why “liberal” can sound like “upper-class”

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Peter

In an article reporting The New York Times‘ recent battleground state polls, Lisa Lerer and Ruth Igielnik quote Jonathan Ball, a Michigan floor-installer:

[He] said he believed Mr. Trump would do more to help working Americans than Ms. Harris. “I think she’s more liberal. I just don’t think she’s all for the middle class,” said Mr. Ball, 46, who plans to support Mr. Trump for a third time this fall. “I just see her one-sided. You know, for the rich.”

I don’t know how many people associate being liberal with being from (or for) the rich. I would like to see survey data specifically on that question, which would allow us to measure the prevalence of this view in various parts of the electorate. But we know that Mr. Ball’s view is not unique. In her book American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears, Farah Stockman discusses an Indiana industrial worker who divides the world between workers (such as himself) and capitalists, urges his union to fight the company, and votes for Trump. His wife is more favorable to management. On that basis, he categorizes her as a “liberal.” I’ve heard real people say the same kind of thing myself.

I grew up believing the opposite: that liberals were more favorable to workers than conservatives were. I acknowledge that this assumption is debatable. Libertarians argue that liberal policies are especially costly to working people. Socialists may distinguish bourgeois liberalism from more radical reform and sometimes see liberals as the main obstacles to social justice. But I doubt either framework is driving these workers’ interpretation of liberalism as favorable to the upper class.

Here is an alternative theory. If you are a worker and a consumer, you are always being notified of rules and policies that constrain and modify your behavior. Some of these rules result from governmental policies that I would code as “liberal.” For instance, the state might pass a law that results in your HR department warning you against sexual harassment. Some of the rules come from government but are not especially liberal, e.g., Don’t use marijuana. And many are not due to the government at all. For example, the same HR department that warns you not to sexually harass your colleagues also warns you not to take unauthorized breaks and not to use the company’s equipment for private purposes.

The tone, format, and consequences of all these rules are similar. The same people deliver and enforce them. These people are managers: white-collar workers with college degrees, sometimes from the corporate HQ in a big coastal city.

They talk and act rather like the most prominent advocates of liberal policies. First of all, politicians in general come from the same professions that set and enforce rules in the workplace. Nicholas Carnes notes that 75% of members of Congress were lawyers or business owners before they ran for office, compared to less than 2% who “came [directly] from working class occupations. … Even districts where working-class people make up disproportionate shares of voters seldom elect working-class politicians” (Carnes 2011). And, among politicians, Democrats are perhaps especially likely to sound like upper management. For instance, Democrats now represent the 17 richest congressional districts.

You’d have to be very politically sophisticated to separate the directives that result from liberal (or progressive, or leftist) governmental policies from those that are meant to profit the company. They all sound like the wishes of highly-educated and well-paid people at corporate headquarters. And the national leaders who advocate for the policies that are liberal sound just the same as your corporate managers.

Regulations can be beneficial and even necessary, but they are not very transparent. It is hard for the recipients to understand who is responsible for a given regulation; and legislators can’t be sure who will be affected, or how. Laws must go through regulatory agencies, courts, and private offices (like a corporation’s HR department) before they reach the people who are regulated, by which time the legislators who voted for them may not recognize the results. And workers and consumers receive a constant stream of directives that reflect companies’ wishes rather than legal mandates.

I am more enthusiastic about taxing and spending as tools of public policy. And I prefer direct, transparent taxes, especially taxes on personal income, rather than sales taxes, tariffs, or corporate income taxes, which have opaque and unpredictable costs for various people. We should be able to say: We compelled these people to pay this proportion of their incomes to buy these goods, which include new jobs for working people.

As long as we deputize private actors to regulate behavior, we must try to mitigate the resulting confusions. Small steps may be worth taking, like nominating Tim Walz instead of yet another big-city lawyer to be a face of the Democratic Party. But the problem may be endemic to the administrative state, in which case it requires more than cosmetic changes.

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using a model to explain a single case

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Peter

Charles Sanders Peirce introduced the logic of what he called “abduction” — a complement to both deduction and induction — with this example:

The surprising fact, C, is observed;
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course,
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.

At least since Harry Frankfurt in 1958, many readers have been skeptical. Can’t we make up an infinite number of premises that could explain any surprising fact?

For instance, Kamala Harris has gained in the polls compared to Joe Biden. If it were true that voters generally prefer female presidential candidates, then her rise would be a “matter of course.” But it is a mistake to infer that Harris has gained because she is a woman. Other explanations are possible and, indeed, more plausible.

