Pundit’s Fallacy Tuesday

Michael Lind argues, once again, that the salvation of the Democratic Party lies, in a remarkable coincidence, on it adopting the political positions of Michael Lind. This leads to the empirical and logical defects that are common to the genre: he cites general polls about the labels people use identify themselves (but make no distinction between cultural and economic conservatism) but avoids polls about specific issues (a wise move if you’re trying to argue that the Democratic position on abortion is unpopular.) Then there’s this:

The populist voters aren’t stupid. Twice they were burned by Carter and Clinton, who pretended to be social conservative economic liberals only until they won election and then revealed the Democratic Party in its true colors as a social liberal party in which disagreement about abortion is banned but disagreement about free trade is acceptable.

So let’s get this straight. Democrats can’t win because “populists” don’t like Democratic positions on abortion (odd, since the Democratic position on abortion is far more popular than the Republican one. Lind also has an interesting definition of “banned,” which apparently means that “you can only be the most powerful Democrat in Congress if you oppose abortion rights”.) Populists were burned by Clinton. The electorate was so upset about it that in 1996 Clinton won by 8 points, and in 2000 they voted for Al Gore by a margin of a half million votes. So, as usual, Lind’s attempt to project his views onto the electorate as a whole fail. This isn’t to say that becoming more conservative on some issues may not help the Dems. But 1)Lind doesn’t provide the necessary evidence, and 2)conflating issues like abortion (where the Democratic position is popular) and gay rights (where it isn’t, although it’s becoming more so) is useless.

Michael Totten, another l’electorate, c’est moi “centrist,” cites Lind and manages to make an argument that’s even worse:

As far as I’m concerned, social liberalism is the best thing the Democratic Party has going for it. They should keep that and drop the pacifism and isolationism instead. They”’ll get a lot more votes next time around if they do. Plenty of socially liberal people voted for George W. Bush on national security grounds. Some of us would go home again if we could.

So the first move here is to claim–again without evidence–that the Democratic Party would be well-served by adopting Michael Totten’s (rather than Michael Lind’s) positions on all cultural issues. He simply assumes that the electorate shares his policy beliefs. But then he has to explain why his support for Bush doesn’t undermine his claim to be nominally pro-choice and pro-gay rights, so he invents out of whole cloth a Democratic policy of “pacifism and isolationism.” (Omitted: citation of a single Democrat with any influence in the party who is a pacifist or isolationist, let alone any evidence of a general policy.) This is a new twist on the pundit’s fallacy: start with an a priori preference for the Republican candidate, proceed by just making stuff up and attributing it to the Democratic Party, and then triumphantly announce that if the Democratic Party abandons positions it never held in the first place you’ll “come home” again. Really, Totten is the master of this field; Lind might as well pack up and go home.