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Pundits and Personalities
Aside from my general disagreements with the Never Trump pundits about policy, strategies for, and direction of, ahem, conservatism, I had pre-existing doubts about their overall ability to judge political outcomes. They have a very bad record of selecting or backing candidates that GOP voters could relate to and be inspired by, and also of judging candidates viability on both sides.
My conclusion, based on new information on how these pundits have gotten things so wrong is: They don’t understand basic psychology of either candidates or voters. They may be policy wonks, but they don’t understand people.
While they are often accused, rightly, of being out-of-touch with the common man, which is another way to describe why these guys get it wrong, I think it goes deeper.
Bill Kristol is the best example. He fundamentally misunderstands Trump’s personality and therefore it naturally follows that he would misunderstand Trump voters. This is reciprocal and self-reinforcing.
If you get such basic things as voter’s desires, motivations and expectations wrong, you will not be able to make very good choices or predictions. Any strategy such a fellow suggests is based on badly flawed assumptions.
Instead of analyzing Kristol and his fellow travelers from their origins and history, let’s look at the present and work backward.
Presently, Kristol is supporting Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, and for President. Let that sink in.
Knowing Kristol as a neocon centrist who doesn’t like radical change or outright socialism, this might be a good choice for him policy-wise. His ‘plan’ is to stop the Trumpward drift of the GOP and make it through the next 4-8 years with a centrist Democrat White House, while shaming and removing anyone related to Trump, trying to relegate the revolt to an insignificant blip in the grand scheme of the glorious GOP. While this idea alone is preposterous, I want to keep my focus on Kristol’s failure to understand people:
“Trump and his aides were obsessed with destroying one, and only one, of the Democratic candidates: Joe Biden. If they feared him so much, maybe we should, after acknowledging his flaws, go back to the big picture: At the end of the day, he’ll beat Trump and govern responsibly.”
Here, he misdiagnoses personalities: they were “obsessed”. There’s absolutely no evidence for this. Then he sees “fear”. I fail to see that. At all.
Then he casually slips in “after acknowledging his flaws” as though they are an afterthought and ordinary voters won’t see them, or will just nod their heads in agreement with Bill the Pundit.
He seems to be free of fear that Biden will continue his gaffes, further embarrassing himself. Kristol apparently has no concern that Biden might be suffering from the onset of dementia. For someone so concerned about how the USA comes off to other world leaders as representative of our country, imagine if we had Joe Biden bumbling and blustering around in meetings and on stage.
Kristol thinks Biden will beat Trump. Where does he get his information about support for Biden? Doesn’t he know that the support is largely name recognition from low-information voters, who will soon see (are seeing, based on his cratering support) how “flawed” Biden is?
We can go back to look at which other politicians for whom Kristol has advocated, but it can be summarized as losers and traitors, and people who did not have a passion for winning or much of a message with which to connect to voters. You know… people.
Someone who misunderstands Biden on this scale is fully capable of wildly misunderstanding Trump. And he certainly does. And if you misunderstand candidates then you misunderstand their voters.
If you don’t understand voters you have no business making predictions about what they will do.
I believe this holds true with most Never Trump pundits and voters. They do not understand the full spectrum of personalities and people. It could be, in part, denial of aspects of human nature they find unpleasant or inconvenient. Perhaps a fear. They live in entirely abstractified worlds. It’s not their zip codes, it’s the worn-out templates they apply to politics with no grounding or understanding of people.
And what would have to happen at this point for Joe to get the nomination? Bernie’s support would have to collapse and certain centrists would have to drop out of the race.
If, somehow Biden gets the nomination, it will be at the expense of Sanders. Is Kristol unaware of the large contingent of Democrats who will not vote for Joe in 2020, especially if there’s even the slightest suspicion the establishment Dems screwed Bernie again?
Once again, consider these words:
Published in General….maybe we should, after acknowledging his flaws, go back to the big picture: At the end of the day, he’ll beat Trump and govern responsibly.”
I believe a lot of Democrats in the citizen class will do the right thing and vote for President Trump. He’ll get more Democrat votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.
