I think the role that bigotry and racism play in rightwing politics is routinely underestimated by those who analyze these things. Attitudes get passed down from generation to generation and what may at first strike us as an aberration due to Donald Trump's destructive influence on the body politic is actually more of a fanning of flames from fires of resentment and hatred that have been smoldering throughout American history. Reading "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson gave me a deeper understanding of this. Having grown up believing in a simplistic view of Americans as the good guys and liberators of the Jews in World War II, I was shocked to find out that the Nazis studied American attitudes and segregation laws when formulating their own plans of how to begin making Jews outcasts in German society.
What this means is that pre-existing inherent biases make Trump's MAGA base easy suckers for the rightwing propaganda machine - because they begin by being predisposed to believe the lies that they like.
MAGAs literally despise and hate those of us they think of as "woke” because they see us as the agents of the changes they feel so threatened by.
They call us "libtards," "demorats" and "demonrats" because we are the ones supporting the move toward “diversity, inclusion, and equity” which to their way of thinking represents most of what has been going wrong with this country.
We think white privilege is a problem.
They think the problem is reverse racism - and they are the victims of it.
Likewise, when those on our side of the political fence see and treat LGBT people like normal worthwhile human beings, that is an affront to those on the other side of the fence, a challenge and an insult to the values they hold close.
What rightwing propaganda peddlers do is continually reinforce, strengthen and exploit the bigotry, racism, and aggressive animosity that is already out there with a relentless deluge of lies that help to rationalize it.
Excellent post. There was a terrific piece in the WP by Robert Kagan this weekend diving into the evolution of our current moment. You should certainly check it out if you haven't.
I mostly agree here with one important caveat. I think you cannot overstate the importance of Fox.
I was recently flipping through my kids history book and came to the section on the "Yellow Journalism Era". I find it profoundly funny that we still feel superior enough to comment on this period as if it was a huge aberration we must read about as a discreet historical era.
We're living through a yellow journalism era. Of course Fox only gave the people what they wanted but there was ALWAYS a market for insanity. It was a strong code of professional ethics and a national response to yellow journalism that kept the "manufactured consent" era.
I wonder if Chomsky has stopped to reflect of the fact that the manufactured consent was actually a good thing.
Bit by bit the strong sense of duty and professional ethics was lost. It was gate keeping that kept the media honest. Fox obliterated that. And the left has been furiously trying to create a leftist Fox ever since.
The average person hasn't read McCluen or Chomsky. They haven't read Lenin or Goebbels. They say they distrust the media. In fact they completely trust THEIR media and distrust media that doesn't affirm their beliefs.
This was always here. It wasn't a mind virus of the 1800s. People purposefully stopped doing that for the good of the state and society.
Fox broke that consensus. It has been a catastrophe.
Without trying to catalog all the reasons why Biden isn’t running away with the election — and the comments note many — I come back to the fact that Biden was and is a weak candidate. His Senate career was long yet not very notable. The same could be said of his time as VP (which is true of almost all VP’s). Coming into 2020, he was old, not very popular, not energetic and very much a career DC pol. His case for nomination seemed to boil down to “it’s his turn”, a rationale that echoed what many active Democratic felt about Hillary Clinton. Such sentiments may help with gaining the nomination but backfire badly in a general election.
Democrats have been associated with big government since Roosevelt. But the Democrats who have won the WH ever since all had personal qualities that cut through the usual associations. Truman won because he could run against the establishment. Kennedy was a complete departure from any previous candidate — young, a war hero, bright and forward-looking with a beautiful wife and children. While Johnson was the prototypical Washington pol, he ran in 1964 on a platform of continuing Kennedy’s legacy and had a string of legislative successes. Carter was the anti-DC candidate, a moralistic outsider running in the wake of Watergate against a weak Ford. Clinton was also an outsider, young, heavily credentialed with enormous energy who was a born retail politician. Finally Obama was young, black and sharp, new enough to project idealism with a non-threatening wonkishness.
Biden offers nothing new — he looks and acts like the DC insider that he was and is. There is nothing unique or special about him as a candidate. He’s not a truth teller like Sanders or anything like an outsider. His strongest characteristic in 2020 was not being Donald Trump. This remains the case, notwithstanding an exceptional record as president. Unfortunately, voters rarely reward competence — see, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, H.R. Clinton.
