79 ms·

The smug style in American liberalism

314 points by andars 10y ago

yarou 10y ago
The plebeians have spoken! Let us wait for our Gaius Marius, Gracchus brothers, and Sulla.
- gozur88 10y ago
  Sulla was an Optimate.
  - unixhero 10y ago
    What is that? Roman history? (Genuine question)
    - vondur 10y ago
      An Optimate was a supporter of the Senatorial class who were benefiting from the massive wealth flowing into Rome after conquering the Mediterranean area. This created a huge problem after 100 of thousands of slaves were brought back to Italy and eliminated the small Roman farmers. The populares took advantage of this, but it ended up in civil strife and war for about 80 years.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      The Optimates were members of the ruling class of ancient Rome. They were the aristocracy - old blue-blood families with seats in the Senate. The history gets a little muddy since there were politicians from that class who embraced populism, but Sulla wasn't one of them.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Yes. A good overview from A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, from the first chapter, "The Breakdown of the Republic": https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/U7mLJYGyGH3?sfc=true https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/U7mLJYGy... (The book is brief but the remainder is about as similarly dense as this overview -- if you're not already familiar with Roman history and particulars, there's not quite enough context to grab hold of. There are better, longer biographies which should be easier reading.)
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Hasn't Trump been an "optimate" his entire life?
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      Yes. But politically, he's running as a populare. This happened in Rome as well - senators would take a populare position on a particular issue, even though they were optimates.
- dba7dba 10y ago
  Dang, that kind of "I'm smarter than you smugness" is what cost Clinton and DNS the election.
fatbird 10y ago
And so begins a really tiresome round of navel-gazing.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  This was published in April - not that it isn't relevant now, but this discourse started happening a while ago.
vacri 10y ago
Yes, liberals in America are all smug and holier-than-thou, unlike their ideological opponents, who really listen to what you have to say and never judge you ahead of time. And, of course, they never pass comment on how a person looks.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  You don't get to claim the moral high ground and use the tactics of the opposition at the same time.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    The only claim of a moral highground here is implicit in that shitpost of an article.
    - venomsnake 10y ago
      The article gave advanced warning of 6 months. That nobody heeded ...
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        In fairness, there were lots of advance warnings of why Trump would lose as well. Someone had to be right...
    - andars 10y ago
      Yes, the article isn't very good. In essence, it reverses the direction of "holier than thou". However, it raises an excellent point. The United States is not going to get anywhere if half the country looks down on the other half as a bunch of plebs, and in response the "plebs" disdain the elites. (I understand that this is a gross simplification, but I have seen this attitude often enough that it is significant). For me, the article was about the need for mutual respect.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
codeonfire 10y ago
Well tens of millions of "stupid hicks" are about to lose their health insurance. How is that for a "good fact"? Sorry for being smug.
- taurath 10y ago
  That they can't really afford in the first place. Bill Clinton himself has said if you're over the poverty line its the "craziest thing in the world".
- gozur88 10y ago
  Are these the same people who've seen their rates go up 85% in two years? Bloody ingrates!
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Well good news! Now you won't have it at all. Wait until you try medical bankruptcy on for size.
    - andars 10y ago
      I will assume that gozur88 has some source on the 85% increase. If that isn't true, ignore this. A prerequisite for an 85% increase is some payment beforehand. If they had no health insurance, they wouldn't have been paying for health insurance, and therefore their rates could not increase.
      - deleted 10y ago
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      - bobwaycott 10y ago
        My guess is an increase compared to the first-year prices under the ACA. Nobody who talks about the premium increases does so from the perspective that those who are impacted by the increases started at zero. I've seen mine nearly double each enrollment period.
    - 10y ago
gaius 10y ago
As a Brit it has been fascinating to watch the Dems run basically exactly the same campaign Remain ran.
- CalChris 10y ago
  As an American Democrat, I'm not in the least bit embarrassed by our campaign. We ran on 8 years of growth, cutting the deficit, 5% unemployment, tripled stock market, etc. Justly proud of that. I'm embarrassed for the country by what Republicans ran on and who they elected.
  - gaius 10y ago
    That's kinda my point. This election was yours to lose, just as it was Remain's, since it was the status quo. Genuine question, are you aware of Brexit at all? Do you feel the Dems learned any lessons from it?
    - CalChris 10y ago