The NeverTrumpers will be voting Democrat, regardless of how socialist that candidate might be. Because the only animating principle they have is hatred for the President.
Folks like Kristol have never done much other than comment on political policy matters. He’s a good interviewer because he’s smart and firmly holds abstract positions he was raised with. What he’s showing, is becoming increasingly obvious, among his class of intellectuals, that one needs to have had some real experience doing stuff other than reading, writing and talking no matter how smart and well read.
Good response, but I question if Kristol “firmly holds abstract positions he was raised with.” Many years ago when first elected, Biden seemed to be a “reasonable” Democrat like JFK and Truman. As commented elsewhere, his performance shows him to be a snake.
People in the Swamp like Kristol are no different than actors in Hollywood. Their whole existence is based on effectively parroting what others dictate. If Kristol had original (yet commonsense) insights like Thomas Sowell, his advice would have some merit. Kristol’s books would be best sellers, and their content would be applicable over time.
With their dismal record at predicting election outcomes, I’m surprised that Kristol and his ilk continue to have an audience. They, no doubt, sound very profound when expounding at gatherings of like-minded friends and acquaintances, but they never seem to have any contact with or knowledge of what middle America is thinking. Did any of them have a clue as to what was happening in 2016? Any?
Drew, I don’t think that you are correct about the NeverTrumpers. Our own Gary Robbins just declared that he is NeverBernie, too. I don’t know how any particular NT might act, but I very much doubt that they will uniformly vote for the Democrat. It seems more likely that they will either not vote (at least not for President), or vote third party.
I don’t think that you’re completely incorrect. I expect that some NTs would vote even for Sanders, but I doubt that many of them would do so.
Kristol and his various schemes and scams (and man, does he have a lot of them!) are kept afloat almost entirely by left-wing sources.
Franco, you make good points, but I must confess that I find it difficult to understand voters, also. There seem to be many explanations for voting behavior.
There are a relatively small number of committed policy-wonks on each side. They are highly reliable voters for their side, in typical circumstances, but they can occasionally be driven away by one or two significant disagreements — examples are the pro-trade and pro-immigration conservatives/libertarians, who didn’t like Trump’s positions.
There are a pretty large number of committed tribalists on each side. This pretty much includes me on the Rep side. By “tribalist,” I don’t necessarily mean that we mindlessly vote with our tribe. Rather, we are strongly committed to our side for a variety of reasons, and tend to view the other side as quite dangerous and reprehensible. These are highly reliable voters. They very rarely switch sides, though they can decline to turn out if they find a particular candidate too objectionable.
Then there’s the mushy middle. I have no idea what motivates these voters. I have some of them in my family. They seem to have few strong beliefs; to have not really thought things through; and to be heavily swayed by emotion and propaganda. This characterization may be unfair, as it may reflect my own lack of understanding.
Gary also claims to have an open mind about the President.
I’m trying to say also that a pundit should be able to recognize personal strength and weaknesses, likeabilty, and how they come off to ‘ordinary’ people.
My assessment of last night’s debate with high school equivalencies.
Bloomberg – weak, whiney, smug. As a kid he was beaten up for his lunch money, now he’s head of the School Board
Buttegieg – young guy with all the answers and little experience to back up his certainty. Outsized self-regard. Teaches English and Biology, coaches lacrosse
Sanders – a slovenly old man, teaches world history
Warren – a quite mean librarian who won’t stop piling on with loaded accusations. Obviously she has experience doing that kind of thing. Now I know why her husband politely declined to join her for that beer.
Biden – angry, blustering, taking too much credit for himself, too much emphasis on the past. Gym teacher/Assistant Principle
Klobuchar – a lightweight trying to be likeable.Teaches French and PTA Laison
Steyer – a rich guy with opinions.
Trump teaches business and is the (controversial) championship winning high school football coach.
Anyone who knows people can do this. But apparently Kristol can’t.
I think people who hate Trump are concerned very little (although they may not realize it) about how other people think and feel. At some level they see themselves as part of an elite (their standards are obviously higher than ours) and I believe their reactions are deeply personal and about more than just Trump. I find it troubling that there is a small, intractable group that is so unwilling to let go of their expectations for human behavior and focus instead on results. If anyone expects people to behave themselves, it’s me. But I think I’ve gotten over myself!
