A few days ago I wrote a post called "If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals." As you can imagine with a provocative headline like that, conservatives loved it. Liberals were a little, um, less enthusiastic.
But my argument was pretty straightforward: survey data over the past 20 years makes it clear that liberals have moved to the left more than conservatives have moved to the right. This has pushed us far enough to the left that even moderates find some of our positions scary, and with centrist states largely out of play it's become very hard to win congressional majorities.
Over at the Bulwark, Tim Miller has taken on the task of rebutting me. He starts out by saying that my analysis is "absolutely correct":
But when it comes to the actions of politicians, the aggressive, top down Culture War is being driven overwhelmingly from the right. And the shift rightward among Republican politicians on culture war issues is as dramatic—if not more so—than the leftward shift among Democratic voters on policy.
I deliberately focused on rank-and-file voters because they are, ultimately, what matters. Still, it's true that the political ecosystem also includes influencers, primarily politicians and the press, and those work differently.
Miller points out that, rhetorically, conservative politicians have moved far more right than liberal politicians have moved left. I agree that this is obviously true even if I don't have hard evidence for it. However, politicians are symptoms not causes, followers not leaders, so the bluster of politicians means less than most people think. I addressed this a bit in my original post, but it's worth doing it in more detail here. Here we go:
- In a political debate, it's entirely natural for the losing side to be much more vocal than the side that's winning something. In the case of culture war issues, it's generally liberals who are pushing to gain something (civil rights, gay rights, etc.) and conservatives who are at risk of losing something (customs and hierarchies that they've long lived with). So no one should be surprised that conservative politicians are louder and more hysterical about culture war issues than liberal politicians. That doesn't mean much.
- Because we've moved so far left, conservative politicians are free to attack us good and hard. Liberal politicians, by contrast, tend to be more judicious. But this is not a difference between liberal and conservative. It's just that a strong leftward shift gives conservative politicians a lot of room to scare moderate voters while liberal politicians are hesitant to fight back because they know they'll lose even more voters if they do. Always remember: there are more conservatives than liberals in the United States.
- By pushing so far left, we have given the conservative press an easy job. It's popular among certain liberals to say that this doesn't matter because conservatives will attack us no matter what, but that's sophistry. Of course both sides are always attacking each other. But conservative attacks are a lot more effective when we liberals provide them with a big fat target—and we do.
- The liberal press—and here I'm mostly talking about MSNBC—shouldn't be underestimated. They are less thuggish than Fox News, but they press the extreme progressive agenda pretty hard, and not always honestly.
- That said, there's no question that Fox News plays a special role in all this. After a relatively moderate start, they moved to the hard right starting around the year 2000 and they've been uniquely destructive ever since. It's not just that they fight back against progressives, it's that they demagogue and misrepresent and just outright lie with a casual abandon.
Miller's basic case is that social change is constant and, sure, "the scores of millions of people who create cultural change in the daily comings and goings of their lives should be more forbearing with everyone else." Still, he says, it's the "inflamers" who are responsible for turning a normal level of disagreement into a war.
But this is just not the way things work. It's easy for liberals to say "social change, eh, no big deal," but it is a big deal to those who are scared by it. To suggest that the elite conservative fight against lefty change is nothing more than a ruse for the rubes is not just backward, it betrays a deep misunderstanding of how H. sapiens tribalism work. Noise level aside, liberals are every bit as invested in pushing change as conservatives are in resisting it, and the farther left we go the stronger the resistance becomes. This should surprise no one.
However, there is one particular place where I agree with Miller: the deep, dark cesspool that is Fox News. The basic political dynamic here is simple: progressives have made themselves into an easy target and Fox News is largely responsible for using that target as a way of not just attacking us, but of making its audience believe that liberals are scary, unpatriotic, and deliberately trying to ruin America. This has had a big impact on rank-and-file voters, and it's no surprise that conservative politicians have followed along like lapdogs. Without Fox News conservatives would still be naturally louder than liberals in this fight, but with Fox News they've been turned into maniacs.
It's still the case that liberals are fundamentally the ones who pushed first and pushed hardest on social issues over the past 20 years. And it's only natural that this sparked a strong response from conservatives. Beyond that, though, it's Fox News that's turned things truly toxic. So if you're looking for a conservative target, forget the politicians, who just follow public sentiment. Look instead to Fox News, which eagerly accepted its 30 pieces of silver and cold-bloodedly stoked that toxic public sentiment in the first place. They're the ones who turbocharged a fairly normal dynamic and made it into the hellscape it is today.
POSTSCRIPT: I want to make clear yet again that nothing I've said is meant to suggest that progressives are wrong. Generally speaking, I'm all on board with most progressive change. But my personal opinion doesn't mean anything, and it's simply a fact that liberals have moved very far to the left in recent years. This has placed them a long way away from the median voter and made it very difficult to win in centrist states.
