The Democrats Were Naive Consequentialists
Probably the only thing 18th century British economists have in common with Kamala Harris
When I look back on Kamala’s campaign, I see strategic mistakes. And those have already been articulated by better bloggers here on Substack (here, for example). But I do actually have one novel take on the election! It’s that Kamala Harris didn’t read enough Derek Parfit.
In the simplest form of act consequentialism, we try to maximize value in every decision. But, counterintuitively, philosophers have figured out that if we really want to be maximizing expected value over the long run, this decision procedure is not optimal. For example, after doing your calculations, you may come to the conclusion that breaking a promise with a friend maximizes EV; but, in the long run, being the kind of person who doesn’t break promises leads to more utility. Or in another scenario, as Parfit explains, and then Richard Chapell summarizes,
“[C]onsider Parfit’s example of the society of perfectly rational egoists, some of whom come to realize that it will advance their interests to become irrational in a specific respect: namely, if they become transparently disposed to follow through on their threats regardless of the costs to themselves. Such a “threat-fulfiller” can then strap a bomb to his chest, and threaten an egoist that he will detonate it (killing them both) unless the egoist complies with his whims. He can safely make such threats, because he knows the egoist would sooner comply than die. As Parfit further shows, the rational response for the remaining egoists is to turn themselves into transparent “threat ignorers”, who are stably disposed to (irrationally) ignore threats no matter the costs to themselves. A threat-fulfiller will leave the ignorers alone, because he knows that if he were to threaten them, they would ignore him, and he would then detonate the bomb, killing them both.”
Predictably, to fix this paradox (and a bunch of other unintuitive results of consequentialism, actually), consequentialists adopt guiding principles: “don’t break promises,” “almost never lie,” etc.
The thesis of this post is that I think the Dems opted for too many max-EV plays that unknowingly traded off against more optimal dispositions they could have carried. That is, Kamala’s campaign was a combination of popular policies and decisions, in which each individual policy seemed to maximize expected value, but, when taken together, looked incoherent and inauthentic. The result being Kamala Harris appeared as a power hungry politician with no actual views (in all honesty, that’s probably true).
Tim Walz comes to mind. Who wouldn’t love him, a gun owning public school teacher from the midwest — and a caring politician with a collection of small d democratic views. I don’t dispute that appeal. I have friends who said that he was a top factor in voting for Harris. But, at the same time, who actually believes that Harris would choose Waltz if not for his appeal to a voter demographic the Democrats were looking for. And in this respect, Harris’s policies are an order of magnitude worse than the Tim Walz pick. Its true that supporting tougher immigration laws is more popular than the converse, but you can’t chase after the median voter in this fashion if, just four years ago, you flirted with abolishing ICE. The same goes for fracking and healthcare.
Most likely, if you took any one of these decisions and changed it the way I am suggesting, Harris would have done worse. But that’s the thing. I’m not making a point about any one policy or VP pick. I am talking about the dem’s entire decision procedure. When you take an overly simple act consequentialist perspective on life, you end up lying, cheating, and breaking promises. In this hypothetical life, if you don’t lie just one time, you don’t get the benefits of being an honest person. Similarly, when you take an overly simple act consequentialist perspective on elections, you present a picture, not of a candidate with beliefs, but an unappealing, philosophically incoherent amalgamation of policies taken from Pew Research Center surveys. If you changed one of these policies, you would just loose worse.
However, maybe, just maybe, if the dems stuck to their guns and actually argued for their platform instead of simply conceding it, they could have done better. If they adopted a Parfitian guiding disposition that you should propose the policies that you think are the best, they could have come across as more genuine. I’m not talking about 2020. Defund the police and abolish ICE were absolutely terrible ideas (like honestly, how were we seriously supporting those?). But healthcare and fracking are different. A candidate like Bernie Sanders who conceivably believes what he says would be able to rally more non-partisans (like Joe Rogan in 2020) even though his individual views appeal less appealing to unaffiliated voters.
Would you like evidence? My evidence is Donald Trump. He consistently makes decisions that appear disastrous on an act by act basis. Yet he has won two elections. Moreover, I am pretty sure that if in each of his past decisions, he acted in a more politically viable manner, the counterfactual looks worse for him. He probably doesn’t even win the republican nomination in 2016.
Democrats don’t seem to have learned just yet the flaws of naive act consequentialism. Most discussion about of why Harris lost is usually: 1. America is sexist, 2. America is racist, 3. She didn’t gaslight voters into thinking the economy was working for them well enough, 4. something else that is not KAMALA HARRIS HAS NO POSSIBLE THEORY OF MIND AND WAS OBVIOUSLY JUST A CANDIDATE PROPPED UP BY ELITES TO BEAT TRUMP.
That being said, I voted for Harris because I don’t mind elites, don’t care about authenticity, and I think the Trump-democracy risk is real. But most people disagree.