He did such a good job keeping Quayle out of trouble. That was a joke, sir. (My imitation of Senator Claghorn on Fred Allen’s radio show)
I don’t want to push this analogy too far, but people such as Kristol remind me of the “research scientists” I worked with at one point in what I laughingly call my career. I came from the engineering side of the house and if we didn’t put a working system in the field, one that satisfied customer requirements, we failed and didn’t get paid. Most of the scientists hadn’t fielded a system and didn’t think the same way we did. They wanted to produce discrete bits of science. If they failed, they could at least publish a paper describing the failure and gain respect from their peers by having been published. They talked to themselves, you see. I think that’s what Kristol, along with a few others, do. They care more whether their ideas are applauded by their peers than whether they win elections and give their ideas a try-out in the real world.
Kristol started running pro-abortion ads behind the front cover of The Weekly Standard before it sank. Ahoy!
I think he’s just a grifter. He’s paid to hate the President. He has no actual principles.
I saw him on some show a few months ago, and he does seem slimy.
Perhaps it would be prudent for Bill Kristol to learn to code.
Evening I Walton and Vectorman,
Excellent points about the sheltered type of life that can make one blind, especially if one is intelligent and has had a life primarily in the academic community.
Evening Jerry,
Using Brexit as an example of the ruling class cluelessness about their fellow citizens, Cameron set the stage for the Brexit vote sure of its passage (its outcome baffled him, rather like Pauline Kael). Even with total media support for the remain position and total celebrity support for the remain position including Obama, Brexit passed with a clear win with the largest voter turnout in UK history. Another example comes from VDH, he said that one of the telling aspects of Trump’s strength happened when he found out that all the English speaking Hispanics in his home county of Fresno were going to vote for Trump. In both votes, voters are wanting their country to be defended more vigously, it may be an appeal to address a perceived international injustice, as with a trade imbalance, or a belief that citizenship requires formal steps and that non-citizens can not just claim a right to immigration. This cluelessness starts with a sense that there are a certain type of people that should be the rulers, of course including their friends and family, and a disdain and disinterest in the common folk who are thought of as being simple, provincial, and uneducated. It also seems that when this ruling class is surprised by the outcomes of an election, they are not interested in learning why they may have lost, they seem to prefer to change the system to marginalize the power of the common folks and to fix the system to insure that they will not be unseated. So in the end they are not interested in opinions which differ from theirs.
At some point his left-wing benefactors are going to pull the plug. (Just like they did on the Weekly Standard.) And then what will he do? Will he find enough donors to keep him in furs?
Cowards enjoy being governed. I have four words for Billy-Boy:
Go back to Russia!
I think with Kristol and some of the other pundits, Trump hatred goes more toward decorum, social status, and the way they were introduced to him in New York of the late 1970s and early 80s.
Before you get to any ideology or political actions at all, there really is a “Caddyshack” mindset of superiority working here, with Bill Kristol in the Ted Knight role of Judge Smalls being disgusted by the idea of having to even interact, let alone listen to, Rodney Daingerfield’s Al Czervik. Bill Kristol’s not rich, but thanks to his parents, he was born into intellectual/political status, while Donald Trump came onto the scene as a loudmouth new-money cretin from the outer boroughs, who in Kristol’s mind, was only listened to because he had money and made being a loudmouthed cretin part of his branding.
Allowing Trump to be President of the United States is like letting Al Czervik into Bushwood Country Club — it’s an outrage that can’t be allowed to stand. Even decorum conservatives who weren’t in New York in the late 1970s like George Will have the same disgust over Trump’s style that they don’t have for Democrats who behave the same way or worse, because they’re not part of the Bushwood Country Club they consider the Republican Party.
They’re repulsed by the idea of a cretin like Donald Trump being the president and representing their party, to the point they can’t be part of that party, and in the case of people like Kristol or Will, openly call for voters to elect Democrats in order to punish Republican pols in Washington for not being more opposed to Trump (and in its worst manifestation, causes people like Kristol to renounce their past beliefs on things like tax cuts, or come out in opposition to Brett Kavanaugh because they can’t be on the same side of any political issue that’s associated with Donald Trump. The problem for them is the Dems are giving them Bernie instead of Biden to support).
