I believe you have hit the proverbial nail on the head - this is an excellent observation of why the Democratic Party continues to lose elections -
I believe the reason that Trump won the 2024 election is because Trump pretended to listen to the problems that people were having and said he was going to address them and make their lives better - of course that was all a lie and as soon as he took Office, you could see that the voters who elected him didn’t matter anymore - and he proceeded to implement project 2025, which illustrates a plan to end democracy - and an alliance with billionaires over the rest of the workers and small business owners that really make this country run
But the Democrats also lost the election because of what you have so brilliantly stated in this article - they continue relying on statistical analysis and polling to find a position that they want to Propose as their parties solution -
Instead of gathering and understanding what the voters issues are - and then proposing solutions that the voters think are in their interests - hopefully the Democrats will realize that doing the same thing for the upcoming election but expecting different results - will be difficult to overcome repeating the results of the last election -
Thank you for this excellent article. I’m going to save it and repost it and hope that the leaders in the Democratic Party truly understand what you are saying
"Democrats win when they’re perceived as challenging elite consensus, and lose when they’re perceived as being the elite consensus."
Mike this should be posted on every person who considers themselves to be in the party, from grunts like me to the top generals at DNC and other party offices!
I get that comment. I saw a poll that showed Brexit support to correlate strongly to years of education. This makes sense, people with college degrees are better able to handle being in the EU with its better mobility for people in all of the EU. If being in the EU means having more workers from outside of the UK proper, then people with college degrees are less likely to have downward pressure on their wages compared to the less educated.
Experts and AI bots both may need human beings to balance out their possible findings and implications. Making hard won data useful to society is going to require better overall eduction . We can value the experts and still need layers of understanding about how, why, what if.
The democrats need to recognize that the so called experts are often actually deeply mistaken. When most people reject a so called expert consensus the people are probably right 😎
The Obama-Trump voter paradox you lay out realy cuts to the core of it. Both candidates promised to disrpt a system, and voters chose disruption over continuity becuse the continuity was managed decline. When people talk about Nate Silver's election models being wrong, they miss that he's measuring the wrong variables entirely. The issue isn't finding the optimal ideological position between progressive and centrist, it's that voters experience both as flavors of the same technocratic management that treats them as problems to solve rather than citizens with agency. Silver can map every demographic shift and DW-NOMINATE score, but if you're analyzing how to optimize expert control, you've already lost the thread of what democratic politics actually requires.
This hits incredibly hard. The line about how they're so busy analyzing complexity that they forgot how to trust citizens to navigate it is exacty what's been driving me crazy for years. Silver's work is brilliant on its own terms, but those terms are the problem. When you point out that Obama ran as someone who would challenge the establishment but governed as a technocrat telling people to trust expertise while conditions deterioratd, that's the whole ballgame right there. The Obama-Trump voter isn't a paradox if you understand they wanted someone who trusted them to participate rather than managed them. What gets me is how many smart people keep doing more sophisticated analysis to figure out why voters are rejcting their sophisticated analysis.
You've put a spotlight square on the problem with this: [the winning] candidates promised to disrupt a system that had stopped working for them.
But framing it as a problem of trust or agency or experts falls short of the mark. Those are problems, but they aren't *the* problem. The issue isn't that the technocrats don't trust the people to make decisions. It's that they don't *want* to empower the people. The issue isn't just that experts make decisions in faraway conference rooms, it's that they have continually and intentionally tipped the balance of power in one direction, while lying, obfuscating, dividing, and distracting.
It is the establishment protecting itself—power protecting power at the expense of human rights. Whether we're talking about wealth inequality or Israel or corporate power, the Democratic Party is so entangled with the forces that protect those things, that they are happy to disavow their own candidates (Mamdani, Platner...) who challenge that dynamic.
Dem candidates rarely speak this obvious truth out loud. And when they do, it rings hollow, because they don't put the words into action. People liked what Clinton and Obama said, but then we saw what they were willing to do (and not do). The bait-and-switch has left an enduring stain.
