The Transionality of Politics

You’ve heard them too: “Voters have become extreme,” or “This mistake could end his campaign,” or “Obama’s success has shown that race doesn’t matter” — all pieces of warmed-over analysis that political scientists no longer take seriously.

But political science is a contradictio in terminis. And a reductio ad absurdum.

People who are ideologically consistent hold beliefs that line up with each other as we’d assume in modern party politics: For example, a liberal who supports gay marriage probably also supports government spending on social programs and protecting the environment. Many of us intuitively believe that there is something “right” about these particular combinations of beliefs—that a liberal or conservative ideology reflects an underlying and internally coherent worldview.

It MUST be logical.

Your own beliefs, if you examine them closely, are probably not perfectly aligned with either major party — few people’s are. Because the United States has a two-party system, it is impossible for every voter to have a political party with views that match their particular combination of stances on the issues.

How COULD they be aligned!

But most people simply don’t follow politics closely enough for gaffes to matter. This doesn’t mean that they are stupid — in fact, I would argue that a Pennsylvania voter whose primary falls in late April is acting very rationally when he chooses to skip the media’s frantic coverage of the Iowa caucuses in January (after all, it’s quite plausible that the candidates who won Iowa won’t even be in the race by the time he casts his ballot).

Why WOULD gaffes HAVE to matter?

We should all be skeptical of anyone who claims that they have isolated the reason for Trump’s success. Politics is more complicated (and, I would argue, more interesting) than that.

Exactly – more complicated because it follows the artistic paradigm.

Again and again, Donald Trump has shown a willingness to violate the accepted norms of campaigning that candidates have followed for decades.

And that’s only a great illustration of this last comment.
Source: Emily Thorson – http://www.politico.eu/article/five-political-myths-
donald-trump-is-exploding-science-election-primaries/