Eric Levitz

No, the neo-Nazism of young Republican staffers is not driven by economic anxiety

www.vox.com/politics/468...

If you want to ask me questions about fully automated neofeudalism (or technically, "anything"), you can do so here at noon:

If you want a picture of a Democratic future, imagine hyper-engaged, suburban wine-moms stomping on J.D. Vance’s face — forever (or, you know, in the 2028 election)

www.vox.com/politics/467...

This is how the Trump coalition unravels The 2025 elections illuminate a nightmare scenario for the Republican Party.

Republicans have long worried that -- once Trump is gone -- the college graduates whom he alienated will remain Democrats, while the disengaged voters whom he mobilized will stop turning out.

The 2025 election results make that scenario more plausible www.vox.com/politics/467...

Anyway, if you think Zohran is an incredible politician and Spanberger and Sherrill are boring establishment mods, then you should take last night's results as evidence in favor of the electoral power of moderation. But also who cares in a sense, give me all the protected bike lanes please.

Zohran is a generational political talent and I'm very happy he's mayor and Cuomo is not. Also Spanberger and Sherrill do not seem to be generational political talents and yet they obviously did very well and Republican turnout cratered in their elections.

Base strategies are good at turning out your base. Just one small problem.

Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara argues that past socialist societies were wrong to think they could do without markets.

But he insists that modern economies *can* do without capitalists

I asked him: Why take that risk? Why not stick to what definitely works (ie Sweden)?
www.vox.com/politics/467...

NYC's new mayor believes in democratic socialism

But how would a democratic socialist economy actually work?

To @sunraysunray.bsky.social, it would mean market competition and profit-driven firms - without capitalists.

We debated his vision of market socialism

www.vox.com/politics/467...

Elites have always depended on ordinary people's labor.

Society has became more egalitarian as workers leveraged this power.

But there is a risk that AI will eventually erode elites' dependence on the masses -- and usher in a permanent oligarchy. www.vox.com/the-highligh...

Robots can now do many parts of my job better than I can

This has made me a bit anxious about my own obsolescence

It has also led me to contemplate the one AI dystopia that I find plausible: A world where robots free elites of all dependence on most ordinary people.

www.vox.com/the-highligh...

Highly-educated Democrats have very different priorities and policy preferences than Americans writ large. This is likely even more true of politically-engaged college grads.

The mood in our circles/social media feeds is not a reliable guide to public opinion

www.vox.com/politics/466...

Welcome PAC just released its case for Democrats to moderate.

I asked the report's author my own greatest reservation about moderation on certain issues -- that the costs of such positioning feel certain, while the benefits are hypothetical.

Here was his answer:

www.vox.com/politics/466...

This week, Welcome PAC released its case for Democrats to moderate. I spoke with the author of its report, and pressed him on (nearly) every prominent, progressive objection to his analysis, including this one: www.vox.com/politics/466...

I think trying to deport millions of law-abiding immigrants is morally wrong.

But even if you disagree, you should *still* oppose Trump's approach to enforcement -- so long as you value your own rights as a US citizen www.vox.com/politics/464...

Some critics of "gifted" programs argue that they mainly serve to placate rich white parents, so they don't pull their kids from big-city public schools.

I don't think that's true. But also: placating rich white parents is important www.vox.com/politics/464...

Zohran Mamdani phasing out gifted programs for kindergarteners is fine.

But in later grades, progressive opposition to "tracking" is misguided imo. Ability sorting can be beneficial for all students, when done right www.vox.com/politics/464...

It doesn't follow that the impact of national position-taking is negligible though

Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics? Your brain isn’t what it used to be.

I've written very long pieces about the degradation of the information environment in recent months. It is of course true that Fox News is a rightwing propaganda outfit, and this generates problems that more strategic position taking would not solve www.vox.com/politics/414...

...in Bonica's suggestion that academic research shows that softening cultural positions doesn't yield significant gains in contemporary elections, and elsewhere. I think this conveys more certainty about the inefficacy of targeted national moderation than is warranted

And I did read your paper. My issue is that I think you and Adam have overstated the implications of your results in your popular commentary, in both the sentence mentioned...

I think the natural reading of your sentence is that national tides don't include party positions, since you describe such tides as something outside of political strategists control.

I don't think I've misunderstood. If "national tide" refers to, among other things, party positions, then "national tides" are a thing that political consultants/academics do know how to *partly* manufacture

Ah yes. This is definitely a separate question and challenge. Though I don't think the correlation between what positions a party actually adopts -- and what voters believe the party's positions to be -- has entirely disappeared. Definitely though, there is not a one-to-one connection

But I think your Substack pieces elide that these considerations mean that national moderation on select issues may be electorally beneficial, even if moderation at the House level is not

I agree that your paper acknowledges the potential existence of penalties for policy non-congruence and the prospect that national party positioning may crowd out candidate effects...

I deleted because there was a typo in my initial post. But I do think I interpret/characterize the screenshot reasonably (and shared it down thread) bsky.app/profile/eric...

But on their list of forces that drive contemporary elections, they did not include "position-taking by the national parties." To the contrary, they suggest that the relevant forces are ones that consultants cannot influence, which implies that national position-taking isn't a significant factor

On the collective action point, I think it happens primarily through the presidential nomination process and to a lesser extent congressional leadership. I agree that there are national trends outside Democratic leaders volition (such as economic developments, among other things)...