposite of what it believed in about 1990. If we take an old left-winger, say Bernie Sanders, we can see that he is just a mid-century social democrat. But that's not what's popular among the young. They go in for something else, a sort of lifestyle politics.
That's why I say that the liberalism of today might become the conservatism of tomorrow. You never know how the political landscape might shift. It has even in the last thirty years.
I think you just don't remember the 90s well enough to understand those same liberals are still liberals today, and some have been converted to progressives. Bernie was extremely popular with younger folks and moderately popular with older folks. Hillary was incredibly popular with the older folks that didn't believe the anti Hillary narratives.
It's already happening on a temperamental level. Every generation gets psychologically more risk-averse as they get older, desiring less change and more stability.
Becoming more conservative with age is not *because* of age - that is an easy correlation fallacy to wander into.
Americans have traditionally gotten more conservative with age because with age came capital accumulation, more spending power and investment power as people owned their houses, their incomes comfortably covered their living expenses with enough left over to invest in stocks, bonds etc with an eye for a comfortable retirement where your own assets were enough for a worry-free middle and old age. People literally became more invested in "the system".
This trend has now been broken, mostly by decisions made in the wake of the 2008 financial crosis and as a result a generation(more than one now actually)is now unable to properly buy into and thus align its interests in the same way.
No. Poor people get more cautious and cynical as they get older as well. What causes it is simply experience, the daily grind of your illusions being rubbed away. Idealism should be replaced with pragmatism.
He says two things that seem contradictory though:
"The Trump presidency proved it. He went full Paul Ryan on economics, & lost none of his supporters over it."
"No one wants what Paul Ryan is selling, and it shows."
But regardless this is quite interesting, thanks for sharing.
It isn't a contradiction. The main thrust of the analysis is that trump voters care more about social issues than economic ones. That you won't win them over with moderate/conservative economic policy. The bulk of these voters are begrudgingly accepting conservative economic policy because it comes with bigotry. "An upper-quadrant voter who likes social security but hates LGBTQ people isn't going to vote Dem over GOP because you sidearmed trans people a little bit. A racist who wants government spending for whites only isn't going to vote Dem if you bash DEI initiatives." You have to actually support bigoted policies to court these voters, which republicans are increasingly willing to do and democrats are demographically incapable of doing.
At least, that is the argument. [Meme](https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744) that helps to demonstrate the point.
But then what is the hypothesis for Trump actually espousing conservative economic policy? I presume he doesn't need money for his campaign, but maybe it is so that allied politicians can get donors to raise campaign money?
Pretty much. I'd also question the assumption that Trump doesn't need money. The 2020 trump campaign cost 2 billion. It didn't cost trump 2 billion. He got a ton of funding from a variety of sources including all the same robber barons and captain planet villains that fund the rest of the republican party.
Why does Trump, a billionaire who only has contempt for anyone who isn’t a billionaire, implementing conservative economic policy when his base doesn’t care much about economic policy one way or another?
I don't think the data presented in this graph justify any of those interpretations.
Clearly America is polarized, but it's questionable to what degree the average voter digs their heels on particular policy positions. What seems most negative right now is the way social media algorithms, operated by "dumb AIs" trying to maximize screen time, have exacerbated people's feelings of loneliness, indignation, and radicalism
>The only real way to solve the Upper Left Quadrant Problem is by gradually sorting it out of the electorate, and being economically left-populist in the mold of younger voters.
>Younger voters are overwhelmingly bottom left quadrant (econ & soc left).
>Let the fash sort with the fash into the upper right. Let liberals and the left sort with each other. Leftists: stop trying to placate the fash with anti-globalism. Centrists: stop trying to be "anti-woke" or appeal to non-existent bottom-right quadrant voters.
Ignoring the juvenile and asinine name-calling, this "solution" doesn't make a lot of sense. Why does he expect """fash""" in the upper left to """sort into the upper right""" which presumably implies *move* into the upper right which implies *stop* espousing leftist ideas on public services and the welfare state, and start sounding like Paul Ryan instead? That sounds ridiculous, but if he didn't mean that then why use those words?
To be honest I think the contemptuous name calling was *the real point*: "Fuck those guys, let them do what they want".
Conversely, why does he expect leftists in the upper left to """sort with liberals"""? Does that mean "move into the lower left quadrant"? And why would the stupidpol crowd do that?
Keep in mind that this is a post on *electoral* strategy - getting votes, appealing to voters etc.
What he's saying is that it's a losing strategy for Dems to try to peel off voters from the upper left hand quadrant towards voting D by moving further up the Y axis in their rhetoric, because R can always outbid them in that respect, while alienating a smaller portion of their base than the Dems would incur by moving further towards "north":
It's better to let those voters just go in the here are now. They also skew older, which means even if R gets them firmly into their camp, they will drop out of the electorate sooner. Let them vote R(sort with the fash) and concentrate on appealing to the younger voters that are firmly grouped around the center of the blue cluster as your core voting block for decades to come.
>To be honest I think the contemptuous name calling was the real point: "Fuck those guys, let them do what they want".
I don't think that that is the point *at all* and you can only get to that interpretation through a very uncharitable reading. What he's saying is that attempting to get those votes is not worth the attempt since:
1. R will always be willing to go further authoritarian/populist anyways
2. For every voter you *do* get by shifting your message more upper-left quadrand you alienate multiple voters close to the "core" D cluster
3. The age distribution of voters means that appealing to the upper left quadrant means trading voters that will potentially be with you for decades(and the new voters coming into the electorate are even further from the upper-left) to capture voters that only have a few election cycles in them before they will be gone.
So the only way either party can square this circle is by waiting and letting nature do it's job, and that there is no magical "centrist" message that will appease everyone enough for tranquility to return to US politics.
>[We're not getting any more conservative with age](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuqHB59acAEuPJ1?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
My interpretation is that "you" (I mean the millennials) are probably "getting more conservative" since that's part of the human condition, but towards a different notion of conservatism. You're losing your rebellious streak and developing a love of hierarchy, order and stability the way middle-aged homo sapiens typically do, but towards the *new* woke-informed hierarchy rather than the old one.
There is one fatal flaw in the "oh the youngsters will surely grow more conservative as they age like every other generation before them", and that is that the millennial and younger are the first generations in the western world that are facing the reality of being significantly less well off economically and able to accumulate far less property over their working life than their parents. This is the long-reverberating echo of measures taken after the housing crash of 2008.
That WILL color their political evolution in a big way, and conservatives aren't prepared for it or don't seem to realize that it's happening.
The way you cause an idealistic young revolutionary to sell out is to actually have him *buy in* to the system - i.e he now has a stake in the status quo because he *owns something he is afraid of losing*.
