Increasingly convinced that democracy is about social norms much more than it is about institutions
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Max Henning
976 posts
Max Henning
@maxahenning
Democracy practitioner, background in neuroscience and social and behavioral science. Big fan of humans, despite it all.
Washington, DC Katılım Aralık 2010
1.2K Takip Edilen342 Takipçiler
Just want to say I appreciate you asking the question and the replies and the tone of it all.
Would echo what others have said. ID in principle is great, but the way this bill does it, without measures to lower financial and time costs etc, will create a big hill to climb for folks who are just getting by. At scale it will suppress voting among people who are legally eligible. Conveniently it will particularly affect many of the groups that are most frustrated by the administration and are likely to vote against it.
It’s entirely possible to implement voter ID in a way that makes it easier for eligible voters to vote while also making it harder for ineligible voters to, but this bill doesn’t do that.
The important thing is that this isn’t an accident. The people designing the policy know how policy works and what it will do. There were many decisions made about how to structure the policy, and what they settled on is 100% going to significantly reduce voting among eligible voters, and they know that, which makes it harder to deny that it’s intentional.
So, the bill is intentionally designed in a way that will make it harder to vote for specifically those groups that are most frustrated with this administration. Not great.
But it’s framed in such a way that if you point out these issues and try to change the bill to not hurt eligible voters, they scream that you want ineligible people to vote, that you support voter fraud. But ***no one*** on the left wants ineligible people to vote. No one. And if there is one we disavow them. We all want secure and verifiable elections, that’s obviously in everyone’s interest.
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Can someone explain to me the counterarguments against voter ID?
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@elonmusk Then why not include measures to ensure all eligible voters can get qualifying voter id easily and for free… ohhh right it’s because it’s actually a voter suppression bill!
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No voter ID, especially when combined with mail-in ballots, means the system is engineered to make fraud impossible to prove.
Everyone knows that you can barely get through your week without showing ID for the most banal activities, like shopping at Costco.
The only reason to ban ID is to hide massive voter fraud.
Katie Miller@KatieMiller
The reality is there's mass amounts of cheating in our elections. Just because there's an engineered lack of data, does not mean there isn't data to the contrary. The new CBS/YouGov poll shows that 80% of Americans support Voter ID including 80% of black Americans & 77% of Hispanic Americans. Yet why is it that Congress seems so intractable to wanting to pass a such a popular policy?
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How do you say you don’t understand, while avoiding mentioning the single most publicized central point of the opposition— that it will prevent voting among those who legally should be able to vote. No one on the left wants anyone who is not eligible to vote to be able to vote, that would be insane.
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i don’t understand why the left is against voter id while simultaneously saying how it won’t make a difference because people aren’t illegally voting
so then pass the law? if the results are the same and it makes no difference, it takes away the talking point
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It’s not about the policies, or the gas prices, never was. Always about social group identity. And that identity is now becoming a liability. The social capital of MAGA is fracturing. The identity isn’t giving them safety and purpose in the way that it was. It’s now kind of embarrassing to be MAGA, not something that seemed cool and rebellious and irreverent. Some folks are backing away, some are in too deep and can’t afford to leave because they’ve alienated lots of people already.
It’s a tightrope moment, where folks will either keep jumping ship or will double down, depending largely on their experience of poking their head out of MAGA to see what the world outside is like. If they get hit with shame many will go right back in. If they get an off ramp and safety, they may actually leave and turn on maga to prove their belonging in the outside world.
At least that’s my view? Curious to hear others thoughts.
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People abandoning Trump now are more of a curiosity than anything. Why now? The latest demonstration of historic incompetence is what did it? The previous decade of grift, hatred, and erosion of democracy was fine but high gas prices is where you draw the line?
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Probably an unpopular opinion, but billionaires tend to do lot more good for society with their money than the government.
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One thing that often gets missed in these discussions is that people’s opinions on issues are usually unconsciously driven by social/group processing, and are less about the issues or beliefs themselves than about the groups they are part of and how safe or threatened they feel by other groups.
Much of what we believe is good or right we believe not because we’ve thought it all through from scratch (because most of our biases are invisible to us anyway), but because the right other people seem to believe it, or disagree with it.
For most folks, if we can help them feel safe in spaces outside their group, their commitment to their groups beliefs can soften. But it’s harder with provocateurs because they reinforce their own group membership by insulting others and provoking negative responses that are consistent with their prejudices 🤷♂️
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Lincoln said that southerners were good people even though they supported the evil of slavery.
It has to be possible to be both decent and misguided. Decency is not a function of one’s opinions, it’s a function of how we treat one another in the exchange of those opinions.
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️@christopherrufo
No, “being a decent person” in politics isn’t about polite speech, performative empathy, and a choir-boy persona. If a political candidate advocates aborting babies, transing kids, and releasing violent criminals into society, he is not a decent person—he is enabling evil.
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Makes sense about candidates being a bridge too far, but I’m more talking about social influences/peer networks? We as social influences can reduce people’s susceptibility to Fox messaging— If a Fox viewer knows/trusts/has good experiences/relationships with folks that are Dems, they will subconsciously be less susceptible to Fox narratives, or at a minimum it will cause some dissonance for them, which is a good first step
A lot of what people think and believe “sounds right” is driven by these unconscious social calculations, and working on that level is at least a somewhat promising way to lower the threshold for people to change. Isn’t easy and isn’t a silver bullet but it’s one way to weaken foxs hold, whereas shaming/socially punishing them for their views will just amplify and reinforce what they’re hearing on Fox due to motivated reasoning. Idk, seems worth a shot at least
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I am surrounded by conservative voters on all sides every day and none of them ever say anything like this. It’s always transgender this and socialism that. None of it is based in reality.