As Pankaj Mishra wrote, in a review of one of Samuel Moyn's books: "[regular working people] can hardly avoid noticing the great chasm that now exists between the continuing official commitment to human rights and their brazen infraction in relations everywhere between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak." Mishra and Moyn are two of the sharpest chroniclers of this disconnect FWIW.
As always, what you have said makes perfect sense to me. But, taking a few steps to the side, I’ve come to see the political/economic/social shit show we’re living in in a somewhat different light. It has been said that your worst enemy may turn out to be your best teacher. Trump and his buddies are the embodiment of outrageously stupid but dangerous clowns (Google “the Daily Show Portland animal memes”). Only our currently crazy governing group could inspire the captivatingly hilarious show being put on in the streets of Portland.
What is appearing on the internet seems to me a marvelous dissection of the trumpian body politic in all its outrageous glory. Nate Silver’s analysis helps us see ourselves in our struggle to understand what’s going on in the minds of our populace. You poetically reveal the
timid/courageous/dizziness roiling in our gut. The “straight” “news” buffets our minds with the horrifying outrageous stuff that grinds out daily. I think it takes all the different ways of looking at our gorgon faced world to get past the fear of seeing ourselves in the reflections of what’s happening.
This is a great presentation. What really struck me, though, was the insidious way that bad faith Repugnicans confused all of politics into ginning up this false equivalence of the two parties having only minor policy differences, all while the contrast between the parties was getting clearer. Repugnicans were steadily gaining self-assurance in their subterfuge. The centrist technocrats, even unintentionally, seem to have swallowed this bull and resorted to micro-metrics to distinguish the parties. Remember, too, that the corporate world is deeply explicit in this confusion, as they desperately need to sell it to maintain their perversion of both parties beyond policy grounds. It is the corporate world that benefits and that controls the narrative. Only now is Trump breaking the cognitive dissonance (should we be thankful?), and we may yet get a revival of the Spirit of '76.
I’m a Bernie-Trump voter. Your analysis is spot on, but your repeatedly using “fascist” pisses me off. Yes, you’re probably right, but Trump DID listen to people like me, on crime, immigration, China, etc..
Well, to be clear, I’m not saying Trump supporters are fascists. I am saying Trump is a fascist. And most of his supporters do not understand that or are in denial about it.
In medical consultations, patients are often, perhaps routinely, overwhelmed by so much information, and with that the medical jargon that the doctor often fails to "translate."
I feel this way often in reading Mike's commentaries. They are so full of information and thought that I feel like I just consumed an eight-course meal and am "stuffed."
What Mike writes about is so damn important and relevant to the disastrous situation clear-thinking Americans now face. My opinion, as someone probably 40 years older than Mike, is to break up seminal commentaries such as "Nate Silver" into Parts I, II, and so on. In fact, this is so critical an issue, a book, albeit concise, should be written.
Examples in the format of quotes from Mike and input from this old timer.
"Not because his facts are wrong—they’re not. Not because his historical understanding is flawed—it’s quite sophisticated. But because the entire analytical exercise demonstrates precisely why Democrats keep losing to fascists: they’re so busy analyzing complexity that they forgot how to trust citizens to navigate it."
ss: more to the point is not so much to trust citizens to navigate it (and that is for me somewhat nebulous" but Democrats, like many physician interactions with patients, do not take the PULSE of the patient or constituency. Who the hell are Democrats talking with and asking "how are you feeling?" or more pointedly "What's wrong and how can we fix it?" I get messaged 2 or 3 times a day from Democrats all over the US. They have one thing in common- always asking for money. Where is the back and forth, the dialogue, the accessibility to those in public office? I'll tell you- it's zilch, nada, zip, etc. You can't have communication if it is one-way and the one-way is basically a "give me."
"This is what I’ve called the analytical frame—a mode of thinking that treats complex social and political realities as problems to be solved through expert analysis rather than ongoing tensions to be navigated through democratic engagement."
ss: Let me use metaphors from my field of expertise- medicine. Doctors typically pigeon-hole patient care. The patient is young, has great insurance ⇢ let's operate. Such "doctors" do not examine all the factors involved in the patient's status- the reality. Similarly, medical statisticians make pronouncements that a particular therapy is beneficial because the statistical indicators point out a mathematical value of "significance." But if the patient spends most of the benefit afforded by such a treatment feeling sick as a dog, with no reasonable quality of life, then what's the real benefit?
