The way to signal LW ingroupness would be to say “signaling progressiveness”, but that does cover it fairly well.
I suspect the logic is roughly that our current prison system (imprisoning people for 12 years for a 1st time drug offense) is bad in the direction of imprisoning far too many people, so opposing our current prison system is good, so opposing the current prison system more is even better, and the most you can oppose the prison system is to support abolishing all prisons.
(actually there might be something of an argument to be made that in order to fight a policy way too far to one side of good policy, it can be useful in some cases to overcompensate and bring a policy too far to the other side into the discussion, although I think in a politically polarized environment like the US that’s bad overall- the overwhelming majority people who hear such an argument will be people who were already convinced of a decent policy and will be sent too far to one side by it, while the people who actually would have their beliefs brought closer to a good policy by hearing the counter-narrative either won’t hear it, or will use it to strawman the opposition.)
The way to signal LW ingroupness would be to say “signaling progressiveness”, but that does cover it fairly well. I suspect the logic is roughly that our current prison system (imprisoning people for 12 years for a 1st time drug offense) is bad in the direction of imprisoning far too many people, so opposing our current prison system is good, so opposing the current prison system more is even better, and the most you can oppose the prison system is to support abolishing all prisons.
(actually there might be something of an argument to be made that in order to fight a policy way too far to one side of good policy, it can be useful in some cases to overcompensate and bring a policy too far to the other side into the discussion, although I think in a politically polarized environment like the US that’s bad overall- the overwhelming majority people who hear such an argument will be people who were already convinced of a decent policy and will be sent too far to one side by it, while the people who actually would have their beliefs brought closer to a good policy by hearing the counter-narrative either won’t hear it, or will use it to strawman the opposition.)
From comments at Marginal Revolution: “People will only tolerate so much bad policy before they start demanding bad counter-policy”.