Aaron Sibarium is a recent graduate of Yale University (2018) and journalist who writes for the Washington Free Beacon. He joins the podcast to discuss his work covering identity politics issues from a conservative perspective, along with his dream of eventually synthesizing his reporting with his own opinion writing.
Yeah, not sure I’m interested in listening to someone so unaware that his tribe is also “prone to misinformation, a lack of interest in policy specifics, mindless tribalism.” Not only that, he has been trained at two of the power centers of the rancid status quo. His job is to figure out what his masters want and deliver it. Wake me up when the apparatchiks get more creative. Tired of everything and everyone who pushes back on the current ugly state of affairs branded right wing.
Why do conservatives but not liberals understand history through philosophy and great historical forces? One factor is that conservatives feel powerless and impotent, so they are continually faced with the question of how did this come to be, how did we lose, why are we in this situation. Liberals don't feel powerless, so they focus on continuing their march forward. As a comparison, the far-left--legitimate communists--similarly feel powerless and have a similar psychological need to cope, and so they have their own theory, which is that the all-powerful force of global capitalism explains modern history, and global capital crushes everything that stands in its path.
On primaries (28:00 or so) I'm coming to think that they should be de-normalized or whatever the right word is. I'll reply with examples and detailed reasoning in a bit.
As mentioned, I think that primary elections (and I don't think it matters whether they're open or closed) aren't a good way of choosing a nominee; the electorate's too small to represent the views of voters generally but too large to put much thought into candidate selection.
Here's a summary of two natural experiments I've watched that reinforce this belief:
1) In 2021, Virginia Republicans used an unusual arrangement to select their statewide nominees: ranked-choice voting by delegates at a drive-thru convention (there were 39 different drive-thru sites spread across the Commonwealth). I personally know some of the people within the party who pushed for this; while 30,000 "delegates" is many more than could fit in a backroom, it's sufficiently few in a state of 8.6 million to comprise a well-informed minority, and it produced 3 winning statewide candidates.
The qualification to be a delegate was "fill out a form and submit it to your local party chair" and the voting process involved around an hour driving and waiting in line. Not objectively much, but only 1 in 10 of the voters who'd voted in the R primary 4 years earlier bothered to do it.
2) My wife ran for city council in Virginia this year. Previously, city council elections (which are nonpartisan and where the candidates are listed on the ballot without a party preference) were held in May, and turnout was typically from 2,000-3,100 voters. This is out of a registered electorate of 17,500 and a city population of 24,000.
This year, the state legislature moved all local elections to November, and turnout was ~9,400 voters. While campaigning for my wife, I got to talk to many of them, and it's fair to put them into two categories:
First, the high-info types who'd previously voted in the May elections, who knew city issues well and who were willing to overlook the candidate's party ID if it differed from their own. They didn't need party endorsements to make up their minds.
Second, the low-info types who were new to voting for city council and mayor. For the most part, all they cared about when I talked to them was whether a candidate was a Democrat or a Republican.
This primary season was one of the worst in memory for the performance of the low-info GOP primary voter. I know a lot of people in GA, and seemingly every Republican with half a brain knew that Walker was a wretched choice. I guess my thought would be, even if we want to ignore electability and insist on someone who's an ideological purist, can't we please at least get someone who can actually articulate an ideology?
So yes, something needs to be done to do better, and I think more reforms like what you describe in VA would be worth a try.
The thought's occurred to me that 2024 might present an opportunity to reintroduce the smoke-filled room.
There's a great chance that Trump can still win Republican primaries if the field of competitors is large enough. There's no chance whatsoever that he can win a series of state caucuses. And if a couple of large state Republican parties take the lead in announcing that they'll use a caucus to nominate in 2024 (with the unspoken but obvious motivation being denial of the nomination to Trump), there's a very good chance that many of the others get on board.
It seems to me the first thing the smoke-filled room needs to figure out, in that case, is how to pay off Trump so he doesn't run on a third-party ticket and wreck the place. Can it be done?
I'm inclined to think he's going to do it no matter what, his ego won't let him stand aside and accept a defeat in the primaries and there's not really a carrot you can offer him at this point that will keep him out. But whatever chance there is of him accepting a primary loss is going to be wiped out if the rules of the game are changed in a less democratic direction.
So this sort of reorganization probably can't help the GOP become competitive in Presidential politics until Trump is dead or disabled. It's more of a plan for trying to take back and hold the Senate.
Coming after the Twitter Files and the exposure and continued massive unethical behavior of the mainstream media this podcast couldn’t have been released at a worse time.
Enjoyed this very much & noticed something personally. I'm instinctively left-leaning but also nonconformist, which is what draws me much more to this search for a credible conservative intellectual frame. Conformism is indeed at work in the Great Awokening and, in my social circle, it's conformist centrists who are the problem.
Also, might it not be the case that Moral Foundations Theory accounts for the hyper-Woke world of medicine? Care/Harm being the axis I imagine motivating those who work in the field.