Note that “voters prefer women candidates” is an empirical generalization. Generalizations cannot be derived from any single case. If that is what abduction means, then it seems shaky. Its only role might be to suggest hypotheses that should then be tested with representative samples or controlled experiments.

But what if A (the premise) is not an empirical generalization but rather a model? For instance, a model might posit that Harris’ current position in the polls is the combined result of eight different factors, some of them general (voters usually follow partisan cues) and some of them quite unrepeatable (the incumbent president has suddenly bowed out).

Positing a model to explain a single case has risks of its own. Perhaps we add no insight by contriving an elaborate model just to fit the observed reality. And we might be tempted to treat the various components of the model as general patterns and apply them elsewhere, even though one case should give us no basis for generalizing.

But let’s look at this example from a different perspective–a pragmatic one, as Peirce would recommend. After all, Peirce calls his topic “Abductive Judgment” (Peirce 1903), suggesting a connection to practical reason or phronesis.

The question is what should (someone) do? For instance, a month ago, should Joe Biden have dropped out and endorsed Harris? Right now, should Harris accentuate her gender or try to balance it with a male vice-presidential candidate?

Inductive logic might offer some insights. Research suggests that the choice of vice-president has never affected the outcome of a presidential election, and this general inference would suggest that Harris needn’t pay attention to the gender of her VP. But induction cannot answer other key questions, such as what to do when you replace the nominee 100 days before the election. (There is no data on this matter because it hasn’t happened before.)

Besides, various factors can interrelate. The general pattern that vice-presidents do not matter might be reversed in a situation where the nominee had herself been the second person on the ticket until last week.

And the important questions are inescapably normative. For Harris, one good goal is to win the election, but she must attend to other values as well. For instance, I think she should adopt positions that would benefit working-class voters of all races. Possibly this would help her win by restoring some of Biden’s working-class coalition from 2020. Polling data would help us assess that claim. But I favor a worker-oriented strategy for reasons of justice, and I think the important question is how (not whether) to campaign that way.

Models of social phenomena typically incorporate descriptive elements (Harris is down by two points today), causal claims (Trump is still benefitting from a minor convention bump), and normative premises (Harris must win)–all combined for the purpose of guiding action.

Arguably, we cannot do better than abduction when we are trying to decide what to do next. Beginning with a surprising fact, C (and almost anything can be seen as “surprising”), we must come up with something, A, that we can rely on to guide our next steps. A should not be a single sentence, but rather a model composed of various elements.

It is worthwhile to consider evidence from other cases that may validate or challenge components of A. But it is not possible to prove or disprove A. As the pioneering statistician Georg Rasch said, “Models should not be true, but it is important that they are applicable, and whether they are applicable for any given purpose must of course be investigated. This also means that a model is never accepted finally, only on trial.”

If a model cannot be true, why should we make it explicit? It lays out what we are assuming so that we can test the assumptions as we act. It promotes learning from error. And it can help us to hold decision-makers accountable. When evaluating leaders, we should not assess the outcomes, which are beyond anyone’s control, but rather the quality of their models and their ability to adjust in in the light of new experience.

Sources: Peirce, C.S. 1903. Lectures on Pragmatism, Lecture 1: Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences; Frankfurt, Harry G. “Peirce’s notion of abduction.” The Journal of Philosophy 55.14 (1958): 593-597. See also: choosing models that illuminate issues–on the logic of abduction in the social sciences and policy; modeling social reality; different kinds of social models

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nonviolence at the frontiers of democracy

Posted on June 17, 2024 by Peter

Last Thursday to Saturday was the Frontiers of Democracy conference, the thirteenth of these annual gatherings at Tisch College. Our theme was nonviolence, because I believe that we are entering a new phase of political violence, with a real possibility that the presidency will be an instigator in 2025. I argue that we must develop skills, strategies, coalitions, organizations, and plans for large-scale, broad-based nonviolent resistance.

Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., had died the previous week at age 95. I’ll re-share a video of an interview that I was privileged to conduct with him and Ken Wong in 2022. His name will be a blessing.

This interview reinforces some points that I would emphasize today.