      As I pointed out above, the status quo is actually pretty good. And yes, I'm aware of Brexit at all. I think that Trump learned more about Brexit than we learned about Remain, Brexit being the politics of complaint.
      - wojcech 10y ago
        > As I pointed out above, the status quo is actually pretty good. For you. And me. But we are not the majority. The majority does not benefit from automation, globalisation etc. as much as you and me. And it doesn't matter if in absolute terms we are all better of(for which citation would be needed, specifically for the lowest income bracket), it matters that the benefits of this new age are not spread around to those bearing the costs as efficiently as necessary. This is why people vote for brexit, trump, afd etc. And no, those don't have the answers either. But they offer convenient scapegoats and changes with "tangible" effect in favour of their voting base. Politicians on the left and the right are united in their elitism and their own bubbles of what is "important", and they have become disconnected from their populace so much that they can't even coral them effectively any more.
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yummyfajitas 10y ago
This is definitely the preference falsification election. Those who know me on HN know that I'm an outspoken proponent of unorthodox ideas. I'm regularly shouted down, called racist/evil/etc, downmodded and flagged on HN. I also get a steady stream of private emails: "I wouldn't say this publicly cause of the bullies, but that .gov link with all the data does seem to support you. I think you might be right, I need to rethink my views." These folks very rarely post here - they are afraid of social and perhaps professional approbrium (ala Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin). Those folks are engaging preference falsification. Off HN there is a similar manufactured consensus, similar social penalties for expressing the wrong ideas, and similar levels of preference falsification. When pollsters call the preference falsification continues. Apparently in the privacy of a voting booth, people are willing to express their true beliefs. Note: I don't support Trump - search my posting history for "open borders" - but I do understand why folks like him. I don't agree with him on basically any policy, but my visceral emotional reaction to his victory is positive: I love the great big "fuck you" to the biased media sneering at him, calling him racist based on "dog whistles" and then writing hit pieces against Ken Bone (let alone the bullying of folks like Tim Hunt, Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin). See also Scott Aaronson who explains this in more detail: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2777 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2777
- ant6n 10y ago
  Regarding the difference between polls and election results: maybe many people are racist, sexist xenophobes and if they tell the preference in public, they get rightfully derided for it. But with the secrecy of the ballot, they can give into their deep desire to kick out the Muslims and the Blacks, kick the females back into the kitchen and make America white again.
  - gcp 10y ago
    they get rightfully derided for it Yeah but one could have observed that shouting/bullying down someone because of their beliefs is counterproductive in getting them to reconsider them. It's not like there wasn't any warning to this.
  - 10y ago
roymckenzie 10y ago
Ironic. Vox exemplifies this.
- c0nducktr 10y ago
  They ended up firing the author.
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    They suspended the author, then let him back off of suspension. It was strange because he was leaving willingly in a few weeks to attend a graduate school program.
Lazare 10y ago
I recall reading the post when it was published, and thought it was very powerful, although I had some quibbles with the details and the tone. I mean, the author was broadly right, sure, but... Also interesting to recall: The amount of disagreements and personal insults the author got for the piece. And another: Rensin was let go from Vox shortly after writing the piece for tweeting "If Trump comes to your town, start a riot." In any case, in retrospect...he nailed it. (Disclaimer: Supported Clinton, although with major qualms.)
dnautics 10y ago
"The knowing know that police reform, that abortion rights, that labor unions are important, but go no further: What is important, after all, is to signal that you know these things." This is an amazing observation. The 'smug style' doesn't actually contribute to the amelioration of these issues. Even for some things the lack of individual commitment betrays unseriousness, e.g. abortion rights - most people protesting federal defunding of PP would NEVER imagine to actually cut a check themselves, whereas there are principled libertarians, for example, who would be for ending funding PP using other people's money while donating to the organization themselves. Ms. Clinton's talks in front of Black Lives Matter audiences was notably bereft of any reference to police accountability (which is the one truly important thing) but instead offers feel-good solutions like broadly 'ending racism', 'sensitivity training', 'community policing'.
- noobiemcfoob 10y ago
  As someone who just recently "got" the whole follow what you preach thing, I believe there is a real gap in communicating how you follow through on high-horse ideals in a practical way. It took me having a comfortable enough income to donate to political parties before it really clicked I could do a whole lot more.
gadders 10y ago
It's not just America - see the responses after Brexit as well. The major claim seems to be that most people are just not intelligent enough to have voted correctly.
