The other day on Threads, Bulwark contributor and all-around great writer
Nicholas Grossman asked the following question:
What he’s getting at is one of the political and ideological asymmetries we talk about here often:
One side of our political divide routinely castigates itself for being in a bubble. One side expends a lot of energy trying to figure out how to appeal to people who don’t vote for them. One side talks a lot about persuasion and understanding the people across from them.
Not coincidentally, that side is the same side that can no longer wield executive power nationally without winning a sizable popular majority.
The other side does not seem to worry about the media bubble it lives in.
This side does not expend much energy trying to understand the 51 percent of the country which votes against it.
Systems engineering is one of those disciplines that, once you start looking at it, shapes your perception of everything around you. (Reminder: The Logic of Failure is a classic and accessible book on the subject and is worth your time.)
In our case, I think it is not an accident that the Republican party became an authoritarian institution at the same moment that it realized minority rule was a viable pathway.
The incentives for majority rule are expansive: Try to be as open to as many voters as possible without losing your base. The incentives for minority rule are propulsive: Try to maximize your base while turning off as few swing voters as possible.
Majority rule as a system selects for moderation while minority rule pushes a party to become an ouroboros.
This asks why conservatives aren’t asking this question and the answer is, I think, correct. They’ve decided that their only path is through sheer power politics. They prefer that anyway,
But here’s another question: why does the mainstream media do exactly the same thing? They are still obsessed with the Trump voter as they have been for the last eight years. There’s been a tiny bit of interest in the effects of the Roe being overturned but I have still not read many profiles of Biden voters or even Democratic voters beyond that specific issue. They have zero interest in the thoughts of the majority. It’s one reason why Trump remains so close. If you didn’t know better you would think that most people in this country are for him.