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Comment by theothermkn | Hacker News Reader

If you look at a presidential election as a negotiation between the political class and the electorate, or at the most recent one as an election that became a negotiation or interrogation, then the Trump voters who went for him as a “fuck you” to the system are better understood in this framework. So are the Clinton voters who reportedly stayed home. They felt victimized by the system, like their vote was a bargaining chip that the political class wanted to manipulate them into casting, and not a token to use to communicate their needs to their supposed representatives.

Clinton’s and her supporters’ hectoring about being the lesser of two evils (voter-blaming, the Bernie Bro smear, and not-really-a-progressive who gets things done come to mind) suddenly seem especially inept. The bad news is that the parties seem to want to continue in their disdain for voters, which will continue to be reciprocated. The good news is that even Bernie could come up with a message that resonated enough to get as far as he did with as few connections as he had. Someone else could do the same.

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Do we really need to turn this article into a hot take on the 2016 election? This isn't useful and the responses amount to bickering over talking points/political messaging and signaling.

Concocting "Us" Vs "the political class wanting to manipulate us"/"the system"/"Clinton's hectoring"/"the parties and their disdain for voters" narratives does not advance political discussion in any way.

It may not be easy or convenient, but people need to step up and start participating in politics (at all levels, not just national) instead of viewing it this way. Why don't we call out charismatic political figures for casting politics this way? It advances individual politicians, with their own flawed views, over democracy as a method of solving problems that everyone must participate in.

The comment wasn't politically charged though, it was a neutral analogy and a nuanced opinion about the election, not supporting one side. But the risk in using politics in your analogies is that it triggers tribal instincts:

> If you want to make a point about science, or rationality, then my advice is to not choose a domain from contemporary politics if you can possibly avoid it. If your point is inherently about politics, then talk about Louis XVI during the French Revolution. Politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality—but it's a terrible domain in which to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

It's makes it more likely replies will overlook the neutral nature of the comment and petty protectiveness of party or ideology will kick in.

I don’t think the comment was neutral at all. Especially:

> The bad news is that the parties seem to want to continue in their disdain for voters, which will continue to be reciprocated.

The view that both parties (the “political class” mentioned earlier in the comment, or the “establishment”) disdain voters is popular among Bernie fans and Trump fans, but not so much Clinton fans, given how much she was (reasonably) equated with the establishment, despite her being full of policy ideas meant to benefit the working class. The comment also implies that future candidates like Bernie would be “good news” who could overcome the elite/ordinary rift, presumably by blowing up the existing establishment as Bernie meant to (and to some extent did).

And yet. As a Clinton fan myself, as soon as I started reading the comment I had a eureka moment. It makes a lot of sense to me to analogous the election as an interrogation. But I‘d characterize the analogy differently - less objective, more based in perception and emotion.

For example, take voters who were pre-inclined to empathize with Trump, for any of a variety of reasons - economic anxiety, racism, a sense that Washington doesn’t care (-> empathy for the outsider), the natural tendency to empathize with the underdog, etc. Note that I said empathize, not just support. I think most voters are drawn to candidates they can empathize and identify with; by contrast, they’re very reluctant to support a candidate they dislike even if they think the candidate’s policies would be better for them. And once a voter is drawn to a candidate, being an “X supporter” starts to become a part of their own identity - and the larger a part it becomes, the more they invest their emotions and time in that identity, the more cognitive dissonance is created by questioning their views (since it would invalidate that investment), and the more biased and illogical the voter’s reasoning becomes.

So whenever Clinton attacked or belittled Trump, proto-Trump supporters had a choice:

- Feel personally attacked, respond wjth anger, end up hating Clinton more.

...or…

- Take the criticism in stride, separate the identities and realize they don’t need to defend Trump on every point, end up cooling on him a little.

