Anti-woke, anti-Trump

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This is a small and interesting subset of commentators. See Coleman Hughes and Andrew Sullivan/Sam Harris.

My framework for looking at various aspects of the Presidential contest is to think in terms of probabilities. Given my preferences, what is the probability that the outcome of a Trump victory would be significantly better? What is the probability that a Biden victory would be significantly better? What is the probability of no significant difference?

For example, Sullivan and Harris argue vehemently that the response to the virus under President Trump was much worse than it should have been. From my framework, I do not see that. On March 19, I wrote Fire the Peacetime Bureaucrats, and I stand by the view that the top career officials at FDA and CDC should have been replaced by a crew with open minds, high energy and determination, and outstanding management skills. I would say that the probability that Biden would rely much more than Trump on the peacetime bureaucrats by a significant amount would be about 8 percent. The probability that Biden would instead find better people to rely on would be about 2 percent. The probability that neither Trump nor Biden would find better people to rely on is 90 percent.

I should say that I do not think that a Kamala Harris Administration would be much different from a Biden Administration. Although it is possible that in a Biden Administration she could slide into a role as ambassador to the radical left, my intuition is that she herself has no deep-seated beliefs, radical or otherwise.

So, on the aspects that I care most about, here goes. Depending on who wins–

1. Four years from now, will the Woke movement be stronger or weaker?

Hughes, Sullivan, and Harris argue that the Woke movement will be weaker if Biden wins. Hughes makes the important point that the Woke movement is cultural, and it would be a mistake to over-estimate the power of Presidential support or opposition to affect it.

One might hope that with Trump off stage, people on the moderate left would feel more inclined to distance themselves from the radicals. I think that is what these anti-Woke commentators are counting on, but I don’t see it as likely. If Biden wins, my friends who live conservatively and vote progressively are still going to keep their Black Lives Matter signs on their lawns. My guess is that Woke Capitalism will continue to march ahead. etc.

The ultra-Woke institutions of higher education and the K-12 establishment are likely to get much more help from a Biden Administration than from a Trump Administration. If you want to see more children in charter schools and more high school graduates finding alternatives to matriculating at Indoctrinate U, you want Trump to win. I put the probability of no significant difference at 70 percent, the probability of a better outcome under Biden at 5 percent, and the probability of a better outcome under Trump at 25 percent.

2. Will the politicization of everything be more or less?

This is where I find Hughes, Sullivan, and Harris most persuasive. Trump is a provocateur, and that is not helpful for turning down the political heat. Yes, you can blame radical leftists for politicization, but their antics are given. At the margin, a Biden Presidency seems to me to be less likely to add fuel to the fire. So I would put the probability of no significant difference at 70 percent, the probability that things would be better under Biden at 25 percent, and the probability that things would be better under Trump at 5 percent.

3. Will the President attract and retain good people?

My sense is that HUD Secretary Carson and Education Secretary DeVos have moved in policy directions that I like, and I give President Trump credit for retaining them. In foreign policy, I think that Trump’s mistreatment of his appointees is very risky. So far, we have survived without a major disaster, but I am not confident that will continue. Overall, I think that President Trump has not done a good job of attracting and retaining good people, and that is an important weakness. I think it is likely that Biden will appoint people who are more effective in achieving results but who push policies that I strongly oppose. So on this one I would rate the probability of no significant difference as 30 percent, the probability that Trump works out better [for me] as 40 percent, and the probability that Biden works out better as 30 percent. I give Biden as high a probability as I do because I fear some major avoidable mis-step on foreign policy under Trump, due to a thin team.

47 thoughts on “Anti-woke, anti-Trump”

  1. Both the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the AOC wing of the Democratic Party promote themselves as a bulwarks against each other.

    In reality they both need and benefit from each other. Each would be much weaker without the threat of the other to energize their supporters.

    Biden is as much of a traditional, centrist, establishment figure as you could find in either party. Trump is trying, as much as possible, to portray Biden as some kind of wild eyed radical socialist. In reality, Biden was the Democratic Party’s furthest option from the radical wing of the party. Which way intra-party power flows in the future will have everything to do with how much that matters to voters.

