I know it's been a hard week, but hang in there. In terms of understanding the results, it's worth remembering the term thermostatic response, something I had mentioned to you maybe a year ago, when I first found your Substack. American politics has long seen a back-and-forth pattern between the parties, in which public opinion shifts in the direction against whoever is in power. Biden's achievements were bound to put voters in a more conservative mood, even if inflation hadn't been a factor. This is just how American politics tends to work; policy success for one party produces backlash.
Thanks, Brad. I agree with how you just described the effect, but when you first brought it up to me, I didn't agree with how you described it. I went back and looked, and you had said "the American voting public wants more liberal policies when the GOP is in charge, yet wants more conservative policy when Democrats have power". I don't think it's as simple as the country wanted conservative policies so they voted for Bush, and then they wanted liberal policies and they voted for Obama, and so on for all the elections. I think there's a distinction between wanting certain policies and just wanting a change in leadership. Policy-wise, the country seems to go through more macro-cycles of ideological preference in which both parties reflect the dominant ideology of their time, such as with Democrats over the last 50 years of conservatism, and vice versa the previous 50 years. Think Nixon's liberal policies (price controls, relations with China) and Clinton's conservative policies (ending welfare, NAFTA, etc.). Both reflected the dominant ideologies of their era, which were supposedly the opposite of what their parties stood for.
So I do understand there's an appetite for leadership change via voting parties in and out of power. But that is during normal times. These aren't normal times. I hoped we'd stick with normalcy until MAGA faded away. Unfortunately, we are probably going to need a major crisis to get the typical swing back now, I don't see how this ends well. I hope I'm too worried, but I really do fear that it may not be as simple as just changing parties again in 2 years and then 4 years. And I didn't want our country to go down this path. I do think an era of liberalism being dominant is imminent. I was hoping we would just usher it in with this election, instead of going through another 4 years of crazy with more election denialism and heated conflict at the end.
No worries, we will be here. My brain is fried so I understand. We all need to remember to take care of ourselves mentally and physically.
I know it's been a hard week, but hang in there. In terms of understanding the results, it's worth remembering the term thermostatic response, something I had mentioned to you maybe a year ago, when I first found your Substack. American politics has long seen a back-and-forth pattern between the parties, in which public opinion shifts in the direction against whoever is in power. Biden's achievements were bound to put voters in a more conservative mood, even if inflation hadn't been a factor. This is just how American politics tends to work; policy success for one party produces backlash.
Thanks, Brad. I agree with how you just described the effect, but when you first brought it up to me, I didn't agree with how you described it. I went back and looked, and you had said "the American voting public wants more liberal policies when the GOP is in charge, yet wants more conservative policy when Democrats have power". I don't think it's as simple as the country wanted conservative policies so they voted for Bush, and then they wanted liberal policies and they voted for Obama, and so on for all the elections. I think there's a distinction between wanting certain policies and just wanting a change in leadership. Policy-wise, the country seems to go through more macro-cycles of ideological preference in which both parties reflect the dominant ideology of their time, such as with Democrats over the last 50 years of conservatism, and vice versa the previous 50 years. Think Nixon's liberal policies (price controls, relations with China) and Clinton's conservative policies (ending welfare, NAFTA, etc.). Both reflected the dominant ideologies of their era, which were supposedly the opposite of what their parties stood for.
So I do understand there's an appetite for leadership change via voting parties in and out of power. But that is during normal times. These aren't normal times. I hoped we'd stick with normalcy until MAGA faded away. Unfortunately, we are probably going to need a major crisis to get the typical swing back now, I don't see how this ends well. I hope I'm too worried, but I really do fear that it may not be as simple as just changing parties again in 2 years and then 4 years. And I didn't want our country to go down this path. I do think an era of liberalism being dominant is imminent. I was hoping we would just usher it in with this election, instead of going through another 4 years of crazy with more election denialism and heated conflict at the end.
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