Nonviolence is not the absence of violence–not a decision to refrain from using violent methods. It is a powerful alternative, with a record of success. One of our panelists at Frontiers was Maria Stephan, who has worked with Erica Chenoweth to show that nonviolent civil resistance movements often win.
Protest is not the essence of nonviolent resistance. Protest actions can be helpful for announcing the presence of an organized movement, but most of a movement’s impact comes from boycotts, strikes, get-out-the-vote, popular education, work inside institutions, and so on. In the interview, Rev. Lawson says, “The march may the weakest tactic, not the strongest.”
Americans have by no means forgotten nonviolent strategies. It is interesting that neither proponents nor critics of Black Lives Matter are prone to label it a nonviolent movement, but it has been that. I don’t only mean that the vast majority of BLM actions have been nonviolent but also that BLM leaders have trained and planned for nonviolence. In fact, BLM has been the largest nonviolent movement in US history and has been associated with a lower amount of collateral violence than the classic Civil Rights Movement. (Then again, it is impossible to prevent all violence, which is an unreasonable expectation.) BLM is just one of several recent or current nonviolent movements.

I would add some points that may not be as explicit in that interview.

First, nonviolence is the only way that most people are willing to engage, particularly in a society that offers some civil and political rights and where political violence is below epidemic levels. The only way to build really broad-based movements (at least outside of dictatorships and civil wars) is to be nonviolent.

Second, at large scales, nonviolence requires organization. One thing we learned from the #Resistance in 2016 is that Americans have good skills for expressing their views and finding allies, but underdeveloped skills for building large and accountable organizations and coalitions.

Particularly if Donald Trump wins in November, the opposition will have no obvious leader. There is a lot of talent in the Democratic Party, but it will not be clear who carries the party’s mantle. Besides, many active opponents of the Trump Administration will not be committed Democrats. Much of the opposition will arise in civil society, in faith communities, perhaps in labor, in media and culture, on the far left, among some conservatives, and perhaps among some businesses. Only some opponents will appreciate the Democratic Party or want to use strategies that involve legislation and elections. Leaders will arise in various sectors and constituencies, and they may or may not cohere.

The role of apex leaders is easily exaggerated. Usually, they are symbols rather than actual causes of change (or of stability). Still, people like you and me will have to decide what to do in the absence of a widely recognized leader, unless one surprises us by emerging quickly. That situation creates specific kinds of challenges for coordinating large-scale action. Who will invite representatives of the aligned small organizations in a given state to a statewide convention? How will that convention make decisions? If there is a big march in Washington, who will determine the speaker list? How can you influence those decision-makers?

If Trump wins, I forecast bitter recriminations and divisions among people who are against him. Regular Democrats will be furious that radicals and others voted for third-party candidates, stayed home or (at best) failed to make the case for the Democratic ticket. Many others will be equally angry at the Democratic Party, for a variety of reasons.

Debate and ideological diversity are good. But intense intramural hostility could be problematic, especially if it soaks up energy or encourages factions to compete for attention by doing things that also alienate key constituencies.

I just finished reading Jonathan Healey’s The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England (recommended) and David Cannadine’s Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 (medium-good). Gross generalizations from any chapters of history are risky, but I would venture these claims:

Large public majorities have a decent chance of getting their way, even when the political system is highly unequal.
Elite minorities have a good chance of dominating, if they control the levers of power.
Activated minorities that lack power may attract attention and leave their mark on history, but they will fail unless they grow into majorities.

If Trump wins, he will represent a minority with his hands of the levers of power. Such a faction can be defeated by a broad majority (particularly since this leader is undisciplined, lazy, and chaotic). But to build a majority requires a specific set of skills and values, including a genuine desire to listen across differences, a willingness to choose winnable battles, and a nuts-and-bolts understanding of nonviolent organizing.

Now is a good time to study, train, and plan.

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tracking the Biden climate investments

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Peter

The United States began a major experiment in 2022. After decades without an intentional industrial policy and not much action on the climate crisis, the federal government decided to spend something on the order of a trillion dollars over a decade to subsidize green industries.

I interpret this decision not only as a way to purchase lower emissions by (for example) buying solar panels, but also as a strategy for changing the power-base of the economy. As long as the livelihoods of many voters are tied to carbon, it’s very hard to regulate emissions. But once many people are involved with green technologies–as producers and/or consumers–they will demand green policies. This is also a competitive move, challenging other countries to subsidize their green sectors.

