You defuse it by not having a party-level position on the issue, so the candidates can run on the party platform of mental health reform and follow their individual district-appropriate stances on limiting gun rights. Sending troops to the border also costs money, as do trade wars, walls, and corporate kickbacks. “We must lower taxes always and on everything, especially the rich” is not a broadly popular opinion and the voters aren’t united in their positions on it the way the GOP representatives are.
Most people prefer middle of the road stances on most issues, and forcefully stating that people’s policy opinions are just too divided for any middle ground to possible doesn’t make it so. There are wedge issues the parties use to force a stark contrast, but they are mostly artificial and seem stark only because of the media hype around them. A party that kept out of that fray would be able to get candidates elected by showing contrasts on issues that don’t run as deeply and by making policy secondary to principles.
For example, on guns, you could take the stance that your goal is to reduce mass shootings and deaths by gun violence and that your specific methods of doing that will have to work within the framework set up by the Constitution. Then propose some useful policies to accomplish those goals.
But, representatives in legislative bodies have to vote on those issues as a bloc or they will always lose.
Citation needed. It depends on what you mean by “middle of the road.” There are many issues where most people prefer stances to the left of either party, e.g. education and health care cost reform.
This is what the Democrats have done. For almost every issue you come up with, I think you’ll find that whatever sensical, measured approach you come up with that it seems like most rational folks would support is what Democrats are already doing. There’s an asymmetry to the parties that has nothing to do with policy. Democrats try to attain and retain political power by crafting policies with wide appeal. That’s what they do. Some people call it “triagulation” or “Third Way Centrist coddling”. Republicans try to acquire political power by propaganda, cynical manipulation of voters, gerrymandering, vote suppression, dog whistling, wedge issues, demonizing opponents, flouting political norms and standards of decorum, ignoring corruption, etc. Trying to find a position between those two “extremes” is like trying to split the difference in a beauty contest between Miss Wausau County and the local crime boss’s daughter.
It’s what some Democrats have done. That’s the problem with a large party with the kind of extreme partisanship we are seeing. The party is defined by its most-extreme positions, not its most-moderate ones. Democrats who claim strong support for gun rights still lose support when other Democrats advocate for assault rifle bans.
If the party doesn’t have a position, it can’t “lose” - something might get done or it might not, the party is indifferent.
Republicans are the bad actors, for sure, but Democrats exploit wedge issues, issue propaganda and cynical manipulations, and demonize their opponents. They are more measured (if both sides did it to the extent Dems do, it wouldn’t be as big a problem), but they still rely on these zero-sum tricks that make it harder for them to draw a hard line in the sand about what is and is not OK. The idea that these tricks will somehow go away and there will no longer be a side that uses them too much if only we can win a few elections in a row seems very naive to me. So I suggested some ways the problem could be resolved: one is to have sufficient policing of all news content that the vast majority of voters are once again basing most of their political decisions on mostly the same analyses and information sources. Another way is to reduce the incentive for zero-sum trickery by adding another major player. I think it’s a bit absurd that the pushback I’m getting on that second point is that there is no such thing as a third set of positions, or that some other voting system would magically created a third reasonable set of positions but our current voting system makes that impossible. I mean, even if you believe that every important issue has literally two possible positions, you can still create a massive number of third party platforms just by picking and choosing between the independent positions of the two parties. Each of those possible platforms would win over some folks from each side who really agree with the other party on some issues but can’t stand to support their positions on other issues.
The podcast ineffablebob linked describes the situation as being like the Cola Wars. That’s great, but duopolies aren’t destiny. Just like technology changes disrupt once-stable competitive landscapes, the issues that are important to voters constantly change and there are many possible alignments that would carve out significant support. There’s nothing inevitable or immutable about the current coalitions.
There is if you don’t allow changes to the process, though. That’s why election reform is such a key component. Change the ground rules, or else you really are locked in because all the power is with the duopoly.
I didn’t say there couldn’t be changes to the process, I said that changes to the process aren’t required - they can help and there are many that are worth supporting, but changing the process is at least as hard as disrupting the parties themselves, because they have a vested interest in not changing it.
What does “extreme partisanship” mean in this circumstance? It is Republicans who advocate extreme policies, and they use propaganda and wedge issues to shore up political support. Democrats are the same slightly-left moderate party they’ve been for decades. Democrats trend toward the center because, again, they build their political coalition by advocating policies, not by vote suppression, gerrymandering and demagoguery. Your gun rights example is instructive. 70% of Americas support stricter laws on assault weapons. Seventy. Percent. That includes 52% of Republicans. That’s a broadly popular policy across a wide range of demographics. And yet, you use it as an example of Democrats’ extremism.
Technically true, but unlikely enough that I don’t think it’s really worth considering. If there’s an organized effort large enough to get a third party going, it’s large enough to have people that recognize they’re better off changing the election process to remove the R/D advantage.
This I disagree with. This very election here in Michigan we’ve got a grass-roots campaign against gerrymandering. It’s done very well, with a ton of people from all walks of life across the state, who identify both R and D. You’d be hard-pressed to get that kind of coalition for electing someone (anyone!) in today’s political climate, but it was doable for the concept of election reform.
And yet this only works one way? Where are the Republicans losing support when Steve King spouts white supremacist crap and literal Nazis are running for office?
All over the place - the generic ballot has been consistently in the +8-10 for Democrats range and Republicans control something insane like 102 of the 111 districts where both parties have at least a 5% chance.
Gerrymandering isn’t a threat to the power of the duopoly, though, only to the power of whichever side is currently drawing the districts.