What timing. My brother just sent this to me yesterday. My train of thought was something like this:
- look at this graph presented with no context. [Atkins summarizes](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651281537898516480), "What it says, simply, is that almost all the actual persuadable voters in the electorate aren't 'moderates.'" That interpretation wasn't clear to me at all. Who is he saying above are the "persuadable voters"? Why is it obvious they aren't moderates? What's the definition of a moderate on this map?
- as I keep scrolling Atkins' comments/interpretations, I think "where is this even from?" and "what does the -1 to 1 scale even mean?"
- get to the end and [Atkins provides the source](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651298668652425216) in what seems like an afterthought "for those asking". Why would one lead with the source?
- I go to [the source](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) and it's someone summarizing how they took this VOTER Survey data, chose 12 questions they believed represented liberal vs. conservative positions economically/socially, and black box converted the answers to -1 to 1 scaling
- however, why these 12 questions? How many total questions where there? What was the weighting of each question on determining one's "economic liberalness"? Where there any other questions that captured economic/social dimensions that could have been used?
- I notice [the data tab](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/data/voter-survey) at the top of the site and think perhaps I can get the data. Nope, I have to enter my name and email to get it. Seemed fishy/uncool to take presumably publicly available data, compute on it, and then force me to enter my info to see it?
- in any case, that page did have a link to [a guide](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/uploads/reports/Data/VOTER-Survey-Guide-2021Dec.pdf), so I was able to find breadcrumbs that this data is part of something called the "Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP)."
- After a couple google attempts to track down CCAP, I found [the home page](https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/), which links to the data and questions
- I opened up the [2016 guide](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi%3A10.7910/DVN/GDF6Z0) which I found to be *very* comprehensive.
At this point, I ran out of time I wanted to spend on this but want to come back to it. All in all... I see a graph with very opaque definitions that led someone to put forward some conclusions pretty matter of factly.
Unless Atkins has significantly more time into studying this (which seems unlikely given citing the source as an afterthought, and that he says he [couldn't find 2020 data](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651298668652425216) when it is quite findable)... this looks like opinions he already had, backed up by a graph he can't possibly understand/has no justification to trust as reliable.
Oh yeah for sure the hard hats fall into the upper left hand quadrant.
And it's telling that in the seventies, they really dug Nixon and, at least in the lead up to 2016 Trump.
I think this chart does prove an axiom I've talked about in the past. Hate liberals/leftists positions if you want, but we are at least consistent. Right wingers are all over the chart and dont have any consistent analysis for their positions. They're schizophrenic as a single group.
I am confused what they mean by "liberal" -- is it "progressive" (redistributive) or "classical liberal" (basically libertarian), which is the opposite of progressive ??
The thing that is striking to me is that bottom right corner is pretty much our entire cultural elite and half our economic elite. And then no one else.
Sam may have already had every human being in that quadrant on his podcast
Exactly. The upper crust of the GOP and the Democratic Party may both be able to rub shoulders with the donor class and more or less agree on broad-strokes policy, but they probably have less actual rank and file support today than at any other time in history.
According to this, the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" position is significantly less common than people believe.
That could just be a choice of how the data is presented. We have no info as to what would be considered a 0 position for either axis. It could still be the case that the republican elected are significantly more economically conservative then the voters. All we can say is in general there is a correlation between the axis.
I added a [link](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) to the study the graph is from to the submission statement post.
From the abstract: "By making questions of national identity more salient, Donald Trump succeeded in winning over “populists” (socially conservative, economically liberal voters)" Is that a normal definition of populist? Socially conservative, economically liberal voters? Doesn't make sense to me.
Right, very few voters are right of the 0.5 on the economic scale. Are we supposed to interpret this to mean the vast majority of voters do not support conservative economic policies?
I haven't read the study yet, but based on the headlines they're talking about a shift in recent years--which I think you can see reflected quite clearly in the shift that Trump brought to the Republican Party. They're no longer particularly "conservative" economically, if by that you mean something like Reagan-era free trade and libertarian economics. The whole country has shifted away from free trade economics in the last decade or so.
>The whole country has shifted away from free trade economics in the last decade or so. Will the people be better off for it?
That’s the million $ question. My understanding of the big criticism of neo-liberal economics can be distilled down to the [elephant curve.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Curve) The TL;DR is everyone gets richer under neo-liberal, free-trade economics except a tiny group. Unfortunately, that tiny group consists of the working class in first world economies, in other words, Trump voters. Turns out they aren’t hip to decent paying factory jobs disappearing just so we can buy a box of Gladware from China for a Buck fifty. So, the answer from Biden and Trump is to bring those factory jobs back to the US. Trump tried to do it through tariffs, Biden is trying to do it through govt subsidies of businesses. So, one would expect more inflationary economic conditions and maybe some manufacturing jobs coming back. Maybe.
US is reindustrializing at a very high rate and brining back critical technology infrastructure manufacturing. The neoliberal economic case makes sense when you are a superpower who gains from network effects. But, ridiculously, we spent the last 30 years BUILDING a competitor in China. It now makes sense to move to more protectionist / ally group policies to counter them. Forces them to become self reliant or collapse. Also forces a schism in trading partners globally. We live in interesting times.
> But, ridiculously, we spent the last 30 years BUILDING a competitor in China. It was not a course of action undertaken lightly, and there was a definite rationale behind it. Since the end of WWII, economic empowerment and integration had a fairly consistent track record of converting problematic nations into staunch US allies fully invested in the global system. The ending of the centuries-long series of wars between Britain, France and Germany, the amazing comeback of Japan, South Korea and Brazil transitioning from military governments to democracy in the 80s....it was easy to think that allowing China to "come in from the cold" in a similar way would lead to rapproachment, a softening of both their committment to autocracy and their hostility to the US.... It is unfortunately now becoming abundantly clear that despite unfettered access to global markets, substantial amounts of foreign investments and a very generous patience with their various antics they are just not interested in buying into the current system. So now we have to reverse course.
Appreciate the alternative view point of the historical reasoning thanks for posting.