I believe this experiment should be on almost everyone’s minds. Conservatives and libertarians should acknowledge that it’s underway–because that’s the truth–and criticize it on its merits. Center-left people should defend it and also think hard about what comes next–whether Trump is elected and tries to undo it all or Biden gets another four years to build on it. Economic and environmentalist radicals are free to criticize the Biden strategy or to vote based on other issues, including the Mideast, but they should at least discuss the opportunities that a green industrial policy creates.

Instead, many conservatives seem locked into the idea that Biden is feckless and has done nothing. At least some on the center-left want to base the 2024 election entirely on Trump and abortion. And most radicals seem uninterested. For every thousand articles about Israel-Palestine debates on elite college campuses, I think I see less than one about the progress of the Inflation Reduction Act–which, by the way, was given a blatantly misleading name on the assumption that voters care about inflation, not climate. I am alarmed at how this whole topic is submerged.

As a very minor and amateurish effort to direct attention to the Biden climate policy, I recommend that people check out the official page for Clean Jobs America. Some points that strike me:

About $150 billion has been committed so far to concrete projects. For reference, that’s about the same as the annual budget of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s somewhat less than the annual cost of the US Navy (about $200 billion).
On a per capita basis, the largest investments are in South Carolina ($2,800 per resident), Arkansas (almost $2,000 per resident), and North Carolina ($1,800 per resident). Eleven states and DC have no specific projects yet.
South Carolina got $14 billion in investments. The same state sends $28 billion to the federal government in tax revenues annually. Basically, South Carolina is getting half its federal taxes back to fund green industry. On the other hand, Washington State sends $100 billion to DC each year and has received no clean energy support.
If you think of this as a jobs program, it is expensive. I calculate that about one job is created for every $1.2 million spent. On the other hand, the impact is not only on direct employment but also on carbon emissions, and there may be long-term positive effects on employment.
The cost of the jobs created varies a lot by sector. Only 200 jobs have been created so far in energy efficiency, but those were cheap at $30,000 per job. (If you want to accomplish something important, and it only costs you $30k to create a new position to do it, that’s a bargain.) On the other hand, the electric vehicle sector has seen more than 60,000 new jobs at $1.3 million per job.

The Biden Administration has also taken regulatory actions regarding hydrofluorocarbons and electric vehicles–see the tracker from the World Resources Institute. But I would regard the industrial policy as much more innovative and significant–for better or worse.

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Unequal opportunities for voice in high school civics classes

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Peter

In CIRCLE’s 2024 national survey of youth, about 40 percent of the 18-24-year-old Americans who were polled recalled having “experiences in class, in student groups, or with school leaders where they felt their voice and opinion mattered” while they were high school students. “White (41%) and Latino youth (40%) were more likely to say they remembered such student voice experiences compared to Black and Asian youth (both 34%).”

White youth were also more likely to recall taking a course labeled “civics,” “American government,” or just “government” in high school (77% of Whites versus 64% of Blacks). After controlling for race/ethnicity, gender, college experience and age, CIRCLE finds strong positive relationships between experiencing voice in high school and planning to vote in the 2024 election. Of those who had positive experiences of voice, 81% say they are “extremely likely to vote,” as compared to 44% of those who did not.

This relationship is probably not entirely causal, with experiences of voice completely explaining the higher intentions to vote. To some extent, people who want to vote now may have sought out high school experiences or may remember those experiences when they are surveyed in the present. Some communities may both support voice in schools and encourage voting later on. Nevertheless, the correlations are stark and apply across demographic groups, which suggests that voice has a substantial impact.

We need two aspects of policy: ensure that every student takes courses on civics, government, and history, and make sure that meaningful discussion of current issues is part of those curricula.

Voting is an indicator here, not necessarily the goal. We teach civics to prepare and enourage young people to engage in many ways, not only at the ballot box. Still, voting is a clear measure of engagement.

See Kelly Siegel-Stechler, Naraya Price, Alberto Medina (with Abby Kiesa, Noorya Hayat, and Sara Suzuki), “Youth Who Develop their Voice in High School Are More Likely to Vote,” March 12, 2024

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Biden’s democracy agenda is limited but Trump is against democracy

Posted on March 19, 2024 by Peter

Tisch College Dean Dayna Cunningham and I have a piece in The Conversation today. We begin:

President Joe Biden argues that “democracy is on the ballot” in the 2024 election.