Sadly, if Biden wins, it will be because, once again, he was not Trump. There will be other forces at play that can help or hurt but, as a candidate, he remains mediocre. If he could harness his energy and go for broke on the campaign trail and in the debates (if they occur), Biden could show a new side to voters and make them less concerned about his age. His staff do not seem to have confidence in him to pull something like that off. I hope they change their minds — soon.
An equitable characterization of candidate Biden who displays a very pedestrian record. When behind a microphone and he talks about an uncle eaten by cannibals or reads exactly from the teleprompter - pause - he shoots himself in the foot and appears lost. The unregulated flood of people across our borders along with the prices people see when buying groceries will hurt him.
Not sure on your take about Biden and the 2020 election. The DNC., and the Dems in general wanted to win in 2020 badly, especially against Trump. So the Dems nominated a safe bet. A moderate, catholic, Washington pol who had been there forever and had a high public profile as Obama's VP. No socialists, no women, no populists need to apply. After 4 years of Trump and chaos, most of the country just wanted a return normalcy again, and uncle Joe fit that bill.
I think we (the voters) are just dumber than we used to be and cannot think clearly. Consider the number of people who watch professional wrestling and take it seriously. These people vote. Donald Trump is especially good at getting them to vote, and they vote for him. The talking heads on cable news have not helped.
There is also the problem that everything most politicians say is field tested before it is uttered (Trump is the exception; perhaps this is why so many of his supporters believe he is honest.) This means that real information is hard to find. Look at how popular the bulwark is. It should not even be necessary, much less popular.
I am quite a lot older than JVL. I remember when pro wrestling was small time with overweight large men in front of a few people around the ring who apparently never understood that the soap in the bad guy's waist band would never be found and that the referee played the same role as the Generals did to the Harlem Globetrotters. It was really good opera and entertainment, but poor reality.
No one with any sense believed professional wrestling wasn't 100% scripted. It was obvious. Now we see literally thousands of people screaming at them from the stands. It has not only affected wrestling, but also politics and art. Our grasp of reality is being driven down by all of this.
I think voters were always pretty dumb (though we were less aware of their dumbness, because there was no social media giving dumb people free megaphones back in 1966 or 1976 or 1986).
"You wanna know how dumb Americans are? Think of how dumb the average America is, and then realize that half of all Americans are dumber than that." -- George Carlin
On a different subject - Congress - it looks like the Dems have a good chance of winning the house in November. The Senate doesn't look at all promising, but there are a some possibilities. 1- Florida, where Mucarsel-Powell is running well behind Scott and 2- Texas where Allred seems be picking up steam vs. Cruz.
Would be very interested in your thoughts re these or any other Competitive Senate possibilities.
"None of this happens overnight; it’s the work of a generation. If anything, I think the Biden Democrats have done a pretty good job of leaning into this diversity—both on policy and politics. That’s why we have Tester and Cooper, but also Fetterman and Warnock and Kelly. That’s why Democrats nominated Tim Ryan in Ohio in 2022 and, frankly, why they chose Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders in 2020."
I agree and I hope the Dems keep moving in this direction. However I'm a moderate squish so this aligns with my priors. I fear that there is a sizeable portion of the Democratic left that will NOT accept a moderate Biden coalition. They're every bit as strident and insistent on instant gratification wins as the MAGA right is. These people are also willing to vote against Dems to burn the corrupt middle down and cede (possibly permanently) power to the right out of spite for not getting their cake and being able to eat it too.
This worries me and is one of the reasons I think this system has become so balanced over the past generation. The Right can hold onto non- or soft authoritarians like Ross Douthat and Bill Barr because someone, somewhere was too fucking progressive and that's the entire Democratic Party's fault.
