A (Non-)Mea Culpa

On the promise and peril of reading the room

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m sometimes susceptible to peer pressure. As much as I try to resist the urge to “read the room” and as much as I take pleasure in my own ability to stick to my guns, I can’t help but be influenced by the media environment around me. It’s mostly very positive coverage of Kamala Harris most of the time — and that’s probably putting it mildly. And so I find myself wondering: was I too hard on her? Did I dismiss her too readily? If everyone is — or seems to be — so enthused by her, all of a sudden, might they have a point? It’s been a remarkable shift.

In seemingly just a few days, Kamala went from being a weak candidate to being, at least to some, the next Obama. Is it possible for perceptions to change that quickly? There’s nothing sinister about it. If you’re a left-of-center person in reasonably good standing, your incentives are to get on board and leave your doubts behind. I can get away with not caring whether Kamala Harris is a person of color or a woman or both. Shadi, are you really going to be a contrarian and be less than enthusiastic about the first black woman president in American history? Are you some kind of monster? Well, I could care less. I don’t buy the premise that race or gender should be a top or even secondary concern when thinking about who should be president. But of course, it’s harder for white liberals. They wouldn’t want to be seen as undermining a woman of color!

It’s not an entirely manufactured consensus, but it’s at least partly that (as

Damir Marusic

and I discussed with Freddie deBoer on the latest

Wisdom of Crowds

, which you can listen to in full here). It began as a top-down endeavor, just 20 minutes after Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the race. That’s seemingly how long it took him to remember to endorse Kamala. Once he issued his endorsement, the message was clear. Much of the Democratic Party apparatus followed suit. I don’t doubt that the grassroots enthusiasm for Kamala is genuine, but enthusiasm can be willed and summoned. If you think the crowd thinks that a candidate is great — even if it’s unclear what the crowd actually thinks — then perceptions matter and then a new reality is fashioned into existence.