What would make people realize that? I mean, wouldn’t it be a clearer message to have an actual party that people actually see some value in that is actually hurt by the current system, in order to convince people that changing the system is needed? I assume your intent is to push through a ballot initiative or something to change the rules (since the parties would have no incentive to support something designed to create new parties). Once you have a sufficiently-powerful movement to change the rules nationwide, you effectively already have a political party. Is that party’s message really better as “let’s change the rules and some cool third party appears to take advantage of the new rules” than as an actual platform intended to elect people who would then also fight to change the rules?
I mean, the podcast mostly talked about how the parties duopolize using techniques that have nothing to do with voting incentives. Their prescription at the end of “oh, well if we had RCV it would be better” is just lazy. If the problem is that the parties control the organizations, donors, talent pools, media, and think tanks, then how does RCV change any of that? To change that you have to attack it head-on and set up your own parallel structure, lure away talent and donors, make deals with powerful organizations, and get your message into the media.
Well, election process changes have actually happened multiple times…single primary in California, anti gerrymandering in several states, ranked voting in Maine. I don’t see that kind of progress for a significant third party. So apparently it is possible to get the vote out for process.
Without some constitutional amendment regarding the senate the union doesn’t last another 30 years, unless there’s a major change in political trends. It’s the only constitutional change democrats should care about, because without that anything else is pretty meaningless.
I mean… there are gay Republicans. Things like immigration reform absolutely have support from some members of the GOP, as seen by past attempts at immigration reform.
At this point, it may be that everyone other than the nuts have left the GOP… but there are in fact moderate conservatives who aren’t the religious nutjobs.
Sure, you might not get their buy in on your more liberal economic policies, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. There’s supposed to be compromise.
If you appeal to those guys, I think there’s a possibility to get their support.
Right now, you’ve got support from folks like me because the alternative is a descent into authoritarianism… but bear in mind, that this is not a blank check to just left your far left inclinations run wild. For the time being, you’re just benefitting from the fact that there’s no non-crazy alternative to the Democratic party.
I don’t believe this. I’d be willing to bet that every single point in the Democrats’ 2016 platform has broad majority support among Americans. Republican voters do not care about policy. They don’t care about character. They don’t care about bipartisan effort. You can’t appeal to them by advocating policies that they agree with and/or that advantage them.
If you define “republican voters” as “people who will never agree with anything I think”, then yes, by definition, they won’t agree with anything you think. You’ll never get their vote if you define them as people who will never vote with you.
But that’s a useless definition.
What we are talking about is folks who have, in the past, voted Republican… and who you could get to vote for your candidate.
I define Republican voters as people who vote Republican: people who cast aside any moral qualms to vote for a guy who bragged about grabbing women’s pussies. It’s hard for me to understand how those folks could ever be won over by reasoned policy discussions. I mean, we try. What else do we have but ideas? But if “grab 'em by the pussy” wins for them over
Break through Washington gridlock to make the boldest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II.
Make debt free college available to all Americans.
Rewrite the rules so that more companies share profits with employees—and fewer ship profits and jobs overseas.
Make certain that corporations, the wealthy, and Wall Street pay their fair share.
Enact policies that meet the challenges families face in the 21st-century economy.
Until we get far more liberals to understand this, we are going to be up against it. I mean, we are likely to win the House today, but in the medium and short run, pretty grim.
Our core political problem is that our opponents (at least the thought leaders who direct them) think tactically: What groups of current Dem-voters could we possibly pry away? Some of this is long term strategy, persuading all kinds of groups that feel disadvantaged by specific changes since their childhood that voting GOP will somehow make it 1950 or 1970 again. Some of this is short term – distracting voters with emotional, visual propaganda designed to change to a topic of their choosing just before an election.
Meanwhile, our side is full of voices which seem to say, “If you voted against us last time, we have given up on you as a human being. You are a bunch of moral defectives who will never vote for us.” Probably not quite as likely to expand our voter base as the GOP strategy.
Our core political problem is that we have a 7% advantage over the GOP in total votes, but still gain fewer House seats. And that GOP Senators only represent 44% of the population. And that we elected a President who lost the popular vote by more than 3 million votes.
A strategy of nakedly racist and nationalist appeals is meant to peel away Dem voters? Trump’s net approval is lower than any other President since Truman. Democrats are 9 points ahead in the House generic ballot. When Trump calls Democrats “treasonous”, that’s trying to be persuasive to Democrats?
In a sense, I think you’re right. The GOP specifically targets certain groups with propaganda messages, and Democrats don’t really do this. Democrats often try to craft policy messages with broad appeal without trying to target specific groups. And maybe Dems could do a better job of this? But I’m not sure how you address the specific concerns of, say, white working class folks. What are the specific concerns of white working class folks that are different than non-white working class folks? Democratic policy proposals are, in general, aimed directly at improving working-class peoples’ lives: making healthcare and education more affordable, minimum wage and labor laws, childcare subsidies, a safety net. And yet, white non-college grads went for Trump by nearly 40 points. What’s the prescription here? What should Democrats be doing differently? How can they convince people that policies designed to benefit working class folks are more beneficial to working class folks than policies designed to benefit rich people and corporations?
By listening to what those folks are concerned about and then telling them about all the ways they will alleviate those concerns, rather than by telling them that what they really want is healthcare and education and wind farms. The problem is, some of what those voters want is to be told that white folks are the superior, true Americans, who are having a rough time because other races and foreign countries are getting too many handouts.
