When does pushing for extreme ideas help expand the Overton window?

Great Debates
1

This essay was published a while ago, but I only read it today and thought it was an interesting idea:

The summary is that if you support a policy that is not currently politically feasible, working to popularise it with the general public is a good and beneficial thing to do, and can result in moving the Overton Window enough for it to be passed. On the other hand, supporting an even more extreme policy in the hope of making your favoured one look moderate by comparison is not a good idea, most especially if you don’t actually think the more extreme policy is a good idea. Proposing unnecessarily radical, and particularly unsound, ideas is likely to lead to a backlash that could make it even more difficult to get support for your less extreme policy.

He gives examples of ‘Defund the Police’ on the left, which seems to have helped torpedo more moderate efforts at police reform, and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, attempts to build a wall etc, which has created far more opposition to his clampdown on asylum seekers and attempts to deport illegal immigrants than there was to Obama doing those things.

I’m not sure I’m convinced by this example; I think the opposition has more to do with how Trump is going about implementing his policies - eg ignoring due process - than with his suggesting even more outrageous ideas. But there must be other examples, since Trump is the king of throwing out crazy, extreme suggestions. Have these helped normalise his less crazy, but still previously outside-the-Overton-Window ideas, or the opposite?

This comment on the article suggests a parallel:

Perhaps it’s similarly true that supporting policies that are only a little more extreme than yours is helpful, but if you push it too far, it can have the opposite effect. Or maybe it’s the overall distance from the current Overton Window that matters? If your policy is already far from the edge, it’s better to avoid anything even a little more radical.

2

Did Trump’s repeated flirtations with extreme racists actually make his immigration restriction agenda seem more moderate and appealing to you? To me, it made it seem like his administration was full of racist nutjobs. I’ve heard the take that it was hypocritical of people to be sharply critical of Trump’s clampdown on asylum-seekers when they were much more open to Obama clamping down on asylum-seekers after being faced with a surge. But I don’t think that’s hypocrisy at all — I think it’s common sense. Obama seemed like a reasonable person who was cracking down because his team genuinely thought it was necessary, and if there were flaws or problems in their implementation, it was probably a good-faith effort.

Trump’s rhetoric, his wink-nudge stuff with white nationalists, his dumbass wall, his crackdowns on legal migration of skilled workers, etc. made him seem like a xenophobic maniac whose approach was grounded in cruelty and hysteria.
Indeed, support for immigration today is at an all-time high because Trump radicalized Democrats and independents in its favor.

Problem is that when Iglesias wrote that, Trump had lost the 2020 election, what he said then has aged like milk. And the Biden admin was not talking about defunding the police, because he did not support that, I will go ahead and say that the whole defund the police was something that some advocates from the left harped about, but the right wing made sure to misled others by harping that “it was what all the democrats and Biden” talked about.

3

I don’t know if this is the same thing as the overton window, but one tactic that does work to create national policy is to first push for policy changes on the state level. After those policies work, other states adopt them and eventually you get national adoption.

The ACA was largely based on a state program created in MA. Multiple states passed something akin to social security before FDR passed it federally in the 1930s. Slavery was abolished in a lot of states before it was abolished nationally.

The Canadian medicare system was started in a province. I think something similar happened in France and Australia, where their current health care system started in a region before going national.

As far as defund the police, some states are passing reforms like CO, IL, NY, etc. They aren’t abolishing the police, but they are increasing accountability and transparency, and helping to provide groups other than the police to deal with things like drug addiction or mental health issues.

Health reform as mentioned starts on the regional level before becoming national. Several states are experimenting with ways to improve upon the ACA with public options, increased subsidies for ACA plans, more transparent pricing, etc.

To me, in the US at least, it seems like the overton window basically goes as follows:

  1. Activists support an idea
  2. Eventually some state governments and local governments support a version of the idea, or the idea itself
  3. A national program is enacted

I’m not sure what role local governments like city and county governments play in this. Like the fight for $15 minimum wage, a lot of cities were passing $15 minimum wages both before and at the same time as states were passing it. But in republican states, the state government just made it illegal for cities to pass these local ordinances.

As far s the overton window, I could see it going in this direction from left to right:

  • Public sector funding and public sector providers (like the NHS in the UK, or the VA in the US) that covers everyone
  • Public sector funding and private sector providers (like medicare and medicaid) that covers everyone
  • Private sector funding and private sector providers (employer based insurance) that covers everyone
  • Private sector funding and private sector providers (employer based insurance) that covers some people, but not everyone

If you start from the position of the NHS, then medicare for all is the more moderate proposal. If you start from M4A, then a public option is the moderate proposal.

4

When does pushing for extreme ideas help expand the Overton window?

When those ideas are right wing, because everyone feels obligated to suck up to the Right and pretend whatever they say and do is reasonable and moral. People don’t feel that way about the Left. So when the Right makes some insane or horrible proposal everyone tries to spin is as worthy of serious consideration and discussion, which normalizes it and shifts the Window rightwards. Then when the Left - or even middle - makes a much less extreme and reality-based proposal the Right screams insanely about it and everyone feels obligated to pretend the ranting and lies of the Right are reasonable, moral objections; which also drags the Window right.

5

Our universal healthcare system known as Medicare was started as Medibank on 1 July 1975 by the Whitlam government.

Prior to that state governments were primarily concerned with health insurance rather than the provision of services.

In 1946 Queensland introduced free public hospital treatment.

Then a constitutional referendum (Constitution Alteration (Social Services) Bill 1946 becoming Section 51) allowed the Federal government to be involved in “pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services.”

Since then the Federal government has assumed primary responsibility for healthcare funding and policy while the states operate their public hospitals in conjunction with private hospital operators.

6

Expanding the Overton Window can’t just consist of pushing ideas that are seen as extremist or fringe. It has to be accompanied by some sort of consequences (for not going along with those ideas) as well.

For instance, one reason gay marriage and LGBT advanced wasn’t just because many people pushed for it - it was also because that opposition to LGBT and gay marriage got the label “bigot” and entailed social consequences for those who opposed it. Same with civil rights. It wasn’t just that people pushed for minority rights; it was also that, as time went on, opposition to civil rights was seen as racist and bigoted (although most of that sentiment gradually kicked in after the Civil Rights Act passed).

So you need to use both persuasion for, and consequences against. Let’s say you want single-payer universal healthcare for all. In that case, you can’t just advocate for it, you need to pair it with a label with which to pin on those who oppose it (i.e., if you don’t endorse universal healthcare, it means you want many people to die or suffer unnecessarily - which is partially true for many of its opponents.)