As it is getting to primary season once more and the term has been tossed around a bit again, I figured it was time for me to do a video on my least favorite argument for why someone should support a candidate. I don’t go after any particular candidates mind you. My goal with this video is to go after a tactic that is honestly rather bogus and manipulative.
My script is below but if you just want to have a watch, here’s my video. Having a watch (and doing that like thing if you approve of my message here) does help me out, but independent of that, I do encourage everyone to find more left/Democratic leaning youtube channels out there and give them some love. The Youtube space is one rife with ideological conflict and right now left/Dem leaning channels don’t get enough love, which makes our reach limited compared to the right wing channels. I should maybe do a post about that whole fight at some point, but for your consideration, here’s my essay of the day.
Electability is a Lie
I know you really like your candidate but, you know, they’re never going to win the general election. No, they have simply had too many missteps. Too many stumbles. Too many misguided attempts to fix their campaign and to respond to scandals. And I hear that they might even be more strapped for cash than they’re letting on.
Now my candidate, well, they’re already winning despite not even trying. Because people just like them that much. And because people like them that much already, they are clearly the only person who can bring the party together and defeat Trump next year. Don’t believe me? Well here’s a pile of polling data that has them leading Trump by more than your candidate.
Yeah I don’t know who this pollster is either, but I’m sure the rest of the polling is similar. I mean, all the polls I’ve seen say the same thing. That my candidate is not only winning the primary, but best positioned to defeat Trump and then, once they’re elected president, pass all the things that you and me both want to see get through congress.
So why not switch your support over to my candidate. After all, they are the most electable candidate.
See what I did just there? This is a technique used in the world of politics to justify an argument. And I’m afraid its one of the more dishonest ones.
You see, this notion of electability, that one candidate is much more electable than another, exploits two things. First is the lack of knowledge of overall candidate quality in the most pure sense. The second is the lack of common ground on what electability actually means.
Those that are most prone to defending electability as a benchmark for who they can support will defend their candidate directly or the practice more abstractly by suggesting that they know enough to make the decision on who is and is not electable. They may cite easy to collect or establish facts such as early poll numbers, perception of established strength in the public sphere as far as how much positive buzz there is around them, and the fact that some candidates are, you know, old white guys and they’re just a shoe in to win, right?
This sort of defense of electability as a standard of deciding who one should or should not vote for leaves out the multitude of unknowns about candidates. For instance, in his presidential runs, basically nobody outside a few corners knew that John Edwards was cheating on his wife until mid 2008. That is an unknown. All candidates have them, some much more damaging than others. And so to assume that your candidate of choice lacks such unknown liabilities is a terrible choice. Especially if one wants to actually win in the general election. It is better to always operate under the assumption that any candidate can fail you in some fashion, and to be prepared to either move onto another candidate, or, if that failure is not an actual deal breaker, how to move forward with your support.
But what you don’t do is to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend everything will be alright. Because when it isn’t fine, well, you’ll be blind to the fact that people are abandoning your candidate. So yeah, don’t fall so in love that you just assume they can do no wrong.
Also, what if you don’t actually know what makes a candidate better at winning the general election? This is an honest question. And one I ask myself from time to time. I try to study strategy in politics from time to time and have realized how wrong tons of people are in their arguments for what works and why. Professional strategists sometimes claim the most ridiculous things are reasons why a certain candidate will do well, and then go on to be proven completely wrong on that. I mean, everybody remembers the presidencies of Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton, right?
So, even if there is some spattering of evidence that portents future events, how can we even assume measuring electability is possible?
For me, the best I can do is to shy away from rewarding failure in the primary but being neutral about it if one fails in the general. Aka, if you can’t beat a nominee that lost in the general, you have demonstrated in the past an inability to over come a substandard candidate. Someone who lost in the general at least has some idea on how to not screw up so badly again.
And that’s the only standard that makes any sense for me to use. And even so, it isn’t a great standard. And I have my doubts about even using it as a baseline in my decision making process. One can make an argument about the ability to read the room and campaign effectively, but that falls down a pit of not everyone agreeing who has that ability, and we’re once again mired in subjectiveness. If there was a better way to measure this I might be more inclined to support such a standard as part of the full equation of who I’d be aiming to support. But at the moment I am much more prone to taking the evidence that would support this standard of electability and use them as a standard of effectiveness in governing well and responsibly, not electability.
Which reminds me that I have higher priorities anyway, so yeah, maybe for me at least pondering about electability is a moot point. Anyway, I shared my half assed standard for what might count as electable, but… not everyone has the same standards.
The notion of common ground. Not everyone who cites electability as the core feature they’re looking for has the same standard. And you know how people are, they’re not interested in giving a complete run down of what that means to them when engaged in light conversation. They’re going to say ‘Oh, this guy is the most electable, so I want to win, so he’s my guy’ and then be done with it. They have no interest in going further, even if prompted to. I’ve tried, its a conversation that doesn’t go anywhere with some folks.
So they have it in their heads some vague notion of what is electable. And they tell someone else that this candidate is electable. This second person has a completely different idea of what that means potentially, but because the conversation doesn’t go beyond the surface level, it ends there. And then this person passes on the same message, surface level as it is, to the next person, who has a third set of standards.
