Over the past two decades, the perverse incentive structures of America’s elite media have caused a new species of pundit to rise from the Beltway’s primordial ooze, at once less insightful and infinitely more annoying than any of his progenitors.
So many of them love to take his grounding statements "It's important to make chickens" like it's the height of his intellectualism. He usually makes that kind of comment when the other person is arguing for free-range only chickens, and Yglesias has to come around and make the point that they're talking about massively increasing the price of a staple protein eaten in the vast majority of US households. Which is exactly what 2/3rds of Americans are going to hear from that argument.
Also, I lose all trust when people start critiquing twitter fights. Twitter has the magical ability to temporarily turn our smartest journalists (e.g. Ezra Klein) into nincompoops. The very platform demands and rewards shallow hot takes.
The exchange with Breunig displayed above was damning. It took me a few volleys to realize Yglesias actually thought his self-canceling assertions could coexist and that he was serious, not trolling. Woof.
Like many journalists, Ezra Klein is using that job as a stepping stone to becoming a pundit. Pundit for those unfamiliar with the term, is what ‘influencers’ call themselves when the NYTimes logo is on their paychecks.
I listened to Klein once only, when he interviewed Noam Chomsky. It was like a bullfight where the Matador was replaced by a goose.
The quoted hit piece makes this clear: the author accuses him of “hedges like ‘sort of’ and ‘slightly’”, when ‘slightly’ is not a hedge in the sentence being referred to- it makes the claim stronger! He says we can make a huge difference by slightly reducing chicken welfare. How is that a hedge? What on earth is this Dan Zak talking about, and is it bad faith or stupidity that motivates the author of this substack to quote that approvingly?
Just one small thing, but it exemplifies the quality of criticism here and elsewhere.
Does he have a lot of far right critics then? I’ve only ever seen him critiqued by centrists who are orders of magnitude smarter and more interesting than his right wing ass.
As an Yglesias reader I check out these hit pieces from time to time just to make sure they're still mostly ad hominem attacks and out of context quotes. It's reassuring this is the best his opponents can come up with.
There is not a single ad hominem in this peace. The article points out that Yglesias is nearly always ignorant of the subjects he claims knowledge of and assumes bad faith on the part of anyone who disagrees with him while being wildly inconsistent in his views. That is not ad hominem. That is direct criticism of Yglesias.
>Over the past two decades, the perverse incentive structures of America’s elite media have caused a new species of pundit to rise from the Beltway’s primordial ooze, at once less insightful and infinitely more annoying than any of his progenitors.
This is the opening paragraph. The authors I respect attack ideas, not people.
"Ad hominem" is "Your argument is wrong because you're an idiot"; it is not "Your argument is wrong because of x, y, and z, and you're an idiot for making it."
That’s true, but if the opening sentence is what Tim quoted, long experience tells me that the author is too filled with bias to provide a good-faith reading of the ideas of the person the author is criticizing.
Somewhat of a pattern to get Iraq wrong, then get Palestine wrong - two of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21st century. It's the same blindspot in favor of Washington consensus imperialism. He didn't learn anything from being wrong about Iraq. You'd think you'd get some humility from the experience, but then again why would he? There were no real professional consequences for anyone who got Iraq wrong. If anything it was rewarded, it shows you're a team player.
No. They are not saying his arguments are wrong because of who he is. The article is saying he is hypocritical and ignorant. That is not ad hominem. That is criticism. Criticizing his not ad hominem
>The article is saying he is hypocritical and ignorant. That is not ad hominem.
That is the literal definition of ad hominem: "to the person/man." Not all ad hominem is bad, and you can say that people deserve criticism, but it's still ad hominem.
As someone who reads Matt for housing policy, the amount of good faith which he affords NIMBY's can be deeply frustrating, but I always find it impressive nonetheless. If there's anyone writing on substack who *isn't* straw-manning those he disagrees with, it's Matt. Maybe he wrote that way two decades ago, but it hasn't been the case for a long time now.