Politicians have to spend less time pontificating and sit down over lunch or whatever in the trenches where their constituents live and work. Politicians, assuming they give a rat's ass, must examine the details of living in the world of those who may or may not vote for him or her.
Due diligence, and not the glib and superficial, must be the modus operandi of the successful political party. I spent an average of 3 hours with every new cancer patient that consulted with me. I read every page of their past history and reviewed all their complaints, and then performed a comprehensive physical examination. We are not getting this with our politicians, and we are not getting this with our major news media. Instead, it is a political version of McMedicine- the 5-10 minutes at most blurb.
"I want to be clear: I think Nate Silver is a brilliant statistician."
ss: I couldn't care less about his number crunching. I am sick and tired of the fast talking reporters who are trying to get in as many words as possible when they are asked to comment. I want in-depth understanding that takes time and is the "comprehensive examination." Screw the statistical analysis. Instead, report to the nation on WHAT IS. The reality, the status, the facts ma'am, just the facts, "the rest of the story." Spend an hour, a full hour without commercials every 7 minutes, and interview one person after another about Portland "burning" a la Trump. Show the hell-hole of Chicago and take us to where ICE and DEA or whoever swept down with Black Hawk helicopters on an apartment on Lake Shore Drive, 5 minutes away from where I lived during a post-doctoral phase of my life at the U of Chicago.
"What he systematically misses is the meta-pattern: Democrats win when they’re perceived as challenging the elite consensus, and lose when they’re perceived as being the elite consensus."
ss: I will stop here after commenting on the above. I do not know what the heck Mike is referring to with the above. I know that Democrats lose when they focus on the wrong issues because they are ignorant to the wants, needs and fears of the voters. Citizens are customers in a restaurant. They want good service, and want to choose what they wish on the menu, and want it affordable and properly served in a setting conducive to enjoyment.
I want to see a nation where EDUCATION is one of the top 3 priorities.
I want to live in a country where crime is not a concern, no matter where I go.
I want to live in a country where I can afford to live at a level based on what I have brought to the community's welfare.
I expect the taxes I have paid for to cover wonderful healthcare and medications at world prices, not the 3-10x more rip-offs that big Pharma has shoved on Americans.
I want to live in a country that honors the Earth and where all, including those in political offices, have as prime goals: legacy, unity and vision.
In my lifetime, 1942-present, I have not experienced a great leader of our nation. I do not consider Clinton, Obama or Biden as great leaders. Maybe many of you feel otherwise. But I would volunteer to work pro bono for a candidate or a party that truly takes the pulse of the people, understands status (what is going on) and works to resolve the issues we face here and abroad.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead
If Mike wants to write a book about "What We Wish to See for Our Children" with a subtitle of
"What the Democratic Party Should Listen To" or something to this effect, I will be glad to be part of that project. But I will say that presenting terms like "conservative or progressive impulse" will not cut it. Human needs and human opinion are more down to Earth issues than this. "Optimization problem," "ideological balance," "factional positioning," are phrases that will confuse voters, and not win elections. Instead, taking the pulse of the nationwide "patient" is a must. How can we best serve the spectrum of peoples living in this country in the context of our times, is a far more grounded approach that people will understand.
Please address the powerful forces of “stupidity” (Bonhoeffer) misogyny, racism, bigotry and cruelty and why these often have nothing to do with being “left behind.” When unleashed -given permission to express- they can contaminate and override any opportunity for democratic deliberation.
Most people have always been ignorant about most things. People are not less intelligent than they were generations ago. But they feel more disconnected and dispossessed than ever. Social media has driven this fragmentation. But elitism greased the wheels and left liberals flat-footed and blind to the problem.