Different people will make different choices, but if your goal as Clinton is to win them over, you really need to go out of your way to portray empathy for them and sympathy for their previous attraction to Trump. You need to stop it from being “us versus them”. Which is hard enough to start with; then consider that if you want to energize people on the other side of the political spectrum, those who are near you and (especially) those who are even further left, the best way is with harsh attacks, by making it as “us versus them” as possible, to strengthen their political identity. There are variations on the approach but it’s always needed to some extent, and sadly, it’s probably a better way to increase your vote total, since it’s easier to motivate someone to (vote, maybe even campaign for you) who already supported you than to get someone to change their mind.

But wait, you might say, Clinton didn’t just attack Trump himself. What about the comment where she said half of Trump supporters fit into a basket of deplorables? Well, I think it was a blunder. But it, along with the many other claims of Trump being x-ist, presents a similar choice for Trump supporters of how to react. One option might be “sure there are lots of deplorables but I’m in the unaffected 50%” - but that’s a fundamentally uncomfortable position, for many reasons including: how can you be sure you’re unaffected if most of the other supporters seem to be saying the same things you are? (FWIW, I’m not saying there aren’t some people who really had zero sympathy for Trump’s racist proposals but supported him anyway; but those are probably mostly reluctant supporters who ended up voting more against Clinton than for Trump. That’s a different case.)

More realistically, I think the choice is:

- See no evil: decide that you’re not racist, your fellow supporters aren’t racist, Trump’s not racist, and the whole thing is just “identity politics” and “political correctness” run amok.

...or…

- Look inward: realize that just about everyone has implicit biases, even if they try to avoid it - biases based deeply in the environments they’ve lived in and the experiences they’ve had. Confront the fact that you are imperfect and will never truly be rid of them - not to mention the fact that as a Trump supporter you probably started with more than average. Work towards self-improvement.

(By the way, the right does not have a monopoly on implicit - or even explicit - bias. But that’s a long story of its own.)

Anyway, both scenarios are similar to the choice of an interrogatee, especially a terrorist:

- View any poor treatment or belittlement during captivity as an extension of the same evil you were fighting. See no evil on your side, and confirm your belief that the other side really is just plain evil. Further solidify your identify as a Member of the Resistance and act as ‘bravely’ and protectively as possible (i.e. by refusing to divulge information).

...or...

- Accept that the interrogator thinks they’re doing the right thing in opposing you and has a reason for thinking that (e.g. from the example in the article, “we want to prevent killings”). Separate your identity from the resistance’s; accept that parts of the interrogator’s motivation may be valid, that even if your cause is just, the resistance has caused a lot of pain to people. End up cooling on your cause a little (if only due to the instinctual desire to compromise when in a debate).

Clearly, the more the interrogator respects you, empathizes with you, and avoids belittling you or your cause, the more you’re probably motivated to compromise. And politics isn’t so different.

One important difference between an interrogation and politics: For an interrogator to win, you don’t need to actually be turned to their side; you only need to cool on your side enough to decide to act in self-interest rather than in the cause’s interest. And only briefly, long enough to start talking: once you’ve started talking, you probably won’t suddenly change your mind and stop, partly due to diminishing returns of not talking, partly because that would be embarrassing. With politics, self-interest is less of a factor and the persuasion has to last until Election Day. Also, in an election, no human witnesses your final choice of candidate: on one hand, that makes it easier to change your mind without feeling embarrassed; on the other hand, it makes it easier to change your mind back after being persuaded, and to act selfishly (which in this case is a bad thing) rather than in the interest of everyone.

There’s also a pride/showing off factor in interrogations, where the interrogatee wants to talk/brag about what they did. I don’t see as much of a parallel in politics, since there are fewer secret plans there, but... maybe just having your would-be persuader praise the success of your old political organization, and/or get you to recount that success to them.

Anyway, I’m running out of time to write this comment, so I’ll leave it at that, even though I’d like to expand the analogy and maybe talk about the primary contest. If there’s a takeaway, though, it’s to reinforce: in elections, perceptions, emotion, and narrative are supreme. Compared to that, objective truth matters very little.