Because Matt isnt operating in good faith. He literally believes that "leftists" (of the type he criticizes) do not have sincere beliefs or are serious, but only virtue signaling as a play for institutional power.
Ah, I couldn't disagree more. I don't know if you read a lot of what Matt writes these days, but he's regularly talking about the sincerity of the left and how it would be a mistake to write their beliefs off as weakly held. He just doesn't agree with their policies as the best way to achieve their goals, generally. He's also written more than once that in order for Dems to win moderates and leftist are just gonna have to learn to make space for each other rather than "win" some imaginary battle and vanquish the other group from the coalition.
To be fair, there were a number of items listed that Yglesias appears to have been wrong about with the benefit of hindsight.
However, Yglesias has been a pundit for a very long time and offered a lot of opinions. Hard to say if his batting percentage is above or below average, relative to other pundits.
In an ideal world, we would be able to sort all pundits by accuracy in order to know who to listen to. Until then, I suppose we can listen to winners of forecasting competitions like https://substack.com/@peterwildeford/note/c-146663376?
I think his most valuable and interesting work is less his occasional analysis of contemporary politics and more his discussion of low-level policy ideas and implementations. He’s also brings this reasonable and down-to-earth vibe to this more polarised writing.
Which of these things about his preaching about the virtues of the traditional halls of power--cloaking his speech in discursive language or aping academic philosophical discourse-- says "down-to-earth" to you?
The reason I think he’s down-to-earth is that he’s pretty pragmatic and tends to criticise arguments regardless of who or where they come from.
He’s long been one of the most vocal NIMBYs; how exactly is that “preaching about the virtues of the traditional halls of power”? Surely his vociferous opposition to the entrenched interests of property owners is the diametric opposite of that, no?
You say he’s aping philosophical discourse, but that’s just a critical framing of “his writing style is similar to philosophy writing”, which is unsurprising since he has philosophy degree from Harvard. Given he has a philosophy degree, is he “aping” philosophical writing or is that just a natural reflection of his intellectual background? And is he “aping” it, or is that just his style?
I’m just trying to understand what your actual beef is with him. It seems like you’re saying something like: Yglesias just supports entrenched interests (“traditional halls of power”) but masks this by writing in a way that makes him seem erudite and thoughtful. Absent compelling evidence that Yglesias is just some kind of traditionalist conservative, your point reduces to: “if only you didn’t fall for his pseudo-intellectual act, the correctness of my point of view would be obvious to you”. The point about style isn’t compelling because: (A) everybody plays that game, all the time—everybody is trying to persuade people that they’re worth listening to—including you; (B) it assumes that everyone who disagrees with your POV is that they’re markedly dumber or more gullible than you (which is unlikely, self-serving, and an extremely common intellectual conceit); and (C) you imply that Yglesias’s writing is meandering in a confusing way, when I’ve found his writing to be uncommonly clear and easy to understand—note that “discursive” can also be used to describe writing that mimics conversation, which is often the easiest to follow because it emulates natural conversation, and is often appropriate for philosophy or politics because it lends itself to considering multiple points of view and literally “putting them in conversation” with each other.
You clearly disagree with him, and I’m sure there’s a legitimate criticism there, but it just isn’t clear what that is. If I had to guess, it might be that you and Yglesias are on different sides of the Conflict vs. Mistake dichotomy. Conflict theorists think that people disagree because of clashing interests, values, or incentives. Mistake theorists think that people disagree because of errors, ignorance, or flawed reasoning. Matt and I are probably more sympathetic to Mistake Theory, whereas you’re more sympathetic to Conflict Theory. The disagreement is about how politics works, downstream of which flow our views of how to effect change in society.