Yeah, not sure I’m interested in listening to someone so unaware that his tribe is also “prone to misinformation, a lack of interest in policy specifics, mindless tribalism.” Not only that, he has been trained at two of the power centers of the rancid status quo. His job is to figure out what his masters want and deliver it. Wake me up when the apparatchiks get more creative. Tired of everything and everyone who pushes back on the current ugly state of affairs branded right wing.
Why do conservatives but not liberals understand history through philosophy and great historical forces? One factor is that conservatives feel powerless and impotent, so they are continually faced with the question of how did this come to be, how did we lose, why are we in this situation. Liberals don't feel powerless, so they focus on continuing their march forward. As a comparison, the far-left--legitimate communists--similarly feel powerless and have a similar psychological need to cope, and so they have their own theory, which is that the all-powerful force of global capitalism explains modern history, and global capital crushes everything that stands in its path.
This makes sense to me. Thanks for an original thought
On primaries (28:00 or so) I'm coming to think that they should be de-normalized or whatever the right word is. I'll reply with examples and detailed reasoning in a bit.
As mentioned, I think that primary elections (and I don't think it matters whether they're open or closed) aren't a good way of choosing a nominee; the electorate's too small to represent the views of voters generally but too large to put much thought into candidate selection.
Here's a summary of two natural experiments I've watched that reinforce this belief:
1) In 2021, Virginia Republicans used an unusual arrangement to select their statewide nominees: ranked-choice voting by delegates at a drive-thru convention (there were 39 different drive-thru sites spread across the Commonwealth). I personally know some of the people within the party who pushed for this; while 30,000 "delegates" is many more than could fit in a backroom, it's sufficiently few in a state of 8.6 million to comprise a well-informed minority, and it produced 3 winning statewide candidates.
The qualification to be a delegate was "fill out a form and submit it to your local party chair" and the voting process involved around an hour driving and waiting in line. Not objectively much, but only 1 in 10 of the voters who'd voted in the R primary 4 years earlier bothered to do it.
2) My wife ran for city council in Virginia this year. Previously, city council elections (which are nonpartisan and where the candidates are listed on the ballot without a party preference) were held in May, and turnout was typically from 2,000-3,100 voters. This is out of a registered electorate of 17,500 and a city population of 24,000.
This year, the state legislature moved all local elections to November, and turnout was ~9,400 voters. While campaigning for my wife, I got to talk to many of them, and it's fair to put them into two categories:
First, the high-info types who'd previously voted in the May elections, who knew city issues well and who were willing to overlook the candidate's party ID if it differed from their own. They didn't need party endorsements to make up their minds.
Second, the low-info types who were new to voting for city council and mayor. For the most part, all they cared about when I talked to them was whether a candidate was a Democrat or a Republican.
Thanks, thoughtful comments.
This primary season was one of the worst in memory for the performance of the low-info GOP primary voter. I know a lot of people in GA, and seemingly every Republican with half a brain knew that Walker was a wretched choice. I guess my thought would be, even if we want to ignore electability and insist on someone who's an ideological purist, can't we please at least get someone who can actually articulate an ideology?
So yes, something needs to be done to do better, and I think more reforms like what you describe in VA would be worth a try.
The thought's occurred to me that 2024 might present an opportunity to reintroduce the smoke-filled room.
There's a great chance that Trump can still win Republican primaries if the field of competitors is large enough. There's no chance whatsoever that he can win a series of state caucuses. And if a couple of large state Republican parties take the lead in announcing that they'll use a caucus to nominate in 2024 (with the unspoken but obvious motivation being denial of the nomination to Trump), there's a very good chance that many of the others get on board.
It seems to me the first thing the smoke-filled room needs to figure out, in that case, is how to pay off Trump so he doesn't run on a third-party ticket and wreck the place. Can it be done?
I'm inclined to think he's going to do it no matter what, his ego won't let him stand aside and accept a defeat in the primaries and there's not really a carrot you can offer him at this point that will keep him out. But whatever chance there is of him accepting a primary loss is going to be wiped out if the rules of the game are changed in a less democratic direction.
So this sort of reorganization probably can't help the GOP become competitive in Presidential politics until Trump is dead or disabled. It's more of a plan for trying to take back and hold the Senate.
Coming after the Twitter Files and the exposure and continued massive unethical behavior of the mainstream media this podcast couldn’t have been released at a worse time.
I forgot to take into account this sounds like a Sam Bankman-Fried interview.
Enjoyed this very much & noticed something personally. I'm instinctively left-leaning but also nonconformist, which is what draws me much more to this search for a credible conservative intellectual frame. Conformism is indeed at work in the Great Awokening and, in my social circle, it's conformist centrists who are the problem.
Also, might it not be the case that Moral Foundations Theory accounts for the hyper-Woke world of medicine? Care/Harm being the axis I imagine motivating those who work in the field.