Morning Must-Read: Jonathan Chait: Have Nerds Betrayed the Left?

I find myself agreeing with Jonathan Chait here: Tom Frank’s big problem is that he doesn’t want his imagination limited by information about what policies would actually work…

Jonathan Chait: Have Nerds Betrayed the Left?: “I pointed out that [Tom] Frank… held…

…a lack of familiarity with even the basic concepts of political science, which can explain how structural limits (like divided government and polarization) constrain the domestic powers of a president in a way that cannot be broken with ideological willpower or inspirational speechmaking. Now Frank has written a column… assailing the influence of political science, which he views as a kind of corrupting force draining the left of its populist fervor…. A good chunk of Frank’s polemic is taken up with generalized experts of all kinds…. He distrusts them all as corrupt handmaidens of power….

After establishing his anti-academic-populist bona fides, Frank provides his readers with an example of the kind of political-science-driven analysis that so perturbs him: a column by New York Times election analyst Nate Cohn that explains why the House map is prohibitively tilted toward the Republican Party, making the race for control of the chamber essentially out of reach this fall. ‘It is this kind of strikingly unoriginal thinking’, responds Frank, ‘which I am sure is shared by the blue team’s high command, that explains why the Democratic Party looks to be headed for another disaster this fall’. Of course, if you believe Cohn, it is not the Democratic Party’s awareness of the GOP’s prohibitive structural advantage but the prohibitive structural advantage itself that explains why the Republicans are going to win the midterm elections….

At the end of his rant, Frank almost seems to concede that his problem with political science is that it leads to conclusions he finds inconvenient. ‘The fatalism here may be science-driven’, he concedes, ‘but still it boggles the mind’. Let that phrase roll around in your head for a moment. Frank has just told you everything you need to know here.