The reason I think it’s this is that you mention “virtues of the traditional halls of power”, which suggests that you believe that the people with power have fundamentally values and interests that are fundamentally misaligned with regular working people, in which case the only way to make things better is to attack those people. You think that anyone who buys Yglesias’s spiel is either part of that class or is being hoodwinked into upholding their own oppression. You’re basically saying “wake up; these people are mugging you off and you don’t even realise it!” And Matt would almost certainly agree that people mostly act in their self-interest, which implies a clash of self-interest, but he’d probably also say that a lot of issues can be explained by people misunderstanding each other and misunderstanding the situation—not because of ignorance or stupidity, but because society and politics is super complex most people have jobs and lives and don’t have time to deep dive this stuff—and that broadly history has shown it’s better to work *with* people’s self-interested nature, and shape it to the maximum social good, rather than assume you can override or change that nature.
Perhaps you think differently. Perhaps you think that anyone claiming the solution is to work *with* self-interested behavior by shaping incentives to solve problems is a shill engaged in a futile, wilfully-naïve project of “using the weapons of capitalism against itself”. But I don’t know. I could be completely misunderstanding the locus of your disagreement with Yglesias. I’m just offering what I imagine *might* be your view in an attempt to understand you, and that’s probably because I myself am more of a Mistake Theorist than a conflict theorist.
Sorry this was such a long response. I’m just trying to engage substantively with what you’re saying rather than just dismissing you as an internet grouch who’s criticising Yglesias based on a shallow evaluation of his political aesthetics being too establishment for your tastes—which could also be the case. If that is the root of your dislike of Yglesias, I urge you to suspend your judgement temporarily and try to see past it, because while you’ll almost certainly disagree with plenty of things he says, you might be able to see that he’s at the very least sincere in what he says and that he, like you, cares deeply about making the world better for regular people.
Any accurate reading of Yglesias, I think, has to separate Yglesias-the-Thinker with Yglesias-the-Shitposter.
Being exposed to him mostly in the form of his long form work, or in podcasts, he often strikes me as someone with unique (centrist contrarian!) ideas that make you think. As a left-lib, I don’t *always* agree with him, but that’s okay.
Then I see his Twitter feed and understand why he’s disliked by a wide swath of people. The dude isn’t *completely* internet poisoned, but I suspect it might have been better for him if he took the Klein route and gfto of social media.
I am baffled at your inability to understand the most blatantly obvious sarcasm of all time ever in history. Truly generational ability to ignore what a person means.
No that was completely sincere. It only appears ironic given what’s happened since.
And it wasn’t even a bad take in 2021, because so many Republicans were coming out against Trump, and many platforms were banning election denial. It seemed like the country had fully and permanently rejected Trump
People like yglesias can only understand politics as a game. Because they've never had any of their material needs go unmet. He's telling on himself because he only views politics bas a game of factional power rather than a means to an end.
The goal of participating in politics should be to facilitate changes that improve people's lives. Yglesias seems to think it's just to gain power for power's sake.
Yglesias (and many other centrist libs) have chosen to pursue power for power's sake by ingratiating themselves to those who are already in power. They can't bring themselves to take an unpopular position because their entire game revolves around sucking up to the powerful while simultaneously masquerading as someone who is somehow challenging power. It's an illusion that only results in superficial tweaking around the edges and exactly zero real change for the better ever happening
Populist economic leftist policies are across the board extremely popular and the failure of centrist democrats to embrace them is the primary reason they keep losing.
Do you believe that Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders are economic populists? Do you have an explanation for why they can’t win a primary with an electorate that should be even more sympathetic to economic populism than the general? I believe their failure to win a primary should poke hole in the theory that left economic ideas are “overwhelmingly” popular.
"Is your belief that 1. Left ideas are not actually unpopular." I think the belief here can be summarized more like "not necessarily at the moment, but with enough time and motivation they can be made popular" i.e. Henry Ford, if we asked people what they wanted they would want faster horses, its essentially a form of idealogical entrepreneurism.
I think that this is a coherent ask of politicians. So I think depending on your values, this could make sense. But I think that politicians are less political tastemakers, and more weathervane. Also I think that I’d rather have more moderate democrats than fewer, more ideologically aligned ones
Capitalists are in power. Wall Street, silicon valley, the oil industry, the healthcare industry, the military industrial complex. That's who is in power and always has been. Regardless of whether the blue team or red team wins. All of the worst things that Washington does are done with huge bipartisan agreement.
