The Iowa Caucus, democracy, and the death of 1000 cuts
This is not the post I expected to write this morning. Mostly, I expected to spend my day working on some revisions to ongoing research, but I think I should take some time out to post something.
As my very, very few readers know, my assessment of the state of American democracy can be best described right now by the metaphor of Schrodinger's cat. For the last three years, we have kept a box closed, leaving ourselves ignorant about whether we inhabit a superimposed universe in which democracy exists, or a superimposed universe in which democracy does not exist, and hence the wave form of democracy, in its failure to collapse through non-observation, continues to exist in the same manner that Schrodinger's cat continues to live in the closed box.
However, we opened the box before yesterday's Iowa caucus.
What happened? I'll leave it to others to give you a full explanation of the problems involved with phone apps, vote-counting in caucuses, and the totality of everything that can go wrong, leaving us all thinking of Florida in 2000, except that the Iowa Caucus is not pivotal to anything, save for the imaginations of journalists who construct narratives that become self-fulfilling.
Yet, Iowa was a mess. At this point, what matters is not who eventually "wins," but that it was a mess, demonstrating widespread problems in our electoral system.
I'll point you to this piece by Rick Hasen over at Slate on Trump's "jokes" about refusing to leave office, and his pointed attempts to undermine confidence in the electoral system. These two points are related.
And the mess in Iowa, for however minor a phone app is, undermines confidence in an electoral system.
What happened in Iowa was very important. Iowa's importance was not about corruption (in all likelihood), nor the mechanics of the Democratic race, nor any of those basic points. Rather, the importance of Iowa is that it is one more in a long series of events that undercuts the capacity of American democracy to function.
And remember that the economy is doing great. People are not turning against democracy because it is failing, in any objective way, and the survey data have shown all along that Republican voters are and continue to be wealthier than Democrats. This is not about globalization, people left behind by trade, or anything like that. All nonsense. Andrew Gelman's individual-level takedown of the "What's the Matter with Kansas" garbage still applies.
Why is this happening? Go. Read Levitsky & Ziblatt. Now.
As my very, very few readers know, my assessment of the state of American democracy can be best described right now by the metaphor of Schrodinger's cat. For the last three years, we have kept a box closed, leaving ourselves ignorant about whether we inhabit a superimposed universe in which democracy exists, or a superimposed universe in which democracy does not exist, and hence the wave form of democracy, in its failure to collapse through non-observation, continues to exist in the same manner that Schrodinger's cat continues to live in the closed box.
However, we opened the box before yesterday's Iowa caucus.
What happened? I'll leave it to others to give you a full explanation of the problems involved with phone apps, vote-counting in caucuses, and the totality of everything that can go wrong, leaving us all thinking of Florida in 2000, except that the Iowa Caucus is not pivotal to anything, save for the imaginations of journalists who construct narratives that become self-fulfilling.
Yet, Iowa was a mess. At this point, what matters is not who eventually "wins," but that it was a mess, demonstrating widespread problems in our electoral system.
I'll point you to this piece by Rick Hasen over at Slate on Trump's "jokes" about refusing to leave office, and his pointed attempts to undermine confidence in the electoral system. These two points are related.
And the mess in Iowa, for however minor a phone app is, undermines confidence in an electoral system.
What happened in Iowa was very important. Iowa's importance was not about corruption (in all likelihood), nor the mechanics of the Democratic race, nor any of those basic points. Rather, the importance of Iowa is that it is one more in a long series of events that undercuts the capacity of American democracy to function.
And remember that the economy is doing great. People are not turning against democracy because it is failing, in any objective way, and the survey data have shown all along that Republican voters are and continue to be wealthier than Democrats. This is not about globalization, people left behind by trade, or anything like that. All nonsense. Andrew Gelman's individual-level takedown of the "What's the Matter with Kansas" garbage still applies.
Why is this happening? Go. Read Levitsky & Ziblatt. Now.
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