- soft_dev_person 10y ago
  After Brexit, the smugness continued. Remain supporters took the campaign for a revote that got millions of signatures as a sign people were regretting, but obviously the signatures mostly were from people who had voted to remain. Still, "they regret it already" was the message spreading throughout Europe for a while. I recently saw some research stating that a very small percentage had changed their mind about the vote, and they came more or less equally from both sides. So no, no significant regret noticed. Not sure why I'm writing this. It just seems that the people seeming to vote rationally are completely irrational when it comes to judging the other side. Did we collectively lose the skill of empathy? We need to understand this or we'll be repeating these mistakes forever.
- RikNieu 10y ago
  I've heard this argument but from the small sample of brits I know(I'm South African), those who voted Leave are highly educated. Two MBAs and an actuary. This trend seems to influenced by something other than "intelligence".
jessaustin 10y ago
On November 6, 2000, during his final pre-election stump speech, Bush explained his history of political triumph thusly: "They misunderesimated me." What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years. It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak. He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style. W's was perhaps a more subtle dominating response to the Smug, but at this point we can't say it was different than Trump's. Both of them went to school with the Smug. They know what it represents both to itself and to the majority of the nation. Neither of them buy into it themselves, unlike e.g. Romney. Democrats lose when the Republican candidate has an authentic and rhetorically effective response to the Smug. Now that it's happened twice, at least some Republicans will remember it the next time around. Democrats will either do the hard work of excising this from their ideology and communication, or they will lose in the same way again.
- cafard 10y ago
  You aren't wrong, or not all wrong. However, you must consider a) that Nader made a very large difference in 2000, and b) that Trump got to run against Hillary Clinton. She is intelligent and able, but she has been a handy target for conservative media for twenty years now, and a good deal of that stuck with voters. "Both of them went to school with the Smug"; well, yes, and some would find it curious that our populists come from Yale and Penn.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Johnson seems to have gotten more votes than Nader; Johnson and Stein together definitely did so. In many of the "battleground" states, Trump's margin is totally swamped by third-party numbers. The observations you've made about Clinton aren't news to anyone. The fact she was nominated anyway, with her only primary opposition coming from outside the party, after the DNC had let it be known to all potential opponents that the fix was well and truly in, is symptomatic of the Smug. The insiders couldn't imagine the average voter rejecting the candidate chosen by the insiders. Maybe they still can't imagine it, only now it has happened. They're stuck in a loop, and for the next iteration the Republicans will know just what to do. Hint: it won't be another Romney.
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deviate_X 10y ago
I have a feeling that this explanation overly complex, more like liberal self-beating and giving far too much credence Simply those who voted for Trump feel like victims of "something" And despite having won "everything" I have the feeling that they will still feel like victims of the undefinable "other" in the up and coming loooong years..
- DefaultUserHN 10y ago
  I agree. Trump supporters won everything by losing their jobs oversea. Trump supporters won when other people call them racist for wanting to have a job. Trump supporters won when their kids are sent to die in the Middle East to line up the Rich Elite's pockets with oil money. Trump supporters won when they return from the war, with missing limbs, and the VA won't even take care of them. And the smug still can't figure out why Trump supporters support Trump.
Asdfbla 10y ago
Pretty hard to not look down on those people when you know that the facts are on your side, since for certain things there are established facts. I wouldn't be ready to be patient with someone who thinks the moon is made out of cheese or something. But I suppose the article is still right and competent politicians should have the empathy to relate even to those people. I couldn't do it.
- talmand 10y ago
  >> Pretty hard to not look down on those people Hence, the problem.
- DefaultUserHN 10y ago
  Yes, it was pretty hard for the Nazi to not look down on the Jews too. And we all know how that turned out.
bambax 10y ago
Wow. This article was published on April 21st, before the end of the primaries. > Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the fuck happened? But the § just before that one is the meat of the article: But even as many have come around to the notion that Trump is the prohibitive favorite for his party's nomination, the smug interpretation has been predictable: We only underestimated how hateful, how stupid, the Republican base can be. Krugman today: > We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law. It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/the-unknown-country http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elect... Some people never learn, but they're not the ones we think don't.
- aaronchall 10y ago