Mike -
I believe you have hit the proverbial nail on the head - this is an excellent observation of why the Democratic Party continues to lose elections -
I believe the reason that Trump won the 2024 election is because Trump pretended to listen to the problems that people were having and said he was going to address them and make their lives better - of course that was all a lie and as soon as he took Office, you could see that the voters who elected him didn’t matter anymore - and he proceeded to implement project 2025, which illustrates a plan to end democracy - and an alliance with billionaires over the rest of the workers and small business owners that really make this country run
But the Democrats also lost the election because of what you have so brilliantly stated in this article - they continue relying on statistical analysis and polling to find a position that they want to Propose as their parties solution -
Instead of gathering and understanding what the voters issues are - and then proposing solutions that the voters think are in their interests - hopefully the Democrats will realize that doing the same thing for the upcoming election but expecting different results - will be difficult to overcome repeating the results of the last election -
Thank you for this excellent article. I’m going to save it and repost it and hope that the leaders in the Democratic Party truly understand what you are saying
"Democrats win when they’re perceived as challenging elite consensus, and lose when they’re perceived as being the elite consensus."
Mike this should be posted on every person who considers themselves to be in the party, from grunts like me to the top generals at DNC and other party offices!
Classic uk liberal comment I heard from a friend bemoaning brexit: there should be an IQ test for voters.
Well there’s the reason the left lost that.
I get that comment. I saw a poll that showed Brexit support to correlate strongly to years of education. This makes sense, people with college degrees are better able to handle being in the EU with its better mobility for people in all of the EU. If being in the EU means having more workers from outside of the UK proper, then people with college degrees are less likely to have downward pressure on their wages compared to the less educated.
Life is more sport than literature, and not at all a sociology paper.
Experts and AI bots both may need human beings to balance out their possible findings and implications. Making hard won data useful to society is going to require better overall eduction . We can value the experts and still need layers of understanding about how, why, what if.
The democrats need to recognize that the so called experts are often actually deeply mistaken. When most people reject a so called expert consensus the people are probably right 😎
Brilliant. Almost brought tears to my eyes. I don’t think the Democratic Party as such is capable of learning this, but some individuals are.
The Obama-Trump voter paradox you lay out realy cuts to the core of it. Both candidates promised to disrpt a system, and voters chose disruption over continuity becuse the continuity was managed decline. When people talk about Nate Silver's election models being wrong, they miss that he's measuring the wrong variables entirely. The issue isn't finding the optimal ideological position between progressive and centrist, it's that voters experience both as flavors of the same technocratic management that treats them as problems to solve rather than citizens with agency. Silver can map every demographic shift and DW-NOMINATE score, but if you're analyzing how to optimize expert control, you've already lost the thread of what democratic politics actually requires.
This hits incredibly hard. The line about how they're so busy analyzing complexity that they forgot how to trust citizens to navigate it is exacty what's been driving me crazy for years. Silver's work is brilliant on its own terms, but those terms are the problem. When you point out that Obama ran as someone who would challenge the establishment but governed as a technocrat telling people to trust expertise while conditions deterioratd, that's the whole ballgame right there. The Obama-Trump voter isn't a paradox if you understand they wanted someone who trusted them to participate rather than managed them. What gets me is how many smart people keep doing more sophisticated analysis to figure out why voters are rejcting their sophisticated analysis.
You've put a spotlight square on the problem with this: [the winning] candidates promised to disrupt a system that had stopped working for them.
But framing it as a problem of trust or agency or experts falls short of the mark. Those are problems, but they aren't *the* problem. The issue isn't that the technocrats don't trust the people to make decisions. It's that they don't *want* to empower the people. The issue isn't just that experts make decisions in faraway conference rooms, it's that they have continually and intentionally tipped the balance of power in one direction, while lying, obfuscating, dividing, and distracting.
It is the establishment protecting itself—power protecting power at the expense of human rights. Whether we're talking about wealth inequality or Israel or corporate power, the Democratic Party is so entangled with the forces that protect those things, that they are happy to disavow their own candidates (Mamdani, Platner...) who challenge that dynamic.
Dem candidates rarely speak this obvious truth out loud. And when they do, it rings hollow, because they don't put the words into action. People liked what Clinton and Obama said, but then we saw what they were willing to do (and not do). The bait-and-switch has left an enduring stain.