We believe there are potential threats to U.S. democracy posed by the choices voters make in this election. But the benefits of American democracy have for centuries been unequally available, and any discussion of the current threats needs to happen against that background. …

For us, Biden’s talk of democracy is a useful starting point for a broader conversation about U.S. democracy and the 2024 election. …

youth views of Israel/Palestine

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Peter

CIRCLE has published detailed data on young people’s views of the current war in the Middle East. I’ll share two graphs, but I recommend their whole document.

First, compared to older generations, young Americans are much more likely to perceive genocide in Palestine (almost 50% agree that it’s happening) and to support an immediate ceasefire.

Second, young Americans are split on whether to sympathize more with Palestinians or Israelis and are divided about US support for Israel. There are differences by race and ethnicity: white youth are least critical of Israel; Asian/Pacific Islander youth are most critical. To my eye, these differences are not very large–particularly between white and African American youth–and the disagreements within each demographic group are more notable.

(By the way, not being sure what to think of this issue seems understandable–for anyone, and especially for someone who is young.)

Whether and how young people will vote in the 2024 election is certainly not the only relevant or important question. That said, political scientists generally doubt that Americans vote on foreign policy issues; and in 2022, according to CIRCLE, just 4% of young Americans named foreign affairs among their top three issues. But in this cycle, as many as 82% of young people are naming foreign policy. I agree with CIRCLE that many young Americans may be “viewing this conflict through a different lens” and, in particular, seeing it as continuous with domestic US issues regarding race.

a different way in which the 2024 election is a failure for democracy

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Peter

Here’s a modest and basic account of democracy: While they seek office, candidates make proposals. Voters select the politicians with the proposals they prefer. The winners try to implement their ideas. Voters observe, discuss, and evaluate what happens. In the next election, voters decide whether to stay or change the course.

In 2020, Joe Biden and congressional Democrats ran on a fairly clear platform of spending money to stimulate green manufacturing in disadvantaged places. They then managed to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act, and the $280+ billion CHIPS Act. The total was less than some of them had proposed, but it was more than I had expected, considering that congressional Republicans were also elected who opposed these ideas.

The net effect is not only a significant change in policy but also a turn of the steering wheel. We’re now at the beginning of a long journey toward a green industrial policy.

In 2024, the voters will–as they should–determine whether to stay on this route or hit the breaks. But they will not make a conscious decision. The federal budget will not be a decisive issue, or perhaps even a prominent one. Whether the country shifts to an industrial policy will be an unrecognized side-effect of votes cast for other reasons.

Biden does not seem likely to emphasize the federal spending because it doesn’t poll well. Perhaps that’s partly because voters (including liberal ones) do not believe what Democratic incumbents claim about their own policy successes. Instead, Biden will run on Trump’s unfitness, Jan. 6, and abortion, and he may well win on that basis.

Trump will not run against the federal spending because he has other grievances on his mind. Besides, he does not really oppose ambitious and expensive federal interventions. The rest of his party will take pot shots at the deficit but not challenge the spending because doing so would concede that the Democrats have made substantial changes. They prefer depicting Biden as feckless rather than wrong.

And the press won’t cover the spending because its results are not yet very tangible, and it no longer qualifies as a live political conflict. As a rough proxy for press attention, consider the trend in Google searches for “Inflation Reduction Act” since 2020. The current rate is one fiftieth of the brief peak that occurred while the Act was political news.

I favor the Biden-era policies. I understand principled arguments against them from several directions. We should be debating green industrial policy and deciding whether or not to continue this course.

One reason we will miss this debate is that Donald Trump has given us other grave matters to discuss. Indeed, it would be problematic if voters failed to consider the threat he poses to the constitution. But I don’t think Trump is the only reason. The failure of a major ideological change to register on the public consciousness is symptomatic of a breakdown in news, attention, and public discussion that prevents the people from controlling our government.

preparing for a possible Trump victory

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Peter

I make no predictions about the 2024 election. It is still far away, and all kinds of dramatic shifts could occur between now and then. But there is a clear chance that Donald Trump will win. One of several paths to that outcome leads through a recession during the next six months.

I am also reluctant to predict what Trump will do if elected; I suspect he doesn’t know himself. But we should take seriously the possibility that he would do what he has been talking about lately, including directly ordering the prosecution of political opponents, invoking the Insurrection Act, building mass camps for immigrants, purging the civil service, and even attacking Mexico.

I disagree with Hillary Clinton that these events “would be the end of our country as we know it.” On the contrary, they would mark the beginning of a new phase with highly uncertain outcomes. Much would depend on how opponents respond. Now is the time to prepare for this contingency.