  It's not the first time he's been wrong. Krugman has lived his life in a liberal urban academic bubble and has no idea what the rest of the USA is like. We would do well to remember that when we have the misfortune to come across his writings in the future.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    I've been talking to a few liberal friends this morning who have no frame of reference outside of living on one of the USA's coasts all their lives. The perceptual bubbles are very real for both sides, and to someone who has been on both sides of the aisle - they're terrifying; because breaking through the bubble is exceptionally hard and costly, doubly so if that person is already an established adult.
  - talmand 10y ago
    >> It's not the first time he's been wrong. It's because Krugman changes his mind based on who is currently President and/or controlling Congress. A policy under a Democrat President is good and the exact same policy under a Republican President is bad. Krugman is a hack who received his Nobel for being anti-Bush. There are far better voices for the Left.
dkrich 10y ago
Bravo. Full disclosure, I voted for HRC. However, I've been saying this to my liberal friends for the entire election cycle. The message from of all of my liberal Facebook friends has been some derivative of: "Hear me out. We know Hillary isn't the best candidate, but you have to vote for Trump. If you don't you're a racist misogynist. Also, if you vote for a third party candidate, you are basically voting for Donald Trump." There are so many things wrong with that message, that I won't go into it, but the last bit about a third party vote == a vote for Trump is dismissive, condescending, wrong, and rude. The assumption is that the third party voters are reasonable people who would otherwise vote Democrat but for the fact that they have a few misgivings about HRC. However that is a very poor assumption. Not once did I hear any of those same people listen to anybody, Trump supporter, third party voter, no voter. They shouted over everyone else and smugly and overconfidently assumed everyone was listening to them. I am as shocked as anyone Trump won, but I had been telling my liberal friends for months that people just don't like HRC. I have my reasons for why I think that's true and it has nothing to do with emails or Bill Clinton's past indiscretions. Her primary run against Obama in '08 is proof positive of this, and in many ways this general election is a near repeat of that process. She and her supporters were overly confident, refused to believe that they weren't connecting with mainstream America, and then got blindsided when the votes were counted. I truly hope that the democratic party learns something from this, but from what I've seen on my Facebook feed this morning it certainly doesn't feel like it's going in that direction.
- hash-set 10y ago
  I'm just curious how old you are because I lived through the Bill Clinton years and it was appalling how bad the Clintons were. Their legacy from Arkansas all the way up the Pay to Play Clinton Foundation has been completely consistent--to bend and break the law everywhere possible if it is to their benefit to do so and then engage in cover ups, blackmail, and possibly murder to get away with it. They are a modern day crime family. You probably dismiss all this as unproven "tinfoil hat" conspiracy stuff, right? But there is such a large body of circumstancial evidence when it comes to the Clintons that it is impossible to ignore. Then the leaks started dropping and we got a small window in a large world of corruption. Did none of this occur to you?
hash-set 10y ago
Pretty much sums up why I'm no longer involved in higher education. I also tend to think a lot of liberals are mentally ill, but I concede that you can't begin a dialog with that assumption. The PC movement on campuses today is a dead end and will thus die or higher education will die. Their choice.
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squozzer 10y ago
Where I think this approach has been especially disastrous has been climate change. When people challenged the facts - which I don't entirely believe but the potential outcome is too serious to just blow off - they were humiliated and discredited, sometimes viciously. When people challenged the feasibility of solutions - ditto. Which in my mind signaled the worst - the desire to break resistance was stronger than the desire to persuade. Which led to a belief that maybe something more sinister was in the cards - a la Pol Pot's killing fields. Not a reasonable belief but when you see others dehumanized for questioning the know-it-alls, it's understandable.
danr4 10y ago
It's been a really long time since I read an article this long. Very eye opening.
lamontcg 10y ago
This was a bit TL;DR. I think a better summary is that "liberal elites" (although really moderate republicans) has conclusively failed. And it lost in 2000 and 2004 and this is a pattern of it failing. And the problems are that they've completely lost the blue collar male vote. There's no labor party here in the US at all. And the problem goes all the way back to Bill's vote for NAFTA and his center-right policies. The Democratic party has been losing the actual working class ever since then. The Democratic Party should really stop lecturing the working class, and start promising the working class that they'll have jobs and won't see their kids sent off to die in foreign wars.
m_herrlich 10y ago
But dumbasses do exist. And if a true dumbass senses that you think he's a dumbass, he will obsessively counter everything you do just to be contrarian. Teach those libtards a lesson. It's not logical but it makes total sense if you think like a dumbass. I guess I'm part of the problem.
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314 points by andars 10y ago