Nate Silver@NateSilver538
You want more neoliberalism or less neoliberalism, whatever. A lot of Democrats' problem is that voters see through the surface rhetoric and recognize that Democratic elites see them as plebes and look down on them.
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@wilksopinion @DerateTheHate 100%, and getting this message out now is more important than eve
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Today is Tuesday March 10, 2026 & this is your daily reminder:
💡"You cannot HATE others into believing what you believe & you cannot HATE them into seeing the world the way you do"
Follow 💖@DerateTheHate
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What? All I'm saying that if we want their behavior to change, us shaming them prob won't help. Shame can change behavior but it can backfire pretty hard especially if it comes from an outgroup. Doesn't carry the same social pressure as it does when it comes from an in-group. Outgroup shame often pushes people further away, binds them more closely to their current group, and deepens rejection of whoever is doing the shaming.
Right now we really need to win again. We need them to stop voting for MAGA, and idk that shaming them harder this time will somehow convince them to support us? But seems you have a different lens on it?
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@maxahenning This is incorrect, and not how people learn either, while framing it in a way that showcases you don't understand the topic.
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"you shouldn't shame people for making bad decisions. It's beating a dead horse."
Well, if they aren't learning from their bad decisions, that's not a dead horse, that's a still very stupid, very alive horse, deciding their bad decisions weren't actually their fault"
Bret Weinstein@BretWeinstein
I don’t owe anyone an apology for supporting Trump. No one does. The Democrats didn’t run a credible candidate. They ran two insults to our intelligence. It was a de facto coup—rule by a cabal of advisors. Voting Trump was a patriotic duty even if a cabal now seems to control him
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its usually not about evidence at all, more about underlying unconscious social safety/group identity processes that make them reject automatically any information that challenges the beliefs that bind their social group together. It sucks and isn't fair but if we want to change their behavior shame probably isn't the way to go
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@maxahenning @BrandonLBradfor So tell me, what does it take to learn that Trump was the worst possible choice? How many bits of evidence do you need? Or does it only sink in when it affects you directly? How many second chances do you need? Like an abuser saying lesson learned and it won't happen again...
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Yeah I mean performing sameness or using inauthentic poll tested language can be spotted instantly and is probably worse than not trying at all lol
I was mostly talking about other voters, not politicians. Like I’ve talked to folks on the right and just been like “hey, we have different views on most things, and I’ve been taught you’re Bad just like you’re taught that I am, but I just want to let you know that most Ds I know aren’t like you’ve been taught, we also care about freedom and rule of law and fairness, etc, just like most Rs aren’t like we’ve been taught, but there are people who profit off of us believing awful stuff about each other etc etc”, and it seems to have been well received and like they appreciated having the stereotype challenged.
It does seem to me that showing up in a way that challenges those stereoptypes is something that dem voters and influential non politicians can/should do, but seems like you might see that as not being likely to matter?
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@maxahenning @NateSilver538 Someone listening to Nate might think that Dem pols just need to use different language or reach out to them more and this is not correct. When they try that all it does is alienate people who might actually vote for them.
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Yeah, it’s really hard, and not going to be an easy path, but there’s some stuff in peacebuilding work, serious contact theory work that’s been used for ethnically divided societies or recovering from group violence, that can make a real difference. But you’re right it’s not easy and idk if folks are prepared to do what it will take
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@maxahenning @rgigger @NateSilver538 I live surrounded by them. Grew up with them. Including my own family. They don't want to listen. They hate us with a passion.
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@maxahenning @rgigger @NateSilver538 No. There is absolutely nothing Dems can say or do to reach those people. Ever.
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Judging from x right now and all the gleeful shaming of folks having genuine cognitive dissonance about the military grade cult they’re realizing they’re deep in, fox wasn’t nearly as important as I’ve thought it was. It’s easier to blame fox than look in the mirror at how we’ve contributed through the weaponization of moral superiority and shame from a position of cultural power
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This is the FOXNEWS EFFECT in the wild.
An electorate, so brainwashed that no matter how much evil Trump perpetrates, anyone with a (D) attached to their name would have meant certain annihilation of the species.
Bret Weinstein@BretWeinstein
I don’t owe anyone an apology for supporting Trump. No one does. The Democrats didn’t run a credible candidate. They ran two insults to our intelligence. It was a de facto coup—rule by a cabal of advisors. Voting Trump was a patriotic duty even if a cabal now seems to control him
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@JohnJHarwood Why don’t you just go ahead and call them deplorables, worked really well last time!
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Tom is right. Trump voters failed the test of judgment and character - a very easy test.
Tom Nichols@RadioFreeTom
Yes, yes, you had no choice, something something. Or maybe Trump has always been a test of basic judgment and character and millions of people have failed it because they were obsessed with their own resentful grievances.
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Not sure if this is sarcastic or not, but as a behavioral scientist I do want to emphasize that it is really important that we make sure folks have an off ramp.
If we want to avoid wasting the one window of opportunity we might have to get out of this timeline, we need to lock in and help folks feel safe leaving maga.
I know it seems like it should be easy for them to leave but the psychological and social pressures of groups like that are really hard to get out of, especially when people outside also ostracize you
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Please do wellness checks on your MAGA friends and family.
They’re discovering in the most horrific of ways this weekend just how cruel, corrupt, and deceitful their leadership.
It’s sinking in slowly, and some of them are going to start bursting through their cult bubble - and it’s going to be jarring to re-enter reality.
Be kind.
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