Those are the people and industries that are in power that people like yglesias refuse to challenge. They're also the people signing their paychecks.
At a certain point this kind of comment is simultaneously true and nonsensical. Coal plant operators that whispered to Manchin and Warren affiliated wind turbine advocates were both “capitalists” trying to influence public policy, but to treat them as a united front isn’t going to generate much analytical value.
The sheer volume of Yglesias ball washers that have scuttled in like rats into the comments to lecture leftists who “don’t get Matty” just fills me with joy. Telling on themselves.
I was mocking Matt Y's complaints about leftists; he's functionally saying that they're both too interested and not interested enough in building power and complaining about both.
I love these pathetic "takedowns" by left-wing nobodies who are CLEARLY just trying to engage in a battle with a well-known blogger to raise their own profile.
Don't you have anything better to do? Who exactly are you trying to convince? What problem are you solving? Patting yourself on the back?
This article misses the forest for the trees. Sure specific details of Trump’s policy are less than 50% supported but broader Americans agree with stronger immigration policies than Biden implemented. The Left is very out of touch with the majority of Americans on this.
If you poll individual positions that trump has on immigration, they are all individually unpopular. But the electorate trusts republicans and trump on immigration, and distrusts democrats. If you are setting the agenda, you should have the topic be something like healthcare/abortion where the public trusts democrats on. If a voter is thinking a lot about immigration when they vote, they are likely to go to the republican. If they’re thinking about healthcare, they’ll vote for the democrats. Yglesias wanted to reduce the salience of immigration in order to talk more about BBB which polls better than immigration.
I find Yglesais to be smarter and more interesting than the majority of his critics.
So many of them love to take his grounding statements "It's important to make chickens" like it's the height of his intellectualism. He usually makes that kind of comment when the other person is arguing for free-range only chickens, and Yglesias has to come around and make the point that they're talking about massively increasing the price of a staple protein eaten in the vast majority of US households. Which is exactly what 2/3rds of Americans are going to hear from that argument.
Also, I lose all trust when people start critiquing twitter fights. Twitter has the magical ability to temporarily turn our smartest journalists (e.g. Ezra Klein) into nincompoops. The very platform demands and rewards shallow hot takes.
The exchange with Breunig displayed above was damning. It took me a few volleys to realize Yglesias actually thought his self-canceling assertions could coexist and that he was serious, not trolling. Woof.
Like many journalists, Ezra Klein is using that job as a stepping stone to becoming a pundit. Pundit for those unfamiliar with the term, is what ‘influencers’ call themselves when the NYTimes logo is on their paychecks.
I listened to Klein once only, when he interviewed Noam Chomsky. It was like a bullfight where the Matador was replaced by a goose.
nobody knows the half of it, actually...but jillikers, raiding a blog for criticism like this isn't the best look, is it?
this guy has probably stopped reading the comments on this, but if he hasn't, he could ask me what i know, if he really wants to start some bsns.
The quoted hit piece makes this clear: the author accuses him of “hedges like ‘sort of’ and ‘slightly’”, when ‘slightly’ is not a hedge in the sentence being referred to- it makes the claim stronger! He says we can make a huge difference by slightly reducing chicken welfare. How is that a hedge? What on earth is this Dan Zak talking about, and is it bad faith or stupidity that motivates the author of this substack to quote that approvingly?
Just one small thing, but it exemplifies the quality of criticism here and elsewhere.
He could be smart and interesting, but if he actually believes the stuff he says then he is a complete moron lol
Does he have a lot of far right critics then? I’ve only ever seen him critiqued by centrists who are orders of magnitude smarter and more interesting than his right wing ass.
As an Yglesias reader I check out these hit pieces from time to time just to make sure they're still mostly ad hominem attacks and out of context quotes. It's reassuring this is the best his opponents can come up with.
