Robert Draper’s cover story for New York Times Magazine has gotten quite a reaction — and not just because he quoted former MTV VJ and current Fox Business host Kennedy comparing Ron Paul to Nirvana.
The piece — which asks in the headline if the “Libertarian Moment” is finally upon us — has inspired a slew of rebuttals from various political commentators, including two from New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait.
Chait’s first post on the subject led to an extended back and forth with Draper on Twitter last week.
In his second, published Wednesday morning, Chait once again took an axe to the central premise of Draper’s story: that younger voters are leaning libertarian.
To support this point, Draper noted that “a recent poll confirmed that fully half of voters between ages 18 and 29 are unwedded to either party.” He also quoted Emily Ekins, the polling director at the libertarian Reason Foundation, who asserted that “we’re seeing a newer dimension emerge where [young voters] agree with Democrats on social issues, and on economic issues lean more to the right.”
Chait called hogwash on both points, writing that lack of party identification isn’t really an indicator of voting patterns and that other polling has found young voters quite supportive of liberal economic policies.
An exhaustive survey released earlier this year from Pew Research Center showed that Millennials, unlike older generations, prefer a larger government that should provide more services. But Draper didn’t include that poll in his piece.
Instead, he touched on Ekins’s own survey of Millennial voters, which Chait said amounted to “advocacy polling.” Ekins penned her own rebuttal to Chait last week, pointing out that most of Reason’s polls are conducted by the same company that does Pew’s surveys. She also noted that her poll found wide support among young people for liberal policies such as raising the minimum wage and government-provided health care.
But those findings make her argument — that young people are drifting to the right on economics — all the more perplexing, prompting Chait to suggest that Draper was duped by the libertarians interviewed for his story.
In an email to TPM (posted below) on Wednesday, Draper insisted that was not the case.
“Anyone who thinks the story amounts to a rallying cry for libertarians did not read it all the way through and is misinterpreting my journalistic approach as a posture of sympathy,” Draper wrote.
He added parenthetically: “(By the same standard, my stories on Sarah Palin, Valerie Jarrett, Kevin McCarthy and Priorities USA could be viewed as sympathetic because they didn’t seek to ridicule or condemn the subject matter.)”
Draper said “protestations” of the piece from Chait and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum were “100% unsurprising” given their “longstanding disdain of libertarians.”
Hi Tom–I’ve pretty much said all I think I need to on this subject via Twitter, both to Chait & to Frum (who have in common their longstanding disdain of libertarians, making their protestations 100% unsurprising). It’s a misreading of the poll I cite to say (as Chait has) that it’s advocacy-based, given that both the questions and the polling methodology employed by pollster Emily Ekins came from Pew. Anyone who thinks the story amounts to a rallying cry for libertarians did not read it all the way through and is misinterpreting my journalistic approach as a posture of sympathy. (By the same standard, my stories on Sarah Palin, Valerie Jarrett, Kevin McCarthy and Priorities USA could be viewed as sympathetic because they didn’t seek to ridicule or condemn the subject matter.) You might want to read Ben Domenech’s piece today in The Federalist on this subject. Though my story’s point of departure was the notion (promulgated by Nick Gillespie and others) that we’re in a libertarian “moment,” Domenech’s point–that however you want to characterize this moment, what it presents is a libertarian “opportunity”–seems salient. In any event, the larger and more interesting question the piece wrestles with is whether libertarians and Republicans can, via Rand Paul, exploit whatever this moment happens to be. Is this a good moment to examine that question? I think it is. Thanks, Robert
Better headline:
“Bullshitter whines when more well informed people call bullshit.”
http://cdn.meme.li/instances/500x/53530405.jpg
So…his rebuttal to Chait’s piece (which I read originally since I read everything he writes) is that it isn’t surprising Chait wrote it since he doesn’t like libertarians and must not have read the piece that he obviously did read.
Wow…it’s like he’s not even trying. Ignore the substance entirely and make it personally about Chait. Because yeah, as long as you ignore the polling that shows that younger people openly support bigger government, I suppose it could look like they might turn libertarian. But…that means you have to ignore the very thing that refutes the point entirely.
And no, lack of partisan ID doesn’t mean people are turning libertarian whatsoever. That’s just stupid and a complete misreading of reality. Lots of people like to say they’re independents even when they reliably vote for one party, and even the few who truly are undecided aren’t necessarily libertarian at all. Anyone who doesn’t understand that needs to go back to the drawing board.
I’ve never been a member of either political party. Well, I aligned with the Dems for the purpose of voting in one primary election. (I think it was for Al Gore.) Right out of high school I didn’t want to be affiliated with any party, like I don’t want to be affiliated with any religion. Its a personal choice that I feel is tied privately to my own personal feelings. But. I’ve always been Liberally minded. I will never, ever vote for a Republican for national office, because they’ve screwed up government. Their aim is to screw up government. They don’t know how to govern. They want to spend large amounts of money on things that cost us the most money, cut those things that aid and protect our citizenry, and eliminate boogeymen like the IRS, taxes, “jack booted ATF”, EPA, FDA, etc. In essence, Republicans, as a national party, don’t make any sense. I do have a few beefs with Dems, but, generally, they tend to listen better. Josh’s post about Republicans inventing news stories on fake news sites and then telling the press that Dems were jealous, like so many outrageous actions Republicans have taken in the past, says loads.
I haven’t read Draper’s piece, but does it mention that those youngest of voters tend to value government services much more than, obviously, Liberatarians do?
The biggest stretch in this whole debacle is not that there might be a libertarian moment among us, or that Draper misinterpreted some polling data to write a fluff piece about libertarianism. No, the biggest blunder in the whole thing is to label and equate Rand Paul as a libertarian. He isn’t. He is a Republican.
Me might have libertarian tendencies, but lots of people do. To label him libertarian is to let the GOP off the hook for all the stupid crap he says and does.