In this article, Matthew Yglesias uses a recent example to discuss how left-wing donor-funded lobbying organizations pressure Democratic politicians to take unpopular positions on a wide range of policy questions.
Golda_M on
>If you hold a safe seat (as most elected officials do) there’s very little short-term downside to embracing demands from these groups, even if they don’t perfectly align with voters’ views.
So… at some point, delving into the minutae of interest group MO, complex incentive structures and whatnot… it becomes a dead end. Too many details to juggle.
The only real antidote to mature games is creative destruction. I don’t mean “burn it all down” but I do mean dynamism and renewal.
It sounds like the interest groups just sucks. *Why* is rolling out solar not a priority while less productive and counterproductive demands are iron clad? Why is the clean energy lobby not just better?
A party coalition is always going to have “groups.” They are supposed to have power and influence.
Once you’re at a place where the hurdle to clean energy policy is the clean energy *faction*… failure is basically guaranteed.
Where do groups get their agendas? How do they form them? Why? Who?
CincyAnarchy on
I’ll focus on one section of the article:
>One reason these interest group checklists are important is that primary voters don’t have a ton of information about the details of candidates’ policy positions, but they do care about endorsements. [Jacqueline Colao, David Broockman, Gregory A. Huber, and Joshua Kalla find](https://osf.io/preprints/osf/7xbza_v1) that, contrary to conventional wisdom, primary voters aren’t particularly extreme in their views. But they do have positive affect toward partisan-aligned groups like L.C.V., and L.C.V. is under no obligation to release their full questionnaire or explain their reasoning. So even if you’re a candidate who thinks it’s more important to get a bipartisan deal to maximize clean electricity than to do ineffectual position-taking against the oil and gas industry, all the voters will hear from L.C.V. during a primary campaign is that your opponent is good on the environment and you’re bad.
I’ll be honest… this rings true. Endorsements are a big thing in primaries, especially in smaller scale primaries.
But what’s the alternative that Primary Voters should be going off of instead? Like, say I am evaluating candidates in the Dem Primary for my State HoR or even for the Federal HoR. Maybe even for local offices for the city. Especially consider this on a systemic level, with tens of thousands of voters who aren’t paying attention to every single candidate on their ballot (read: most people). How are voters supposed to figure out what name they don’t recognize to vote for?
The problem I see is that Democrats, for a long long time, have worked off endorsements. That’s the whole reason why Unions were (and still are but increasingly less so) so important to the coalition. Union members would vote based on their Union’s endorsement, and politicians would go to Unions and ask what they want from them for their endorsement. It was an effective ecosystem. It was also, importantly, a largely LOCAL ecosystem. Which is also what the article talks about as a problem right now:
>Moderation-skeptics keep making the point that it’s increasingly difficult for [individual members to distinguish themselves from national party brands](https://www.slowboring.com/p/moderation-is-not-overrated), but that just means that the groups’ sway over safe seat members is a big deal, even if they’re more pragmatic in their attitude toward frontline races.
So, what’s the alterative? How do Democrats get their voters to not consider endorsements a very important part of their decision matrix? Or put another way, what should their decision matrix be, especially with less “branded” personalities running for office?
n00bi3pjs on
Isn’t this the guy who platformed Warren and her garbage policies and was a mega Bernie supporter in 2020
4 Comments
In this article, Matthew Yglesias uses a recent example to discuss how left-wing donor-funded lobbying organizations pressure Democratic politicians to take unpopular positions on a wide range of policy questions.
>If you hold a safe seat (as most elected officials do) there’s very little short-term downside to embracing demands from these groups, even if they don’t perfectly align with voters’ views.
So… at some point, delving into the minutae of interest group MO, complex incentive structures and whatnot… it becomes a dead end. Too many details to juggle.
The only real antidote to mature games is creative destruction. I don’t mean “burn it all down” but I do mean dynamism and renewal.
It sounds like the interest groups just sucks. *Why* is rolling out solar not a priority while less productive and counterproductive demands are iron clad? Why is the clean energy lobby not just better?
A party coalition is always going to have “groups.” They are supposed to have power and influence.
Once you’re at a place where the hurdle to clean energy policy is the clean energy *faction*… failure is basically guaranteed.
Where do groups get their agendas? How do they form them? Why? Who?
I’ll focus on one section of the article:
>One reason these interest group checklists are important is that primary voters don’t have a ton of information about the details of candidates’ policy positions, but they do care about endorsements. [Jacqueline Colao, David Broockman, Gregory A. Huber, and Joshua Kalla find](https://osf.io/preprints/osf/7xbza_v1) that, contrary to conventional wisdom, primary voters aren’t particularly extreme in their views. But they do have positive affect toward partisan-aligned groups like L.C.V., and L.C.V. is under no obligation to release their full questionnaire or explain their reasoning. So even if you’re a candidate who thinks it’s more important to get a bipartisan deal to maximize clean electricity than to do ineffectual position-taking against the oil and gas industry, all the voters will hear from L.C.V. during a primary campaign is that your opponent is good on the environment and you’re bad.
I’ll be honest… this rings true. Endorsements are a big thing in primaries, especially in smaller scale primaries.
But what’s the alternative that Primary Voters should be going off of instead? Like, say I am evaluating candidates in the Dem Primary for my State HoR or even for the Federal HoR. Maybe even for local offices for the city. Especially consider this on a systemic level, with tens of thousands of voters who aren’t paying attention to every single candidate on their ballot (read: most people). How are voters supposed to figure out what name they don’t recognize to vote for?
The problem I see is that Democrats, for a long long time, have worked off endorsements. That’s the whole reason why Unions were (and still are but increasingly less so) so important to the coalition. Union members would vote based on their Union’s endorsement, and politicians would go to Unions and ask what they want from them for their endorsement. It was an effective ecosystem. It was also, importantly, a largely LOCAL ecosystem. Which is also what the article talks about as a problem right now:
>Moderation-skeptics keep making the point that it’s increasingly difficult for [individual members to distinguish themselves from national party brands](https://www.slowboring.com/p/moderation-is-not-overrated), but that just means that the groups’ sway over safe seat members is a big deal, even if they’re more pragmatic in their attitude toward frontline races.
So, what’s the alterative? How do Democrats get their voters to not consider endorsements a very important part of their decision matrix? Or put another way, what should their decision matrix be, especially with less “branded” personalities running for office?
Isn’t this the guy who platformed Warren and her garbage policies and was a mega Bernie supporter in 2020