"Further, I suspect that the parties are as much reflections of this reality as causes of it.3"
It's a positive feedback cycle where nearly step between the beginning and end is both a cause and an effect. This process has made politicians and voters alike have more extreme and like-minded than they were 40 years ago, and it's much more pronounced in the R party, where the extreme is AUTHORITARIAN, very different than the conservatism of 40, even 20 years ago. Voters keep choosing from among themselves, candidates with the more radical "solutions," who happen to be the ones most skilled in "sales pitches" (nothing sells better than painting the opponent as an "enemy"). They are also the least skilled at, or even interested in, SERVING the citizens and the Constitution. It becomes like a drug, for voters and the politicians, and particularly in the R party where authoritarianism is particularly attractive to the addicted. The more they have, the more they crave.
I appreciate the nod to Newt Gingrich, and while it's entirely sensible to attribute the sorting to larger, structural changes (Cold War, tech., etc.), I do think Gingrich directing an entire party and it's full media apparatus to refer to democrats as enemies, to continually say that democrats hate and are destroying America, to model that they should be treated beneath contempt, etc. - that to me is the defining factor explaining where we are today. People follow leaders. Republicans/Red America saw their politicians, radio and TV personalities, other local leaders, treat democrats as enemies for 30 years, so while it was shocking to then see republicans side with Putin over America, it should not have been surprising.
Yes, there are several reasons for why we are here now, but nothing (IMO) explains it more than an entire party deciding the whole of the other political party and its voters are their *enemies*, not just a competing political party. Everything flows from that.
It's a large part of the "I know Trump is a corrupt, evil, treasonous moron but I'll vote for him anyway because Democrats are evildoers destroying America" mindset. It's what's behind the Supreme Court's concern that Trump's criminal charges are scary partisan attacks on a former president and not evidence that he committed the worst crimes against American democracy than any other president in history. They've all bought into the "Democrats evil" narrative that's been beamed into their brains for 40 years.
On the Democratic side, let me share my own perspective - Massachusetts, where I grew up, is known as a deep blue state but for most of my life, we had Republican governors. Good, competent, not crazy, popular governors. I also voted for Republicans for other offices over the years. But while the Republicans were learning to hate their fellow citizens and turning themselves into a party that deifies, justifies, cheers and supports the most vile human imaginable, I was learning that this party cannot be trusted with power and so I will never, ever, for any reason vote for a Republican again, even if I think they may be a better candidate. In my view, they've forfeited their right to power.
I think it’s Congress that got us into this hellscape. Congress should never have gotten the federal governement involved in supporting political party processes.
We should not be funding primary elections
> We should have strict requirements for getting on the general election ballot
> Everyone who qualifies and so chooses should be on the ballot
> The political parties can restrict, if they choose, who can use their name
> Voting should be ranked-choice
We should not be providing security for political conventions. If political parties choose, as in my third point above, to select a candidate to endorse, the party can hold a convention or use any other means to make that choice. If the political convention becomes such a spectacle that it is dangerous then the convention should be reconsidered, refocused.
There are two reasons for our current system, and neither has anything to do with helping we the people make good choices for our representation.
I would like to suggest that a factor in the emergence of political polarization has been the decline of local politics. Tip O’Neill famously said that “all politics is local.” In a sense that remains true, but local means by ideology today, not by issues. In Texas, where I live, the majority party in rural areas is trying to shut down their local schools and their voters blithely disregard this fact, so intent are they on ideology. I believe that reinvigorating local government requires allowing local governments mismanage their affairs to some extent so that their constituents will feel that they are truly empowered. It also requires reducing the size of school districts and other political entities so that individuals will feel that their views are influential.
Just a note in this last summer of the American republic, that while JVL is certainly correct that a landslide presidential election seems impossible today, if there is another one in 2028, the probability is it will be indeed a landslide — of Putinesque proprtions.
If you ever visit Germany, make the #1 site to see the museum at Dachau. And reflect that Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January (1933) and the first prisoners arrived in March.
He is losing support in his own party. The Bernie/Bros who were never happy they had to vote for him once, are now so mad about GAZA they may not vote for him. In fairness to the Bros, GAZA is revolting. This is the first war conducted in a slum where the residents can not escape. The results are disgusting. But Biden needs to explain the policy to the Bros and the rest of us. Perhaps the two decade problem of failing to deal with Iran is now more than Biden can shoulder. We are living in a time when resentments outway gratitude. Not an easy time to lead.