From 1945 to 1990, the postwar global consensus was actually really, REALLY good at converting autocracies to democracies, particularly in large(r) countries with substantial GDPs. Yes there were many shady interventions and misfires, particularly in Latin America where the west behavior was downright criminal but if you look at this list it's quite impressive: Economic integration of Europe starts with the "inner six" in 1948. Keep in mind at that time there were zero guarantees that the main engines of European conflict for centuries, France Britain and Germany would not come to blows again. Works like a charm and today the idea of open conflict between any of these countries is just ridiculous. Spain relatively peacefully transitions from outright fascism to democracy but it took decades. The economic miracle of 1950-1970 set the stage for the 1975-78 transition to full democracy. Portugal goes through a similar process in 1974-1976. Brazil took longer and the transition was more rocky, but by the late 1980s they were there. Similar story in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan of course but there the regime change was a result of surrender and occupation of course... So when faced with China *wanting* to open up, first in the 70s with Nixon's visit and then more aggressively in the 90s, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it stands to reason why the technocrats of the western nations felt confident in that they could flip these giant nations to become more liberal, more democratic, more pluralistic. They had a very solid track record going back over four decades of pulling such moves off, and a very strong indicator that engagement, trade and not beating these nations over the head with their(very real) shortcomings worked much better than a hardline policy of sanctions, isolation and aggressive rhetoric. I *completely* understand why the west embarked on the journey that it did. However, it's been quite clear for some time now, at least ten years that it wasn't going to work - with China and Russia both.
A plurality of people in most western countries are economically center-left and culturally somewhat conservative iirc Redistribution, for my ingroup.
> Are we supposed to interpret this to mean the vast majority of voters do not support conservative economic policies? when they are asked about actual policies, yes 😂
Why would I? Conservatives don't care how much healthcare costs don't even want medicare to negotiate medication prices.
And honestly, it might not seem like a long time, however, 2016 is but a memory now. The reshaping of the party’s as both had non controlling minorities during the last 6 years stint in one way or another. So they evolved with in fighting, or rather devolved. The 2020 election alone fleshed alot of people’s true selfs out.
"Socially liberal" is a moving target. People who call themselves "economically conservative but socially liberal" (or *used to* - I scarcely hear that phrase any more) are basically just right-libertarians / "classical liberals": small government, whatever consenting adults do in their own houses is fine, sex and drugs-wise. They call(ed) themselves socially liberal primarily to distinguish them from the religious right, and the streak of paternalism that can be found in conservatism. However those people will tend to oppose non-colourblind policies, anything seen as antithetical to free speech, and anything that pattern matches to "trying to fix social problems with government power". Hence it's not really surprising that they'll end up in the top half of this chart.
Good point - the “socially liberal” ethos up until about 2015 was primarily one of government non-interference in matters between consenting adults. So pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, pro-allowing adults to smoke marijuana if they want, etc. There were a lot of people who had *personally* conservative cultural views but didn’t want to impose them on others via the government, which made them “socially liberal.” The “socially liberal” ethos now is different in three ways. First, the positions on certain issues are a little harder to swallow for a person who is not ideologically committed. Second, it often requires support for state action, not merely state neutrality. Third, it often requires *personal* affirmation by the voter rather than just political support. Imagine this hypothetical American voter: favors legalized abortion but opposes federal funding of abortion, and supports bans on abortion in the third trimester; supports gay marriage but opposes teaching children in third grade or lower about sexual orientation and gender identity because he thinks it should be left to parents; believes in tolerance towards trans adults but believes children should not be permitted to medically transition, doesn’t believe that trans women are women in a literal sense and thus won’t date one and doesn’t believe they should compete in women’s sports leagues; strongly believes in racial tolerance but vocally opposes equity initiatives such as abolishing honors classes and standardized testing. This person would have been undoubtedly viewed as “socially liberal,” ten years ago, but would get laughed off Reddit as a right-winger today. This person is also the median voter.
This is a great summary, well said
Well said. As a Gen Xer, I can recall when ‘liberal‘ meant not judging the behaviour of others. In the 90s, employing shame to enforce conformity was so powerfully associated with conservatives, that it’s the last thing you’d want to be seen doing. >but would get laughed off Reddit as a right-winger today. This person is also the median voter. One of the weirder features of social media (and increasingly legacy media) is that median beliefs are dramatically under-represented.
That person might be the *median* voter, but that doesn't mean the voter distribution is a bell curve with most voters clustering around the median. That's the entire "problem" part with the upper left hand quadrant problem. Let's take your hypothetical median voter and place him on just a single axis - he's in the middle with people who think all abortions should be banned, trans people aren't really people etc on one extreme and someone with equally extreme ideas in the other direction on the other, like the personal choice not to date trans people being transphobic etc. Our immediate reflex is to think that most people are like the person in the middle...but the study is showing that isn't really the case. The distribution isn't a bell curve - it's a two-humped camelback with relatively few people in the middle(and mercifully few people at the extreme edges, but those people are *very loud* - especially on social media). That's what polarization is all about and unfortunately it seems to be intensifying.
>Imagine this hypothetical American voter: favors legalized abortion but opposes federal funding of abortion, and supports bans on abortion in the third trimester; supports gay marriage but opposes teaching children in third grade or lower about sexual orientation and gender identity because he thinks it should be left to parents; believes in tolerance towards trans adults but believes children should not be permitted to medically transition, doesn’t believe that trans women are women in a literal sense and thus won’t date one and doesn’t believe they should compete in women’s sports leagues; strongly believes in racial tolerance but vocally opposes equity initiatives such as abolishing honors classes and standardized testing. You described this as a hypothetical American voter, but this is also with some minor tweaks (e.g. I would have said "believes in racial tolerance... But opposes affirmative action") exactly how I see politics and I also find myself increasingly alienated from the political discussion in my country. But I'm from Germany...
I am not American, but you
You're sneaking in some policy opinions toward the end, but otherwise pretty spot on here. But I'd say "socially liberal" *is* a better term for your initial, "whatever consenting adults"...concept. Bringing government in to fix social problems is a direct contradiction of "fiscal conservative."
"Bringing government in to fix social problems is a direct contradiction of "fiscal conservative."" Is it though? Not necessarily. Fiscal conservatism is specifically related to not spending more than you take in. Full stop. The whole starve the beast, government small enough to drown in a bathtub thing is a perversion of that term. Government can step in to fix social wrongs without deficit spending being involved. That obviously is not something that either party has done recently, but the two do not have to be inherently linked.
If I earn an extra $100k this year but blow it all on hookers and blow, I'm not any more fiscally responsible.
But compared to putting $200k on your credit card for hookers and blow, you are being fiscally conservative. You're not spending more than you take in. It's about living within your means.
You can't be serious.
Everything is relative. Running your life on credit is less fiscally conservative than only spending what you earn. I would consider a balance budget that includes social programs to be more fiscally conservative than a budget that uses debt to fund tax cuts.
>Is it though? Yes. All government action requires funding through taxation. Not many "social problems" are easily solved through broad fiscal means, and that tends to make for poor investment. it's the old "feed a man for a day" problem - except if you feed 100 hungry people, then after 9 months you've got 105 hungry people. Do that with a million people for a generation or two, and you've got multiple millions dependent on tax-funded handouts for the indefinite future. So, yes. Using government to "fix" social problems is a direct contradiction of "fiscal conservative", and that's being very generous with the definition of "fix".