    • [edited to make the criticism less personal–ed.]
      Biden was imposed by the Old Guard as much as Hillary in 2016 to stop Sanders and the radical leftists. In 2016, the Old Guard didn’t negotiate with Sanders because many Dems thought he was just noise. In 2020, the Old Guard negotiated with Sanders and he accepted “to lose” in exchange for a share in the Biden Administration (Kamala is the first payment to Sanders). To have a chance of winning in 2020, the Old Guard had no choice but to collude with the radical leftists. If Biden wins, the Old Guard will attempt to appease the radical leftists but they will claim a much larger share in the Administration than the Old Guard promised and they will fight for it.

      [Trump] showed that Obama was a fiasco and Hillary was just noise. If you want to understand what Trump’s breaking into the 2016 election meant, you have to compare it with the experience of Ross Perot in 1992 as an independent candidate.

    • The Woke movement (with the complicity and material and moral support from many corrupted Dems) is the new Puritanism. They claim to be motivated by our human condition and ready to save all from our sins. Don Boudreaux explains the details in his latest post:

      “Of course, the specific superstitions, terrors, and lusts of puritanism in the 2020s differ from those of puritanism in the 1620s and even the 1920s. And today’s high pastors of the puritan faith boast not degrees in divinity but, instead, MDs, JDs, and PhDs. But puritanism’s basic character is unchanged. Ditto for its pastors’ conceits. Today’s puritans, like yesterday’s, believe that ordinary human beings are corrupted sinners who pose unspeakable harm to each other unless firmly bridled and muzzled by stern ’tho saintly elders.

      The puritan elders of 2020 have frightened the flock into the belief that they – the flock – are all sinners infected by a Satanic force named “Covid-19,” and that the only salvation from this evil spirit is unquestioning obedience to the elders’ harsh but God-ordained commands. (It is an insignificant detail that in 2020 “God” has been renamed “Science.”)

      Sure, such obedience results in the abandonment of all joy, spontaneity, pleasure for the sake of pleasure, beauty for the sake of beauty, and natural human engagement and commerce. But if we don’t obey, our destination is as certain as it is terrible: Covid hell – an unspeakably painful and gruesome place in which everyone of all ages is sure to perish in agony. Avoidance of this pulmonary inferno is worth any price paid over any length of time – or so our elders thunder from their pulpits.

      Obey, ye sinners, lest ye suffer justly at the hands of an angry God!”

  2. It’s really not that interesting a subset of people. They claim to stand on principle, but what’s the point of standing against woke-ness but refusing to fight it? We should all be so lucky in our enemies.

    The idea that you’re going to defeat woke-ness through rationale, civil and intellectual discussions is absurd. The first rule of woke-ness is that you’re not allowed to speak against it.

    • Having observed them on Twitter etc., and having argued with Scott Aaronson, who is another moderately prominent and representative member of this set, I doubt it’s correct to say that these people stand against wokeness. As a matter of principle, they are on the side of wokeness. They just deplore the modus operandi, the methods used by the vanguard of wokeness, and plead for existing unprincipled exceptions (such as mostly merit-based hiring in science) to not be completely destroyed. Likening wokeness to law, they concur with its substantive points, dissenting only from some procedural points. Such a position naturally vitiates itself. E.g. they dislike educational institutions’ practice of requiring written diversity statements as a condition of employment, but they are very much on board with the goals such statements are (ostensibly) designed to achieve.

    • Because not everyone accepts the idea that reality is Manichean, that it’s either wholeness or whatever Republicans are offering, particularly if you have major disagreements with both. I think you sound much like people on the left who are trying to badger non-populist conservatives into voting straight democratic tickets because everything now and till the end of time is a referendum on Trump.

      Even if one (mistakenly, imo) thinks voting must be treated as a binary option, there’s no reason people should pick one of two ideologies, embrace it wholesale, and suppress whatever visible misgivings they have.

      • The question for me is whether to take any particular commentator seriously. “Is this guy being serious? Is he a serious thinker? Or is he just blowing smoke?”