As Pankaj Mishra wrote, in a review of one of Samuel Moyn's books: "[regular working people] can hardly avoid noticing the great chasm that now exists between the continuing official commitment to human rights and their brazen infraction in relations everywhere between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak." Mishra and Moyn are two of the sharpest chroniclers of this disconnect FWIW.
As always, what you have said makes perfect sense to me. But, taking a few steps to the side, I’ve come to see the political/economic/social shit show we’re living in in a somewhat different light. It has been said that your worst enemy may turn out to be your best teacher. Trump and his buddies are the embodiment of outrageously stupid but dangerous clowns (Google “the Daily Show Portland animal memes”). Only our currently crazy governing group could inspire the captivatingly hilarious show being put on in the streets of Portland.
What is appearing on the internet seems to me a marvelous dissection of the trumpian body politic in all its outrageous glory. Nate Silver’s analysis helps us see ourselves in our struggle to understand what’s going on in the minds of our populace. You poetically reveal the
timid/courageous/dizziness roiling in our gut. The “straight” “news” buffets our minds with the horrifying outrageous stuff that grinds out daily. I think it takes all the different ways of looking at our gorgon faced world to get past the fear of seeing ourselves in the reflections of what’s happening.
This is a great presentation. What really struck me, though, was the insidious way that bad faith Repugnicans confused all of politics into ginning up this false equivalence of the two parties having only minor policy differences, all while the contrast between the parties was getting clearer. Repugnicans were steadily gaining self-assurance in their subterfuge. The centrist technocrats, even unintentionally, seem to have swallowed this bull and resorted to micro-metrics to distinguish the parties. Remember, too, that the corporate world is deeply explicit in this confusion, as they desperately need to sell it to maintain their perversion of both parties beyond policy grounds. It is the corporate world that benefits and that controls the narrative. Only now is Trump breaking the cognitive dissonance (should we be thankful?), and we may yet get a revival of the Spirit of '76.
You don’t win ball game with a calculator.
Ever heard of Moneyball? I think the geeks will always dominate!
I’m a Bernie-Trump voter. Your analysis is spot on, but your repeatedly using “fascist” pisses me off. Yes, you’re probably right, but Trump DID listen to people like me, on crime, immigration, China, etc..
Well, to be clear, I’m not saying Trump supporters are fascists. I am saying Trump is a fascist. And most of his supporters do not understand that or are in denial about it.
In medical consultations, patients are often, perhaps routinely, overwhelmed by so much information, and with that the medical jargon that the doctor often fails to "translate."
I feel this way often in reading Mike's commentaries. They are so full of information and thought that I feel like I just consumed an eight-course meal and am "stuffed."
What Mike writes about is so damn important and relevant to the disastrous situation clear-thinking Americans now face. My opinion, as someone probably 40 years older than Mike, is to break up seminal commentaries such as "Nate Silver" into Parts I, II, and so on. In fact, this is so critical an issue, a book, albeit concise, should be written.
Examples in the format of quotes from Mike and input from this old timer.
"Not because his facts are wrong—they’re not. Not because his historical understanding is flawed—it’s quite sophisticated. But because the entire analytical exercise demonstrates precisely why Democrats keep losing to fascists: they’re so busy analyzing complexity that they forgot how to trust citizens to navigate it."
ss: more to the point is not so much to trust citizens to navigate it (and that is for me somewhat nebulous" but Democrats, like many physician interactions with patients, do not take the PULSE of the patient or constituency. Who the hell are Democrats talking with and asking "how are you feeling?" or more pointedly "What's wrong and how can we fix it?" I get messaged 2 or 3 times a day from Democrats all over the US. They have one thing in common- always asking for money. Where is the back and forth, the dialogue, the accessibility to those in public office? I'll tell you- it's zilch, nada, zip, etc. You can't have communication if it is one-way and the one-way is basically a "give me."