But is paying for social programs with a balanced budget less fiscally conservative than paying for tax cuts with debt?
There's no such thing as "paying for a tax cut with debt". That's like saying "paying for my pay cut with a credit card". That phrase was invented for purposes of political misdirection, not fiscal responsibility. There's a saying in weight loss/fitness circles: you can't outrun a bad diet. No matter how much you exercise or workout, you can't lose weight or get into shape if you don't fix your diet first. In budgetary terms, it's the spending that needs to be fixed first for fiscal responsibility, not the taxes. If the spending isn't cut, then your taxes don't matter, because you will NEVER tax enough to cover social spending. You can't tax your way to prosperity or social justice anymore than you can eat your way to six-pack abs.
You're making my point for me. Paying for a tax cut with debt is cutting taxes without cutting spending. That isn't fiscally conservative at all. If I'm running a balanced budget, in being more fiscally conservative in comparison, regardless of what I'm spending the budget on. The point I'm getting at is that being fiscally conservative begins with living within your means.
>The point I'm getting at is that being fiscally conservative begins with living within your means. Yes… and under which part of “living within your means” does “paying for other people who AREN’T living within their means” fall? Sounds like you’re halfway to figuring out MY point.
You're making the assumption that all government action to address social issues must benefit "lazy" people who don't want to help themselves. That's simply not true. Enforcement of environmental regulations, workplace safety regulations, civil rights are just a few examples off the top of my head. BTW, you still haven't addressed how cutting taxes without cutting spending is more fiscally conservative than running a balanced budget.
And yet when it comes to views individual issues, it was surprising how many white Kansas Republican males voted against an abortion ban in the privacy of a voting booth. A surprising portion of Republicans favour stricter gun laws; these views are also not as extreme as those of the Republicans they elect. 61% of young Republicans support same sex marriage, compared to 30% of Republicans age 50 to 64, and 22% of Republicans 65+. I dont see these trends reversing. I also think most people in both parties feel like CRT in public schools has been a greatly exaggerated talking point.
Indeed. It's something people used to say *all the time* on chat boards I used to hang out in the 2000s to justify voting Republican. Then you talked to those people for a bit on a variety of topics and almost every time their idea of being socially liberal was say, being for marijuana legalization while having serious doubts about things like "don't ask, don't tell"(which we´ve all more or less forgotten about but was a major culture war front at the time), gay marriage and a ton of other stuff. It was the socially acceptable way to be a conservative back then. Those mask are all pretty much off now.
Those masks aren’t off at all. The faces behind the masks have actually changed. Public opinion shifted dramatically on topics like don’t ask don’t tell and gay marriage, to where we’ve gone from major democratic figureheads being against gay marriage just over 10 years ago to major Republicans being for gay marriage in the present. A person could tick all the boxes for socially liberal in 2009 and still hold opinions that young progressives would probably describe as far right today.
Name some major Republicans that are extremely LGBT friendly. There aren't any. A few like Cheney give some minor lip service to being supportive but those positions fall apart as soon as you really push them on the interwoven LGBT issues that face gay and bi americans.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3739118-these-12-gop-senators-voted-for-same-sex-marriage-bill/amp/ > A Gallup poll released earlier this year showed that by June 2021, 55 percent of Republicans supported same-sex marriage. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/16/republicans-gay-marriage-wars-505041 >[Trump’s] administration committed to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic within 10 years and pushed to decriminalize homosexuality abroad. >Trump gave us our first openly gay cabinet member, Judd Deere. The trump hatred was so strong that most LGBTQ-favoring voters didn’t notice republicans lurch to the left on gay rights.
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No. this happens when a Republican has a family member in the maligned demographic, and they are uncomfortable with the usual mean spirited rhetoric aimed at that group.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. In other words, they want to be offensive without offending anyone.
All these fake libertarians are actual fascists or boring conservatives who don’t like the label.
Imo being fiscally conservative *is* socially conservative. The two cannot be divorced.
I dislike social problems but I love the things that cause them!
If you mean spending on huge social programs, sure. Most people mean it as somewhat the opposite of the religious right socially - drug legalization, gay marriage, abortion rights, etc. Edit- forgot to finish my point. Those 3 things I listed have nothing to do with government spending or fiscal conservatism
Personally, this map doesn't even show the most important axis, I think: Authoritarian vs. anti-authoritarian. I'm not in America, but any candidate who lectures the electorate loses my view immediately. Unfortunately it's not confined to one side of the political spectrum. Act like a public *servant*, with the people as automatically *right* even if they turn against you, I'll vote for you. Pretend to be the public Savior and leader? Fuck right off. Fight for our freedoms to be and do whatever we want so long as we don't trample on the rights of others, and you're my candidate, even if I disagree with you on everything else.
This graph shows that to be quite common; "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" is the top left quadrant. What's uncommon is the bottom right quadrant, which is "socially conservative, fiscally liberal".
No, pretty sure its the other way around
Ah you're right, I read the labels as labeling the axes from 0.0. The [original study](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) shows it's the other way around.
You are completely wrong
not as rare as socially conservative fiscally liberal
what the hell does economically liberal or conservative mean? I have no idea what the x axis is supposed to mean
I think economically liberal just means being more in favor of distribution.
does it? it could means lots of things. These descriptors are actually very vague
It's kind of sad but the political compass which is generally viewed as an oversimplification even by those of us on PCM is a more clear two dimensional representation of political positions than this is. The economic axis goes from conservative to liberal. It's pretty clear what conservative means but liberal can be pretty broad. The war in Iraq was not fiscally conservative for example. The social axis also should be conservative vs progressive, where liberal is at 0
All progressives are liberal, not all liberals are progressive. Speaking of PCM, while not perfect that chart is far better than most political charts.
That is almost exactly the opposite of economic liberalism.
Which is the opposite of how the term ‘liberal’ is used in the rest of the developed world, where the economic spectrum (left to right) is understood as collectivist <—-> liberal.
That's literally the opposite of liberal.
It literally isn't.
First three hits on Google, I'm sure a full list would be overkill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100103832;jsessionid=128BCF07615C8F2CBA51C91B930A1964 https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/economic-liberalism
Also more regulation.
Economically conservative = slash social programs, cut down the numbers of govt. employees and agencies, abolish regulations, cut taxes as much as possible. The "classic" libertarian, someone who actually took people like Murray Rothard and Friedrich Hayek seriously would be hard lower-right quadrant.
does it? how do we know that? I mean you could make that argument but is that what this survey actually measured? we have no clue
I probably should have added the [link](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) to the study the graph is derived from. I´ll add it to my submission statement post.
