there should always be lots of discussion of the issues! a party can win an advantage from less swingy voters that way. 1/

but in a two party system where the other side can copy, issues contestation will leave us at 50% ± some bias. a bias can help, but the deciders will be people orthogonal to the parties’ main issues. 2/

and if your mode of issues politicking alienates these orthogonal deciders, it’s likely to more than undo the small bias you can realistically hope to pick up from issues politicking. 3/

this is why “popularism” is such a terrible idea. of course you should try to adopt and message popular ideas. Trump does a massive u-turn on abortion, would have lost if he hadn’t. 4/

but the trick is you have to reconcile your strategic chameleonings with projecting some center of principle, of a stable core, that people can affiliate with. it’s a thing you do carefully, at the margins, and do a lot of work to justify and reconcile with your core identity. 5/

making chameleonings openly the heart of public process is just self-sabotage in the name of consultant-branded science. /fin