Let’s get back to sandwiches. You know what kind of sandwiches most restaurants, food trucks, and delis like to sell? The kind people like to eat. I’m not going to show a lot of my work on this one. Still, it’s worth asking why? Why do people in the sandwich-selling business want to sell sandwiches people want to eat rather than sandwiches they think people should eat? Well, one reason is what economists call “the profit motive.” It turns out that consumers—in both the economic sense and the eating sense—are more likely to spend large amounts of their disposable income on food they enjoy eating. That’s not the only reason, though. Some people actually just take great satisfaction in making sandwiches that are popular because they’re good. I suspect that even in communist countries, sandwich makers would rather have a reputation for making great sandwiches than the alternative. Earned success is a thing…

The remarkable thing about the unpopularity of popularism among progressive elites is how it is best understood as self-protection, not just of their jobs and status, but of their worldviews. I’ve been listening to Mike Duncan’s podcast on the Russian Revolution. One of the points he presses to great effect is that the White Russians could have easily beat the Bolsheviks if they just let go of their traditional notions of aristocratic entitlement, czardom, feudalism, etc. But they couldn’t do it. The Bolsheviks were horrible, but they at least made promises that were popular among the workers and the peasants. The Whites just promised to restore the old status quo, so most Russians had no interest in rushing to their cause. In today’s scenario, the progressive intellectuals are the White Russians. They can’t let go of their worldview because it’s so tied up in their identity, their careers, and their ideology.

Average workers are struggling to afford to fill their gas tanks, and Biden’s reminding them that if they bought an electric car (average price $56,000, which is $10,000 more than the average gas-powered vehicle), they’d save $80 per month on gas. That is dumbass politics if your audience is normal voters. But it’s the kind of thing that garners praise from the progressive Mandarins.