VOX has an article entitled,
"Tech nerds are smart. But they can't seem to get their heads around politics". The first part sings the praises of Tim Urban's
WAIT BUT WHY, for digging deep into, and explaining in plain English, subjects many people are fuzzy about.
In the majority of the article, David Roberts, explains why he thinks Urban, like many tech nerds, get politics wrong, when not shunning it in disgust. He goes on with his explanation of why Congress is gridlocked, and his reasoning is far beyond money. He explains how the roots, trunk, and branches of American politics, grew to the tangle it is today.
It sound logical, reaffirms things I knew, dispels some misconceptions I had, and clarified a lot of fuzzy WTFs. You may like it, or not, but I think you'll come away with a clearer picture.
Quote:
First, independents are not independent. In fact, "independent" may be the second most myth-encrusted, poorly understood phenomenon in US politics. The key thing to understand about independents is that they generally vote like partisans. As political scientist John Sides says:
"They tend to be loyal to their party’s candidate in elections. They tend to have favorable views of many political figures in their party. They are not much more likely to identify as ideologically moderate. To be sure, independent leaners are not as partisan as the strongest partisans. But they resemble weaker partisans much more than they do real independents. In actuality, real independents make up just over 10 percent of Americans, and a small fraction of Americans who actually vote."
Second, the most myth-encrusted phenomenon in US politics is the "moderate." The popular conception of moderates is that they gravitate toward the political center, splitting the difference between the mainstream positions of the two parties.
If that's a moderate, then America doesn't have many of those either. In fact, the relative prevalence of moderates in popular polling is almost certainly a statistical artifact. A voter with one extreme conservative opinion (round up and expel all illegal immigrants immediately) and one extreme liberal opinion (institute a 100 percent tax on wealth over a million dollars) will be marked, for the purposes of polling, as a moderate. What's really being measured is heterogeneity of opinion, not centrism. In fact, most moderates have at least one opinion that is well outside the mainstream of either party.
|