There is not a single ad hominem in this peace. The article points out that Yglesias is nearly always ignorant of the subjects he claims knowledge of and assumes bad faith on the part of anyone who disagrees with him while being wildly inconsistent in his views. That is not ad hominem. That is direct criticism of Yglesias.
>Over the past two decades, the perverse incentive structures of America’s elite media have caused a new species of pundit to rise from the Beltway’s primordial ooze, at once less insightful and infinitely more annoying than any of his progenitors.
This is the opening paragraph. The authors I respect attack ideas, not people.
"Ad hominem" is "Your argument is wrong because you're an idiot"; it is not "Your argument is wrong because of x, y, and z, and you're an idiot for making it."
That’s true, but if the opening sentence is what Tim quoted, long experience tells me that the author is too filled with bias to provide a good-faith reading of the ideas of the person the author is criticizing.
No....
Read the person responding to you.
Savage is essentially saying "Yglesias is an idiot (or other mean thing or perhaps rude comment) for the following reasons".
Just because Savage is being invective towards Yglesias does not mean he is participating in ad hominem
Florid prose is not ad hominem.
Is that why the author has to resort to critiquing his opinions from 20 years ago?
Somewhat of a pattern to get Iraq wrong, then get Palestine wrong - two of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21st century. It's the same blindspot in favor of Washington consensus imperialism. He didn't learn anything from being wrong about Iraq. You'd think you'd get some humility from the experience, but then again why would he? There were no real professional consequences for anyone who got Iraq wrong. If anything it was rewarded, it shows you're a team player.
Two does not a pattern make champ.
The piece is full of ad hominem attacks. Deeply unserious and uncurious.
No. They are not saying his arguments are wrong because of who he is. The article is saying he is hypocritical and ignorant. That is not ad hominem. That is criticism. Criticizing his not ad hominem
>The article is saying he is hypocritical and ignorant. That is not ad hominem.
That is the literal definition of ad hominem: "to the person/man." Not all ad hominem is bad, and you can say that people deserve criticism, but it's still ad hominem.
He called him a dork, for instance.
Cause he is
As someone who reads Matt for housing policy, the amount of good faith which he affords NIMBY's can be deeply frustrating, but I always find it impressive nonetheless. If there's anyone writing on substack who *isn't* straw-manning those he disagrees with, it's Matt. Maybe he wrote that way two decades ago, but it hasn't been the case for a long time now.
NIMBYs are generally leftists. So of course he affords them good faith
Because Matt isnt operating in good faith. He literally believes that "leftists" (of the type he criticizes) do not have sincere beliefs or are serious, but only virtue signaling as a play for institutional power.
Ah, I couldn't disagree more. I don't know if you read a lot of what Matt writes these days, but he's regularly talking about the sincerity of the left and how it would be a mistake to write their beliefs off as weakly held. He just doesn't agree with their policies as the best way to achieve their goals, generally. He's also written more than once that in order for Dems to win moderates and leftist are just gonna have to learn to make space for each other rather than "win" some imaginary battle and vanquish the other group from the coalition.
To be fair, there were a number of items listed that Yglesias appears to have been wrong about with the benefit of hindsight.
However, Yglesias has been a pundit for a very long time and offered a lot of opinions. Hard to say if his batting percentage is above or below average, relative to other pundits.
In an ideal world, we would be able to sort all pundits by accuracy in order to know who to listen to. Until then, I suppose we can listen to winners of forecasting competitions like https://substack.com/@peterwildeford/note/c-146663376?
I think his most valuable and interesting work is less his occasional analysis of contemporary politics and more his discussion of low-level policy ideas and implementations. He’s also brings this reasonable and down-to-earth vibe to this more polarised writing.
Which of these things about his preaching about the virtues of the traditional halls of power--cloaking his speech in discursive language or aping academic philosophical discourse-- says "down-to-earth" to you?
The reason I think he’s down-to-earth is that he’s pretty pragmatic and tends to criticise arguments regardless of who or where they come from.