        It’s related to the question of how much sympathy one should have for an individual when they are making a complaint. Do they have a legitimate grievance? Are they just whining? Are they “not even whining”?

        Someone is “not even whining” when they are complaining about the consequences of their own choices. A very obese man may feel real pain in his knees, but he should keep it to himself, because he is choosing the knee pain over the difficulty of losing weight.

        To me, it is not serious, and inconsistent with Stoic virtue, to complain about some state of the world that could be remedied, while refusing to countenance any remedy. The idiom is “You made your bed, now lie in it.” It’s off-putting to say, “Oh, it’s terrible to lie in this messy bed.” Make the bed or lie in rumbled sheets but if you’re a serious person, don’t complain to me about it.

        If the Wokening is a serious issue, it deserves a serious response likely to put a dent in the problem. And, like in any conflict, that implies the acceptance of trade-offs and compromises of other values that go along with it.

        If it doesn’t warrant a serious response, how can I take you seriously that it’s a legitimate, serious problem worth complaining about in amplified terms of warning and alarm?

        If you want to have your cake and eat it too, “It’s a major problem, but I refuse to fight it,” then why should anyone conclude that you are a serious thinker and not just a whiner?

        It’s ok to be a pacifist and refuse to fight, on the grounds that you admit that (1) I am a pacifist, not fighting is more important to me than losing a war, and (2) A policy of pacifism does indeed mean we lose the war, because it doesn’t ‘work’ to deal with the adversary.

        It’s not being serious to be such a pacifist in reality, but pretend otherwise in commentary.

  3. Arnold, on your three points:

    1 — Woke is a political movement that relies on idiots that pretend to be useful (like the three commentators you refer to –sooner or later they will be canceled and they deserve to be canceled). The movement will be much stronger in 4 years with Biden than with Trump.

    2 — Politicization will continue to increase regardless of who wins. No difference between Biden and Trump because the main driving force is what you call the Woke movement (see point 1). The difference between Biden and Trump will be in Biden’s attempts to appease the Woke crazies while Trump will repress them.

    3 — If Trump wins, he will be free to appoint the people he wants to a much larger extent than in 2017-20. If Biden wins, there will be a huge fight between Old Guard Dems and the Woke crazies for all positions.

    • She is signaling that she will be a useful idiot and trying not to be canceled by her new friends.

      • So, I held my nose and voted for the very strange orange man. First time voting since 1996. Gotta do my part to keep Texas red. That said, I’m very sympathetic to the view that Biden will do a better job of squelching the crazy left. Trump is just too antagonistic and polarizing.

        At the end of the day, I’m happy to take corporate tax reform + 3 solid Supreme Court picks and cut my losses from there. Maybe it’s time to move on to a better conservatives?

        • I’m feeling pretty good this morning. Texas is red, Trump has a slim chance (it for sure won’t be the blowout that many Biden supporters were hoping for) and, perhaps most importantly, the Senate is gonna stay red. Also, prop 16 (re-instate racial preferences) in California is currently losing big time even with all of the lopsided money and favorable media coverage.

  6. Not sure how Trump would repress the woke. His few small steps at preserving speech rights have been tolerant. The 2024 Republican candidate will need to be much more willing to cut funding to the NGOs and universities.

    Woke doesn’t make my top ten issues list, and I suspect I am not alone. Personally, peace and domestic economic performance is the highest priority.

    •Real median household income increased by $4,400 in 2019, reaching a high of $68,700. This was a a 6.8 percent one-year increase, and the largest one-year increase in median income on record. Between 2016 and 2019, real median household income has increased by 9.7 percent.

    •Income gains in 2019 were largest for minority groups. Real median income grew by 7.9 percent for black Americans, 7.1 percent for Hispanic Americans, and 10.6 percent for Asian Americans. These one-year increases were all record highs, and the new income levels reached in 2019 were all record highs.

