This is a diary I published in August 2007 under my previous nom de net. I ran into it unexpectedly today when doing a search. It seems timely again now, so I've decided to republish it, with only slight adaptations, to see what reaction it receives.
The Democrats. The Democrats. The Democrats. The Democrats. The Democrats.
This is one of the most unpopular things I could possibly say here, as I've found out when I said something much like it in the past. But we -- we -- and people like us share responsibility for Democratic cave-ins like the one that resulted in the enactment of the reprehensible FISA bill a week and a half ago. And we have got to stop.
This is based on elementary psychology -- behaviorist theory, actually, the stuff that works with pigeons. We have got to understand this and stop playing into the hands of our (and our Constitution's) enemies.
Some explanation and more yelling below.
By the way, I'm not sure if I still believe all of this, in our present political moment, but I know that others will, and perhaps my presenting this context will lead to a better meta-diary than most. Perhaps not!
(1) A primer on utility maximization
Here's one of the basic truths of psychology (and economics, for that matter):
People act so as to maximize the expected benefits from their choices
[See footnote 1 for those interested in these sorts of things]
Now: Republicans officeholders are making choices about what policies to promote. What do they want to maximize?
Votes.
They do not want to maximize how much people love them. They do not want to maximize how well people speak about them. They do not want to maximize how well they can sleep with their tortured souls at night. They want to maximize one thing -- votes -- because with votes they can siphon money from the public well for themselves and their contributors, they can keep their wives in minks and their prostitutes in clover, and they can have great health insurance and vacations and earmuffs and blinders to keep news of the world outside their gated communities away.
Votes.
Now, how do they get votes? This has been sort of heavy-handed so far, so let me toss in an old joke:
Two hikers are walking in a field when suddenly a man-eating tiger appears before them and roars with a mighty hunger. One hiker sits down, takes off his hiking boots, and begins lacing on his sneakers. The other hiker looks at him and says "Are you crazy? You're never going to be able to outrun that tiger!" And the first hiker looks back with a contemptuous expression and says:
"I don't have to be able to outrun the tiger. I just have to be able to outrun you."
The "tiger" of righteous voter anger can go after either party. But our proto-fascist opponents don't have to be loved by the voters. All they have to do -- in the more-or-less zero sum game that is mandated by our present political system with its lack of preference voting -- is outrun us.
And that means that anything that hurts us helps them.
And that's where simple behaviorist psychology comes in.
(2) A primer on instrumental learning
The Republicans won't do something if they think it will hurt them. They will do it if they think it will help them.
Now you would think that something so craven and wrong as gutting the Fourth Amendment or prolonging the war would hurt them, right? I mean the public hates this outcome; that should hold them back -- right?
Not necessarily. Not if it hurts us more.
But how can it possibly hurt us more than them, when 98% of them vote the wrong way and 80% of us vote the right way?
Don't you read Daily Kos?
Who takes a share of our anger disproportionate to the number of votes cast for a given reprehensible bill?
The Democrats. The Democrats. The Democrats. The Democrats.
"The Democrats are weak. The Democrats can't stop the Republicans. The Democrats can't keep their caucus in line. The Democrats are worthless. We should give up on the Democrats."
I'm not complaining that any of this is unfair. Politics is unfair. You have the right to be unfair.
No. I'm complaining because this reaction -- the reaction that often pervades this very site -- is one that MAKES THESE AWFUL POLICIES PAY OFF FOR THE GOP.
And, because
People act so as to maximize the expected benefits from their choices
this reaction MAKES THOSE VERY POLICIES WE HATE MORE LIKELY.
Put otherwise, if Karl Rove thinks that some awful policy will increase contempt for Democrats more than it will increase hatred for Republicans, he's going to do it! Only when he thinks that Republicans will pay a greater price will he stop.
Analogously, if you're playing in the seventh game of the NBA Finals, you might be glad to see a fight break out that takes away two of your best players, so long as it takes away three of your opponent's. It is, after all, a zero-sum game.
And, to raise a point I made here almost two years ago, if you're thinking about reversing Roe v. Wade, you're going to do it even if it makes the public hate you for being evil, so long as it makes the public hate the party that was supposed to protect them even more for being weak.
(3) Advanced psychological theories
* (a) Why people don't want to hear this
People don't want to hear this because it is frustrating as hell.
First of all, we think that we ought to be able to criticize the scumsucking bastards and/or craven sea slugs in our party who go along with our Republican opponents. What are we supposed to do, sit here and shut up and smile? That goes against most of what life teaches us about how to make people change their behavior.
And second: we really don't want to hear that our righteous anger at Democrats can actually be making the problem worse.