There are so many problems with this response. Mostly related to your inexplicable efforts to ascribe meaning that was not conveyed in the OP comment. I won't go through your entire wall of text, because it is an emotional response to a salient and accurate neutral analysis. But I do want to point out that your post seems to place an inordinate amount of trust in our current set of elected officials. For example, your assertion that candidates do not hide behind secret plans. What a silly, and frankly incorrect, assertion. Many of our current president's policies, foreign and domestic, were opaque and largely summarized by his now-infamous regurgitation, "you'll find out - after I'm elected."

Regarding secret plans, I apologize for writing unclearly. I did not mean to imply that candidates lack secret plans, but that voters lack them. I was pointing out that in a criminal interrogation, the interrogatee (if guilty) likely made secret plans for the crime that they’re now being interrogated about, and may have some primal urge to show off by explaining how good those plans were. However, there’s no directly equivalent motivation for a voter to switch to a different faction, since the voter likely doesn’t have any secrets to show off to the new group. There may be exceptions.

(There are also other motivations to reveal one’s secrets in an interrogation besides showing off, and perhaps I should have been more general. In the first example in the article, for instance, it seems less about showing off and more about finding a willing recipient for Diola’s political diatribe - premised on explaining why he did it, but apparently including enough of what he did and planned to satisfy the interrogator. But anyway.)

Regarding othermkn’s comment, I’m not sure what meaning you think I incorrectly read into it. The first paragraph is pretty neutral, as it talks only about what voters perceive - and it’s inarguable that many voters in 2016 felt ignored by the ‘political class’ or elites. However, the second paragraph states outright that “the parties seem to want to continue in their disdain for voters”, which implies that the parties objectively did disdain voters, something I question (at least when it comes to the Democratic Party). I further stated:

> The comment also implies that future candidates like Bernie would be “good news” who could overcome the elite/ordinary rift

The comment makes explicit that continued disdain is “bad news”, implying that overcoming it would be good. It technically doesn’t state outright that Bernie’s message itself was “good news”, as opposed to the fact that his candidacy showed that outsiders can get “as far as he did”. But I thought it could be reasonably inferred, given the resonance between the rest of the comment and the message of Bernie and many of his fans.

I went on to be slightly more speculative:

> presumably by blowing up the existing establishment as Bernie meant to (and to some extent did).

But I don’t think it’s a reach to say that if (a) you think the elites disdain voters and (b) you praise outsider candidacies, then your goal is indeed to get the elites out of power (not just change their minds or something).

Personally I thought it was an interesting perspective, which is exactly what I come to HN for.

>Concocting "Us" Vs "the political class wanting to manipulate us"/"the system"/"Clinton's hectoring"/"the parties and their disdain for voters" narratives does not advance political discussion in any way.

You are completely right in the short term, but in the long term, we need to get over the hurdle if we are (collectively) to advance at all.

And if we don't get over that step, why should people become interested in joining politics in the first place? As opposed to something more effective like protesting and, well, stay home (which I honestly also consider a political act).

Your analysis is on point. Both Bernie and our the President gave the impression of putting everything on the table. However true or false the reality of that was didn't seem matter nearly as much as making people "feel" as though they were being completely frank with people. Which seems to fit quite well with what the article is talking about.

>suddenly seem especially inept

As long we we're clear that the thing being labeled as inept is a particular persuasion strategy. It was nevertheless rational from the perspective of a person's political interests to go out and vote, even if they felt confronted, manipulated and taken for granted and any number of other things.

I certainly felt that way by a number of political conversations I had, but tried not to substitute those feelings for the reality of competing policy agendas and their effect on the world, which were the real thing I was voting on.

The tricky part of interrogation and perhaps all forms of persuasion, is connecting human nature on one end, to the need to fix problems in the outside world with some meaningful policy agenda, without losing perspective and letting one substitute for the other.

> It was nevertheless rational from the perspective of a person's political interests to go out and vote, even if they felt confronted, manipulated and taken for granted and any number of other things.

