Suppose that you generally prefer Democrats to Republicans, but Republicans nominate Randy, who’s an above-average Republican, for president, while Democrats nominate Donna, a below-average Democrat, for president, such that you’re actually roughly neutral between them.
Even though you think Randy and Donna would be about equally good as president, I claim that you should vote for Randy. That’s because, if Randy becomes president, he’s “locked in” as their party’s nominee in the next presidential election, which is great from your perspective. You’d much rather the next presidential election be contested between Randy and a generic Democrat, than between Donna and a generic Republican.
This difference can be important enough that you might sometimes want to vote for Randy even if you actually prefer Donna as president by a small-to-medium amount.
(This of course works symmetrically if you switch the two parties in my example.)
I think it’s vanishingly rare that things are this close, especially when you consider ongoing party pressure and cross-aisle animosity. The reasons that you generally prefer Democrats will be more applicable to the government with a Democrat president, even if the Republican candidate was roughly as preferable to you.
More importantly, I don’t think you WOULD rather have Randy than Donna as incumbent for the next cycle.
I don’t think that’s true because Randy would appoint Republicans throughout government/be more captured by the Republican party’s interests? Like it depends on how much you like Randy-flavored Republican in executive and judicial roles. I think there’s probably a huge difference for what types of judges Randy and Donna would nominate, for example.
I guess this is more true for Presidents than it is for Senators/Representatives (since an Republican congressperson will vote for the Republican Speaker of the House/Senate Majority Leader, who has a lot more power than any individual congressperson.)
This consideration is meant to be included in the evaluation of Donna and Randy. As in, I am supposing that they are of similar quality after taking into account the dynamic you mention.
Is it fair to assume that Obama-McCaine and Obama-Romney were the background thoughts that lead to this post?
I can easily imagine McCaine or Romney leading the Republican Party in a very different direction from our current president. I do wonder in this scenario what the Democratic party would look like after wandering through the desert of unelectability. I think they would land in a better place for my political preferences than our current ruling party, but the thought experiment is still intriguing and history is often surprising.
Is it fair to assume that Obama-McCaine and Obama-Romney were the background thoughts that lead to this post?
Nope. I was thinking about this in the context of imagining hypothetical nominees in the 2028 presidential election (I probably won’t say who specifically I was imagining).
It gives both parties a signal to move in the direction you prefer. The Republicans might get the message that voters prefer Randy-like representatives and all move in that direction. Meanwhile the Democrats get the signal to move away from Donna back to positions you prefer.
If Randy was a good enough candidate that you’re considering voting for him despite you generally preferring Democrats, he might actually be a better candidate overall.
This is a good point, and it overlooks another argument that further strengthens the case for voting for Randy: The party in power (more specifically, the party that controls the White House) will face a large and predictable backlash in the upcoming midterms and Presidential election; the President’s party has lost seats in the House in every recent midterm except 2002, which was a major outlier because of 9/11. If Randy wins, the backlash will favor the Democrats. If Donna wins, it will favor the Republicans.
This presumes that “above-average Republican” and “below-average Democrat” (or vice versa) are referring to the same average, which is a rather questionable bucketing of reference classes. And there are incentives for politicians to favor policies advanced by their own party (or bipartisan policies) over policies advanced by other parties (which comes back to the same question of whether the parties’ replacement-level policies are better understood as being pulled from the same distribution or two distinct distributions).
@Eric Neyman re: not understanding: your top-level comment seems to be glossing over the fact that an above-average Republican is… still really quite bad, on everything from immigration to AI safety to basic human rights? A below-average Democrats is still probably on par with an average Republic, at least as far as I can see at the moment. So I claim that the marginal dollar (or minute, or word) is best spent raising the ceiling instead of the floor, and on reducing the chance that a Republican wins instead of trying to make whichever Republican might win less bad.
...Also I’m not clear on why you’re assuming symmetry here. We haven’t got it.
I don’t understand how what you’re saying is in tension with what I’m saying. My post makes no object-level claims about the relative goodness of Democrats and Republicans. I’m merely positing a hypothetical in which you think Donna and Randy would be equally good as president, despite being nominated by two different parties, one of which you prefer to the other.
I do not entirely disagree with the hypothetical case as stated (and probably should have made that clearer). But in applying this hypothetical to the real-world, one cannot avoid the reference class problem, and in my opinion second-order effects such as appointed officials and the policies each party is liable to put forward (and which Randy and Donna might have incentives to veto) alter the dynamic significantly. If you are indeed “supposing that they are of similar quality after taking into account the[se] dynamic[s]”, then sure, IF your hypothetical conditions obtain, there is an argument for Randy. This is absurdly distant from anything we seem likely to actually see in upcoming elections, and I think your avoidance of object-level claims regarding the parties demonstrates that this post is operating entirely within the spherical-politician-in-a-vacuum regime (which occupies measure zero in the space of real world politics).
I think that, while many LessWrong readers do believe that one party is way better than the other, such that the inter-party quality variation is far larger than the intra-party quality variation, this is not true of all readers.
And I think it’s a reasonable move to write a post that says “Assuming that these are your values/beliefs, you should do X” without taking a position on whether those values/beliefs are correct: it can be valuable and action-guiding for such people!
