Asymmetric intensity. Biden Sucks!!!
"The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity."
Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919
People wonder how a freedom-loving people decided to vote in Prohibition. The answer was asymmetry. The people who wanted to ban alcohol really cared about it. They were a single-issue voting block.
The gun rights issue is asymmetric. The people who love guns are motivated and intense. Most people who tell pollsters they are OK with gun registration and restrictions care about a multitude of issues. Polls deceive Democrats on this issue because polls miss the intensity of gun owners. The gun issue hurts Democrats.
Democrats are deceived by the polls on abortion, too. Abortion rights poll well, but Roe v. Wade made abortions generally available to highly-motivated people, so there is a relief value for the desperate. Democratic politicians understand there is a single-issue abortion rights constituency with party activists and gatekeepers, but the abortion rights constituency on the ground with voters is a leaky and diffuse. Women--including ones who tell pollsters they support abortion rights--vote their race or political party or their attitude toward taxes rather than their abortion rights sentiment.
A year ago COVID generally worked as a positive for Biden and Democrats. That is changing, again due to asymmetric intensity. The vaccinated and unvaccinated have sorted themselves. People in politically red social and political enclaves get social cues to oppose vaccination. They define it as "losing" and they feel so intensely about it they risk hospitalization and death. They have dug in their heels. The people who approve of vaccinations and vaccination mandates have gotten theirs and are grateful. The issue is largely off the table for them personally.
Republican politicians and thought leaders have worked out a way to thread the political needle. Most say they are "not anti-vax," a double-negative, thereby insulating themselves from accusations that they are kooky fringe. You can get vaccinated if you really want to. They also say that vaccination mandates are tyranny, that asking a person's vaccination status is an invasion of privacy, and that businesses and government cannot discriminate against the un-vaccinated. No passports. No asking. It prioritizes freedom and autonomy over public health. They immunize the message against the concern for public safety by asserting that COVID is generally an overblown fear hyped by Democrats for partisan advantage and pharmaceutical profit.
This is another area where polling will deceive Democrats. That Republican message addresses the asymmetry of intensities. Democrats hear the message that vaccination is a good thing for people who want it--a vague and minimally satisfactory message for multi-issue voters who generally want everyone vaccinated. Vaccination resisters are the ones with intense feelings and they hear what is essential to hear, no mandate. They can stay unvaccinated and interact fully in the community.
The New York Times reported that asymmetry was key in the Virginia governor election, quoting a spokesman for a Monmouth University poll.
The numerical majority may not be enough. Nearly all the 40 percent who are against mandates say it's very important to them. The 60 percent who support mandates, they say it's not their top issue.
Gasoline prices play a special role in America, and this, too, is working against Biden. No other consumer product is marketed so singularly on price. Gasoline prices are in our faces and can create intense feelings.
We are following a short period of extraordinarily low prices coinciding with the collapse of demand during the early COVID shutdowns. The price rise is conspicuous and coincides with Biden's presidency. It tends to define the public mindset regarding inflation. Official explanations, longer term charts, the prices several years ago, and Fed comments are almost irrelevant. It costs me about $80 to fill up my tank yesterday--20 gallons at $4.00/gallon--and my tank wasn't even empty. Eighty dollars is anchored in my mind as a lot of money.
I do not expect a bumper sticker to read: "Gasoline Prices are back to pre-pandemic levels!" We see and respond to what is in our faces. This, too, is a problem for Biden
All is not lost for Democrats. Trump appears to insist on staying center stage. He is a single-issue that motivates Democrats. He brings out Republican voters but he brings out a great many more Democratic and Non-Affiliated voters, too. Trump back on the ballot is a high-risk proposition for Democrats. He might win, and in that case it would validate his post-election efforts to overturn the election. But in a single-issue world, the fact of consequences to losing appears to be what motivates voters. That will be how Democrats can frame their case to the voters in 2024: Do you really want Donald Trump back in office taking revenge on the people who didn't cave into his demands to overthrow our government?