I agree. There is also the seemingly secretive manner in which U.S. military aid been given to Israel. The aid to Ukraine has been much more transparent to the public. Biden’s unwavering support of Israel, without accountability from the recalcitrant Netanyahu, has put President Biden at odds with not just the Progressives in the Democratic Party. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Tim Kaine have also expressed frustration about the free reign Netanyahu appears to enjoy. Bibi snubs his nose at Biden’s appeals because he knows he can. I am a life-long Democrat, and my husband and I always vote. We aren't necessarily satisfied with Biden but he will get our votes. In our minds, there is no choice. Biden is our last hope to save our democratic system. Yet, I do understand the frustration and disappointment by many, particularly younger voters who see the tragic conditions in Gaza. They may not vote ar all. It's the apathy that concerns me.
The fairest thing I can say about Biden that progressives don’t seem to get, is he can count votes. No one on earth could pass a progressive agenda with only 50 votes in the senate in his party-including some Democrats who are clearly not progressive. One weakness of Democrats is the somewhat socialist tendency to push a trend-EV’s and batteries-for example, before consumers had decided they would support it. Affordable housing-clearly in very short supply for many Democrats-while not sexy, might have been a way to go. Because the free market in Housing likes to build mansions for wealthy people.
Bill Barr claims: "The Socialist Communist Democratic Party is the biggest threat to the country." Why? The border (Republicans killed the bill). Regulations (apparently the government is taking our cars). Crime! (is down). Biden is a leftist (no, he's not).
Meanwhile, Democrats care about making sure our kids get to and from school without getting shot. Clean air and water. Bodily autonomy for women. Civil rights. Increased wages. Privacy. Ending the war in Ukraine. Education. Health care. Social Security for our parents.
I think the role that bigotry and racism play in rightwing politics is routinely underestimated by those who analyze these things. Attitudes get passed down from generation to generation and what may at first strike us as an aberration due to Donald Trump's destructive influence on the body politic is actually more of a fanning of flames from fires of resentment and hatred that have been smoldering throughout American history. Reading "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson gave me a deeper understanding of this. Having grown up believing in a simplistic view of Americans as the good guys and liberators of the Jews in World War II, I was shocked to find out that the Nazis studied American attitudes and segregation laws when formulating their own plans of how to begin making Jews outcasts in German society.
What this means is that pre-existing inherent biases make Trump's MAGA base easy suckers for the rightwing propaganda machine - because they begin by being predisposed to believe the lies that they like.
MAGAs literally despise and hate those of us they think of as "woke” because they see us as the agents of the changes they feel so threatened by.
They call us "libtards," "demorats" and "demonrats" because we are the ones supporting the move toward “diversity, inclusion, and equity” which to their way of thinking represents most of what has been going wrong with this country.
We think white privilege is a problem.
They think the problem is reverse racism - and they are the victims of it.
Likewise, when those on our side of the political fence see and treat LGBT people like normal worthwhile human beings, that is an affront to those on the other side of the fence, a challenge and an insult to the values they hold close.
What rightwing propaganda peddlers do is continually reinforce, strengthen and exploit the bigotry, racism, and aggressive animosity that is already out there with a relentless deluge of lies that help to rationalize it.
Excellent post. There was a terrific piece in the WP by Robert Kagan this weekend diving into the evolution of our current moment. You should certainly check it out if you haven't.
I mostly agree here with one important caveat. I think you cannot overstate the importance of Fox.
I was recently flipping through my kids history book and came to the section on the "Yellow Journalism Era". I find it profoundly funny that we still feel superior enough to comment on this period as if it was a huge aberration we must read about as a discreet historical era.
We're living through a yellow journalism era. Of course Fox only gave the people what they wanted but there was ALWAYS a market for insanity. It was a strong code of professional ethics and a national response to yellow journalism that kept the "manufactured consent" era.
I wonder if Chomsky has stopped to reflect of the fact that the manufactured consent was actually a good thing.
Bit by bit the strong sense of duty and professional ethics was lost. It was gate keeping that kept the media honest. Fox obliterated that. And the left has been furiously trying to create a leftist Fox ever since.
