Noah Smith is doing his “you people on the left need to be re-conciliatory, join up with moderate conservatives like McMullin to fight Trumpism“ that’s continuing his “The US is turning into civil war spain“ idea.
And he’s presenting it like people on the left are too prideful to do it, which some are. But the other problem with this he’s not addressing is that this plan could basically be “We’re about to be shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, so what we need to do is to tie ourselves to the heaviest and fastest-sinking piece of the ship!“
Boring answer is that granting the premises there’s risks and benefits to either strategy, and while the risks and benefits for one strategy or the other might in principle be calculable, the noise of motivated reasoning means we won’t be able to tell which strategy is “right” ahead of time.
I’m largely in the camp that we should do what we can to defend liberal-democratic norms and make a coalition with anyone else who is also defending liberal-democratic norms, whatever else their views may be. Granted, that’s partly because there’s no real coherent agenda with broad support among the left, and we shouldn’t be picky about ideological purity when we don’t know what our ideology is.
(I mean, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are very popular on the left, but their popularity is more about personality and symbolism than policy)
I think the agenda with broad support is social democracy. That’s what the Bernie and Warren supporters want, that’s actually something that exists, and it’s a goal that can be worked towards.
And I’m not sure what level or type of support the left is expected to give. Is the left supposed to agree with McMullin when he says the Real Problem is the size of the US deficit? That’s the problem here, what exactly does this “coalition“ entail? Who gets thrown under the bus?
The closest thing to an answer I could think of is the generic culture war “Tone down the PC“ thing. But even leaving aside the morality and possible damage of that decision it’s tricky because it’s not something that can be given away, I don’t think it’s so much the law that pisses people off as the actions of people. It’s not available to give up.
I think we could actually get some support for social democracy. I don’t think it will be as pragmatic as I’d like, but a relatively coherent social democracy that is not indifferent to the conditions of WWC rural Americans could rally up some enthusiasm and take some of the pressure off of automation.
And yeah, social democracy exists, and unlike Communism, it doesn’t involve killing lots of people.
I’m not sure how well it would work when combined with Globalism, which seems to be a thing the Left really does not want to remove, which I want to see removed.
On top of that, I recently had someone argue that all cultures are equal, despite my clearly explaining that FGM is cultural (not even religious), and them appearing to be opposed to FGM. So I’m not sure how much pragmatism there is to be had.
