A RECENT article by Ezra Klein on the theme of ' How political science conquered Washington' has sent Thomas Frank, a progressive firebrand and author of 'What's the Matter with Kansas', into a tizzy. 'Nearly every aspect of this argument annoyed me', Mr Frank confesses. Mr Klein's piece heralds the rising influence within Washington of academic political science and, by implication, the rising influence of Ezra Klein (pictured), who trucks in punched-up popularisations of the otherwise dry stuff. Mr Frank is not impressed. 'The characteristic failing of D.C. isn't that it ignores these herds of experts,' he writes, 'it's that it attends to them with a gaping credulity that they do not deserve.'
As an example of gaping credulity, Mr Frank points to the argument of Nate Cohn, another wonkish purveyor of pop poli-sci, to the effect that the Democratic Party cannot realistically hope to win a majority in the House of Representatives because the Democratic base has become too concentrated in big cities, and has more or less ceded the sticks to the GOP. When it comes to taking back the House, Mr Cohn says, Democrats have two options: tack to the right or 'wait for demographic and generational change'.
Mr Frank simply cannot accept that these are the only options. The Republican House majority is so egregiously rotten that surely something- something!-can be done to recapture hardscrabble rural whites only recently lost to the party of goodness and light. So why aren't Messrs Cohn and Klein, good liberals both, working harder to divine that special something capable of turning the boondocks blue? According to Mr Frank, political science is making them complacent. The median-voter theorem, in particular, is leeching the fight from the intellectual left by assuming that liberals need to edge towards conservatives in order to gain broader appeal. Mr Frank writes:
All political contests are battles over the center, everyone here knows that, and so Democrats who wish to win must always move to the center, meaning to the right. ...
So a data-minded commentator like Nate Cohn is able to look out over the blasted moonscape of Appalachia and conclude that a party of the left has nothing it might conceivably offer the people there.
The fatalism here may be science-driven, but still it boggles the mind. Today, the right is out there organizing and proselytizing and signing people up for yet another grievance-hyping mass movement. Over the last 40 years they have completely remade the world, and at no point did they play by the centrist rules.
There is a good point hiding in here somewhere. There's also a fat dollop of guff. On the way to his fair point, about which more anon, Mr Frank suggests that Democrats would not have lost the House back in 1994 had Bill Clinton not moved toward the centre. Jonathan Chait of New York, citing the relevant political science, points out that that's nonsense. Mr Chait accuses Mr Frank generally, and not entirely fairly, of 'a lack of familiarity with even the basic concepts of political science'. Mr Frank is manifestly familiar with at least one of these basic concepts. That said, it is true that when ideologically sympathetic political scientists have examined Mr Frank's bestselling armchair analyses of the electorate, they have found it lacking. The idea that the Democrats are somehow knee-capping themselves by pursuing the median voter, but would succeed brilliantly if only they would commit whole hog to the redistributive populism Mr Frank himself champions is similarly lacking. It is wishful thinking without empirical credibility. It's not fatalistic to say so.
Mr Frank's fair point is that there is much to be said for 'organizing and proselytizing and signing people up for ... [a] grievance-hyping mass movement'. I take him to mean that the terms of the debate, the contours of coalitions, and therefore the space of electoral possibilities is not set in stone, but is open to transformation through galvanising rhetoric and spirited activism. It's a good point.
Yet this does not add up to an argument against median-voter logic-which actually is logic. Mr Frank's point is best recast as a point about median-voter logic-as an exhortation to his fellow progressives not to take the preferences of the median voter for granted, as fixed, when it might be possible to shift those preferences to the left with some galvanising rhetoric, etc. In any given election, the party that wins the median voter wins. But over the longer term, the party that succeeds in pulling the median in its direction gets more of what it wants and is forced to concede less of what it doesn't. This, I think, is the kernel of truth nestled inside Mr Frank's fulmination.
Yet I think Mr Frank is mistaken to hold that wonky, data-centric journalists such as Messrs Cohn and Klein are somehow failing the left by seeking to describe reality rather than to change it. Can't they change it by describing it? Surely successful political strategy requires a correct map of the electoral territory. And it is possible, though difficult, to change the opinions of voters simply by changing their understanding of the facts. So-called 'explanatory journalism' can be persuasive journalism, too.
More importantly, Mr Frank ought to recognise that every political coalition needs both analysts and evangelists. Ezra Klein is an incisive analyst with an extraordinarily detailed grasp of policy and a crisp, bland prose style. In contrast, Thomas Frank's analytical abilities are overmatched by his truly extraordinary rhetorical gifts. The prospects of the Democratic Party would not be improved were Mr Klein to try his hand at Mr Frank's brand of stylishly vehement polemics. It might help, however, were Mr Frank to deign to listen to what Ezra Klein is saying, and then to say it better.
Entities 0 Name: Frank Count: 18 1 Name: Ezra Klein Count: 4 2 Name: Klein Count: 4 3 Name: Thomas Frank Count: 2 4 Name: Washington Count: 2 5 Name: Democratic Party Count: 2 6 Name: House Count: 2 7 Name: Messrs Cohn Count: 2 8 Name: Nate Cohn Count: 2 9 Name: Cohn Count: 1 10 Name: D.C. Count: 1 11 Name: Republican House Count: 1 12 Name: Bill Clinton Count: 1 13 Name: Kansas Count: 1 14 Name: Appalachia Count: 1 15 Name: House of Representatives Count: 1 16 Name: New York Count: 1 17 Name: Jonathan Chait Count: 1 18 Name: Chait Count: 1 19 Name: GOP Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1qE4BY8 Title: Why Democrats and Republicans don't understand each other Description: Political scientists Matthew Grossmann and David Hopkins think the Democratic and Republican parties really are different, and in a series of papers, they're trying to prove it. In "Policymaking in Red and Blue," Grossmann and Hopkins state their conclusion plainly: "the Republican Party is dominated by ideologues who are committed to small-government principles, while Democrats represent a coalition of social groups seeking public policies that favor their particular interests."
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