He’s long been one of the most vocal NIMBYs; how exactly is that “preaching about the virtues of the traditional halls of power”? Surely his vociferous opposition to the entrenched interests of property owners is the diametric opposite of that, no?
You say he’s aping philosophical discourse, but that’s just a critical framing of “his writing style is similar to philosophy writing”, which is unsurprising since he has philosophy degree from Harvard. Given he has a philosophy degree, is he “aping” philosophical writing or is that just a natural reflection of his intellectual background? And is he “aping” it, or is that just his style?
I’m just trying to understand what your actual beef is with him. It seems like you’re saying something like: Yglesias just supports entrenched interests (“traditional halls of power”) but masks this by writing in a way that makes him seem erudite and thoughtful. Absent compelling evidence that Yglesias is just some kind of traditionalist conservative, your point reduces to: “if only you didn’t fall for his pseudo-intellectual act, the correctness of my point of view would be obvious to you”. The point about style isn’t compelling because: (A) everybody plays that game, all the time—everybody is trying to persuade people that they’re worth listening to—including you; (B) it assumes that everyone who disagrees with your POV is that they’re markedly dumber or more gullible than you (which is unlikely, self-serving, and an extremely common intellectual conceit); and (C) you imply that Yglesias’s writing is meandering in a confusing way, when I’ve found his writing to be uncommonly clear and easy to understand—note that “discursive” can also be used to describe writing that mimics conversation, which is often the easiest to follow because it emulates natural conversation, and is often appropriate for philosophy or politics because it lends itself to considering multiple points of view and literally “putting them in conversation” with each other.
You clearly disagree with him, and I’m sure there’s a legitimate criticism there, but it just isn’t clear what that is. If I had to guess, it might be that you and Yglesias are on different sides of the Conflict vs. Mistake dichotomy. Conflict theorists think that people disagree because of clashing interests, values, or incentives. Mistake theorists think that people disagree because of errors, ignorance, or flawed reasoning. Matt and I are probably more sympathetic to Mistake Theory, whereas you’re more sympathetic to Conflict Theory. The disagreement is about how politics works, downstream of which flow our views of how to effect change in society.
The reason I think it’s this is that you mention “virtues of the traditional halls of power”, which suggests that you believe that the people with power have fundamentally values and interests that are fundamentally misaligned with regular working people, in which case the only way to make things better is to attack those people. You think that anyone who buys Yglesias’s spiel is either part of that class or is being hoodwinked into upholding their own oppression. You’re basically saying “wake up; these people are mugging you off and you don’t even realise it!” And Matt would almost certainly agree that people mostly act in their self-interest, which implies a clash of self-interest, but he’d probably also say that a lot of issues can be explained by people misunderstanding each other and misunderstanding the situation—not because of ignorance or stupidity, but because society and politics is super complex most people have jobs and lives and don’t have time to deep dive this stuff—and that broadly history has shown it’s better to work *with* people’s self-interested nature, and shape it to the maximum social good, rather than assume you can override or change that nature.
Perhaps you think differently. Perhaps you think that anyone claiming the solution is to work *with* self-interested behavior by shaping incentives to solve problems is a shill engaged in a futile, wilfully-naïve project of “using the weapons of capitalism against itself”. But I don’t know. I could be completely misunderstanding the locus of your disagreement with Yglesias. I’m just offering what I imagine *might* be your view in an attempt to understand you, and that’s probably because I myself am more of a Mistake Theorist than a conflict theorist.
Sorry this was such a long response. I’m just trying to engage substantively with what you’re saying rather than just dismissing you as an internet grouch who’s criticising Yglesias based on a shallow evaluation of his political aesthetics being too establishment for your tastes—which could also be the case. If that is the root of your dislike of Yglesias, I urge you to suspend your judgement temporarily and try to see past it, because while you’ll almost certainly disagree with plenty of things he says, you might be able to see that he’s at the very least sincere in what he says and that he, like you, cares deeply about making the world better for regular people.