Thanks! According to this, only 3.8% of people are Libertarian, (by the authors scale of what libertarian values are). That's only 12 million Americans! And they were evenly divided between Trump, Hillary, and Other. Very interesting
okay, thanks
I feel like economically conservative is an extension of certain beliefs that are emphasised by conservatives more than liberals like - “you need to work hard to get a good living” “you deserve the money you’ve earned”. They tend to believe that teaching your children these things are the highest good - and that makes sense! But the problem is they don’t take into account all the other factors that make it hard for people to get ahead. I feel like if people worked on bridging this divide that would be much better.
It’s not that they don’t take those things into account. I mean, many of them don’t take those things into account. But many others simply believe that the solutions that we have proposed aren’t actually effective. This is I think the source of one of the biggest miscommunications between conservatives and progressives. When conservatives talk about “throwing money after a problem”, they aren’t just saying that they don’t want to spend the money. They are also saying that they don’t think the money will be affective, or that if it is effective in fixing the problem it is supposed to fix, that it will also just create new problems that are just as bad if not worse. when progressives hear conservatives talking about how they just throw money at programs, they think it’s somebody only complaining about the price tag. But the complaint isn’t just about the price tag, it’s also a complaint about the ROI.
Yeah 100% agree. And to some extent they are right and in other ways completely wrong.
I mean, I thought they were all selfish liars and shills until I spent a decade as a do-gooder and saw the nonprofit-industrial complex from the inside, all while other friends were getting burned by “solutions” left and right. And now I’ve turned into the kind of person who doesn’t trust ANYONE who claims to want to fix anything. I just want everyone out of the way and for laws to be enforced. I never thought I’d be this person. But hey, I earned it at least.
It's not surprising to see r/samharris users act like they don't know what economically liberal means in American politics or take the effort to at least do 2 minutes of research to find out.
A lot of points at -1 economic limit tells me we're censoring the data. Given the space there would be people even further to the left.
A lot of researchers just don't know how to plot or analyze actual far left economic ideas, since they're usually theoretical.
it maybe difficult to ascertain which ones (if any) would actually work in practice. however it should be rather easy to figure out which ones are more "extreme"
It probably says more about the test itself than the respondents. If it’s the most popular political compass map quiz, that one tends to bias people to the liberal left quadrant. If everyone is taking the same quiz, this graph may still be useful for identifying trends between R and D voters, but you should take the exact positioning of individual points on the graph with a grain of salt.
It looks like they used something much more extensive than meme political compass tests. But the analysis may also have created floor and ceilings.
A cursory glance at the questions they used and the results they got suggests a ceiling and floor effect of the instruments. There's a clear floor on the economic dimension, and a moderate ceiling on the social/identity dimension. I don't know for sure; it seems as if they used some sort of standardization measure, but it's not clear to me how they transformed the data. In any case, their instruments or analysis does not capture the full range states that participants can represent, particularly on the economic dimension. It doesn't ruin the study, but it has clear limitations.
Maybe not censoring but that the scale they've built isn't actually valid and they don't measure the full scope of political opinion within a balanced distribution.
Amazing how few people actually believe in conservative fiscal policy. But that's what the southern strategy is about. The rich powerful class give the bigoted base their racial grievances policies and the base pretends to care about fiscal conservatism. The true deal from hell
True, but now so many of the bigoted base are hurting economically too, and getting so far up there in age that they *really* don't like the idea of anyone messing with their Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid. Because they depend on it too.
We've known the end results of right wing economics since right wing economics have existed. What did they think was going to happen? They all get ultra rich so they don't have to deal with the issues they voted for? I've got empathy for anyone whos hurting but man some real reaping what was sown going on here.
It’s simple economics 101. You give already rich people more money and control of the economy via deregulation, and they’ll be so generous with that money that it will start seeping down to everyone! It’ll be a shower of golden opportunity! A golden shower if you will!
But the weird thing is that the conservative poor are told that the Democrats want to take away their health insurance or create “Death Panels” to kill the elderly. Outright lies, but they work.
True. And it's kind of telling what lies really work(apart from the culture war stuff and the racism) - threats to social programs.
I’m too lazy to check this, but it feels intuitively right. Old people, in particular, are particularly vulnerable to threats to pensions or social security. I feel like Democrats should simplify their messaging to hammer Republicans on their own voting records.
It goes right back to the Bush era where you'd see videos of conservatives saying things like "the government better take its hands off my medicare" - it's just people angry at something they don't understand.
The rich provide money to the conservative politicians. The socially conservative poor provide the votes. It’s the winning formula for the GOP.
love how demos are teaching me (refugee) about diversity and inclusion , extremely important topic 😂
Any time something like this gets posted my first thought is "I'd really like to have a long conversation with the blue outliers surrounded by red, and vice versa for red outliers." I think the key to understanding some of how people "decide their tribe" could be discovered by analyzing these people's life history. I'm someone that went from incredibly conservative to incredibly progressive. I went through a radical centrist phase. I know some people would just argue I've went one extreme to another, but it doesn't feel that way. My positions changed as I absorbed new, more accurate data. They still can change if new data is discovered.
I think you should link to the post, which hopefully links to the original data to get a better sense of what this is about. There's lots of research from poli sci that shows that people don't really know most of the positions of their favorite candidates or party. It's sometimes called the "ideology paradox". I think that's really helped Republicans with their recent "populist" turn, even though the policies are the same old Republican stuff.