"This is what I’ve called the analytical frame—a mode of thinking that treats complex social and political realities as problems to be solved through expert analysis rather than ongoing tensions to be navigated through democratic engagement."
ss: Let me use metaphors from my field of expertise- medicine. Doctors typically pigeon-hole patient care. The patient is young, has great insurance ⇢ let's operate. Such "doctors" do not examine all the factors involved in the patient's status- the reality. Similarly, medical statisticians make pronouncements that a particular therapy is beneficial because the statistical indicators point out a mathematical value of "significance." But if the patient spends most of the benefit afforded by such a treatment feeling sick as a dog, with no reasonable quality of life, then what's the real benefit?
Politicians have to spend less time pontificating and sit down over lunch or whatever in the trenches where their constituents live and work. Politicians, assuming they give a rat's ass, must examine the details of living in the world of those who may or may not vote for him or her.
Due diligence, and not the glib and superficial, must be the modus operandi of the successful political party. I spent an average of 3 hours with every new cancer patient that consulted with me. I read every page of their past history and reviewed all their complaints, and then performed a comprehensive physical examination. We are not getting this with our politicians, and we are not getting this with our major news media. Instead, it is a political version of McMedicine- the 5-10 minutes at most blurb.
"I want to be clear: I think Nate Silver is a brilliant statistician."
ss: I couldn't care less about his number crunching. I am sick and tired of the fast talking reporters who are trying to get in as many words as possible when they are asked to comment. I want in-depth understanding that takes time and is the "comprehensive examination." Screw the statistical analysis. Instead, report to the nation on WHAT IS. The reality, the status, the facts ma'am, just the facts, "the rest of the story." Spend an hour, a full hour without commercials every 7 minutes, and interview one person after another about Portland "burning" a la Trump. Show the hell-hole of Chicago and take us to where ICE and DEA or whoever swept down with Black Hawk helicopters on an apartment on Lake Shore Drive, 5 minutes away from where I lived during a post-doctoral phase of my life at the U of Chicago.
"What he systematically misses is the meta-pattern: Democrats win when they’re perceived as challenging the elite consensus, and lose when they’re perceived as being the elite consensus."
ss: I will stop here after commenting on the above. I do not know what the heck Mike is referring to with the above. I know that Democrats lose when they focus on the wrong issues because they are ignorant to the wants, needs and fears of the voters. Citizens are customers in a restaurant. They want good service, and want to choose what they wish on the menu, and want it affordable and properly served in a setting conducive to enjoyment.
I want to see a nation where EDUCATION is one of the top 3 priorities.
I want to live in a country where crime is not a concern, no matter where I go.
I want to live in a country where I can afford to live at a level based on what I have brought to the community's welfare.
I expect the taxes I have paid for to cover wonderful healthcare and medications at world prices, not the 3-10x more rip-offs that big Pharma has shoved on Americans.
I want to live in a country that honors the Earth and where all, including those in political offices, have as prime goals: legacy, unity and vision.
In my lifetime, 1942-present, I have not experienced a great leader of our nation. I do not consider Clinton, Obama or Biden as great leaders. Maybe many of you feel otherwise. But I would volunteer to work pro bono for a candidate or a party that truly takes the pulse of the people, understands status (what is going on) and works to resolve the issues we face here and abroad.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead
If Mike wants to write a book about "What We Wish to See for Our Children" with a subtitle of
"What the Democratic Party Should Listen To" or something to this effect, I will be glad to be part of that project. But I will say that presenting terms like "conservative or progressive impulse" will not cut it. Human needs and human opinion are more down to Earth issues than this. "Optimization problem," "ideological balance," "factional positioning," are phrases that will confuse voters, and not win elections. Instead, taking the pulse of the nationwide "patient" is a must. How can we best serve the spectrum of peoples living in this country in the context of our times, is a far more grounded approach that people will understand.
Please address the powerful forces of “stupidity” (Bonhoeffer) misogyny, racism, bigotry and cruelty and why these often have nothing to do with being “left behind.” When unleashed -given permission to express- they can contaminate and override any opportunity for democratic deliberation.
Most people have always been ignorant about most things. People are not less intelligent than they were generations ago. But they feel more disconnected and dispossessed than ever. Social media has driven this fragmentation. But elitism greased the wheels and left liberals flat-footed and blind to the problem.