During the arduous year-long grind to finish my architectural thesis, I took it upon myself to to listen to all 21 hours and 76 minutes of Dan Carlin’s: Blueprint for Armageddon. It’s a 6-part podcast series covering the entirety of the First World War. Between the lurid description of carnage at Verdun and Gallipoli, Carlin interjects with facts about technological advancements and social changes which shaped the face of the war. A consistent theme brought to the fore is this refrain; innovation is the strategy of the underdog. This fact seems particularly easy to forget in our startup economy where novelty and expediency are prized above all. However, this is not necessarily so with presidential campaigns.
Out of necessity, these campaigns compute a political calculus to determine which areas of the country are worth sending the candidate to and investing with ad money. It behooves a candidate to take for granted states which seem solid and to aggressively fight in states which seem on edge, able to flip either way. Sadly, much like sending your infantry streaming into battle in red pantaloons towards machine guns nests, cleaving too closely to outdated ideas of tactics and civility can prove fatal.
Back in July (which seems like decades ago now) there were a bevy of articles like this and this which prophesied the end of the Republican party as we know it. The one-two combo of changing demographics and popular liberal culture were seen as too much for a party which staked its claim as a white, christian and traditionalist institution. Yet, flash forward seven months and you’re faced with Republican-controlled House, Senate and Presidency with Democrats at their lowest point in decades. At face value this reversal seems totally incomprehensible. However, with an analysis of the changing nature of conservatism and an investigation into the powerful new tools utilized by the Donald Trump campaign, insight can be provided into what happened and how to meet the challenges posed by this new political world.
The Republican base since Reagan has always been always been a collection of strange bedfellows. Die-hard evangelicals devoted to expunging the “moral degeneracy” of America rubbed shoulders with the well-heeled business class who dedicated themselves to unchaining the free market of all its horrendous restrictions. Generals, government contractors and warhawks of every stripe chatted amicably with 2nd amendmenteers and militiamen who made clear their intent to take up arms against them if ever they felt the need. Yet, this unique coalition was always underpinned by a mutually agreed upon cultural conservatism. There were ways you did or didn’t act and certain lines that were not to be crossed. Though this coalition still stands, the party has been crashed and the rules changed. Nowadays, the so-called Alternative Right has begun steering the ship.
The Alt-Right is such an inconceivable phenomenon that it's hard to wrap your head around it. Where Conservatives of the past employed code such as “states-rights” or “tough on crime” to not-so-subtly imply a corralling of “disruptive” groups or ideologies, Alt-Righters refer to themselves as White Nationalists and “race-realists” in public. The aforementioned underlying rules of civility and decency seem to have vanished. Where conservatives were often portrayed as technologically illiterate old white men, the Alt-Right is filled with Millennials employing meme warfare. Milo Yiannopoulos, a prominent mouthpiece of the movement, stymies explanation further considering he brags about being “...a bottom for tall black men...” going so far as to use a “...paint sample called Pharoahs Gold 5 to men at clubs to see if they were dark enough to have sex with.” The thought of him speaking for American conservatives must have Jerry Falwell and Barry Goldwater spinning in their graves.
Through fractures in the current conservative coalition are visible from the outside, with few exceptions Republicans seem to have fallen into line behind their new shitposting leaders, content to enjoy as many legislative victories as they can. From a purely pragmatic standpoint it seems hard to blame them. Breaking all rules of civility and propriety (whether it’s bragging about sexual assault or questioning a judge’s objectivity due to his Mexican heritage) has paid off. Trump’s so called “straight shooting” and aggressive authenticity to his own caricature was endearing. Those working-class whites who looked to the Democrats for their traditional economic populism saw their man Bernie Sanders, being cheated by an establishment that had become more focused on safe spaces and bathrooms for the 0.6 percent of the population , than their economic mobility. Sending an outsider to “Drain the swamp” was music to their ears. Music which incidentally, seemed to be micro targeted to them in the most thorough way possible.
The conditions for Trump’s rise may have been fully ripe, but the actual business of eking out that narrow margin of victory was still a difficult task. Enter the brave and disturbing world of big data and Psychometrics. Psychometrics is the measurement of more nuanced psychological traits such as personality. On its own, psychometrics seems like an innocuous enough scientific pursuit, but coupled with data collected routinely from every single interaction we have with our digital devices, it’s essentially a detailed map of what every adult in the United States thinks of an issue and how they would be best approached about it. Targeting ads to specific states or ethnic groups is nothing new however, the level of detail available through these new techniques is astonishing. The data is so precise that precinct walkers can be informed about what the specific occupant of a specific house in a contentious county would like to hear (or what they would rather not hear) before they even answer the door.
Democrats and liberals have always fancied themselves as the technologically savvy and socially progressive face of the country. Always moving forward into the future under the great burden of all those backwards yokels in the hinterlands who stymied their march towards progress. Yet it was the democrats who held the presidency for 8 years under Obama, and the democrats who have and continue to hold dominance over the cultural expressions of the nation. In our reality it’s more apt to think of the republicans as Princess Leia’s successful rebels, plying their guile and grit against a slow-moving empire rather than the other way around.
Moving forward it would behoove democrats to simultaneously do two things: to 1) employ the same hyper specific psychometric techniques in their own canvassing and 2) become significantly more inclusive as a party. Though it may seem ridiculous to suggest that the party of POC and LGBTQ contingents would at all need to be more inclusive, the current Democratic ethos doesn’t seem super interested in protecting anyone outside of those groups. Thinkers who dare postulate ideas outside of the politically correct channels are physically barred from speaking on campus. It’s become fashionable to blame cis white men for any and all problems in the universe (whether accurate or not) without considering how that might not engender much loyalty from a very active voting bloc. Rooting the party in ideas of economic justice does not need to come at the cost of protecting minority groups. Having respect and pride for nontraditional relationships and gender identities does not necessitate trashing traditional ones. The democrats should take this political thumping and do what every successful army does after a crushing defeat: reevaluate strength and weaknesses, take note of the lay of the land and implement the newest technology and tactics. True change is never easy. It involves making tough and unpopular choices. But to resist the shifting of the tides is to dig your own grave. The choice is ultimately up to the members of the party to decide what they want to do.
