- feeling strongly validated about this one!
- "leadership-ism is the opposite of poll-driven popularism" bsky.app/profile/prot...
- "popularism [defining politics down to poll-watching] trains leaders to check with polls before governing..." pretty much!
- This part of our response essay is where I'm at. Boiling down all of politics to electoralism has been absolutely terrible for resisting rising authoritarianism. www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...
- "reject any efforts to lead" I went further: popularism means assuming public opinion is fixed, and that it in large part arises from wanting to keep the status quo intact
- they reject any efforts to do actual politics, to lead, to shape public opinion. On many issues the polls are misleading because people are poorly informed. Popularism (“status quo-ism”) rejects efforts to educate.
- On this point, see also the response by @gelliottmorris.com: “The conventional approach—diagnosing preferences at present & adopting corresponding positions—treats public opinion as too static, even over the short term. Issues undergo redefinition. Events transform how voters interpret policy.”