The average person hasn't read McCluen or Chomsky. They haven't read Lenin or Goebbels. They say they distrust the media. In fact they completely trust THEIR media and distrust media that doesn't affirm their beliefs.
This was always here. It wasn't a mind virus of the 1800s. People purposefully stopped doing that for the good of the state and society.
Fox broke that consensus. It has been a catastrophe.
Without trying to catalog all the reasons why Biden isn’t running away with the election — and the comments note many — I come back to the fact that Biden was and is a weak candidate. His Senate career was long yet not very notable. The same could be said of his time as VP (which is true of almost all VP’s). Coming into 2020, he was old, not very popular, not energetic and very much a career DC pol. His case for nomination seemed to boil down to “it’s his turn”, a rationale that echoed what many active Democratic felt about Hillary Clinton. Such sentiments may help with gaining the nomination but backfire badly in a general election.
Democrats have been associated with big government since Roosevelt. But the Democrats who have won the WH ever since all had personal qualities that cut through the usual associations. Truman won because he could run against the establishment. Kennedy was a complete departure from any previous candidate — young, a war hero, bright and forward-looking with a beautiful wife and children. While Johnson was the prototypical Washington pol, he ran in 1964 on a platform of continuing Kennedy’s legacy and had a string of legislative successes. Carter was the anti-DC candidate, a moralistic outsider running in the wake of Watergate against a weak Ford. Clinton was also an outsider, young, heavily credentialed with enormous energy who was a born retail politician. Finally Obama was young, black and sharp, new enough to project idealism with a non-threatening wonkishness.
Biden offers nothing new — he looks and acts like the DC insider that he was and is. There is nothing unique or special about him as a candidate. He’s not a truth teller like Sanders or anything like an outsider. His strongest characteristic in 2020 was not being Donald Trump. This remains the case, notwithstanding an exceptional record as president. Unfortunately, voters rarely reward competence — see, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, H.R. Clinton.
Sadly, if Biden wins, it will be because, once again, he was not Trump. There will be other forces at play that can help or hurt but, as a candidate, he remains mediocre. If he could harness his energy and go for broke on the campaign trail and in the debates (if they occur), Biden could show a new side to voters and make them less concerned about his age. His staff do not seem to have confidence in him to pull something like that off. I hope they change their minds — soon.
An equitable characterization of candidate Biden who displays a very pedestrian record. When behind a microphone and he talks about an uncle eaten by cannibals or reads exactly from the teleprompter - pause - he shoots himself in the foot and appears lost. The unregulated flood of people across our borders along with the prices people see when buying groceries will hurt him.
Not sure on your take about Biden and the 2020 election. The DNC., and the Dems in general wanted to win in 2020 badly, especially against Trump. So the Dems nominated a safe bet. A moderate, catholic, Washington pol who had been there forever and had a high public profile as Obama's VP. No socialists, no women, no populists need to apply. After 4 years of Trump and chaos, most of the country just wanted a return normalcy again, and uncle Joe fit that bill.
I think we (the voters) are just dumber than we used to be and cannot think clearly. Consider the number of people who watch professional wrestling and take it seriously. These people vote. Donald Trump is especially good at getting them to vote, and they vote for him. The talking heads on cable news have not helped.
There is also the problem that everything most politicians say is field tested before it is uttered (Trump is the exception; perhaps this is why so many of his supporters believe he is honest.) This means that real information is hard to find. Look at how popular the bulwark is. It should not even be necessary, much less popular.
I'm curious what JVL will think of your analogy, since I think he qualifies as a pro wrestling fan. He taught me what "kayfabe" means.
I am quite a lot older than JVL. I remember when pro wrestling was small time with overweight large men in front of a few people around the ring who apparently never understood that the soap in the bad guy's waist band would never be found and that the referee played the same role as the Generals did to the Harlem Globetrotters. It was really good opera and entertainment, but poor reality.
No one with any sense believed professional wrestling wasn't 100% scripted. It was obvious. Now we see literally thousands of people screaming at them from the stands. It has not only affected wrestling, but also politics and art. Our grasp of reality is being driven down by all of this.