Suppose that you generally prefer Democrats to Republicans, but Republicans nominate Randy, who’s an above-average Republican, for president, while Democrats nominate Donna, a below-average Democrat, for president, such that you’re actually roughly neutral between them.
Even though you think Randy and Donna would be about equally good as president, I claim that you should vote for Randy. That’s because, if Randy becomes president, he’s “locked in” as their party’s nominee in the next presidential election, which is great from your perspective. You’d much rather the next presidential election be contested between Randy and a generic Democrat, than between Donna and a generic Republican.
This difference can be important enough that you might sometimes want to vote for Randy even if you actually prefer Donna as president by a small-to-medium amount.
(This of course works symmetrically if you switch the two parties in my example.)
I think it’s vanishingly rare that things are this close, especially when you consider ongoing party pressure and cross-aisle animosity. The reasons that you generally prefer Democrats will be more applicable to the government with a Democrat president, even if the Republican candidate was roughly as preferable to you.
More importantly, I don’t think you WOULD rather have Randy than Donna as incumbent for the next cycle.
I don’t think that’s true because Randy would appoint Republicans throughout government/be more captured by the Republican party’s interests? Like it depends on how much you like Randy-flavored Republican in executive and judicial roles. I think there’s probably a huge difference for what types of judges Randy and Donna would nominate, for example.
I guess this is more true for Presidents than it is for Senators/Representatives (since an Republican congressperson will vote for the Republican Speaker of the House/Senate Majority Leader, who has a lot more power than any individual congressperson.)
This consideration is meant to be included in the evaluation of Donna and Randy. As in, I am supposing that they are of similar quality after taking into account the dynamic you mention.
Is it fair to assume that Obama-McCaine and Obama-Romney were the background thoughts that lead to this post?
I can easily imagine McCaine or Romney leading the Republican Party in a very different direction from our current president. I do wonder in this scenario what the Democratic party would look like after wandering through the desert of unelectability. I think they would land in a better place for my political preferences than our current ruling party, but the thought experiment is still intriguing and history is often surprising.
Nope. I was thinking about this in the context of imagining hypothetical nominees in the 2028 presidential election (I probably won’t say who specifically I was imagining).
Two more reasons to vote for Randy:
It gives both parties a signal to move in the direction you prefer. The Republicans might get the message that voters prefer Randy-like representatives and all move in that direction. Meanwhile the Democrats get the signal to move away from Donna back to positions you prefer.
If Randy was a good enough candidate that you’re considering voting for him despite you generally preferring Democrats, he might actually be a better candidate overall.
This is a good point, and it overlooks another argument that further strengthens the case for voting for Randy: The party in power (more specifically, the party that controls the White House) will face a large and predictable backlash in the upcoming midterms and Presidential election; the President’s party has lost seats in the House in every recent midterm except 2002, which was a major outlier because of 9/11. If Randy wins, the backlash will favor the Democrats. If Donna wins, it will favor the Republicans.
This presumes that “above-average Republican” and “below-average Democrat” (or vice versa) are referring to the same average, which is a rather questionable bucketing of reference classes. And there are incentives for politicians to favor policies advanced by their own party (or bipartisan policies) over policies advanced by other parties (which comes back to the same question of whether the parties’ replacement-level policies are better understood as being pulled from the same distribution or two distinct distributions).
@Eric Neyman re: not understanding: your top-level comment seems to be glossing over the fact that an above-average Republican is… still really quite bad, on everything from immigration to AI safety to basic human rights? A below-average Democrats is still probably on par with an average Republic, at least as far as I can see at the moment. So I claim that the marginal dollar (or minute, or word) is best spent raising the ceiling instead of the floor, and on reducing the chance that a Republican wins instead of trying to make whichever Republican might win less bad.
...Also I’m not clear on why you’re assuming symmetry here. We haven’t got it.
I don’t understand how what you’re saying is in tension with what I’m saying. My post makes no object-level claims about the relative goodness of Democrats and Republicans. I’m merely positing a hypothetical in which you think Donna and Randy would be equally good as president, despite being nominated by two different parties, one of which you prefer to the other.
I do not entirely disagree with the hypothetical case as stated (and probably should have made that clearer). But in applying this hypothetical to the real-world, one cannot avoid the reference class problem, and in my opinion second-order effects such as appointed officials and the policies each party is liable to put forward (and which Randy and Donna might have incentives to veto) alter the dynamic significantly. If you are indeed “supposing that they are of similar quality after taking into account the[se] dynamic[s]”, then sure, IF your hypothetical conditions obtain, there is an argument for Randy. This is absurdly distant from anything we seem likely to actually see in upcoming elections, and I think your avoidance of object-level claims regarding the parties demonstrates that this post is operating entirely within the spherical-politician-in-a-vacuum regime (which occupies measure zero in the space of real world politics).
I think that, while many LessWrong readers do believe that one party is way better than the other, such that the inter-party quality variation is far larger than the intra-party quality variation, this is not true of all readers.
And I think it’s a reasonable move to write a post that says “Assuming that these are your values/beliefs, you should do X” without taking a position on whether those values/beliefs are correct: it can be valuable and action-guiding for such people!