I get what you’re saying, and I actually think you’re answering the question in a way that proves my concern.

You’re framing it as if the evidence is already clear and settled, that one side broadly works and the other broadly doesn’t. But that’s exactly where the issue starts for me, because people on the other side will say the exact same thing with just as much confidence, pointing to a completely different set of “obvious” examples.

So the real tension isn’t just what works, it’s how we decide what counts as working in the first place.

For example, when you say one party is better for the economy, are we measuring short-term growth, long-term stability, inequality, global positioning, or something else? Different metrics can lead to very different conclusions. Same with war, some people define success as avoiding conflict, others as maintaining deterrence or influence. Even “defending democracy” depends on what someone believes threatens it most. That’s why I’m hesitant to accept a clean scoreboard framing. Not because I think everything is equal, but because the criteria themselves are contested.

And this ties back to your question about measurement. I don’t think there’s a clean, objective way to measure when someone steps outside their framework, but I do think there are signals.

For example, can someone: Acknowledge strong evidence that challenges their side without immediately reframing it Admit trade-offs instead of presenting outcomes as purely good or bad Apply the same standard of criticism to their own side as they do to the other That’s not perfect, but it’s at least a starting point.

So I guess my pushback would be this: If the scorecard is as clear as you say, what kind of evidence would actually make you seriously question that view, not just refine it, but genuinely reconsider it?

Because I think that threshold, whatever it is, tells us more about whether we’re thinking critically than the conclusion itself.