新闻来源：www.nytimes.com
原文地址：Opinion | What Undecided Voters Might Be Thinking
新闻日期：2024-09-14
自英国脱欧和特朗普上台以来，西方世界政治已经极端分化成了一个僵持不下的对峙状态——一种在有正当权威的精英阶层和populist反叛之间的无法决断的挣扎。这场2024年选举最后阶段是一个悲观的例子。在这次辩论中，卡马拉·哈里斯以她在学术界的正当身份（credentials）为依托，让特朗普下降到其最差的populist表演状态，而不是面对政府的真实记录。
2024年选举日的前一天，对未决选民的批评从左右两翼都激烈不止。但是，当我暗示这次选举中人们的选择性也是完全可以理解时，却会让很多读者感到有些厌烦。但是，他们确实如此。民主党在2024年的要求，并不只是让选民放弃个人原则或接受一些政策错误，而是要认可一个充满实质性政策失误和明显理念执拗的记录，这些都在以一种薄薄的“不重蹈覆辙”的承诺上做最后的装饰。
这种僵持状态是西方精英在过去一代中的常态。一种激进的一致性思维在最优秀的人中间占了上风，理念被洗练成所谓的专业或共识，结果就是9/11之后在伊拉克、阿富汗和利比亚的战争失利……或是达沃斯精英对全球化的不足与中国崛起的认识不够深入……或是欧洲官员对共同货币的明智程度、大规模移民的管理能力和俄罗斯能源的真实成本的短视……或是最近的进步狂热导致学校关闭、硬毒品合法化、教育标准被破坏、课程内容变得扭曲，在跨性别权利的名义下进行了一些可疑的医疗实验，并将美国的移民系统变成了一个灾难。
然后账单来了，精英们后退一步，含糊其辞，并方便地忘记了这些（例如，卡马拉·哈里斯公开支持为非法移民提供性别重置手术？听起来像福克斯新闻的胡言乱语！）这让那些不满意的摇摆选民被告知，所有这些愚蠢的结果并没有真正付出代价，因为populist的替代者并不适合掌权。
果然，美国最伟大的populist领导者正与远右派影响力人物劳拉·卢默相处，她那明显的偏见和阴谋论如此明显，以至于让其他远右派的影响人焦虑不安。他目前通过Facebook流言和反海地情绪在诉讼拜登-哈里斯的移民记录，他的最聪明的支持者基于他是个巨大的说谎家这一想法——可能不会兑现所有承诺——而忠诚于他，而他最坚定的支持者则准备好为他的过度、腐败和宪法上的冒险辩解。
但这个不称职的人已经当了四年的总统，在其中三年里，他个人的混乱与良好的结果并存。在这些领域——外交政策、通货膨胀和移民——情况比由认真人士、优秀的能力强者、平滑而有魅力的精英领导下的状况要差得多。即便是在疫情横行期间，他的摇摆不定与进步主义的狂热期相匹配，但白宫还是设法让中产阶级保持稳定，股市维持高位，并且也比预期更快地推出了新冠疫苗。
所有这些足以解释为何这次选举结果相近，为什么选民可能不会把卡马拉·哈里斯从进步主义apparatchik转变为稳重的手和合理的中间派。对未决的选民而言，这不仅仅是一个在稳定与危险之间做出的选择。它是一个需要在两个候选人的不同原因上都不信任公信力的情况下做出的选择。在一个民主制下，如果你不断提供给选民两个糟糕的选择，他们通常会选择你觉得更差的那个选项。
原文摘要：
Since the populist surge that gave us Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, politics in the Western world has polarized into a distinctive stalemate — an inconclusive struggle between a credentialed elite that keeps failing at basic tasks of governing and a populist rebellion that’s too chaotic and paranoid to be trusted with authority instead.The 2024 campaign in its waning days is a grim illustration of this deadlock. We just watched Kamala Harris, the avatar of the liberal establishment, smoothly out-debate Trump by goading him into expressing populism at its worst — grievance-obsessed, demagogic, nakedly unfit.But her smoothness was itself an evasion of the actual record of the administration in which she serves. Harris offered herself as the turn-the-page candidate while sidestepping almost every question about what the supposed adults in the room have wrought across the last four years.A historic surge in migration that happened without any kind of legislation or debate. A historic surge in inflation that was caused by the pandemic, but almost certainly goosed by Biden administration deficits. A mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan. A stalemated proxy war in Eastern Europe with a looming threat of escalation. An elite lurch into woke radicalism that had real-world as well as ivory-tower consequences, in the form of bad progressive policymaking on crime and drugs and schools.All of this and more the Harris campaign hopes that voters forgive or just forget, while it claims the mantle of change and insists that “we’re not going back.”Undecided voters in a polarized America generate a lot of exasperated criticism from both sides of the partisan divide. And no doubt it will exasperate many readers when I suggest that the choices presented in this election make indecision entirely understandable.But they really do. The “ask” of the Democratic Party in 2024 is not, as some anti-Trump writers would have it, to merely compromise one’s convictions on this issue or that issue, to accept a few policies you dislike in order to keep an indecent and unstable populist out of office.Rather, the “ask” is to ratify a record of substantial policy failure and conspicuous ideological fanaticism, dressed up for the moment in a thin promise that we won’t make those mistakes again.This is the constant pattern of the Western elite over the last generation. A form of aggressive groupthink takes hold among the best and brightest, ideology gets laundered into supposed expertise or consensus, and the result is post-9/11 debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya … or Davos-man naïveté about the downsides of globalization and the rise of China … or Eurocrat myopia about the wisdom of a common currency, the manageability of mass migration and the true cost of Russian energy … or the recent phase of progressive mania that closed schools, legalized hard drugs, wrecked educational standards and warped curriculums, licensed dubious medical experiments in the name of transgender rights and turned the U.S. immigration system into a disaster area.Then the bill comes due, the elites backpedal and obfuscate and conveniently forget (What do you mean, Kamala Harris endorsed publicly funded gender reassignment surgery for illegal aliens? Sounds like Fox News nonsense!) and the unhappy swing voter is informed that no real price can be exacted for any of this folly, because the populist alternative isn’t fit for power.And, sure enough, the great leader of American populism is currently hanging out with the far-right-influencer Laura Loomer, who’s so manifestly bigoted and conspiratorial that she gives other far-right influencers hives. He’s currently litigating the Biden-Harris immigration record via Facebook rumors and anti-Haitian animus. His smartest supporters premise their loyalty on the idea that he’s a huge B.S. artist who probably won’t actually follow through on all his promises, even as his most devout supporters stand ready to excuse excess, corruption and constitutional brinkmanship.But this unfit man was already president for four years, and for three of them his personal chaos coexisted with decent outcomes in arenas — foreign policy, inflation and immigration — where things have been much worse under the rule of the serious people, the good meritocrats, the smooth and respectable elites. And even when Covid overmastered his administration, his flailing was matched by progressivism’s period of mania, and his White House still managed to keep the middle class solvent, the stock market high, and also delivered a Covid vaccine faster than almost anyone expected.All of this is more than enough to explain why this election is close, and why voters might not rubber-stamp the sudden transformation of Kamala Harris, apparatchik of progressivism, into Kamala Harris, steady hand and reasonable moderate.To the undecided voter this isn’t a simple choice between stability and peril. It’s a choice between two candidates and coalitions that for different reasons don’t merit public confidence. And in a democracy, if you keep offering voters two bad options, you shouldn’t be surprised that they will often choose the one you are sure is worse.
