Some stuff is just too good to pass up. Ezra Klein's unconscious was working overtime in Why Bernie Sanders's campaign makes me worry about how he’ll manage the White House. There's some blah, blah and blah, and then we get this—
And, hell, let's just be honest:
Go for it, Ezra!
All this policy talk is just a way to pass the time between now and the election. It doesn't matter how strong Bernie Sanders's single-payer health care plan is — it's not going to pass, just like Donald Trump isn't going to get Mexico to pay for a wall and Hillary Clinton isn't going to get universal pre-K past a Republican Congress and Ted Cruz isn't going to set up a value-added tax.
It's obvious that debating the details of campaign proposals is, on some level, fantasy football for wonks. Events will intercede, bureaucracies will weigh in, Congress will balk, promises will be broken. Remember when Barack Obama ran for president opposing an individual mandate and then flip-flopped and supported one?
So what's the point of paying attention to any of this at all?
Good question! It looks like Ezra is having an existential crisis.
Or is he? Surely Ezra can't simply conclude that his own existence is pointless, not to mention the pointless existence of all those policy "wonks" Ezra hired to write at Vox.com.
Ezra doesn't beat around the bush. His self-justification comes immediately after his pointed existential question.
As someone who pays quite a lot of attention to campaign policy processes, here's my answer:
Watching a candidate run his campaign's policy processes is one of our best ways of predicting how he would run his White House.
Ezra then proceeds to justify his existence by bashing Bernie Sanders. Thus we get bullshit like this—
My worry about Sanders, watching him in this campaign, is that he isn't very interested in learning the weak points in his ideas, that he hasn't surrounded himself with people who police the limits between what they wish were true and what the best evidence says is true, that he doesn't seek out counterarguments to his instincts, that he's attracted to strategies that align with his hopes for American politics rather than what we know about American politics. And these tendencies, if they persist, can turn good values into bad policies and an inspiring candidate into a bad president.
Who knows how Bernie would run the White House? The question is moot because there is no chance whatsoever that Bernie will be elected president. But Ezra's existence is made meaningful by entertaining fantasies about Bernie's weakness in this regard. Bernie isn't interested in learning the weak points in his ideas, he doesn't seek out counterarguments, and so forth.
(As far as I can see, Bernie has no interest in Reality—period.)
What is important to understand here is that Ezra employs "motivated reasoning" (bullshit) to justify himself. See the third Flatland essay. This is an election year, so you can't leave the house without tripping over some motivated reasoning.
I mean, why doesn't Vox simply change its domain name to Hillary-Is-Awesome.com?
That would clarify things considerably if you read there. The "wonks" at Vox won't (and can't) tell you that almost everything they write is subtly tilted toward Hillary because their own biases are largely invisible to them. That's what Flatland is all about.
In time, after Hillary wins the nomination, they will endorse her, and of course Hillary was the obvious choice all along, right? Because Hillary is the reformer who gets things done!
Not to mention the fact that Ezra himself will benefit from Hillary's election. At least, that's what his unconscious tells him.
And as astonishing as it is to say, it is this kind of pointless sociopolitical bullshit which makes the human world go round. I could have titled this post As The World Turns.
Consequently, now that Ezra thinks his existence has a point—he will invent self-serving bullshit as he goes along—Ezra gets to keep busy, make some money, accrue some social status, get invited to the right parties, and maybe get a one-on-one interview with Hillary down the road—she's so awesome! And so on.
And what about Ezra's original question?
So what's the point of paying attention to any of this at all?
You got me there, Ezra. I'm stumped. I don't see any point to it. Unlike you, I can't simply make up some ridiculous but convenient post-hoc rationalization to infuse all this political bullshit with some deeper meaning.
the fine art of ass-kissing
"He doesn't seek out counterarguments to his instincts." LOL. Hillary, Ted, Donald, and Mario, of course, do.
Posted by: Ken Barrows | 02/23/2016 at 10:24 AM