yarou 10y ago

The plebeians have spoken! Let us wait for our Gaius Marius, Gracchus brothers, and Sulla.

gozur88 10y ago
Sulla was an Optimate.
- unixhero 10y ago
  What is that? Roman history? (Genuine question)
  - vondur 10y ago
    An Optimate was a supporter of the Senatorial class who were benefiting from the massive wealth flowing into Rome after conquering the Mediterranean area. This created a huge problem after 100 of thousands of slaves were brought back to Italy and eliminated the small Roman farmers. The populares took advantage of this, but it ended up in civil strife and war for about 80 years.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    The Optimates were members of the ruling class of ancient Rome. They were the aristocracy - old blue-blood families with seats in the Senate. The history gets a little muddy since there were politicians from that class who embraced populism, but Sulla wasn't one of them.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Yes. A good overview from A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, from the first chapter, "The Breakdown of the Republic": https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/U7mLJYGyGH3?sfc=true https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/U7mLJYGy... (The book is brief but the remainder is about as similarly dense as this overview -- if you're not already familiar with Roman history and particulars, there's not quite enough context to grab hold of. There are better, longer biographies which should be easier reading.)
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Hasn't Trump been an "optimate" his entire life?
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Yes. But politically, he's running as a populare. This happened in Rome as well - senators would take a populare position on a particular issue, even though they were optimates.
dba7dba 10y ago
Dang, that kind of "I'm smarter than you smugness" is what cost Clinton and DNS the election.

fatbird 10y ago

And so begins a really tiresome round of navel-gazing.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
This was published in April - not that it isn't relevant now, but this discourse started happening a while ago.

vacri 10y ago

Yes, liberals in America are all smug and holier-than-thou, unlike their ideological opponents, who really listen to what you have to say and never judge you ahead of time. And, of course, they never pass comment on how a person looks.

oldmanjay 10y ago
You don't get to claim the moral high ground and use the tactics of the opposition at the same time.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  The only claim of a moral highground here is implicit in that shitpost of an article.
  - venomsnake 10y ago
    The article gave advanced warning of 6 months. That nobody heeded ...
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      In fairness, there were lots of advance warnings of why Trump would lose as well. Someone had to be right...
  - andars 10y ago
    Yes, the article isn't very good. In essence, it reverses the direction of "holier than thou". However, it raises an excellent point. The United States is not going to get anywhere if half the country looks down on the other half as a bunch of plebs, and in response the "plebs" disdain the elites. (I understand that this is a gross simplification, but I have seen this attitude often enough that it is significant). For me, the article was about the need for mutual respect.
    - M_Grey 10y ago

codeonfire 10y ago

Well tens of millions of "stupid hicks" are about to lose their health insurance. How is that for a "good fact"? Sorry for being smug.

taurath 10y ago
That they can't really afford in the first place. Bill Clinton himself has said if you're over the poverty line its the "craziest thing in the world".
gozur88 10y ago
Are these the same people who've seen their rates go up 85% in two years? Bloody ingrates!
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Well good news! Now you won't have it at all. Wait until you try medical bankruptcy on for size.
  - andars 10y ago
    I will assume that gozur88 has some source on the 85% increase. If that isn't true, ignore this. A prerequisite for an 85% increase is some payment beforehand. If they had no health insurance, they wouldn't have been paying for health insurance, and therefore their rates could not increase.
    - deleted 10y ago
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    - bobwaycott 10y ago
      My guess is an increase compared to the first-year prices under the ACA. Nobody who talks about the premium increases does so from the perspective that those who are impacted by the increases started at zero. I've seen mine nearly double each enrollment period.
  - 10y ago

gaius 10y ago

As a Brit it has been fascinating to watch the Dems run basically exactly the same campaign Remain ran.

