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Democrats and the Overton Window [1]

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Date: 2024-11-10  

I've been thinking about the Overton Window and bubbles. The Overton Window says that there is a small range of social and policy options that a body politic is willing to consider. If you try to push beyond those options, you lose. If you're a small group, you can be easily ignored. If you're a large group, the push back will be much stronger than merely being ignored.

In libertarian circles I see this all the time. Most libertarian candidates do a great job of talking about the ideal libertarian state. They don't talk realistically about what they can do within the Overton Window that can be accomplished during their administration. Why? Because they're mainly talking to the libertarian bubble. The result is less than 1% of the vote. Basically being sidelined in the political debate.

But what happens when a large group goes beyond the boundaries of the Overton Window? I'd argue that's exactly what happened to the Democratic Party last week. They lost votes compared to four years ago. The Trump victory wasn't a landslide, despite the surprise factor. (If you want to see what a landslide looks like, look at Obama and Reagan's election results.) Instead, it was due to nominally Democratic voters not showing up.

First, they ignored the fact that Trump's first election was driven by immigration issues. When Biden came to office, one of the first things he did was to cancel almost all of Trump's immigration policies. Worse, he didn't put into place a set of "better" policies. This fed directly into the belief that the Democrats supported open borders. Policy setting by knee jerk reaction usually ends up with poor policies. But by listening primarily to their own bubble, this issue was completely ignored until late in the Biden Administration.

Second, the whole culture war thing. It took generations for Blacks to be considered human. It took decades for gays to be accepted, and gays had the advantage of popular media repeatedly including gays as a normal part of society. (I give Will and Grace huge amounts of credit for shifting society.) The attempt to normalize trans individuals as quickly as they did without the decades or generations of groundwork necessary to shift societal norms was doomed to failure. But it was part of Democratic orthodoxy. Why? Bubbles. Many Democrats accepted this belief. And so everywhere they looked within their bubbles, they saw acceptance. But when those beliefs were tested outside their bubble, those beliefs failed.

I can understand why you, as a private individual, want to stay in your bubble. It's far more comfortable existing where everyone agrees with you on the issues you consider important. But when you choose as your political leaders those who also exist in the same bubbles and who don't know the boundaries of the Overton Window of society as a whole, you're going to fail.

In your private life and in your dealings with people, feel free to treat people as you wish society as a whole treated them. But be realistic in your views of what is acceptable to society as a whole. Pick leaders who are willing to work for small gains and for generational shifts. Otherwise you may find that by trying to force society in your direction, you are actually shifting society away from you.

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