The problem with this childlike viewpoint is that it assumes public opinion is static and unchanging and per popularism’s own illogic, should regard Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech as opposed to their cause because he was extremely unpopular when he gave it. This strain of anti-thought by its own definition should be opposed to all struggles for Civil Rights in American history because they all have started out in the red. In 1993, interracial marriage was still underwater, so I can only assume that per popularism’s beliefs, Yglesias would argue that outlawing it in 1994 would have been the Very Smart and Very Serious strategy for Democrats.
Another problem with popularism is that Matt Yglesias and company are complete dumbfucks who have no idea how to read issue polling, all while they condescendingly explain to us why we can’t have nice things because of issue polling.
I scrolled through Yglesias’ Twitter feed today, and other than saying he was in favor of Trump establishing Nazi-style policies as he is “sort of open to the idea that we should have a country with a national ID card and a rule that you’re expected to have your papers on you at all times in case your citizenship is challenged,” he hasn’t really posted about immigration since that condescending post I embedded above. He even has a pinned post from that same day saying “by suggesting it is bad to increase the salience of immigration, I have generated meta-discourse that has only further increased the salience. No more posts about this from me ever!”
Which is a convenient thing to say given all the immigration polling in the last week revealing that Trump is now underwater on an issue the popularists said we should concede on because they don’t understand how issue polling works and never have.
Life comes at you fast: Trump now underwater on immigration in Fox News poll.
@gelliottmorris.com: 1
“Don’t raise the salience!”: 0
www.foxnews.com/official-pol…
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— David Nir (@davidnir.com) April 23, 2025 at 7:10 PM
New YouGov/Economist poll out this morning finds Trump is no longer popular on immigration. This was the last issue he had a positive net approval on.
This was very easy to see coming, esp bc individual components of immigration policy are so toxic: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/should-dem…
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— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) April 23, 2025 at 8:30 AM
👀 🚨 Uhm … From the PEW Research Center Poll today: Americans disapprove of Trump’s assault on DEI policies by 9 points: 53-44
He has lost support on immigration and now on this.
What’s gonna happen to the elite DC/NY media narrative on DEI?
www.pewresearch.org/politics/202…
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— Murshed Zaheed (@murshedz.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 3:10 PM
If the popularists were right that public opinion is both unchanging and that issue polling directly correlates to voting preference, then it is very likely that the large majorities of Democrats and Independents saying they approve of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal in 2020 would have ushered Bernie Sanders into the White House. That this didn’t happen was a lesson for all us lefties in how simply proposing popular policy is not enough to win elections, and we learned something in 2020 that the Matt Yglesias’ of the world have proven themselves constitutionally incapable of understanding.
Because these lazy boobs are not interested in learning anything. Popularists are raging ideologues pretending to have evidence-based beliefs. Joe Rogan has already demonstrated more of a willingness to let new facts change his mind than Joe Biden’s favorite Substack writer has this year. Popularism is a branding exercise centered around shutting your brain off and pointing to the biggest numbers you see in topline polling data and thinking that makes you smart while actively avoiding any real kind of statistical analysis. Popularism is entirely antithetical to how politics has worked forever as a persuasive exercise, and it is the kind of thinking that could only come from a group of out of touch elites who haven’t talked to someone this past decade who makes less than six figures that wasn’t performing a service for them.
Yglesias and John Fetterman and the litany of out of touch Beltway popularist dipshits have been talking nonstop since the election about how public opinion is supposedly unchanging and how Democrats need to enthusiastically embrace some parts of Trumpism if they want to win future elections. Now that public opinion is dramatically turning on Trump, these frauds are silent, proving that they are professional liars at best, and pro-Trump wolves in sheep’s clothing at worst.
Chris Van Hollen showed these Vichy Democrats what real leadership looks like and helped turn the tide of popular opinion on immigration against Trump, and every single poll on every single issue has moved against Trump since he was inaugurated. Karl Rove spent years tormenting Democrats by turning their strengths into weaknesses, and the supposed dispassionate and evidence-based popularists still argue today that Rove’s strategy that won the GOP a generation of power is a misguided one. Popularists have proven themselves to be unserious ideologues who cannot even pretend to meet their own supposed data-driven standards. Stop listening to them. Stop reading them. These functional Trump allies know less than nothing.
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