My Highly Decoupled Election

At least bad people or bad policies will lose

Most people who are into politics are low decouplers. They believe that their tribe has both better policies and better people. Institutions are biased against your side. Any bias you must acknowledge that tilts in your favor is either not that important or exaggerated when put in its proper context. They fight dirty, while our problem is that we stick too closely to principle and are too nice to do what needs to be done.

If there’s one thing that separates people worth listening to from those who are not, it is that useful analysts are high decouplers. But in a world where some people are high decouplers and others are low, the latter are at an advantage. Imagine political Faction A believes their side is correct on policy but is filled with people with bad intentions who lie, cheat, and steal. Faction B acts like a typical political movement, and is low on decoupling, believing that their side is superior in terms of policy preferences, morality, personal conduct, and the purity of its intentions. Faction A will have a much harder time rallying its troops. Some authors acknowledge this, as in this recent piece in which Brian Buetler calls for his left leaning audience to take joy in the thought of defeating Donald Trump and Elon Musk and thwarting their vision for the future of the country.

As a high decoupler, I’m in a unique place. I think Republican policies are better for economic growth, and economic growth is what matters. But I have an extremely negative impression of the Republican base, and the media institutions and influencer class that appeal to it. Take this recent ad placed by a PAC in support of Deb Fischer, a senator from Nebraska who has found herself in a surprisingly tough reelection bid against independent candidate Dan Osborn.

What is the message here? Three arguments are presented against Osborn: he lets in illegal immigrants, he gives your jobs to foreigners, and he gives them social security checks. A Republican might pretend that this ad is an appeal to economic interest. This would be like saying a commercial that talked about Jews committing murder, Jews committing theft, and Jews raping women was about crime. There is little reason to think that a person who such an ad appeals to is really concerned about crime rather than hearing about bad things regarding one particular ethnic group.

I assume conservative elites who fund commercials like this know what they’re doing. Protecting social security and mercantilism aren’t what motivates them. They run ads like this not out of a belief in the message, but because they know this is what works.

Think of all the things you could try to sell people on. We’re going to cure aging, visit the stars, genetically engineer away disease, or create artificial wombs so women don’t have to go through the horrors of pregnancy. Even if the techno-futurist vision doesn’t appeal to you, how about a more positive trad vision of making the streets safe and clean, without needing to lie about immigrants being responsible for the current state of our cities, in addition to trying to increase the fertility rate and making Americans skinnier? None of this is what the people of Nebraska want to hear about. Short Latinos hurting them is their happy place. Nebraska, as you might guess, has a foreign born population of around 7%, about half the national average.

The ad above is in line with the general message of the Trump campaign, which, setting aside the Trump cult itself, has little to say to the world other than you should be scared of anyone who was born abroad. Whether discussing childcare, economic growth, housing, crime, or helping black people specifically, the solution to each problem is tariffs and immigration restrictions.

Why do people support the Democratic ticket? The closest thing we see to rightist foreigner bashing on the left is wokeness, but that’s not what Kamala is running on. Wokes are part of the Democrat coalition but they are a faction that is at this point treated with some embarrassment, while the “evil foreigner theory of everything” is central to the Trump campaign.

Kamala is running on ideas like your abortion rights should be defended, Trump lies a lot and commits a lot of crimes, Trump is mentally slipping, and Trump has authoritarian tendencies. I like each of those messages. Some of the stuff like “the rich should pay their fair share” I don’t. But overall, if you’re going off vibes and whose campaign appeals to a higher quality being, the Democratic message is we’re going to make your life better by helping you while Republicans are saying that we will make your life better by hurting foreigners. Very ugly stuff. The current conservative influencer class reflects these same values, without the redeeming feature of politics being a small part of their lives.

Democratic messaging is also remarkably uninspiring. See how much it focuses on the price of insulin, for example. But while Democrats are only small minded, Republicans are both small minded and hateful. Neither party is running on traveling the stars or curing aging. The case for Republicans is that the people who do have grander visions for humanity are more likely to get their way if Trump wins. That said, having bad people in power has potentially negative outcomes itself, as it can lead to a decay in institutions.

Deep in my heart, I want rightists not to feel like they won something. But I know that Democrats are the party that supports higher taxes, unions shutting down technological progress, keeping kids stuck in public schools, and America turning its back on Israel out of a misguided concern for human rights.

All of this means that my emotional investment in the outcome of this election is pretty low. Either (relatively) good people with bad policies, or bad people with (relatively) good policies, will win. No matter what happens, I will be able to rejoice knowing that either bad people or bad policies have lost.

I’m unsure whether we would rather have a world where good people and good policies are aligned in the same coalition. This seems like more of a high-risk/high-reward state of affairs, which could be a positive or negative development depending on the exact details of future political and social configurations.