I actually wonder if the Democratic disarray stems from a particular failure mode due to their high level of education. Hypothesis:
Dems culturally believe in data-based decisions, accuracy, cooperation and the greater good. So they lean on polls, focus on the maximum likelihood outcome, and sacrifice their ambitions in service of a perceived need for unity.
But polling is notoriously unreliable. They get confused by it. Their focus on the most likely outcome leads them to underrate tail risks and opportunities. And their self-abnegation leaves them vulnerable to both inertia and to exploitation by selfish actors within their party.
The cure would be to encourage aggressive, self-serving political ambition within the Democratic party. Instead of Ds being nicey-nice with each other, they show sharp elbows and openly focus on their own political career advancement not as an exception but as a rule.
We don’t know if they were on track, because Biden ultimately did not run, so we did not get a chance to find out. But the main issue I’m trying to highlight is that the Democratic Party may have a tendency to assign too much decision-making weight to polling data, despite its inaccuracies and the challenge of interpreting it. And this applies to Biden too—he should have looked himself in the mirror and said “I’m too old to run,” not assigned so much weight to his own beliefs about how he was polling.
I actually wonder if the Democratic disarray stems from a particular failure mode due to their high level of education. Hypothesis:
Dems culturally believe in data-based decisions, accuracy, cooperation and the greater good. So they lean on polls, focus on the maximum likelihood outcome, and sacrifice their ambitions in service of a perceived need for unity.
But polling is notoriously unreliable. They get confused by it. Their focus on the most likely outcome leads them to underrate tail risks and opportunities. And their self-abnegation leaves them vulnerable to both inertia and to exploitation by selfish actors within their party.
The cure would be to encourage aggressive, self-serving political ambition within the Democratic party. Instead of Ds being nicey-nice with each other, they show sharp elbows and openly focus on their own political career advancement not as an exception but as a rule.
Though, in the book, the polls were pretty on track, and the problem was that they were not being communicated to, believed in, or listened to.
We don’t know if they were on track, because Biden ultimately did not run, so we did not get a chance to find out. But the main issue I’m trying to highlight is that the Democratic Party may have a tendency to assign too much decision-making weight to polling data, despite its inaccuracies and the challenge of interpreting it. And this applies to Biden too—he should have looked himself in the mirror and said “I’m too old to run,” not assigned so much weight to his own beliefs about how he was polling.