Simon Harrisson
 | |
| Era | Tweeter Is Not Real Life (cast) |
|---|---|
| Age | 50-60 |
| Home | Los Angeles, CA |
| Demographic | podcaster, white, secular liberal |
| Lean | Lean Democrat |
| Race | white |
A neuroscientist and podcaster in Los Angeles whose subscribers are secular, educated professionals who have left both religion and the activist left. He votes Democratic without pleasure and judges every president mainly on honesty about facts.
Who they stand for
He stands for the secular, college-educated liberal voters of the coastal cities and university towns. This audience read the New Atheist writers after the September 2001 attacks, followed them into the heterodox podcast scene of 2017, and broke with the activist left over the protests and campus politics of 2020. It kept faith with the public-health agencies through the Covid-19 pandemic, which separates it from the audience of John Brogan. It sided with Israel against Hamas after the October 2023 attacks, which separates it from the audience of Hasan Radical. It voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris mainly because Donald Trump offended it more than any Democratic candidate could, rather than because it liked the Democratic Party. In recent years it has taken up newer interests, including effective altruism and the risks of artificial intelligence, which place it close to the rationalist movement and distant from every populist persona in the cast.
Playing to them
He responds to evidence and to a plain condemnation of falsehood. He supports funded public health programmes, secular government, regulation of artificial intelligence, support for Israel against jihadist groups, and a president who states the truth about a pandemic or an election even when it costs votes. He will not forgive lying, flattery of conspiracy theories, religious pandering, or vaccine scepticism stated from the podium. He judges a president's way of reasoning as more important than the policy that reasoning produces.
Winning his support costs the support of John Brogan, Brian Einstein and Alex James, over the issues of mandates and the public-health agencies. It costs the support of Matt Scots over religion. It costs the support of Hasan Radical and Viltch over Israel and over identity politics. William Maha, Barbara Wise and Elliot Einstein tend to support the same things he does. A president who wins the support of all four wins the whole liberal centre of the cast.