I think voters were always pretty dumb (though we were less aware of their dumbness, because there was no social media giving dumb people free megaphones back in 1966 or 1976 or 1986).
"You wanna know how dumb Americans are? Think of how dumb the average America is, and then realize that half of all Americans are dumber than that." -- George Carlin
Great thought provoking article.
On a different subject - Congress - it looks like the Dems have a good chance of winning the house in November. The Senate doesn't look at all promising, but there are a some possibilities. 1- Florida, where Mucarsel-Powell is running well behind Scott and 2- Texas where Allred seems be picking up steam vs. Cruz.
Would be very interested in your thoughts re these or any other Competitive Senate possibilities.
"None of this happens overnight; it’s the work of a generation. If anything, I think the Biden Democrats have done a pretty good job of leaning into this diversity—both on policy and politics. That’s why we have Tester and Cooper, but also Fetterman and Warnock and Kelly. That’s why Democrats nominated Tim Ryan in Ohio in 2022 and, frankly, why they chose Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders in 2020."
I agree and I hope the Dems keep moving in this direction. However I'm a moderate squish so this aligns with my priors. I fear that there is a sizeable portion of the Democratic left that will NOT accept a moderate Biden coalition. They're every bit as strident and insistent on instant gratification wins as the MAGA right is. These people are also willing to vote against Dems to burn the corrupt middle down and cede (possibly permanently) power to the right out of spite for not getting their cake and being able to eat it too.
This worries me and is one of the reasons I think this system has become so balanced over the past generation. The Right can hold onto non- or soft authoritarians like Ross Douthat and Bill Barr because someone, somewhere was too fucking progressive and that's the entire Democratic Party's fault.
Did we hear about the effects of the 'massive economic prosperity' mentioned in Footnote #4?
"Further, I suspect that the parties are as much reflections of this reality as causes of it.3"
It's a positive feedback cycle where nearly step between the beginning and end is both a cause and an effect. This process has made politicians and voters alike have more extreme and like-minded than they were 40 years ago, and it's much more pronounced in the R party, where the extreme is AUTHORITARIAN, very different than the conservatism of 40, even 20 years ago. Voters keep choosing from among themselves, candidates with the more radical "solutions," who happen to be the ones most skilled in "sales pitches" (nothing sells better than painting the opponent as an "enemy"). They are also the least skilled at, or even interested in, SERVING the citizens and the Constitution. It becomes like a drug, for voters and the politicians, and particularly in the R party where authoritarianism is particularly attractive to the addicted. The more they have, the more they crave.
I appreciate the nod to Newt Gingrich, and while it's entirely sensible to attribute the sorting to larger, structural changes (Cold War, tech., etc.), I do think Gingrich directing an entire party and it's full media apparatus to refer to democrats as enemies, to continually say that democrats hate and are destroying America, to model that they should be treated beneath contempt, etc. - that to me is the defining factor explaining where we are today. People follow leaders. Republicans/Red America saw their politicians, radio and TV personalities, other local leaders, treat democrats as enemies for 30 years, so while it was shocking to then see republicans side with Putin over America, it should not have been surprising.
Yes, there are several reasons for why we are here now, but nothing (IMO) explains it more than an entire party deciding the whole of the other political party and its voters are their *enemies*, not just a competing political party. Everything flows from that.
Very true.
It's a large part of the "I know Trump is a corrupt, evil, treasonous moron but I'll vote for him anyway because Democrats are evildoers destroying America" mindset. It's what's behind the Supreme Court's concern that Trump's criminal charges are scary partisan attacks on a former president and not evidence that he committed the worst crimes against American democracy than any other president in history. They've all bought into the "Democrats evil" narrative that's been beamed into their brains for 40 years.
On the Democratic side, let me share my own perspective - Massachusetts, where I grew up, is known as a deep blue state but for most of my life, we had Republican governors. Good, competent, not crazy, popular governors. I also voted for Republicans for other offices over the years. But while the Republicans were learning to hate their fellow citizens and turning themselves into a party that deifies, justifies, cheers and supports the most vile human imaginable, I was learning that this party cannot be trusted with power and so I will never, ever, for any reason vote for a Republican again, even if I think they may be a better candidate. In my view, they've forfeited their right to power.
