How to win an election

Lessons from the US; and, a bad week in the comments

Someone wrote a Substack column about how terrible I was this week, which rather dominated my Wednesday afternoon.

When you are the subject of a critical story it doesn’t really matter who the author is or what credentials they have. So long as they can string a sentence together and have more than half a dozen followers you get an incomparable adrenaline jolt as you read, then things get worse in the comments as people, smelling blood in the water, say nasty things about imaginatively wide-ranging aspects of your life and career.

Anyway this is not a self-pity post just a lead in to telling you that I was going to write this week’s newsletter about all the reasons you should take my side and how toxic people can be when they think they’re speaking up for justice but after spending all of Wednesday evening dreaming up arguments and retorts I woke up on Thursday morning feeling almost nothing about the whole incident. What a gift. So if you want to read through the story and my comment on it you can find it here, otherwise feel free to do what I’ve done and move on with your beautiful life.

Instead this week I’ll tell you about an idea from one of Ezra Klein’s recent podcasts, where he and broadcaster Chris Hayes talked about “Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old Politics”. Reacting to the surprise victory of Zohran Mamdani, a young unknown, in the recent New York mayoralty nominations, they talked about the changing role of policy in a campaign (I listened to this on a drive without taking notes so apologies for any paraphrasing or misrepresentation of the argument).

In the old days, and for politicians who still act like it’s the old days, you have a policy and then you do your best to communicate it. But for Trump and this new kid Mamdani, they’re not communicating their policies; the policy is the communication.

“We’re going to build a wall on the Mexican border”

“We’re going to freeze rents in New York City”

“Buses will be free”

“Drill baby, drill”

“Free childcare for under fives”

“We’re going to end all the wars”

These policies have different politics but they’re similar in that they are self-fuelling. What were Hillary Clinton’s policies in 2016? Or Kamala Harris’s in 2024? If you know the answer, it’s probably because you went looking for them. Trump and Mamdani’s policies come and find you.

And when they find you, they tell you something about the candidate. In fact that is arguably the major job of these policies. Mamdani admits that free childcare will likely not be possible; nine years later Trump hasn’t built the wall. But the lack of accountability doesn’t seem to matter, or at least it’s outweighed by the benefits. If a policy is attention grabbing enough that every single voter knows about it heading into the polling booth, and thereby knows something about what your values are without you having to have explained them, that’s a big win. The policy is the communication.

I make no judgment here about the ethics of this sort of campaigning: arguably a world in which candidates say things they don’t believe as a blunt communication instrument is worse than one where everyone is honest about their plans and lets the voters make a decision based on that.

But perhaps there is another view here too. I remember talking to a political insider about Jacinda Ardern and Chris Luxon and suggesting that people were too cynical about them: the right thought Jacinda would say anything to get elected, the left thought Luxon would say anything to get elected. “I genuinely think they both just want what’s best for the country”, I said.

“That’s true,” he said slyly. “But it’s possible they each think what’s best for the country is for them to get elected.”