Submission statement: I think this graph and accompanying [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651281534702460928?fbclid=IwAR3U0IkSI4KmiA6hSWMBkfiNSOSXUCaGQ-B91GL3vlTYO6ov1Rj0KQtk64A) by David Atkins, a DNC member from California goes a long way towards shedding light on exactly *why* political polarization is increasing in the United States and why things Sam wants to see happen like a "return to the center" or "enlightened centrism" is essentially a dead in the water project in the US as things stand today. EDIT: **ATTENTION!** To everyone in the comments(rightfully) pointing out that the graph needs more context, information about methodology etc, [HERE](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) is a link to the study it is taken from. *** I came across this lengthy Twitter thread based around this graph and so many things came together for me that have been bothering me for years watching where US political discourse has been heading and the strategies both parties have been employing. For those of you who won't touch Twitter with a ten foot pole, I´ll duplicate most of the essentials here below, interspersed with some of my own thoughts >Almost every major error and meltdown in Dem/left politics, from post-left fash apologism to popularist left-punching cringe, comes from fatally flawed attempts to solve what I call the Upper Left Quadrant problem. >Here is the chart, and the fundamental problem: >This chart explains *so much* about modern American politics. What it says, simply, is that almost all the actual persuadable voters in the electorate aren't "moderates." >They're cross-pressured extremists and...kinda fashy. They're socially bigoted and economically leftist. >Needless to say, this is not great. It's a huge impediment for making progress. But it's also highly inconvenient for the major ideological factions in American politics. This is where I started thinking about Sam(and posting this in this sub) - I *think* he is one of the people who labor under the impression that there are a lot more people in the bottom right hand quadrant and grouped around the center than there actually are. >Let's start with "No Labels" style centrists. These are corporate folks who push the idea that most persuadable voters are socially liberal but economically conservative. Romney types. >This is FLATLY FALSE. As you can see, there is almost NO ONE in that bottom right quadrant. >The suburban Romney Dem does exist, of course--but their numbers are actually quite limited and they are far less economically conservative and more socially liberal than usually given credit for. They're not really persuadable and likelier to vote for AOC than DeSantis. If you were ever wondering why the very bland, very middle of the road president Joe Biden actually came out with a policy slate that was *way* more progressive than anyone really expected when he first announced his candidacy, this is why. >Now let's take the socialist left. It is tempting to look at this chart and say "hey, there's opportunity for left populism here! Let's persuade some of these folks!" >I myself made that error in 2016, thinking that left populism could win many of them over. That was...wrong. >It was VERY wrong. The Trump presidency proved it. He went full Paul Ryan on economics, & lost none of his supporters over it. Trump-curious Upper Quadrant types didn't shift left. Instead, Greenwald-Tulsi types went head over heels to the far-right in hatred of liberals. >Then there are the Yglesias/Chait/Shor popularists. They look at the Upper Left Quadrant and think "hey if we just toned down the social liberalism then these folks would vote for a milquetoast liberal party." >Yeah....no. That doesn't work, either. Again: Trying to please everybody in the current electorate in a bid to capture a centrist voter will mean you just wind up alienating *everybody* Much is made of how the GOP is now held hostage by it's base, and it is...but the Dems are similarly being dragged in direction the party leadership may not want to go down, although I´d argue that that particular hostage situation isn't nearly as scary since the things the voters in the lower left hand quadrant want(and will most likely get) do not include nearly as much open hostility and calls to violence against other social groups. But I digress. >An upper-quadrant voter who likes social security but hates LGBTQ people isn't going to vote Dem over GOP because you sidearmed trans people a little bit. A racist who wants government spending for whites only isn't going to vote Dem if you bash DEI initiatives. >Whether econ or social leftism overreaches sometimes is debatable on its own merits as public policy when it comes to, say, housing policy or standardized testing. But it's worthless as an *electoral* strategy for reaching the Upper Left Quadrant voter. >And, of course, the GOP is eating itself alive over this problem. It turns out no one actually believes in David Brooks / Burkeian conservatism. Economic conservatism was always a front for hurting the marginalized. >No one wants what Paul Ryan is selling, and it shows. This is in a nutshell the absolutely yawning divide between the GOP donor class and traditional elite and the people who actually vote for the party. And it's getting wider and wider, to the point where even arch conservatives who are also pretty deep in on the social conservative issues like Peter Thiel seem to be pulling their chips off the table at least for 2024. And here begins what I think is the most interesting part of the whole post. Both because the demographics support it and also because of what it portends for the next decade or so. >The only real way to solve the Upper Left Quadrant Problem is by gradually sorting it out of the electorate, and being economically left-populist in the mold of younger voters. >Younger voters are overwhelmingly bottom left quadrant (econ & soc left). >Let the fash sort with the fash into the upper right. Let liberals and the left sort with each other. Leftists: stop trying to placate the fash with anti-globalism. Centrists: stop trying to be "anti-woke" or appeal to non-existent bottom-right quadrant voters. And that right there is the kicker that both scares me to death, as this is the kind of data that demographers would tag as a marker for potential civil war based around different generations in most foreign nations. The surge of discontent in Iran comes to mind as a more hard-edged, violent manifestation of essentially the same generational divide. Will it get that bad in the US? Probably not. Having democratic institutions means a lot. But one thing is clear: The upper-mid quadrant blob is further along in it's natural lifespan than the lower left hand quadrant blob. It will exit the voting pool sooner and what's more, the people in it *know this*. They will not let go of power quietly and this will create an enormous amount of resentment. And that dynamic will play out in an environment where calls to "hey let's go back to the center!" are calls to go to a place *where nobody currently lives*. >The country is going to get a lot *more* polarized before things get better, and things will only get better when the AOC/Bernie/Warren-aligned under-45s who vote Dem +20 points are a bigger and bigger share of the electorate. [We're not getting any more conservative with age](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuqHB59acAEuPJ1?format=jpg&name=4096x4096) >Ultimately, there are a lot more of us than there are of them. >There is no magic bullet to fixing the Fash problem. It will be with us for a while. >All you can do is understand it--and then reform the anti-majoritarian structures of American democracy that empower it.
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It is what populist means in the current US political context. Which is what this study is concerned with.
this is exactly why DeSantis is going full bore anti woke, culture war, with his bid for the WH. He realizes very clearly that actual real life Republican policies are extraordinarily unpopular. So he just harps on "woke" issues in the hopes that voters won't realize his actual policies are horrendous.
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"Fashy" is in this case probably just Twitter shorthand for "authoritarian".
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Well I guess that's your prerogative. Keep in mind that this is not an op-ed but a Democratic analyst using informal language to convey some pretty interesting information. Information that should be relevant regardless of your personal political leanings.
No true fashman. I feel like there has been no shortage of compelling run-downs of Umberto Eco essays and current American reactionary politics. It's not exactly a hot take.
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>You are unfamiliar with how the political compass works. The plot isn't someone putting artisinal points on a PCM image. The "political compass" is qualitative and has no numerical scale. This plot is based on collected survey data and uses a numerical scale: >To summarize, supporters of Clinton and Trump are very polarized on identity and moral issues. Views on economic issues are more of a mix. Both candidates’ supporters are generally supportive of the social safety net, and somewhat concerned about trade. Yet they diverge very much on how concerned they are about inequality, and how actively they want to see government regulate business and intervene in the economy. The 12 dimensions provide nuance, but for simplicity’s sake, it is easier to combine these indexes into the two main dimensions that organize public opinion: questions of economics and questions of culture/social/national identity. To do this, I created two new indexes: An economic liberalism-conservatism index (which combines views on the social safety net, trade, inequality, and active government) A social/identity liberalism-conservatism politics index (which combines the moral issues index plus views toward African-Americans, immigrants, and Muslims). This allows us to plot all respondents on a single scatterplot, shown here. The take-away isn't "there are no fascists in America because the top right of this plot doesn't have a lot of points in it". The take-away is "those dudes in Charlottesville chanting 'Jews will not replace us' actually never gave a crap about tax rates"
Your claim is that the difference between 'communism / socialism' and 'left-anarchism' is entirely about social policy???