    • Over 4 million people were lifted out of poverty between 2018 and 2019 for a 1.3 percentage point decrease. This was the largest reduction in poverty in over 50 years.
    • Compared to the overall poverty rate reduction of 1.3 percentage points, black poverty fell by 2.0 percentage points, Hispanic poverty fell by 1.8 percentage points, and Asian poverty fell by 2.8 percentage points. The poverty rate fell to an all-time record low for every race and ethnic group in 2019. Notably, the black poverty rate fell below 20 percent for the first time.
    • Child poverty fell to a near 50-year low in 2019, falling by 1.8 percentage points to 14.4 percent. Between 2016 and 2019, 2.8 million children have been lifted out of poverty, including over 1 million Hispanic children.
    • In the fourth quarter of 2019, 74.2 percent of workers who took jobs came from outside the labor force rather than the ranks of the unemployed. That was the highest percentage since 1990, when the government began reporting such data.

    If Biden is able to produce a similar record while not getting into any new wars, I will vote to re-elect him.

    • Sorry, edgar. Too early to make your list for Santa. Unfortunately, politics is not about Santa.

        • Dr. Kling stated his priorities in thinking about the election. I stated mine. If you have different priorities, I would love to hear them. The virus is not a big presidential election issue for me because I believe President Trump, consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, was correct to defer to state and local officials in handling prevention measures. Democrat cities and states got what they voted for good and hard.

          • Is “edgat” the same guy as “edgar”? Maybe with a different saved name?

            Dem cities got the results of Dem policies. I think lots of voters are clearly getting that message.

  7. One might hope that with Trump off stage, people on the moderate left would feel more inclined to distance themselves from the radicals. I think that is what these anti-Woke commentators are counting on, but I don’t see it as likely.

    Same here. The moderate left hasn’t really shown any inclination to resist even the worst impulses of the woke left, thus far, outside of a few isolated, courageous, individuals like Jonathan Haidt, Bret Weinstein, etc. Nobody is going to suddenly grow a backbone just because Joe Biden becomes president, for the very reason Hughes noted: the woke movement is cultural, but so is the moderate left’s kowtowing to it.

    • “I’d fight the Wokesters if only Trump wasn’t around” is a rationalization for ones own cowardice. Nothing more. There is no serious reason to believe that electing Joe Biden will allow the center-left to assert itself. We are talking about a man that calls critical race theory sensitivity training and endorsed 8 year olds getting transgender surgeries.

      In two years I’d like to send my kids to elementary school. Will I be able to do that (perhaps literally, given the democrats love shutting down schools) without them getting indoctrinated? Am I going to have to send them to private school simply to not have progressivism shoved down their throat. I figure this question is worth something like 340k+ in tuition for K-12. Who do you think gives me the best shot there? I’ll take the guy that outlawed CRT and is starting a commission to keep it out of K-12 schools.

      • So, you wanna live in a blue city, but somehow get the red city benefits in that city? Good luck to you. Open up your wallet and prepare to watch it get emptied in the private schools. Time to put on those big boy pants and stop complaining.

        • Dude I live in a red town in the exurbs. This shit is being implemented everywhere by the same kind of people that live in every part of the country whether they reflect the local majority it not.

          • It ain’t being implemented here in North Texas. We’ve got a Republican governor and two Republican Senators. They won’t tolerate the nonsense nor will the average folks in our school district.

        • And, it’s not like there aren’t many many underrated beautiful options out there: Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Nebraska, etc.

          • Virginia used to be like Texas. Now … it’s not.

            Last time Texas went for Trump by 9 points. If you believe Politico, with 60% of the votes in, it’s 50/50, too close to call.

            Beware the blueing.

          • If Trump loses in Texas it’s because of Trump and not because of conservative values. John Cornyn easily won re-election to his senate seat.

  8. There is only 1 issue in this election. Is the government’s power legitimate?

    Republicans have lost the popular vote for the senate and the presidency. It’s fine to have a system where that happens from time to time, but Republicans have tried to entrench that system, to continually rule from the minority. This is unsustainable and will lead to either war, revolution, succession, or an explicitly authoritarian government where legitimacy depends not on rule of law and peaceful transfers of power but of might and propaganda.