The thing is, if the Nevers are so concerned about decorum, why do they behave like animals? They are just as rude and obnoxious as they say the President is — frequently more obnoxious. (See the foul scribblings of Rick Wilson for an extreme example.)
So it can’t be decorum.
I think it’s loss of status. The Trump team came into Washington and ignored all these silly “experts” who have been around since Bush I. They didn’t get hired, didn’t get cushy spots in the administration, didn’t get feted and celebrated. The big revelation was that after being courted by every Republican over the last three decades, President Trump showed that they weren’t needed.
They’re reacting to their loss of status.
I understand why some of the NeverTrump don’t want to vote for him. What I do not understand is many of these people voted for neither candidate in 2016 but will choose a life long Marxists in 2020
It’s cultural. Every group has it’s aversions and people in different cultures and sub-cultures are programmed from early childhood to reject certain traits, expressions, personality types, etc.
Has anyone ever seen a Jewish version of Trump?
The reason you haven’t is baked into their culture ( I’m not saying this is bad, or good)
Jews historically have been elite (and I don’t mean that in a bad way, either) they were/are professionals, and educated. Everywhere they went they were a minority, often newly arrived foreigners or refugees, and yet quite well-off, or soon to be because of their skills, emphasis on education, solid family structure, and general smarts. In short, they were always outsiders, and if they succeeded, which they invariably did, they could easily have become a target of xenophobia. But outsider-hatred/fear, combined with envy, is an especially toxic blend, as we have unfortunately seen in history.
This combination encouraged them avoid being ostentatious, their culture discourages braggadocio, because the results can be, for their people, quite disastrous. Here you have a minority who is somehow doing better, perhaps smarter, and culturally more efficient. They are by nature a sub-culture- a culture within a culture. They assimilate, but still remain connected and protective of each other.
Thus they are easy targets for any politician or thug to blame and stoke resentment. So better, as a Jew, to be compliant, respectful and humble. Don’t attract attention. Don’t break any social rules or offend anyone. Certainly don’t boast or flaunt anything. It’s stupid for them to attract attention to themselves and their financial success individually or collectively. They have historically been envied and then conveniently blamed and attacked. It’s a mortal danger to the tribe. Perfectly understandable that the Jewish culture evolved that way.
Someone like Trump is anathema to their sensibility. So many things about him strike a sour note to their core. I say this with understanding not with condemnation. It’s perfectly natural. This is my theory why so many right-of-center Jews have severe Trump aversion.
Someone with Trump’s personality is way outside their learned manners and social mores. I think as a result of this basic aversion many have allowed that to misread other aspects of him negatively through confirmation bias.
Apologies for some repetitive points but I just want to be sure this comment isn’t misunderstood.
The angriest of the #NeverTrump people though were already at the boiling point the moment he came down the escalator in June of 2015, when their status was still in place. It was his style and the class-based mockery it entailed dating from the late 1970s, which many of them had been immersed in growing up in New York that fueled the outrage.
Trump never shed his outer borough ethos, and played to the idea that the majority of the working class types were outer borough and that they loved his style more than they loved the elites. If you lived in Manhattan (raises hand), you looked down on the cruder nature of the more outgoing/loudmouthed Brooklyn-Queens-Bronx-Staten Island-Long Island-New Jersey types, so that the idea that this guy is going to be the GOP presidential nominee and de factor standard-bearer for the conservative movement was totally unacceptable. And the worst of those almost five years down the line still find it unacceptable, no matter how many conservative things Trump has done.
If he makes it acceptable for them to do so. Trump should win by 15 points. The question for each of these voters is how much of his bad behavior can they put up with. His attacks on the liberals on the Supreme Court have cost him votes.
I don’t regard his comments that RBG and Sotomayor should recuse themselves from cases involving him to be attacks. Given their public statements about him, I thought his response was reasonable.
BTW: https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/27/oliver-bye-bye-bill-kristol/
Oh, I don’t think so.
Logged in just to like this.