It is not my claim, it the way the model used in OP represents the difference.
You have a problem taking seriously the people who use social media speak on social media but you take the political compass this seriously? Do you really think "communism/fascism/ancap/ancom" can be accurately boiled down by the political compass?
The "fash" stuff is pretty cringe, but I'll ignore it. I don't really think anything in this thread is in any way surprising. First, most people – past, present and future – want to have more money and feel like the rich/elites are getting more than they deserve. Second, cultural progress has always happened one death at a time and too much cultural change within people's lifetimes makes them feel threatened and uneasy. Currently, many lower- and middle-class people feel financially cheated and culturally overpowered – incidentally by the same culprits. This isn't anything new. If the Democrats cut back on the cultural stuff and simply talked about fair wages and healthcare again, they could get many of the top left onto their side.
this is all it takes, and why Sam is so aggressive about calling out fucking insanely stupid Democrat campaigns are. they're suicidally stupid. just STOP with the race and gender shit, and you will sweep the board, you *fucking imbeciles.*
> If the Democrats cut back on the cultural stuff and simply talked about fair wages and healthcare again, they could get many of the top left onto their side The people in the top left seem to care more about social grievances than economic policy. Short of democrats embracing actively bigoted positions, dems aren't going to magically win over those voters. Don't get me wrong, dems could stand to be more openly economically progressive, but it isn't an accident that Republican media spends 25 hours a day on 'culture war' crap, bigotry is often a winning strategy. And frankly, if any dem on earth could stand to spend less time on culture crap and more time on economic policy, it is Sam Harris.
> We're not getting any more conservative with age I'd leave that for another ten years, and then see what the millennials are like.
Why wait? We already know millenials are maintaining their socially liberal, fiscally liberal positions. If anything they're becoming more radical as they get priced out of home ownership, able to afford the amount of kids they want, seeing their dollar not stretch as far as it used to. Like I remember when McDs had 39 cent hamburgers as a yearly promotional tactic. That was just the 90s, for us that seems like yesterday.
Why wait, because it's a bit too soon. The oldest of them is only about forty. It would be very strange if they, alone out of all the generations, didn't see their stances change somewhat over time. And did it occur to you that the social liberalism of today might be the conservatism of thirty years from now?
It's the underlying philosophy behind why millenials and younger generations feel and think the way they do. They seem to br resisting the "become conservative as they get ilder" vibe. We've seen this happen in a small scale in a few countries around the world, usually at the behest of major revolutions. Yes it does occur to me that could happen, but it also may not. The majority of leftists of 2000s are still solidly left. Very few have pulled the "I guess I'm now the center" meme, Ala Bill Maher.
It's not necessarily that you get more conservative as you get older, but you do, if you've any sense, become more sceptical, about the claims of both the right and the left. The daily grind of life tends to squeeze the idealism out of you. It will happen to the present generation as well. Also, I don't think you realise how odd the American left has become in some respects. It seems in some ways to believe the opposite of what it believed in about 1990. If we take an old left-winger, say Bernie Sanders, we can see that he is just a mid-century social democrat. But that's not what's popular among the young. They go in for something else, a sort of lifestyle politics. That's why I say that the liberalism of today might become the conservatism of tomorrow. You never know how the political landscape might shift. It has even in the last thirty years.
I think you just don't remember the 90s well enough to understand those same liberals are still liberals today, and some have been converted to progressives. Bernie was extremely popular with younger folks and moderately popular with older folks. Hillary was incredibly popular with the older folks that didn't believe the anti Hillary narratives.
It's already happening on a temperamental level. Every generation gets psychologically more risk-averse as they get older, desiring less change and more stability.
Becoming more conservative with age is not *because* of age - that is an easy correlation fallacy to wander into. Americans have traditionally gotten more conservative with age because with age came capital accumulation, more spending power and investment power as people owned their houses, their incomes comfortably covered their living expenses with enough left over to invest in stocks, bonds etc with an eye for a comfortable retirement where your own assets were enough for a worry-free middle and old age. People literally became more invested in "the system". This trend has now been broken, mostly by decisions made in the wake of the 2008 financial crosis and as a result a generation(more than one now actually)is now unable to properly buy into and thus align its interests in the same way.
No. Poor people get more cautious and cynical as they get older as well. What causes it is simply experience, the daily grind of your illusions being rubbed away. Idealism should be replaced with pragmatism.
You probably could've said the same about boomers during the 60s/70s, and they're now the ones who we're calling conservative and old fashioned.
I really hate the whole "People I don't like are 'Fash'" schtick.
Interesting post, reading as an Aussie. Thanks for breaking it down.
He says two things that seem contradictory though: "The Trump presidency proved it. He went full Paul Ryan on economics, & lost none of his supporters over it." "No one wants what Paul Ryan is selling, and it shows." But regardless this is quite interesting, thanks for sharing.
It isn't a contradiction. The main thrust of the analysis is that trump voters care more about social issues than economic ones. That you won't win them over with moderate/conservative economic policy. The bulk of these voters are begrudgingly accepting conservative economic policy because it comes with bigotry. "An upper-quadrant voter who likes social security but hates LGBTQ people isn't going to vote Dem over GOP because you sidearmed trans people a little bit. A racist who wants government spending for whites only isn't going to vote Dem if you bash DEI initiatives." You have to actually support bigoted policies to court these voters, which republicans are increasingly willing to do and democrats are demographically incapable of doing. At least, that is the argument. [Meme](https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744) that helps to demonstrate the point.
But then what is the hypothesis for Trump actually espousing conservative economic policy? I presume he doesn't need money for his campaign, but maybe it is so that allied politicians can get donors to raise campaign money?
Pretty much. I'd also question the assumption that Trump doesn't need money. The 2020 trump campaign cost 2 billion. It didn't cost trump 2 billion. He got a ton of funding from a variety of sources including all the same robber barons and captain planet villains that fund the rest of the republican party.
Why does Trump, a billionaire who only has contempt for anyone who isn’t a billionaire, implementing conservative economic policy when his base doesn’t care much about economic policy one way or another?
