What a dead Ford Ranger and AI can teach progressives about politics

[ericjhensal]

For anyone worried AI is about to take over the world, try using it to fix an old truck. I spent the weekend asking one why my 1993 Ford Ranger wouldn't start, and it did what AI does: missed the complexity. seized onto one wrong answer and rode it down an increasingly hallucinatory road, never solving the problem.

It struck me that this is exactly how we on the left too often read the electorate. We reduce voters to the most convenient explanation — they're stupid, they're racist — and stop looking. When people vote against their interests, we blame the victim instead of asking what actually changed.

The Pew Research Center's new 2026 typology sorts voters into nine groups, not two. There's more blue than red in it, a hardcore authoritarian corner around 21%, and a large cross-pressured middle to be won. The map is more hopeful than the discourse.

My argument, borrowed from car-revival culture: don't get it right, just get it running. Stop the bleeding, restore a government that can govern, then argue about everything else.

Full piece here:

**snip**

https://newsletter.aprogressiveway.com/the-left-right-up-down-in-out-of-politics/

So I'll put the question to this group: where's the line between holding the line on principle and the righteousness that costs us winnable voters? Curious where people here land.