Well, taking the second problem first: that's tough. Reality is what it is; you ignore it or you don't. For my part, I think we should be reality-based. If our beating up on Democrats empowers Republicans to do even worse, we'd be wise to admit it and figure out what to do about it.
Luckily, there are things to do about it other than shutting up and smiling when our representatives betray our ideals and the Constitution, and we should do them more.
* (b) Individual and group payoffs
The most important thing we should do is change the "payoff matrix" -- the rewards and punishments -- for individual actors within the Democratic Party, but not for the whole party.
For me, the cardinal example of this is Joe Biden. He was not the only one who voted for the Bankruptcy Bill -- we haven't forgotten you, Senator Reid -- but he led the charge. And, to me, that was unforgivable, and I don't give a rat's ass whether MBNA actually has electrodes attached to his testicles to make him comply. I do not blame "Democrats" for a bill that Republicans disproportionately supported and that only Democrats in some future Congress might fix, but I do blame Biden. And that means that I will never support Biden in any internal power struggle within the party, whether for President or for Party Leadership. Punish the individual, not the group.
So, it's not "The Democrats, The Democrats, The Democrats" who should be blamed. It's Joe Biden on Bankruptcy. The otherwise beloved Joe Sestak on the Iraq vote. The otherwise beloved Jim Webb -- who two weeks ago was my favorite choice for VP in 2008 -- for the FISA vote. Make their ambition work for us. I will still campaign for each of them in the general election because it is to the party's advantage, and would campaign for them in a primary if it was the best way to hold a seat. But beyond that? Well, maybe they can explain and atone, but short of that they should not have their personal ambitions rewarded. (And politicians tend to be ambitious.)
* (c) Attribution theory and how to change the payoffs
Some people do bad things because of internal factors, like character. They are, when you're talking about members of Congress, generally Republicans. (You may have an occasional person like Lincoln Chafee who becomes Republican because it was the family business, or Jacob Javits because the Democrats around him were so corrupt, or William Cohen because he was brought up in an area where it was to be expected, but for most people in Congress it's not the situation around them that led them to this path, but a conscious expression of their values.) On a vote like FISA, Republicans voted for it because of their bad character. We should be angry and disgusted. (Sometimes Democrats -- Biden on the bankruptcy bill -- do bad things out of bad character as well. In those cases, refer to the previous section on squashing their ambition.)
Some people do bad things because of situational pressures. I do not think that Congressional Democrats would be caving in on FISA were it not for the fact that Republicans are eagerly poised to blame them if anything goes wrong -- almost surely actually as a result of Republican incompetence -- that could possibly be blamed on the refusal to renew FISA. When someone does something bad due to situational pressures -- stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's family, in Victor Hugo's famous story, or women forced into prostitution out of poverty -- you don't react with anger and disgust, even though you may strongly want them to stop, but with sadness and pity.
* (d) Transparency in reinforcement and punishment
People and animals being trained have to be able to connect the act with the consequence, or the training does no good. When we reject Joe Biden for the Presidency, or Jim Webb for the Vice-Presidency (if we do -- I still hold out hopes for repentence there), we have to say explicity: "Senator, with all due respect, what you have done on every other issue doesn't matter to me, because your vote on ISSUE X was so wrong that it simply disqualifies you." If Joe Biden is debating, I want to see the Bankruptcy Bill come up 10 times out of 10 questions. He could be a good man. And he should continue being a good Senator. But he'll be a great example. Let them know why they are being punished.
(4) A prescription for reacting to Democratic betrayals
Republicans who sin: anger and disgust and great punishment
Democrats who stray: sadness and pity and lesser punishment
If we can learn to react this way to our betrayals -- where the brunt of our fury is directed at the Republicans who warrant it, while with sorrow we conclude that Democrats simply can't be trusted with positions of power within the party -- then these corrosive policies will no longer pay off for the GOP. With each such policy, the balance shifts slightly more in the direction of the Democrats. The caucus becomes that much less likely to accept people who have strayed. And -- with these games no longer "paying off" for Republicans by hurting the Democrats more than it does them -- maybe, in time, they too will learn to stop.
What we do as party activists has a real effect. So in choosing where to aim our fire so as do the most good, our target is not The Democrats The Democrats The Democrats.
It's the Republicans.
Footnote 1: the question of "what is a benefit" divides much of psychology from microeconomics. Economics historically argues that a model based on the most easily quantified payoff -- cash reward -- is good enough for most predictive purposes, though many economists will go beyond this and look at less-easily quantified factors. (This has changed somewhat in recent years.) Psychologists have an expanded calculus of motivation that recognizes that people have many, usually difficult to quantify, motivations -- such as the desire for sex, fame, companionship, positive self-image, negative self-image that fits one's preconceptions, religious yearning, etc. -- that no one can figure out how to fit together.