Unless they had no faith in either candidate; either the content of their proposed program, or their actual intention of carrying it out. I don't think that the contempt for voters inspires that faith.

I think the key in your scenario is that a person already has settled substantive beliefs that aren't tilted toward any particular candidate. As long as someone really feels like they can justify their pox-on-both-houses apathy on nuanced policy grounds, that's perfectly fine.

I'm talking about something slightly but importantly different. I'm talking about someone who isn't already settled on those questions, but nevertheless feels that their sense of indignation at having their dinner interrupted by a phone call is more important than who the next supreme court justice is.

There's two failures there- one in the chosen form of interaction, which has no possibility of creating a real connection to a person and doesn't seem to come from a place of caring what they think. That's real and needs to be taken seriously.

But then you have the second failure: of letting this personal desire for validation of one's autonomy become the whole of one's political perspective, at the expense of any consideration of policy outcomes that will affect hundreds of millions of other people.

Thank you for these posts. I have struggled to make this point many times and have never seen it communicated so clearly and neutrally.

Voting for a 3/4th party candidate is still better than staying home. Voting Libertarian / Green / whatever is not going to change the results, but it is taken into consideration as 'available' voters in a way staying at home does not.

Considering the insignificance of the vote, if the other party leader doesn't deserve my vote I don't care if they fit my ideology better than the rest, I'm not going to give them or the larger political system any validation. It's about integrity and indifference in the entire system.

The 'everyone should vote' activists so often operate on the assumption that this is the system, it's the only option, and if they can just convince people of the right strategy to work the system they'll be motivated to vote. Without considering a rejection of the system itself and the options the system produced, where discussing individual strategy is a meaningless exercise.

Do better next time, offer better people, and maybe I'll be motivated, or better year propose fixes to the electoral system as part of their campaign. But I've already been burned in Canada where Trudeau made promises to update the electoral system...then he completely backed out of it after being elected. Which does nothing to convince me the utility in taking an active interest. Even if they are offering things I care about, if that comes with zero integrity about following through then again the individual strategy is meaningless.

Votes are not insignificant as winners and losers consider the actual votes not just who won. (ex: When drawing district maps.) Further, even if you dislike all the options for president, congress, local election, etc there are still generally referendums where obtaining is meaningless as they are direct Y/N questions.

Not voting on the other hand accomplishes nothing and convinces the system that you don't matter.

PS: I don't necessarily mind you conceding all your power to other people. I simply object to flawed logic.

> Not voting on the other hand accomplishes nothing and convinces the system that you don't matter.

Once again, these embedded assumptions about the 'system' and my responsibility to it, all under the pretext that it is a system which is capable of significance if only more people, or the right people, took part in it. Reminds me of the cliche definition of 'crazy', expecting different results.

There's plenty of more useful ways to affect the world than that. But by all means, if you think things will be different next time...

And there's a difference between active vs passive involvement. By staying home and not voting I'm not actively negatively affecting the system. My involvement is entirely passive.

I am not trying to convince you to vote. Please feel free to stay home as that's probably better for me than you going out and voting.

Still, to give a specific example: Republicans want to replace the affordable care act. They also want to get elected.

So, let's figure out what explains their actions. People who vote, political donors, or everything else such as people send out angry tweets etc.

PS: It's possible for the 3rd option to be important, but frankly your actions not going to be.

> Republicans want to replace the affordable care act.

And that got rejected in congress unsurprisingly, just like all of his more extreme policies which everyone freaked out about (how's that wall coming?).

The latest executive orders will make a difference but a minor one in the long run. The US government's involvement in the healthcare system is still a super expensive mess.

Despite the intense discourse, billions of dollars spent, countless hours of us vs them, the US isn't much different than a year ago. I'm not saying it all doesn't matter but I'm struggling to see the utility in caring in my short life.

So far trump signed 53 or more bills into law. Now, yes they might not make headlines, but they are very much different laws than if he had lost.