    To be a republic people need to believe in the legitimacy of the system. To accept a loss, knowing the game was fair, to win graciously knowing their victory can be undone. Republicans have lost the thread, they are really becoming an autocratic party, and need to be taught a lesson or abolished. Democrats are terrible, but they believe the votes of yokels should be counted, republicans think it’s bad when black people vote, they have no confidence in convincing people of the power of their ideas. What republicans have done should be a death sentence for their party.

    The woke stuff will end just like McCarthyism or which trials, it’s just a matter of how much damage it does before it burns itself out.

    Don’t drown the baby.

    • While even China’s cultural revolution did come to an end, it’s a dark road the woke would take us down.

    • This is such B.S., Matt. Yes, the system is entrenched, and has been for 230 years. But to say things like “republicans think it’s bad when black people vote” is just B.S. Do you have anything reasonable to say?

      • At this moment Trump is trying to declare victory before the votes are finished being counted. Where are they left to count, Atlanta, and Philly, Detroit…Our blackest cities. I said republicans were creating a legitimacy crisis, and don’t want black people to vote. Clearly I am a crazy person.

        • “Clearly I am a crazy person.”

          Yep, that about sums it up.

          I’m a Republican that wants so see all legitimate ballots counted and I highly doubt that any Republican would disagree with me. You’re wanting to tar us as racists (a rather juvenile and boring accusation at this point), but there you are.

          • I actually think rank and file republicans would support every vote being counted. However, the party leaders, have changed rules in lame duck sessions, sued to stop votes being counted, and generally acted in a way I see as profoundly un-American. This isn’t about racism, leaders have decided it’s okay not to count democratic votes, like when the FL legislature refused to let felons vote, after overwhelming public support for the referendum. The leadership has decided that ends justify the means. The result unfortunately is exactly the same as Jim Crow, we should make it hard for black people to vote. Do you think Harris county should have only one drop box for absentee ballots, your leadership does. Because democrats live there, and many of them are black. This is literally the woke people’s point, and there is no reason to make it for them. You want the woke stuff to go away, you need to treat people equally, and when the other side doesn’t call them out on it.

          • @Matt H

            It’s not about racism, but yet it’s all about racism. Blah blah blah.

            Have you been spending too much time getting mentored by Tyler Cowen, thinking that people actually believe that Straussian bullshit?

            The voting lines were quite short here in North Texas. I cannot speak directly to South Texas (including Harris County), but the voter drop-off issue was fully adjudicated in the courts in Texas. As an example, our in-laws had no issues whatsoever in dropping off their completed ballots in the most urban part of Houston.

          • Your argument is all of the bad stuff my party leadership tried was blocked by the courts. Let’s hope your party doesn’t get the power to appoint judges, or to change the rules of appointment, Or increase the size of the state supreme courts, and appoint a majority, like in GA. The ends justify the means thinking corrupts everything. You are counting on institutions protecting you, while republicans undermine them. Simple question: if Puerto Rico wants to become a state, would you let them, why not? Under what theory other than I want to keep my power should they not have a voice in the government that controls their island?

          • Good golly, why do you folks always have to change the topic mid-stream? Now I need to argue for or against Puerto Rico coming into the union and then demonstrate my non-racist bonafides in defending that position? I’m feeling lazy, so sorry.

            The original topic was on whether the Republicans were actively suppressing black voters and that they were joyfully celebrating this. There is no evidence to support this.

            Nonetheless, hope you enjoy your time in calling your opponents racists. We are immune to it at this point.

          • You are counting on institutions protecting you, while republicans undermine them.

            Sorry, but I see a lot more institution-undermining being done by Democrats these days.

    • Matt, the damage the woke movement can do depends on people like you. Your question about the legitimacy of government power is nonsense and your answer shows you don’t know what you are talking about. If you want to question the legitimacy of the U.S. rule of law, you have to start with the criminals that attempted a coup d’état against Trump. Robert Mueller and his gang of sicarios should be in jail, or worse. Nancy Pelosi and her clowns should in psychiatric confinement.

  9. I like Hughes, but he is just totally out of his depth when averring that control over the Executive is not of immense consequence both in practicalities as well as in the “culture war” contest of ideas, which in in feedback with the exercise of power and certainly responds to and is shaped by all kinds of political action.