Any accurate reading of Yglesias, I think, has to separate Yglesias-the-Thinker with Yglesias-the-Shitposter.
Being exposed to him mostly in the form of his long form work, or in podcasts, he often strikes me as someone with unique (centrist contrarian!) ideas that make you think. As a left-lib, I don’t *always* agree with him, but that’s okay.
Then I see his Twitter feed and understand why he’s disliked by a wide swath of people. The dude isn’t *completely* internet poisoned, but I suspect it might have been better for him if he took the Klein route and gfto of social media.
Someone who doesn't seem to believe anything can't believe real people believe things. Thank you for this piece.
Yes, everyone who doesn't believe what you believe doesn't believe in anything.
It's a reminder of why liberalism emerged after a century of religious conflict
It is sometimes hard to fathom the crazy stuff you guys believe. Biological males should compete in women sports, including martial arts?
Get a life dork
I am baffled at your inability to understand the most blatantly obvious sarcasm of all time ever in history. Truly generational ability to ignore what a person means.
Any specific examples?
The tweet about banning Trump from Twitter is the most sarcastic tweet ever sent ever in life ever.
No that was completely sincere. It only appears ironic given what’s happened since.
And it wasn’t even a bad take in 2021, because so many Republicans were coming out against Trump, and many platforms were banning election denial. It seemed like the country had fully and permanently rejected Trump
It's a common trait among the online bloggerati.
People like yglesias can only understand politics as a game. Because they've never had any of their material needs go unmet. He's telling on himself because he only views politics bas a game of factional power rather than a means to an end.
The goal of participating in politics should be to facilitate changes that improve people's lives. Yglesias seems to think it's just to gain power for power's sake.
Yglesias (and many other centrist libs) have chosen to pursue power for power's sake by ingratiating themselves to those who are already in power. They can't bring themselves to take an unpopular position because their entire game revolves around sucking up to the powerful while simultaneously masquerading as someone who is somehow challenging power. It's an illusion that only results in superficial tweaking around the edges and exactly zero real change for the better ever happening
Is your belief that
1. Left ideas are not actually unpopular.
2. Left ideas are unpopular, but politicians should have them because other benefits.
Populist economic leftist policies are across the board extremely popular and the failure of centrist democrats to embrace them is the primary reason they keep losing.
Do you believe that Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders are economic populists? Do you have an explanation for why they can’t win a primary with an electorate that should be even more sympathetic to economic populism than the general? I believe their failure to win a primary should poke hole in the theory that left economic ideas are “overwhelmingly” popular.
Because the democratic party and their associated media apparatus (people like yglesias) have blocked them every chance they get.
lol, no.
"Is your belief that 1. Left ideas are not actually unpopular." I think the belief here can be summarized more like "not necessarily at the moment, but with enough time and motivation they can be made popular" i.e. Henry Ford, if we asked people what they wanted they would want faster horses, its essentially a form of idealogical entrepreneurism.
I think that this is a coherent ask of politicians. So I think depending on your values, this could make sense. But I think that politicians are less political tastemakers, and more weathervane. Also I think that I’d rather have more moderate democrats than fewer, more ideologically aligned ones
I'm so confused by this take. Who do you think is in power??
Capitalists are in power. Wall Street, silicon valley, the oil industry, the healthcare industry, the military industrial complex. That's who is in power and always has been. Regardless of whether the blue team or red team wins. All of the worst things that Washington does are done with huge bipartisan agreement.
Those are the people and industries that are in power that people like yglesias refuse to challenge. They're also the people signing their paychecks.
I’m pretty sure Yglesias doesn’t get a paycheck. He is a Substacker. He gets paid based on newsletter subscriptions.
1. Vox was/is a corporate funded venture that propelled him to where he is today.
2. His new effort, the argument, has raised millions of dollars in donations from wesltgy powerful politically connected (to the DNC) people.
No. The Republicans are in power.
I'll let Ygelsias's work speak for itself on why he's not an anti-capitalist. Expecting him to be is silly.