Trump would have significant support, including a popular base. Certain organizations and institutions would take his side, perhaps including at least one house of Congress.

But he would also face mass resistance from segments of the population and from important organizations and institutions–notably, from some state and local governments. He would quickly encounter roadblocks, which would frustrate him and his supporters. Some of his efforts might go forward, at least temporarily, which would enrage his opponents.

The result would be intense conflict, not only in Congress and courts but also potentially on the streets. I don’t think a literal civil war is likely, if only because the US military and security services would refuse to be drawn in, and it’s extraordinarily difficult to create an army from scratch. But it is common around the world to see periods of political conflict, typically labeled “unrest,” “instability,” or “disorder.” We might expect:

constant debates about whether various institutions should make statements about recent incidents, with repercussions for members of these institutions who disagree;
frequent crises that are permitted by existing laws, such as government shutdowns and even a debt default;
politically motivated pardons, amnesties, and blocked prosecutions;
prominent dismissals and resignations;
bans and purges of ideological minorities within institutions such as universities, corporations, and publications;
overt refusals to follow constitutionally permissible directives (e.g., state governors might resist federal mandates);
temporary closures of schools and colleges that are political hotbeds;
attempts to declare martial law and states of emergency at various levels;
arrests of questionable legality;
illegal orders that are either accepted or refused;
Increasingly flagrant displays of weapons;
paramilitary and revolutionary organizations, with training programs, uniforms, insignias and the like;
large and frequent protests, some of which may involve clashes with counter-protesters or the police;
frequent threats of violence;
politically motivated assaults and homicides of various kinds (not only assassinations, but also quasi-accidental deaths).

I’d expect similarities to periods like the Years of Lead in Italy or The Troubles in Northern Ireland–among many other examples. In fact, we may already have entered a period like that.

I would anticipate passionate and fraught disagreements within the potential resistance to Trump. For example:

Should the objective be to restore and protect the constitutional system as it has been, or was that system already flawed (and responsible for the present crisis) so that it needs to be changed? If it requires change, how basic and radical must that be?
Is the Democratic Party a worthy vehicle of resistance, or even the main opposition, or is it part of the problem? This debate will be especially fraught if it looks as if Biden would have won without third party presidential candidates in 2024.
How broad should the coalition be? It’s easy to say “As broad as possible,” but the hard questions arise when activists must consider whether to defer causes that they consider important in order to collaborate with people who are ideologically dissimilar. For instance, imagine that it is possible to draw businesses into a pro-democracy movement, but at the cost of delaying strong action on climate. Many people would balk at that tradeoff. But what if strong federal environmental action seems impossible, anyway? Would it then be worth submerging environmental goals to expand the pro-democracy movement?
What means are appropriate–or necessary–to combat authoritarian tendencies and street-level violence?

I think the response should be massively nonviolent, and we should eschew concrete, physical violence even in the face of institutionalized injustice. Nonviolent direct action is a powerful strategy with a strong record of success. It is particularly likely to draw broad participation and to yield a stable democracy as its outcome.*

There may be times when violence is appropriate: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt all commanded armies that fought for freedom. And sometimes it is a mistake to criticize acts of violence even if you wouldn’t endorse them. In response to the Detroit riots of 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walked a careful line. He said that crimes committed during the riots were “deplorable” but also “derivative.” He explained, “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” Nevertheless, King continued to defend nonviolence because he believed that it was the most powerful option, with the greatest chance of creating a better society. That argument will be even stronger under conditions of social unrest and escalating, tit-for-tat violence. Apart from anything else, as Bayard Rustin argued, political success requires the support of a substantial majority, and violence alienates people.

Nonviolence takes skill, discipline, and values, all of which that can be taught and practiced in advance of a crisis. Now is the time for practice and training.

I am discussing a threat that comes from the extreme right. This threat is not symmetrical. However, intimidation and violence may be reciprocated, and ugly behavior may spread across the spectrum; this common pattern must be resisted.

It will be crucial to promote dialogue and listening. People will need ways to exit extremist movements and be reintegrated. And we need to hear about legitimate grievances from all quarters so that they can be addressed.

Anyone who is knowingly involved in violating civil rights should ultimately be held accountable. But tens of millions of people will vote for each major party’s nominee in the 2024 election, and voters on both sides are members of our national community. As the risk of violent conflict rises, so does the need for empathy and curiosity across partisan differences.

a presidential election with two incumbents?