CalChris 10y ago
As an American Democrat, I'm not in the least bit embarrassed by our campaign. We ran on 8 years of growth, cutting the deficit, 5% unemployment, tripled stock market, etc. Justly proud of that. I'm embarrassed for the country by what Republicans ran on and who they elected.
- gaius 10y ago
  That's kinda my point. This election was yours to lose, just as it was Remain's, since it was the status quo. Genuine question, are you aware of Brexit at all? Do you feel the Dems learned any lessons from it?
  - CalChris 10y ago
    As I pointed out above, the status quo is actually pretty good. And yes, I'm aware of Brexit at all. I think that Trump learned more about Brexit than we learned about Remain, Brexit being the politics of complaint.
    - wojcech 10y ago
      > As I pointed out above, the status quo is actually pretty good. For you. And me. But we are not the majority. The majority does not benefit from automation, globalisation etc. as much as you and me. And it doesn't matter if in absolute terms we are all better of(for which citation would be needed, specifically for the lowest income bracket), it matters that the benefits of this new age are not spread around to those bearing the costs as efficiently as necessary. This is why people vote for brexit, trump, afd etc. And no, those don't have the answers either. But they offer convenient scapegoats and changes with "tangible" effect in favour of their voting base. Politicians on the left and the right are united in their elitism and their own bubbles of what is "important", and they have become disconnected from their populace so much that they can't even coral them effectively any more.

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yummyfajitas 10y ago

This is definitely the preference falsification election. Those who know me on HN know that I'm an outspoken proponent of unorthodox ideas. I'm regularly shouted down, called racist/evil/etc, downmodded and flagged on HN. I also get a steady stream of private emails: "I wouldn't say this publicly cause of the bullies, but that .gov link with all the data does seem to support you. I think you might be right, I need to rethink my views." These folks very rarely post here - they are afraid of social and perhaps professional approbrium (ala Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin). Those folks are engaging preference falsification. Off HN there is a similar manufactured consensus, similar social penalties for expressing the wrong ideas, and similar levels of preference falsification. When pollsters call the preference falsification continues. Apparently in the privacy of a voting booth, people are willing to express their true beliefs. Note: I don't support Trump - search my posting history for "open borders" - but I do understand why folks like him. I don't agree with him on basically any policy, but my visceral emotional reaction to his victory is positive: I love the great big "fuck you" to the biased media sneering at him, calling him racist based on "dog whistles" and then writing hit pieces against Ken Bone (let alone the bullying of folks like Tim Hunt, Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin). See also Scott Aaronson who explains this in more detail: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2777 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2777

ant6n 10y ago
Regarding the difference between polls and election results: maybe many people are racist, sexist xenophobes and if they tell the preference in public, they get rightfully derided for it. But with the secrecy of the ballot, they can give into their deep desire to kick out the Muslims and the Blacks, kick the females back into the kitchen and make America white again.
- gcp 10y ago
  they get rightfully derided for it Yeah but one could have observed that shouting/bullying down someone because of their beliefs is counterproductive in getting them to reconsider them. It's not like there wasn't any warning to this.
- 10y ago

roymckenzie 10y ago

Ironic. Vox exemplifies this.

c0nducktr 10y ago
They ended up firing the author.
- tanderson92 10y ago
  They suspended the author, then let him back off of suspension. It was strange because he was leaving willingly in a few weeks to attend a graduate school program.

Lazare 10y ago

I recall reading the post when it was published, and thought it was very powerful, although I had some quibbles with the details and the tone. I mean, the author was broadly right, sure, but... Also interesting to recall: The amount of disagreements and personal insults the author got for the piece. And another: Rensin was let go from Vox shortly after writing the piece for tweeting "If Trump comes to your town, start a riot." In any case, in retrospect...he nailed it. (Disclaimer: Supported Clinton, although with major qualms.)

dnautics 10y ago

"The knowing know that police reform, that abortion rights, that labor unions are important, but go no further: What is important, after all, is to signal that you know these things." This is an amazing observation. The 'smug style' doesn't actually contribute to the amelioration of these issues. Even for some things the lack of individual commitment betrays unseriousness, e.g. abortion rights - most people protesting federal defunding of PP would NEVER imagine to actually cut a check themselves, whereas there are principled libertarians, for example, who would be for ending funding PP using other people's money while donating to the organization themselves. Ms. Clinton's talks in front of Black Lives Matter audiences was notably bereft of any reference to police accountability (which is the one truly important thing) but instead offers feel-good solutions like broadly 'ending racism', 'sensitivity training', 'community policing'.

noobiemcfoob 10y ago
As someone who just recently "got" the whole follow what you preach thing, I believe there is a real gap in communicating how you follow through on high-horse ideals in a practical way. It took me having a comfortable enough income to donate to political parties before it really clicked I could do a whole lot more.

gadders 10y ago

It's not just America - see the responses after Brexit as well. The major claim seems to be that most people are just not intelligent enough to have voted correctly.

