Matthew Yglesias has some fun at my expense:
Chris Bowers is right that people should be less averse to primaries, but this is a terrible logical fallacy:
All Democrats, all progressives, and really all Americans need to stop thinking that primaries are a bad thing. Since primaries are elections, such a belief is literally the same as thinking that elections are a bad thing.
Compare: All Americans really need to stop thinking that disease-infested rats are a bad thing. Since disease-infested rats are animals, such a belief is literally the same as thinking that animals are bad. Why do you hate pandas?
Its true--I made a fallacious argument. I incorrectly argued that attributing a negative value to a subset (primaries) or a larger set (elections) is that same as attributing a negative value to the larger set.
However, while what I wrote was a logical fallacy, Yglesias actually mocked it with a fallacy of his own. He wrote that attributing negative value to a subset (disease-infested) of a larger subset (rats) of a still-larger set (animals) is the same as attributing negative value to the still-larger set.
Had I wrote that attacking Democratic Party primaries is that same thing as attacking elections, then his analogy would work. However, I did not make the Democratic Party primaries" specification in the two sentences Yglesias cites--I only wrote "primaries." Further, had Yglesias mocked me by saying that attacking rats is the same thing as attacking animals such as pandas, then he would have been correct. However, he wrote "disease-infested rats" instead.
Anyway, leaving the specifics of two poorly written sentences aside, the central thesis of my article was that one of the main reasons Democrats who hold publicly elected office are often unresponsive to the desires of Democratic Party voters is because, in the vast majority of cases, Democratic Party voters do not determine Democratic nominees for elected offices. Rather, such determinations are more commonly made by donors, party officials, or a combination of both. As such, Democrats who hold elected office are often more responsive to the desires of the donors and party officials then they are to Democratic voters.
The extent to which Democratic elected officials are often unresponsive to the political desires of Democratic Party voters is certainly debatable. Still, it strikes me as a fairly safe proposition that when Democrats--whether in the grassroots or the leadership--work against competitive primaries, they are working against one of the main, if not the main, safeguards against Democratic elected officials becoming unresponsive to Democratic voters.
But, for the record, I hate pandas because I have a bamboo fetish.
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