And here we are.
https://dianeravitch.net/2024/04/30/joel-why-does-the-media-lie-about-the-economy/ Cited Jonathon last!
I think it’s Congress that got us into this hellscape. Congress should never have gotten the federal governement involved in supporting political party processes.
We should not be funding primary elections
> We should have strict requirements for getting on the general election ballot
> Everyone who qualifies and so chooses should be on the ballot
> The political parties can restrict, if they choose, who can use their name
> Voting should be ranked-choice
We should not be providing security for political conventions. If political parties choose, as in my third point above, to select a candidate to endorse, the party can hold a convention or use any other means to make that choice. If the political convention becomes such a spectacle that it is dangerous then the convention should be reconsidered, refocused.
There are two reasons for our current system, and neither has anything to do with helping we the people make good choices for our representation.
1. To protect and support incumbents.
2. To make political consultants rich.
I think it’s funny that the example used to show voting for candidates of different parties because their values aligned is Nixon and Gore!
I would like to suggest that a factor in the emergence of political polarization has been the decline of local politics. Tip O’Neill famously said that “all politics is local.” In a sense that remains true, but local means by ideology today, not by issues. In Texas, where I live, the majority party in rural areas is trying to shut down their local schools and their voters blithely disregard this fact, so intent are they on ideology. I believe that reinvigorating local government requires allowing local governments mismanage their affairs to some extent so that their constituents will feel that they are truly empowered. It also requires reducing the size of school districts and other political entities so that individuals will feel that their views are influential.
Just a note in this last summer of the American republic, that while JVL is certainly correct that a landslide presidential election seems impossible today, if there is another one in 2028, the probability is it will be indeed a landslide — of Putinesque proprtions.
If you ever visit Germany, make the #1 site to see the museum at Dachau. And reflect that Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January (1933) and the first prisoners arrived in March.
He is losing support in his own party. The Bernie/Bros who were never happy they had to vote for him once, are now so mad about GAZA they may not vote for him. In fairness to the Bros, GAZA is revolting. This is the first war conducted in a slum where the residents can not escape. The results are disgusting. But Biden needs to explain the policy to the Bros and the rest of us. Perhaps the two decade problem of failing to deal with Iran is now more than Biden can shoulder. We are living in a time when resentments outway gratitude. Not an easy time to lead.
I agree. There is also the seemingly secretive manner in which U.S. military aid been given to Israel. The aid to Ukraine has been much more transparent to the public. Biden’s unwavering support of Israel, without accountability from the recalcitrant Netanyahu, has put President Biden at odds with not just the Progressives in the Democratic Party. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Tim Kaine have also expressed frustration about the free reign Netanyahu appears to enjoy. Bibi snubs his nose at Biden’s appeals because he knows he can. I am a life-long Democrat, and my husband and I always vote. We aren't necessarily satisfied with Biden but he will get our votes. In our minds, there is no choice. Biden is our last hope to save our democratic system. Yet, I do understand the frustration and disappointment by many, particularly younger voters who see the tragic conditions in Gaza. They may not vote ar all. It's the apathy that concerns me.
The fairest thing I can say about Biden that progressives don’t seem to get, is he can count votes. No one on earth could pass a progressive agenda with only 50 votes in the senate in his party-including some Democrats who are clearly not progressive. One weakness of Democrats is the somewhat socialist tendency to push a trend-EV’s and batteries-for example, before consumers had decided they would support it. Affordable housing-clearly in very short supply for many Democrats-while not sexy, might have been a way to go. Because the free market in Housing likes to build mansions for wealthy people.
Bill Barr claims: "The Socialist Communist Democratic Party is the biggest threat to the country." Why? The border (Republicans killed the bill). Regulations (apparently the government is taking our cars). Crime! (is down). Biden is a leftist (no, he's not).
Meanwhile, Democrats care about making sure our kids get to and from school without getting shot. Clean air and water. Bodily autonomy for women. Civil rights. Increased wages. Privacy. Ending the war in Ukraine. Education. Health care. Social Security for our parents.
See the problem?