Fantasies of Control

Axios this morning leads with the email subject line: “Dems’ private panic.” And then inside the email “1 big thing: Dems fear they’re blowing it.” In this case I’m not really writing to criticize Axios, which I admittedly, and rightly, often do. Because what they’re describing here is real. This post is agnostic on what the result of the election is going to be. And for what it’s worth, I keep in close touch with numerous high level campaign operatives in the swing states and I do not sense panic or pessimism from them. They all know it could go either way but I don’t think they think they’re losing. My topic is this blame feature of Democrats’ mass psychology, which is strongly echoed in the press, and their tendency to panic and almost always think they’re going to lose unless the available evidence to the contrary is simply overwhelming. But it’s not the “bedwetting” that interests me most. It’s the second version of the headline, that blame feature: “Dems fear they’re blowing it.”