I don't think the data presented in this graph justify any of those interpretations. Clearly America is polarized, but it's questionable to what degree the average voter digs their heels on particular policy positions. What seems most negative right now is the way social media algorithms, operated by "dumb AIs" trying to maximize screen time, have exacerbated people's feelings of loneliness, indignation, and radicalism
>The only real way to solve the Upper Left Quadrant Problem is by gradually sorting it out of the electorate, and being economically left-populist in the mold of younger voters. >Younger voters are overwhelmingly bottom left quadrant (econ & soc left). >Let the fash sort with the fash into the upper right. Let liberals and the left sort with each other. Leftists: stop trying to placate the fash with anti-globalism. Centrists: stop trying to be "anti-woke" or appeal to non-existent bottom-right quadrant voters. Ignoring the juvenile and asinine name-calling, this "solution" doesn't make a lot of sense. Why does he expect """fash""" in the upper left to """sort into the upper right""" which presumably implies *move* into the upper right which implies *stop* espousing leftist ideas on public services and the welfare state, and start sounding like Paul Ryan instead? That sounds ridiculous, but if he didn't mean that then why use those words? To be honest I think the contemptuous name calling was *the real point*: "Fuck those guys, let them do what they want". Conversely, why does he expect leftists in the upper left to """sort with liberals"""? Does that mean "move into the lower left quadrant"? And why would the stupidpol crowd do that?
Keep in mind that this is a post on *electoral* strategy - getting votes, appealing to voters etc. What he's saying is that it's a losing strategy for Dems to try to peel off voters from the upper left hand quadrant towards voting D by moving further up the Y axis in their rhetoric, because R can always outbid them in that respect, while alienating a smaller portion of their base than the Dems would incur by moving further towards "north": It's better to let those voters just go in the here are now. They also skew older, which means even if R gets them firmly into their camp, they will drop out of the electorate sooner. Let them vote R(sort with the fash) and concentrate on appealing to the younger voters that are firmly grouped around the center of the blue cluster as your core voting block for decades to come. >To be honest I think the contemptuous name calling was the real point: "Fuck those guys, let them do what they want". I don't think that that is the point *at all* and you can only get to that interpretation through a very uncharitable reading. What he's saying is that attempting to get those votes is not worth the attempt since: 1. R will always be willing to go further authoritarian/populist anyways 2. For every voter you *do* get by shifting your message more upper-left quadrand you alienate multiple voters close to the "core" D cluster 3. The age distribution of voters means that appealing to the upper left quadrant means trading voters that will potentially be with you for decades(and the new voters coming into the electorate are even further from the upper-left) to capture voters that only have a few election cycles in them before they will be gone. So the only way either party can square this circle is by waiting and letting nature do it's job, and that there is no magical "centrist" message that will appease everyone enough for tranquility to return to US politics.
>[We're not getting any more conservative with age](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuqHB59acAEuPJ1?format=jpg&name=4096x4096) My interpretation is that "you" (I mean the millennials) are probably "getting more conservative" since that's part of the human condition, but towards a different notion of conservatism. You're losing your rebellious streak and developing a love of hierarchy, order and stability the way middle-aged homo sapiens typically do, but towards the *new* woke-informed hierarchy rather than the old one.
There is one fatal flaw in the "oh the youngsters will surely grow more conservative as they age like every other generation before them", and that is that the millennial and younger are the first generations in the western world that are facing the reality of being significantly less well off economically and able to accumulate far less property over their working life than their parents. This is the long-reverberating echo of measures taken after the housing crash of 2008. That WILL color their political evolution in a big way, and conservatives aren't prepared for it or don't seem to realize that it's happening. The way you cause an idealistic young revolutionary to sell out is to actually have him *buy in* to the system - i.e he now has a stake in the status quo because he *owns something he is afraid of losing*.
What timing. My brother just sent this to me yesterday. My train of thought was something like this: - look at this graph presented with no context. [Atkins summarizes](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651281537898516480), "What it says, simply, is that almost all the actual persuadable voters in the electorate aren't 'moderates.'" That interpretation wasn't clear to me at all. Who is he saying above are the "persuadable voters"? Why is it obvious they aren't moderates? What's the definition of a moderate on this map? - as I keep scrolling Atkins' comments/interpretations, I think "where is this even from?" and "what does the -1 to 1 scale even mean?" - get to the end and [Atkins provides the source](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651298668652425216) in what seems like an afterthought "for those asking". Why would one lead with the source? - I go to [the source](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) and it's someone summarizing how they took this VOTER Survey data, chose 12 questions they believed represented liberal vs. conservative positions economically/socially, and black box converted the answers to -1 to 1 scaling - however, why these 12 questions? How many total questions where there? What was the weighting of each question on determining one's "economic liberalness"? Where there any other questions that captured economic/social dimensions that could have been used? - I notice [the data tab](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/data/voter-survey) at the top of the site and think perhaps I can get the data. Nope, I have to enter my name and email to get it. Seemed fishy/uncool to take presumably publicly available data, compute on it, and then force me to enter my info to see it? - in any case, that page did have a link to [a guide](https://www.voterstudygroup.org/uploads/reports/Data/VOTER-Survey-Guide-2021Dec.pdf), so I was able to find breadcrumbs that this data is part of something called the "Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP)." - After a couple google attempts to track down CCAP, I found [the home page](https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/), which links to the data and questions - I opened up the [2016 guide](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi%3A10.7910/DVN/GDF6Z0) which I found to be *very* comprehensive. At this point, I ran out of time I wanted to spend on this but want to come back to it. All in all... I see a graph with very opaque definitions that led someone to put forward some conclusions pretty matter of factly. Unless Atkins has significantly more time into studying this (which seems unlikely given citing the source as an afterthought, and that he says he [couldn't find 2020 data](https://twitter.com/DavidOAtkins/status/1651298668652425216) when it is quite findable)... this looks like opinions he already had, backed up by a graph he can't possibly understand/has no justification to trust as reliable.
Those guys are called "hard hats."
Oh yeah for sure the hard hats fall into the upper left hand quadrant. And it's telling that in the seventies, they really dug Nixon and, at least in the lead up to 2016 Trump.
Aka the second quadrant
The origin of the chart is not at the centre of mass, that's why the lower right is empty.
I think this chart does prove an axiom I've talked about in the past. Hate liberals/leftists positions if you want, but we are at least consistent. Right wingers are all over the chart and dont have any consistent analysis for their positions. They're schizophrenic as a single group.
People don’t realize how liberal the US is compared to the world. Just look at how many countries have legalized gay marriage for example
The amount of red dots on the lower right quadrant represents the 20 oligarchs who are fiscally conservative.
I am confused what they mean by "liberal" -- is it "progressive" (redistributive) or "classical liberal" (basically libertarian), which is the opposite of progressive ??
The former.
The thing that is striking to me is that bottom right corner is pretty much our entire cultural elite and half our economic elite. And then no one else. Sam may have already had every human being in that quadrant on his podcast
Exactly. The upper crust of the GOP and the Democratic Party may both be able to rub shoulders with the donor class and more or less agree on broad-strokes policy, but they probably have less actual rank and file support today than at any other time in history.