soft_dev_person 10y ago
After Brexit, the smugness continued. Remain supporters took the campaign for a revote that got millions of signatures as a sign people were regretting, but obviously the signatures mostly were from people who had voted to remain. Still, "they regret it already" was the message spreading throughout Europe for a while. I recently saw some research stating that a very small percentage had changed their mind about the vote, and they came more or less equally from both sides. So no, no significant regret noticed. Not sure why I'm writing this. It just seems that the people seeming to vote rationally are completely irrational when it comes to judging the other side. Did we collectively lose the skill of empathy? We need to understand this or we'll be repeating these mistakes forever.
RikNieu 10y ago
I've heard this argument but from the small sample of brits I know(I'm South African), those who voted Leave are highly educated. Two MBAs and an actuary. This trend seems to influenced by something other than "intelligence".

jessaustin 10y ago

On November 6, 2000, during his final pre-election stump speech, Bush explained his history of political triumph thusly: "They misunderesimated me." What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years. It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak. He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style. W's was perhaps a more subtle dominating response to the Smug, but at this point we can't say it was different than Trump's. Both of them went to school with the Smug. They know what it represents both to itself and to the majority of the nation. Neither of them buy into it themselves, unlike e.g. Romney. Democrats lose when the Republican candidate has an authentic and rhetorically effective response to the Smug. Now that it's happened twice, at least some Republicans will remember it the next time around. Democrats will either do the hard work of excising this from their ideology and communication, or they will lose in the same way again.

cafard 10y ago
You aren't wrong, or not all wrong. However, you must consider a) that Nader made a very large difference in 2000, and b) that Trump got to run against Hillary Clinton. She is intelligent and able, but she has been a handy target for conservative media for twenty years now, and a good deal of that stuck with voters. "Both of them went to school with the Smug"; well, yes, and some would find it curious that our populists come from Yale and Penn.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Johnson seems to have gotten more votes than Nader; Johnson and Stein together definitely did so. In many of the "battleground" states, Trump's margin is totally swamped by third-party numbers. The observations you've made about Clinton aren't news to anyone. The fact she was nominated anyway, with her only primary opposition coming from outside the party, after the DNC had let it be known to all potential opponents that the fix was well and truly in, is symptomatic of the Smug. The insiders couldn't imagine the average voter rejecting the candidate chosen by the insiders. Maybe they still can't imagine it, only now it has happened. They're stuck in a loop, and for the next iteration the Republicans will know just what to do. Hint: it won't be another Romney.

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deviate_X 10y ago

I have a feeling that this explanation overly complex, more like liberal self-beating and giving far too much credence Simply those who voted for Trump feel like victims of "something" And despite having won "everything" I have the feeling that they will still feel like victims of the undefinable "other" in the up and coming loooong years..

DefaultUserHN 10y ago
I agree. Trump supporters won everything by losing their jobs oversea. Trump supporters won when other people call them racist for wanting to have a job. Trump supporters won when their kids are sent to die in the Middle East to line up the Rich Elite's pockets with oil money. Trump supporters won when they return from the war, with missing limbs, and the VA won't even take care of them. And the smug still can't figure out why Trump supporters support Trump.

Asdfbla 10y ago

Pretty hard to not look down on those people when you know that the facts are on your side, since for certain things there are established facts. I wouldn't be ready to be patient with someone who thinks the moon is made out of cheese or something. But I suppose the article is still right and competent politicians should have the empathy to relate even to those people. I couldn't do it.

talmand 10y ago
>> Pretty hard to not look down on those people Hence, the problem.
DefaultUserHN 10y ago
Yes, it was pretty hard for the Nazi to not look down on the Jews too. And we all know how that turned out.

bambax 10y ago

Wow. This article was published on April 21st, before the end of the primaries. > Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the fuck happened? But the § just before that one is the meat of the article: But even as many have come around to the notion that Trump is the prohibitive favorite for his party's nomination, the smug interpretation has been predictable: We only underestimated how hateful, how stupid, the Republican base can be. Krugman today: > We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law. It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/the-unknown-country http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elect... Some people never learn, but they're not the ones we think don't.