To the extent Yglesias has power or influence himself, it's because he's persuasive. He's not above criticism, but *your criticism* is bad.
At a certain point this kind of comment is simultaneously true and nonsensical. Coal plant operators that whispered to Manchin and Warren affiliated wind turbine advocates were both “capitalists” trying to influence public policy, but to treat them as a united front isn’t going to generate much analytical value.
I think Yglesias has the unique ability to mix liberal elite arrogance with conservative for me, but not thee.
Its truly incredible how odious he is on every front
Your disassembly of this turgid, nonthinking thief of ideas is a salve on my tortured soul.
The sheer volume of Yglesias ball washers that have scuttled in like rats into the comments to lecture leftists who “don’t get Matty” just fills me with joy. Telling on themselves.
Great piece.
There is a list of things that Yglesias was “brazenly incorrect about” but more than half that list is unfalsifiable opinion…not objective fact…
The worst thing about leftists is that they are either trying to build power, or aren’t. They need to stop this right away.
Matt isn't a leftist 🙄
What does this even mean? This is like saying "people either do things or don't do things"
Compeltely meaningless attempt at an aphorism
I was mocking Matt Y's complaints about leftists; he's functionally saying that they're both too interested and not interested enough in building power and complaining about both.
I got it, now.
Missread it as sincere because of well, you've seen the state of the thread. My fault!
Apologies!
I love these pathetic "takedowns" by left-wing nobodies who are CLEARLY just trying to engage in a battle with a well-known blogger to raise their own profile.
Don't you have anything better to do? Who exactly are you trying to convince? What problem are you solving? Patting yourself on the back?
Pathetic.
you're here, boosting this, so it worked. kaboosh!
That’s….not how this works kid.
bigger number means he looks like more of a real person. hey, while i have you, what do you think of shawn fain for president?
Amazing how often nobody-leftists write articles like these exclusively to raise their own profile.
People like you argue that Mamdani is a "model" for the nation. Like, have you been to Oklahoma dummies?
What a joke lol.
Have you been to Oklahoma?
Unaffordable housing and childcare costs are not unique to NYC.
If you think the people of Oklahoma want higher taxes for government-run grocery stores I have a bridge to sell you.
You really have no idea how much of a bubble you are in, do you?
It would be funny if he didn't have such influence and wasn't so ghoulish
Is this the Substack version of what the kids call “clout farming?”
Something tells me you are not fond of Matt Yglesias.
Matt bullied him in highschool
Dude... Matt Ygelsias did not bully anyone in high school. Just look at him.
He's an insufferable rich kids politics dork. His face screams for a swirly and a king kong wedgie
Yeah I was joking.
I know he's a dork.
Calling MY a contrarian is lefty navel gazing. Taking broadly popular positions is not a contrarian.
He took the position that the Dems should dispense with defending Kilmar Abrego Garcia because it "wasn't popular", except it was popular to defend him and it did hurt Trump on immigration and overall - https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-immigration-agenda-isnt-popular?r=qwta8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
This article misses the forest for the trees. Sure specific details of Trump’s policy are less than 50% supported but broader Americans agree with stronger immigration policies than Biden implemented. The Left is very out of touch with the majority of Americans on this.
If you poll individual positions that trump has on immigration, they are all individually unpopular. But the electorate trusts republicans and trump on immigration, and distrusts democrats. If you are setting the agenda, you should have the topic be something like healthcare/abortion where the public trusts democrats on. If a voter is thinking a lot about immigration when they vote, they are likely to go to the republican. If they’re thinking about healthcare, they’ll vote for the democrats. Yglesias wanted to reduce the salience of immigration in order to talk more about BBB which polls better than immigration.
Fans keep saying his positions are broadly popular, are they?
Or are they popular with the kind of people who read his blog?
Where his views are not popular (greater than 50%) he is more often on the left side of the issue not the right.
I think you and I would disagree on what we consider "left"
Yes and your nuance is not useful in national elections.