See the problem here? The argument exploits and spreads from person to person without actually holding anything of substance itself. It fits nicely over top your own biases and world view without challenging them, and then can also fit with someone else’s. A one argument fits all!
And because it lacks any substance, that means its an argument that isn’t an argument at all. Its a deception. It is a lie. It is a lie suggesting that everyone else around you shares your same view on what makes a good candidate. And thus you simply smile and nod along with them, assuming that this candidate that they are arguing for has met your criteria.
And maybe the candidate does. But what if it doesn’t? Would you feel like you’ve been lied to? I’d hope so. Gives the interaction more impact, perhaps making you more resistant to such arguments. Because in the end, I want you to learn a lesson from the experience.
And because electability is, at its core either reliant on a shaky foundation in terms of those who will share their standards or a complete lie for those who don’t, that makes it a terrible standard for how to choose a candidate. Especially if your choice is being prompted by someone else.
Because you know what being either lied to directly via rhetorical slight of hand or omission is really about, manipulation. It is a means to build a narrative that is not grounded in the reality of the world to prompt you to take action, to vote for a specific candidate, that you would otherwise have no interest in supporting. To even take action that you now think is good for you, when in reality is actually very detrimental to you. That could even, surprise surprise, be an action that runs counter to the stated argument being put forward.
I mentioned before the habit of talking heads on the news channels being often wrong. A lot of the time its because they’re either working for a particular campaign or just fully invested partisans of some form. And thus are highly motivated, often by financial incentives but sometimes other things, to tell a yarn that suggests their candidate of choice will be the best. Good motivation to lie. To craft a story that will get repeated by others who need no such motivation. To craft a memetic virus that will spread across the nation and get everyone repeating the same slogans.
But then these slogans, these ideas, these strategies end up falling apart. Because any number of reasons. But the idea of the strength of the strategy was part of the larger effort to support their cause. Because if you can get enough people on board with doing something, it can become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Or in shorter terms, these stories are build in order to get you to make them be true. But often this doesn’t work. I mean, everyone remembers the presidencies of Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain right?
So the argument from electability is generally used as a means to manipulate you to support a candidate without actually giving you a real reason to do so. So maybe you’re more resistant to it. You are now going to go out and find the candidate to fall in love with without using it as a consideration and… oh, now you’re in love, and now you’re pushing arguments for why others should support your candidate.
Are you suggesting electability as one of them? Its kind of hard not to. I mean, everyone else seems to be doing it as well. Either to support your candidate or someone else. So you gotta fight fire with fire right?
The reason I made this video is to discourage the use of such an argument, not just to pull the curtain back. I’d rather you not try to fight fire with fire but to throw some water on this nonsense. To when ever someone says that their favorite is the more electable candidate, call them on it. To point out how that’s a damn dirty trick they’re pulling right there and you’re not going to have any of it. If you feel angry about being manipulated, yeah, this is a situation where its okay to get angry. Like, don’t get into a fight, but make it clear you’re not interested in putting up with such a lie.
Because most the time the person sharing it, doesn’t know its a lie. And calling it a lie, especially when you have a fair bit of emotion behind it, well, might make them stop and think, wait, is it?
Nothing is for sure of course, but collective action is needed to create mass change in the end. So some of us should be using such a tactic to counter this deception.
So yeah, don’t use it yourself, and cut it off when others do. Start to inoculate each other to this kind of deception. This tactic.
So why am I talking about this in a series called Grand Strategy of Politics? Because in the end, each of us is a player in this thing. Yes, our power may be minor, but we still have it. And we should and can use it to better things. This series is to not just talk about the big things, the parties and presidents, but also things you can do to be a better political actor. To have more media literacy. To be able to identify when people are manipulating you.
To that end, here’s a final suggestion for you: Find a candidate who excites you, and don’t worry about if they excite other people. Because if you can get behind someone in that singular interaction of you and the candidate without a care about electability or how well they play in Peoria, then guess what, you’re not the only one. It may be weird to think about, but for each of us, there’s hundreds, thousands, even millions of people who have wants and desires that are similar to our own. And if someone is a candidate for you, then they may also be the candidate for all of them. If you want an electability argument, then there it is. If a candidate can make you excited about their run, their issues, or their biography, then there’s many other people who are similarly excited. And you don’t have to lie to them to get them interested.
But people will lie to them to get them to shy away from the candidate that best fits them. So help your compatriots see through the deception so they can find their candidate too.
And maybe, I don’t know, if we’re actually honest about who would be a good president, that would be a more powerful argument for someone actually being president than some weird undefined standard of electability. And telling people, especially in the general, that they should vote for someone because they’d be a better president overall, is a way better argument than telling them, hey, we nominated this person because we think we know that you’d like them.
One way is selling them on a candidate, you see. And the other is assuming you know what they want and then making decisions for them and then getting angry at these folks when they don’t feel motivated to sign up with your fave. Which is kind of awful.
Don’t be awful. Like seriously, don’t be awful.