The US does not change quickly. But, just because you stop paying attention does not mean you are not impacted.

The act of voting, from an individual perspective, is objectively irrational. Since the chance of your particular vote affecting the outcome of an election is 0 your time and effort is wasted.

The lesser of two (or few) evils argument only applies on a collective level but you are an individual making ab atomized decision, not a collective.

Since your particular vote has no effect on the outcome if you are going to do so anyway you might as well vote for someone you believe in. And if no candidate exists that fits that criteria you are not just wasting your time, you are willingly participating in your own delusion.

Voting is like praying. Both have zero effect on the world, but there are huge structures that rely on maintaining the illusion to the contrary.

Do you think politicians pander and offer concessions to people that are motivated to vote?

Or do you think they spend a majority of their time trying to please non-voters and suss out the particular reason they aren't voting?

I depends, if they follow political consultant focus-group research they'll probably just be hitting up the same voters as last time, with the usual safe party topics.

Which is why I believe Trump (and Sanders) was able to hit up a very cynical voter base, and cross typical party lines, by going totally off the mainstream script. Which may have played a big role in why all of the standard projection models missed their mark so badly. While Clinton was the polar opposite. Which also attracted the 'fuck you' votes against Clinton, even from people indifferent to Trump.

As someone totally disinterested in voting I saw appeal in that, although I'm too much of a logic/rational person to toy with stuff like that.

But there's definitely something deeper there, a deep seated dissatisfaction with the entire system and a voter base not being addressed by standard messaging. Sadly, we're all back to ignoring that fact, blaming Nazis and obsessing over the daily Trump gossip, like celebrity Entertainment Tonight.

Trump got no extra votes, Hillary simply drummed up less support. Voter turnout actually declined signficantly.

"he got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012, fewer votes than John McCain in 2008, and fewer votes than George W. Bush in 2004." This despite the growing US population.

Republican candidate got: 2004 62 million votes, 2008 60.0 million votes, 2012 60.9 million votes, 2016 59.7 million votes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/10...

"She got 6 million fewer votes than Barack Obama did in 2012, and nearly 10 million fewer than he did in 2008"

I was referring to a poll I read showing a notable portion of Trump voters either didn't vote last time or if they did vote it was for Obama in 2012 or 2008. That's all I meant by my comment... not that he had some new big number of voters?

It's been well covered in the press Trump got less votes than a number of presidents in the past, which only contributes to my general point.

But the election wasn't just about Clinton and Trump; it was just as much about Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch. Even if you still don't see a difference between the former two, surely you would recognize a difference between the latter two.

I think that's a bit of a stretch.

It is a little bit of a stretch, but not so much of one that it is not a useful mental model. I talked to 1000s of people from many different walks of life about that election from 2014-2016 - top comment accurately describes how most middle and lower class people (i.e. the vast majority of America) felt about that election and their choices.

"All models are false. Some of them are useful."

> So are the Clinton voters who reportedly stayed home

You mean nonvoter. Someone who stayed home is by definition someone who did not care enough to go vote, so there's no evidence they supported clinton over any other candidate.

> the Bernie Bro smear

As far as I'm concerned anyone who considers this a 'smear' (implying any credibility) just feels or felt entitled to votes because they made the mistake of trying their own 'lesser of two evils' fearmongering koolaid.

Neither party convinced me to vote for their candidate, and adding my support to third party candidates would just have provided them to another statistic to blame.

> The good news is that even Bernie could come up with a message that resonated enough to get as far as he did with as few connections as he had. Someone else could do the same.

I'd be amazed if anyone wanted to at this point. Most politically interested people I know've left for greener pastures.

>adding my support to third party candidates would just have provided them to another statistic to blame.

So? They're still blaming you for not going out to vote for Clinton. Provide the evidence that you say is missing, show that the electoral system is broken by voting anyone else or intentionally not marking a candidate. People will see through the "spoiler" narrative if it happens every election.

There are only two options for change, get enough people to try and game the broken system to fix it or hope for a revolution.

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