aaronchall 10y ago
It's not the first time he's been wrong. Krugman has lived his life in a liberal urban academic bubble and has no idea what the rest of the USA is like. We would do well to remember that when we have the misfortune to come across his writings in the future.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  I've been talking to a few liberal friends this morning who have no frame of reference outside of living on one of the USA's coasts all their lives. The perceptual bubbles are very real for both sides, and to someone who has been on both sides of the aisle - they're terrifying; because breaking through the bubble is exceptionally hard and costly, doubly so if that person is already an established adult.
- talmand 10y ago
  >> It's not the first time he's been wrong. It's because Krugman changes his mind based on who is currently President and/or controlling Congress. A policy under a Democrat President is good and the exact same policy under a Republican President is bad. Krugman is a hack who received his Nobel for being anti-Bush. There are far better voices for the Left.

dkrich 10y ago

Bravo. Full disclosure, I voted for HRC. However, I've been saying this to my liberal friends for the entire election cycle. The message from of all of my liberal Facebook friends has been some derivative of: "Hear me out. We know Hillary isn't the best candidate, but you have to vote for Trump. If you don't you're a racist misogynist. Also, if you vote for a third party candidate, you are basically voting for Donald Trump." There are so many things wrong with that message, that I won't go into it, but the last bit about a third party vote == a vote for Trump is dismissive, condescending, wrong, and rude. The assumption is that the third party voters are reasonable people who would otherwise vote Democrat but for the fact that they have a few misgivings about HRC. However that is a very poor assumption. Not once did I hear any of those same people listen to anybody, Trump supporter, third party voter, no voter. They shouted over everyone else and smugly and overconfidently assumed everyone was listening to them. I am as shocked as anyone Trump won, but I had been telling my liberal friends for months that people just don't like HRC. I have my reasons for why I think that's true and it has nothing to do with emails or Bill Clinton's past indiscretions. Her primary run against Obama in '08 is proof positive of this, and in many ways this general election is a near repeat of that process. She and her supporters were overly confident, refused to believe that they weren't connecting with mainstream America, and then got blindsided when the votes were counted. I truly hope that the democratic party learns something from this, but from what I've seen on my Facebook feed this morning it certainly doesn't feel like it's going in that direction.

hash-set 10y ago
I'm just curious how old you are because I lived through the Bill Clinton years and it was appalling how bad the Clintons were. Their legacy from Arkansas all the way up the Pay to Play Clinton Foundation has been completely consistent--to bend and break the law everywhere possible if it is to their benefit to do so and then engage in cover ups, blackmail, and possibly murder to get away with it. They are a modern day crime family. You probably dismiss all this as unproven "tinfoil hat" conspiracy stuff, right? But there is such a large body of circumstancial evidence when it comes to the Clintons that it is impossible to ignore. Then the leaks started dropping and we got a small window in a large world of corruption. Did none of this occur to you?

hash-set 10y ago

Pretty much sums up why I'm no longer involved in higher education. I also tend to think a lot of liberals are mentally ill, but I concede that you can't begin a dialog with that assumption. The PC movement on campuses today is a dead end and will thus die or higher education will die. Their choice.

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squozzer 10y ago

Where I think this approach has been especially disastrous has been climate change. When people challenged the facts - which I don't entirely believe but the potential outcome is too serious to just blow off - they were humiliated and discredited, sometimes viciously. When people challenged the feasibility of solutions - ditto. Which in my mind signaled the worst - the desire to break resistance was stronger than the desire to persuade. Which led to a belief that maybe something more sinister was in the cards - a la Pol Pot's killing fields. Not a reasonable belief but when you see others dehumanized for questioning the know-it-alls, it's understandable.

danr4 10y ago

It's been a really long time since I read an article this long. Very eye opening.

lamontcg 10y ago

This was a bit TL;DR. I think a better summary is that "liberal elites" (although really moderate republicans) has conclusively failed. And it lost in 2000 and 2004 and this is a pattern of it failing. And the problems are that they've completely lost the blue collar male vote. There's no labor party here in the US at all. And the problem goes all the way back to Bill's vote for NAFTA and his center-right policies. The Democratic party has been losing the actual working class ever since then. The Democratic Party should really stop lecturing the working class, and start promising the working class that they'll have jobs and won't see their kids sent off to die in foreign wars.

m_herrlich 10y ago

But dumbasses do exist. And if a true dumbass senses that you think he's a dumbass, he will obsessively counter everything you do just to be contrarian. Teach those libtards a lesson. It's not logical but it makes total sense if you think like a dumbass. I guess I'm part of the problem.

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