    This is not the 19th Century, the American Presidency is an extremely powerful and influential position (a “bully pulpit”), and an order of magnitude more powerful (thus more dangerous) when occupied by progressives who can link arms with their allies in the courts and bureaucracy and media. With that kind of power the President decides who to threaten to sue into oblivion, which laws to enforce, which laws not to (e.g., DACA).

    At the very least, if one believes at all in checks and balances and divided, limited government, one should hope the President is resisted by these other ‘estates’, instead of empowered by them. A Republican administration is always barely holding position against their countervailing forces, but a Democratic administration has these winds in its sails.

    And they will use that wind. We can now demonstrate definitively that the Wokening kicked off at the beginning of Obama’s second term. Why did having a Democrat President accelerate the trend instead of ‘calming it down’? Why should we expect different this time? How does that even make sense in the face of the contrary evidence from just a few years ago?

    Speaking of Obama’s second term, take a quick look back at conservative commentary from 2012-2016 for an endless stream of serious complaints about the actions and policies of this purportedly inconsequential office. If the Executive doesn’t matter, why shriek and moan all the time. If it matters and the grievances are real, then elections are too consequential to throw support to your own opposition.

    You know, a few Trump-supporters just put out entire books trying to make the case for a Trump re-election.

    But I’ve got to say, not a single thing they’ve said has seemed as persuasive to me as the revealing incoherent flailing that NeverTrump non-progressives display when trying to come up with some rationalized explanation for why it’s ok to help hand more power to the progressives.

    If the progressives have all this cultural power, does it make sense – if one claims to be an alarmed anti-progressive – to *also* give them the force-multiplier of political power, so they can put the last Infinity Stone in their Gauntlet, the only stone left that non-progressives are capable of denying them? ‘Endgame’ is right. Checkmate, idiots.

  10. Thanks Arnold, for GREAT 3 part deconstruction of your important issues.
    1. “Woke movement” strength. (Not PC? Not “Theory”? — no, “woke” is a better term, now)
    2. Politicization level
    3. Good people.
    You mentioned Trump failed to fire the top lousy bureaucrats of CDC & FDA; he did, slowly, get rid of some of the top lousy folk at the FBI. All of Biden’s “good people” will be similar PC/ woke boot lickers.

    Mostly not my issues. I voted Trump, with a blog post.
    https://tomgrey.wordpress.com/about/

    • “I just voted for Trump. Trump is a sinner. So am I, so are you, so is Biden. Both Trump and Biden have personal flaws. A country’s policies are more important than the flaws of its leaders.”

      +1 thanks. And, greetings from North Texas.

      • Thx Hans. Glad you liked it.

        Also mostly glad you’re making comments here, I like most of them. Tho I worry about following your lead, too much, and making too many comments.

        On the one hand, it’s more interactive to have a conversation, and reply to those who disagree. There were many times when I wished Arnold would be more active in comments.

        OTOH, there’s something to be said about thinking, then writing, and leaving it at that. Allowing others to comment, but only occasionally adding something or taking a (really) good comment and making a new thoughtful post about it.

        This blog and thenewneo.com are the two whose comments I usually read all of, and whose links I most often follow.

        Most blogs with comments that I sort of follow (sometimes read some comments) have too many comments: Tyler’s Marginal Revolution, Althouse, Instapundit.
        Other econ blogs, some from here, some not. Cochrane. Hanson; Kimball, Mankiw. Most suffer from some TDS tho.

        Fine fanboy of Trump is Don Surber, whose news summaries I like but not the comments so much.

        I’m in Slovakia, but I suspect I’d be happiest in America in Texas right now, tho will always miss the Pacific Ocean beaches.

        • “I’m in Slovakia”

          Yes sir, I was aware of that from your blog post. We would be super happy to welcome you to North Texas anytime. The people here are super friendly. However, you’re of course right that the more beautiful spots are on the Pacific Coast. I lived in the SF Bay Area for 40+ years, but will never move back. The quality of life took a nose dive circa 2010.

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