Sep 24, 2026 · 51 min · 14 segments
Much of the media debate about the 2026 elections presumes voters are making ideological choices between moderate and progressive Democrats, and democratic socialists. This presumption that voters…
Nathan KalmoeGuestRobert KraigHostYou're very engaged and more influential than the mostly disengaged masked electorate, right? So someone who's a leader in the ACLU who is engaged in lobbying the legislature is an elite by this political science definition.
You're influential in a way and involved and ideological, frankly, in a way that the mass public, voting public is not in any other democracy, mass democracy we know of.
So there's been a cottage industry of trying to cut a progressive or liberal position as appealing to conservatives, like the Affordable Care Act includes insurance companies and people get to choose which insurance plan they get.
It seems that's based on a fallacy that people's opposition to it was not simply partisan.
It was that I just didn't like, you know, having a government run health care program.
There's more choice in it that that assumes an ideological predisposition in the public that just didn't exist.
Yeah, I think maybe a good anecdote of this is that a lot of people aren't even aware about what is private and what is public.
There's the famous comment, maybe in the 2008 election, I'm dating myself a little bit, but I think somebody said, keep your government hands off my Medicare bill.
You know, people don't have a good sense of of how things are being produced.
They care more about what the outcomes that they're seeing in their everyday lives.
And that's one of the reasons why you see these big swings between Democrats and Republicans.
Yeah, a lot of people are pissed at things are not great for regular folks, and they're getting worse in a lot of ways.
And the tendency is to punish whoever is in power and to say, well, these guys aren't getting it done, so we need to try something else.
You're very engaged and more influential than the mostly disengaged masked electorate, right? So someone who's a leader in the ACLU who is engaged in lobbying the legislature is an elite by this political science definition.
You're influential in a way and involved and ideological, frankly, in a way that the mass public, voting public is not in any other democracy, mass democracy we know of.
So there's been a cottage industry of trying to cut a progressive or liberal position as appealing to conservatives, like the Affordable Care Act includes insurance companies and people get to choose which insurance plan they get.
It seems that's based on a fallacy that people's opposition to it was not simply partisan.
It was that I just didn't like, you know, having a government run health care program.
There's more choice in it that that assumes an ideological predisposition in the public that just didn't exist.
Yeah, I think maybe a good anecdote of this is that a lot of people aren't even aware about what is private and what is public.
There's the famous comment, maybe in the 2008 election, I'm dating myself a little bit, but I think somebody said, keep your government hands off my Medicare bill.
You know, people don't have a good sense of of how things are being produced.
They care more about what the outcomes that they're seeing in their everyday lives.
And that's one of the reasons why you see these big swings between Democrats and Republicans.
Yeah, a lot of people are pissed at things are not great for regular folks, and they're getting worse in a lot of ways.
And the tendency is to punish whoever is in power and to say, well, these guys aren't getting it done, so we need to try something else.
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