There’s
a danger. Well, perhaps more than one danger, but the one I’m thinking
of at the moment is the danger of “motivated reasoning” aided by the
twin demons of selective perception and confirmation bias. At some
fairly superficial level, most of us believe it’s important to keep an
open mind, listen to new evidence and consider the possibility that one
or more of our beliefs is incorrect, at which point we are supposed to
change our minds.
But in practice too many of us read
and listen to those with whom we expect to agree. And when we do listen
to those with whom we disagree, we are motivated to disbelieve their
argument and treat their facts more skeptically. Although I try to be an
exception to the dangers of motivated reasoning, selective perception
and confirmation bias, I mostly fail. (Or maybe it’s just that my
beliefs are just, you know, right.)
For example, as
regular readers of Black Ink have noticed, I’m fairly convinced that the
U.S. system of politics and government is slowly but steadily breaking
down. We have a system that — more than pretty much any other in the
world — requires compromise across party lines for the government to
function. But our parties have mostly lost the ability to compromise. I
do believe that most of the fault for this is on the right/Republican
side, where the notion of compromise is more frequently treated as a
form of betrayal or surrender. All of this is available for more
discussion as we head into our ridiculously long and very enlightening
presidential campaign season.
But Tuesday, the regular morning note from NBC’s politics crew, starting with Chuck Todd, focused on the connection
between the modern way of winning presidential elections (which has
less and less to do with appealing to moderate swing voters) and the
gridlock in Washington. First you ignore most of the country because
only a relative few swing states matter. But even in those states, you
don’t put most of your effort into persuading moderate swing voters. The
new formula focuses much more on identifying people who would vote for
your candidate, if they vote, and then motivating those voters to vote.
Those are, in the passage below, “the voters you need.” And you motivate
them by scaring them about the consequences of the other side winning.
From that article:
David Plouffe, Obama's former top political strategist, summed it up this way: “If you run a campaign trying to appeal to 60 to 70 percent of the electorate, you're not going to run a very compelling campaign for the voters you need.” In today's highly polarized political world, this is how you win elections — by motivating your base and by recognizing there are few swing voters left. But it also makes governing harder, especially when the parties are trading electoral victories every two years (with Democrats benefitting from presidential turnouts, and with Republicans benefitting from midterm turnouts). When you have data-driven candidates appealing to win 51% of voters, it means that a president's job-approval rating is never going to get much higher than that, and it means that bipartisan policy goals (like the TPP free-trade agreement) are the exception rather than the rule.
