Americans Don’t Understand What Voting is For
We vote to determine policy, not “send a message”
After every election (and sometimes before), pundits of all stripes will weigh in to tell us what the results mean. What message are the voters trying to send to their leaders? Sometimes there’s general agreement, but usually not.
Arguably, this is one of those years when most pundits agree. Before the election, Matthew Yglesias said it was strange that so many people were asking why Harris wasn’t running away with it, given how terrible a candidate Trump is. In reality, Yglesias argued, we should be asking why Trump wasn’t polling better, given that incumbents have been getting torched all over the world in recent years.
The day after, Daniel McCarthy argued that this election was best understood as an instance of what economists call “creative destruction,” in which “a vote for Mr. Trump meant a vote to evict a failed leadership class from power and recreate the nation’s institutions under a new set of standards that would better serve American citizens.”
Finally, David Brooks contended that the election represented a revolt against the neoliberal consensus that has defined both parties ever since the end of the Cold War. The American Dream — career success, financial independence, and personal happiness —…
