Read on Twitter
Alright, just woke up, but seeing this thread retweeted onto my timeline reminded of something I've been wanting to talk about with regards to politics in general.
Let's talk about what I'm calling Lowest Common Denominator politics, and why it can't be trusted. https://twitter.com/sadydoyle/status/1248637112569737217
Let's talk about what I'm calling Lowest Common Denominator politics, and why it can't be trusted. https://twitter.com/sadydoyle/status/1248637112569737217
Lowest Common Denominator politics is a process of political decision-making whereby a voter looks at the worst behaviors of a candidate's base, and then decides if they should support them based on that.
This is similar to civility politics, but there are important differences:
This is similar to civility politics, but there are important differences:
LCD politics focuses almost exclusively on a candidate's followers rather than the actions of the candidates themselves (though it can later feature as a component in a civility-based package of disagreement). It narrows politics down to personal interactions (usually online).
But this approach to politics is flawed in a number of ways, perhaps the most important of which is that it weakens one's own base.
Let's start from a personal space and work outward:
Let's start from a personal space and work outward:
Humans are bad at statistics.
When we encounter one person who upsets us, that one encounter gains a lot of emotional weight. The right like to abuse this phenomenon in a few ways, from dismissing accounts of marginalized folx to misrepresenting the danger of those same people.
When we encounter one person who upsets us, that one encounter gains a lot of emotional weight. The right like to abuse this phenomenon in a few ways, from dismissing accounts of marginalized folx to misrepresenting the danger of those same people.
But ultimately, in all these cases, actual data is the closest we can get to understanding large-scale problems. That's why we throw numbers and studies at bigots. It's also why the narrative of Sanders supporters being disproportionately cruel is false. https://www.salon.com/2020/03/09/there-is-hard-data-that-shows-bernie-bros-are-a-myth/
If you don't want to read that whole article but want a (very basic) understanding, Winchell essentially boils it down to: On average, a given group of people has a percentage of assholes. Sanders has a lot of supporters on twitter, so his base looks like a big group of assholes.
And while that's fair from a "I don't wanna tweet about this shit" standpoint, it doesn't reflect an actual problem with Sanders any moreso than it does with the other candidates.
But what about the Trump/Sanders comparisons? What about the rallies and the fanaticism?
Leaving aside the obvious problems with comparing a jewish man to nazis, it essentially boils down to "having a lot of grassroots support is bad" which seems a bit odd in a post-Obama world.
Leaving aside the obvious problems with comparing a jewish man to nazis, it essentially boils down to "having a lot of grassroots support is bad" which seems a bit odd in a post-Obama world.
Democrats love a charismatic leader. Honestly, everyone does. What people consider to be charismatic may change, but people want to like their candidate.
But an important question to ask here is: who benefits from the comparisons between Trump and Sanders?
But an important question to ask here is: who benefits from the comparisons between Trump and Sanders?
Clearly not Sanders— the left hates Trump more than anything else, and it's unlikely those comparisons drove anyone his way. But it also doesn't serve Biden.
Whether you agree with Sanders' plans or not, the goal of many supporters is support for America's most vulnerable.
Whether you agree with Sanders' plans or not, the goal of many supporters is support for America's most vulnerable.
Those comparisons, to a Sanders supporter, sound like "your push for rights, access, and support for people that are literally dying is the same as all those angry people that want you dead."
Which implies that the other candidates aren't committed to the same goals.
Which implies that the other candidates aren't committed to the same goals.
It undermines any opportunity for Biden to highlight potential progressivism, and forces him to either write off Sanders supporters and hope they vote for him anyway or spend even more of his campaign's resources undoing that negative perception of his campaign.
But there's one more big reason why LCD politics is a weak (though admittedly influential) strategy, and it goes back to the 2016 election.
The reality of the world today is that social media is easily manipulated. Platforms are trying to keep up and prevent outside meddling, but ultimately they will never be able to entirely defeat a concerted effort from a foreign state to sway our elections.
The platforms themselves (Twitter especially) tend to disproportionately promote conflict (because engagement is important), and anyone with a vested interest and enough resources can manufacture conflict by pretending to be a bunch of assholes in support of ANY campaign.
That's where this breaks down. I know that it's enticing to feel like you're part of something where The Good Guys support your candidate. Hell, that's how I felt as a Sanders supporter. But when it comes down to it, interactions with supporters are an unreliable barometer.
We're far less likely to face abuse from people that support the same candidate, further cementing the belief that "the other guy" is cruel and uncaring. And in some cases that might end up being true, but we can't pick our politicians that way.
On the bright side, American politics already came up with a few alternatives. Debates, platforms, data about sources of funding, voting history, and more are all freely and publicly available for you to examine and base your decisions off of.
Intuitively, technology should have made it easier for us to make these decisions so that we didn't have to do all of that research. But if the last four years teaches us anything, it should be that there will never be a replacement for the efforts of hundreds of millions of us.
Anyway, sorry if this thread is a bit disorganized. I did my best, and hopefully it's useful to some of you.
I'm gonna go eat breakfast now
I'm gonna go eat breakfast now
