Krugman shows us why the Left loses, despite its advantages

Larry Kummer, Editor

10 years ago

Summary: This is the fourth in a series about why the Left loses. America’s drift to the Right since 1980 has not only become impossible to ignore, but has accelerated despite the many fundamentals favoring the Left. Such as demographics and the increasing acceptance of behaviors an anathema on the Right (e.g., gay marriage, abortion). Increased concentration of wealth and income by the 1% explains much of the Right’s success. As this series will show, weakness of the Left explains much of the rest.

A symptom of the problem
Diagnosis
Significance
Other posts in this series
More evidence

(1) A symptom of the problem

“Triumph of the Wrong“, Paul Krugman, op-ed in the New York Times, 6 November 2014 — Excerpt:

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet midterms to men of understanding. Or as I put it on the eve of another Republican Party sweep, politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. Still, it’s not often that a party that is so wrong about so much does as well as Republicans did on Tuesday. … So now is a good time to remember just how wrong the new rulers of Congress have been about, well, everything.

First, there’s economic policy. … In short, the story of conservative economics these past six years and more has been one of intellectual debacle — made worse by the striking inability of many on the right to admit error under any circumstances.

Then there’s health reform, where Republicans were very clear about what was supposed to happen: minimal enrollments, more people losing insurance than gaining it, soaring costs. Reality, so far, has begged to differ, delivering above-predicted sign-ups, a sharp drop in the number of Americans without health insurance, premiums well below expectations, and a sharp slowdown in overall health spending.

And we shouldn’t forget the most important wrongness of all, on climate change. As late as 2008, some Republicans were willing to admit that the problem is real, and even advocate serious policies to limit emissions — Senator John McCain proposed a cap-and-trade system similar to Democratic proposals. But these days the party is dominated by climate denialists, and to some extent by conspiracy theorists who insist that the whole issue is a hoax concocted by a cabal of left-wing scientists. Now these people will be in a position to block action for years to come, quite possibly pushing us past the point of no return.

One of these three things is not like the others. For the first two Krugman clearly identifies the GOP view and provides rebuttals, all supported by links (I agree 100%). The third asserts that the GOP is dominated by climate extremists — and implies that the Democrats represent the consensus of climate scientists. He provides no evidence for either claim; there are reasons to doubt both. Certainly the public does, with climate change near the bottom of major threats (See Gallup polls, other polls, other evidence).

Is the Republican Party “dominated by denialists?” In Leftist usage, “denialist” has no fixed meaning beyond “people who disagree with me about climate change”. Much like “terrorist” to the Right, it’s a political tool rather than a category. It includes prominent climate scientists skeptical of some aspects of the IPCC’s views (e.g., Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Sr) — or critical of the Left’s exaggerations of the IPCC’s views, and have supported their view with studies in the peer-reviewed literature (e.g., Roger Pielke Jr).

On the other hand, polls show that a slim majority of people who identify as Republicans are literally denialists — who believe that global warming is a hoax (as Senator Imhofe, R-OK, believes). But more detailed surveys paint a more complex picture of right and wrong beliefs by conservatives about warming.

Such data does not show what a majority of the GOP’s leaders believe. Even Imhofe, who often plays the clown on global warming, is more nuanced when pressed for details. As in this interview on CNN, in which he discusses the effects of rising CO2 and refers to the pause in surface atmosphere warming (a reference CNN’s Tapper either doesn’t catch or doesn’t understand). Typically, a note by the Editor confidently but wrongly corrects Imhofe’s estimate of the Bush tax cuts (comparing Obama’s exaggerated estimate of the 10-year cost with the annual cost Imhofe gives).

On still another hand, Leftists don’t have clean hands here. Many on the Left continue to deny the pause in surface atmosphere warming, while climate scientists explore its causes and estimate its duration. They refused to acknowledge their past false predictions, such as predicting increased frequency and strength of hurricanes after Katrina, the “end of snow“, and rapid melting of the arctic sea ice (Al Gore in 2007-09, slanted presentation of current research. They often describe normal weather as extreme (e.g., the OK tornadoes, Hurricane Sandy), and exaggerate & over-simplify trends). They attribute almost every extreme weather event to increased CO2-caused global warming, without evidence (e.g., the cold 2008 and the 2010 Russian Heat Wave).

Perhaps worst of all, many on the Left have abandoned the IPCC (examples here and here) as “too conservative”. It’s a sad state of affairs for conduct of the Left’s signature public policy initiative.

(2) Diagnosis

In this, as in the many other examples listed below, we see epistemic closure. The same illness which has infected the Right, as described by Julian Sanchez, 10 March 2010:

One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. … This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile.

… If disagreement is not in itself evidence of malign intent or moral degeneracy, people start feeling an obligation to engage it sincerely — maybe even when it comes from the New York Times. And there is nothing more potentially fatal to the momentum of an insurgency fueled by anger than a conversation.

Many on the Left see the threat of climate change as a bludgeon that vigorously wielded will return them to power, accompanied by a massive increase in government power. Their success promulgating the “nuclear winter” story showed that their strength in the news media and academia could be used to influence public opinion (they ignore the failure of the Nuke Winter campaign to have much political effect).

Sadly, as so often the case when attempting to persuade using half-truths, they were the first and most strongly convinced of their stories about global warming (which go far beyond the consensus of climate scientists).

(3) Significance

The Right always has more money, and so often has more effective organizations and a deeper bench of trained talent (see the Shame Project for examples of money well-spent over decades), especially since the collapse of labor unions (the only institutional counter-weight to the Right). Epistemic closure, the dominant role of tribal truths, maintains the Right’s ideological cohesion and prevents compromise with foes — at the cost of some disconnect from reality.

The Left’s advantage has been its “reality based community”, a trait abandoned by the Right under the leadership of Bush Jr. But such an inward turn always appeals to members of a group; fighting that temptation requires listening to critics — even among your foes (where most live) — learning from them and even admitting mistakes. But given the odds against them, without a tight grasp on reality the best the Left can become is a loyal opposition. They can watch the Democratic and Republican Party leaders fight for allegiance of the center-right (as they did in this recent election).

Most of us like to imagine ourselves bold leaders, with the inevitable forces of history on our side. This can easily be re-written about the Left today:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush {later identified as Karl Rove}. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” {Source: Ron Suskind in the New York Times}