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Peter

Incumbent presidents have a substantial advantage for reelection. Only 10 have lost. Statistical models that attempt to control for other factors, such as the economy, typically give a presidential candidate a bonus of 4-8 percentage points just for being the incumbent. In 2009, David Mayhew noted that parties had won the White House only half the time when they didn’t run an incumbent for reelection, but two thirds of the time when they did. That disparity is a little smaller now that Trump has lost a reelection race, but it’s still substantial.

Incumbents also have a vast advantage in their own party’s nomination race, with only Franklin Pierce actually losing his party’s support while he was in the White House. (Several others have chosen not to run.)

However, it’s not clear what these patterns mean for 2024. After all, two leading candidates have recently been presidents of the United States. Whether one, both, or neither will get an incumbency advantage is hard to tell from the historical data. There have only been 59 presidential elections ever, and only 23 in the modern era since FDR beat Hoover. Many variables are relevant to the outcomes of these cases. It is therefore hard to detect which aspects of incumbency may matter–and certainly hard to extrapolate any patterns to our unprecedented situation.

(I think that only one president was unseated but got his original party’s nomination again in a subsequent year: that was Grover Cleveland, who won the rematch.)

Mayhew identified 12 possible explanations for the presidential incumbency advantage and collected the evidence that might bear on each explanation. See his table 3.

Possible explanations of presidential incumbency bias from Mayhew 2008.

Some of these factors presume that the incumbent typically has impressive “capabilities,” because a president has already managed to win a national election and has governed for up to four years. The challenger could be equally capable, but the odds are against it.

In this case, I personally think that Joe Biden has demonstrated strong capabilities, whereas Trump’s campaigns and his time in office demonstrate a blatant lack thereof. However, it doesn’t matter what I think, but what the electorate decides. According to today’s New York Times/Siena poll, 44 percent of Americans agree with me–they hold a very unfavorable view of Trump–but 42 percent strongly disapprove of Biden’s performance in office. What is unusual is the fact that both likely nominees have recently served as the president, which may make this factor a wash.

Voters might also simply prefer a candidate who already holds office. For instance, perhaps some voters are risk-averse: biased against changing horses. Or perhaps they think that any newcomer would need too much time to become effective. Risk-aversion might help Biden a bit in 2024, although some voters may feel that electing him in 2020 was the unwise change. Voters can presumably see either Trump or Biden as the status quo if they want to. Some Trump voters even believe that he is the rightful winner of the most recent election.

“Incumbent party fatigue” refers to the pattern that each party loses a small amount of support–on average–each year that it holds the White House. However, this trend does not doom incumbents, in part because too little “fatigue” typically occurs within four years. The candidates who tend to suffer are those who try to succeed a president of the same party.

The explanations that Mayhew calls “strategic behavior” are of the following type. Perhaps the party of an incumbent president typically organizes to renominate him if he’s been doing well but moves against him if not–as was the case with LBJ in 1968. That would imply that incumbents who run for reelection have generally had successful first terms. And perhaps the opposition party is easily captured by marginal figures when its prospects already look weak against a popular incumbent (consider Barry Goldwater in 1964, or Michael Foot against Margaret Thatcher in 1983). However, Mayhew does not see a lot of power in this type of explanation.

Somewhat buried in his list are factors under the incumbent president’s direct control, such as the ability to allocate funds (e.g., to decide whether to locate the Space Command in Colorado or Alabama), where to deploy cabinet members, which bills to sign or veto, etc. Early in 2021, I predicted that the “$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 would prove popular by putting cash directly and quickly into people’s pockets,” and this would help Democrats in 2022. Democrats did somewhat better than most people expected that year, but there’s no evidence that nearly $2 trillion helped them electorally. (In other words, I was wrong.) The other side of the coin is that presidents must make difficult and unpopular decisions.

Overall, I think that Biden has an advantage in 2024 if the economy avoids a deep recession. I think a substantial Biden victory is possible if the economy starts to lift. I suspect that the 4-8 point incumbency advantage–which would typically give Biden a landslide–will not apply, because the electorate will split on the question of who is the rightful incumbent in the first place.

*Mayhew, David R. “Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Presidential Elections: The Historical Record.” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 123, no. 2, 2008, pp. 201–28. See also: 1984 all over again? The Reagan/Biden analogy; What kind of a claim is “Biden has an 87% chance of winning”? (on the metaphysics of probability)

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