I’m inclined to agree. I think the relevant axis is likelier to be Anti-Establishment <--> Pro-Establishment, within the Democratic Party. I suspect where someone would fall on that axis is mildly/moderately positively correlated with where they’d fall on a leftist-centrist axis. This doesn’t tell us enough though. For example, I’d say Harris is perceived as almost as ‘establishment’ as Biden or O’Rourke, but she is apparently to the left of both of them on many policies. While we can _roughly_ tell how pro- or anti-Dem establishment a candidate is, this is less amenable to analysis because there aren’t quantitative tools for looking at how ‘establishment’ a candidate is, and definitely not for the current Dem establishment. Such tools exist for evaluating one’s place on the ideological spectrum. That political science is better at this I think is why by default most people are more comfortable thinking in terms of left/centrist than anti-establishment/pro-establishment. At least that’s why I expect why the debate has defaulted as about the leftist/centrist axis. I imagine this will remain the dominant framing of the issue until much later in the Dem races, when the field has shrunk enough to make more precise evaluations more useful.
I’m inclined to agree. I think the relevant axis is likelier to be Anti-Establishment <--> Pro-Establishment, within the Democratic Party. I suspect where someone would fall on that axis is mildly/moderately positively correlated with where they’d fall on a leftist-centrist axis. This doesn’t tell us enough though. For example, I’d say Harris is perceived as almost as ‘establishment’ as Biden or O’Rourke, but she is apparently to the left of both of them on many policies. While we can _roughly_ tell how pro- or anti-Dem establishment a candidate is, this is less amenable to analysis because there aren’t quantitative tools for looking at how ‘establishment’ a candidate is, and definitely not for the current Dem establishment. Such tools exist for evaluating one’s place on the ideological spectrum. That political science is better at this I think is why by default most people are more comfortable thinking in terms of left/centrist than anti-establishment/pro-establishment. At least that’s why I expect why the debate has defaulted as about the leftist/centrist axis. I imagine this will remain the dominant framing of the issue until much later in the Dem races, when the field has shrunk enough to make more precise evaluations more useful.