This sounds pretty depressing to me, I am inclined to interpret this as "most voters do not have their own opinion, may not have the capacity to form their own opinion, and instead just tow the...
This sounds pretty depressing to me, I am inclined to interpret this as "most voters do not have their own opinion, may not have the capacity to form their own opinion, and instead just tow the party line in a tribalistic manner". Tribalism is part of the problem, no?
Related: I don't understand why everyone is so focused on ideology, or rather why political ideological divides are based on solutions. It seems to me that before you start throwing solutions around, you need to agree on the problems, and that once you have a measurable definition of a problem then you can evaluate different solutions and just choose the most effective solution without getting pissy 'cos "it goes against my ideology" -- what value does bringing a solution-set into your personal identity provide to anyone? I don't think it's controversial to say that homelessness is a problem and nobody should be homeless, so can't we look at different ways to solve that as a single policy issue and then just fix the fucking problem please?
I think it's more hopeful than that. It means the 'tribe' is stronger on some level than the 'issues'. While that seems like bad news, it goes both ways. The party group can shift opinions, it's...
I think it's more hopeful than that. It means the 'tribe' is stronger on some level than the 'issues'. While that seems like bad news, it goes both ways. The party group can shift opinions, it's just a question of what opinions they are shifting and in what direction. This can be used for good just as well as bad policy.
Because the tribalism gets so strong that members will work to deny reality to avoid agreeing there is a problem to be solved, or having to work together to solve it. I've had numerous people...
I don't think it's controversial to say that homelessness is a problem and nobody should be homeless, so can't we look at different ways to solve that as a single policy issue and then just fix the fucking problem please?
Because the tribalism gets so strong that members will work to deny reality to avoid agreeing there is a problem to be solved, or having to work together to solve it.
I've had numerous people (including many Democrats) that say that being homeless should be criminalized, because you should just go to prison instead, as your obviously a drain on society. As if that won't make the problem worse.
Both sides tell me not to be idealistic, that the world is mostly fine, and we shouldn't try radical solutions to what they see as minor problems.
Confirmation bias plays a strong role. Person in rural area sees someone on disability or welfare driving a nicer car? Well obviously all people getting assistance are worthless drains on society.
How powerful are political parties in shaping citizens' opinions? Despite long‐standing interest in the flow of influence between partisan elites and citizens, few studies to date examine how citizens react when their party changes its position on a major issue in the real world. We present a rare quasi‐experimental panel study of how citizens responded when their political party suddenly reversed its position on two major and salient welfare issues in Denmark. With a five‐wave panel survey collected just around these two events, we show that citizens' policy opinions changed immediately and substantially when their party switched its policy position—even when the new position went against citizens' previously held views. These findings advance the current, largely experimental literature on partisan elite influence.
@stu2b50 - I didn't take the time to properly respond to you yesterday about my truisms comment from the other thread. This is why I think that way. Political views are more fluid than we've expected.
@stu2b50 - I didn't take the time to properly respond to you yesterday about my truisms comment from the other thread. This is why I think that way. Political views are more fluid than we've expected.
While that makes sense as a reason to have a multi-party coalition government as the smaller parties can better support their own ideology without being swept as hard by the larger coalition's...
While that makes sense as a reason to have a multi-party coalition government as the smaller parties can better support their own ideology without being swept as hard by the larger coalition's party's (although, with something like Brexit, I find it hard to believe a similar phenomena does not happen when you are a minority party in a larger coalition that is going 100% on one issue like the Tories with Brexit), it doesn't really answer the other cruxes of the question, since the above cannot exist without a better voting system, and the problem of liquid partisan beliefs exists in multiparty systems anyway (the study was done in Denmark, after all)
Namely, if you perturb the two party political system, does it actually result in different parties, washed of establishment members and righteous in their fight? I find it more likely any significant perturbation is either mostly Republican or mostly Democrat, and it goes the way of the Progressive/Bull Moose Party in 1912 - first, it's full of establishment politicians from the party it split off of, and second, it cost the Republican party an election by splitting the vote nearly 50-50 and then gets slowly reabsorbed into the Republican party as the defeat kills enthusiasm. To be honest, the Progressive Party sounds exactly like what you were talking about.
Additionally, I am doubtful of any significant anger building now or in the future against mainstream party's that's going to manifest as anything, especially since if such a large movement were brewing, there would be far more, well, advocation for it - it's very difficult for an amorphous third party with a substantial enough voting bloc to just exist suddenly - there needs be organization, a figurehead to rally around, donations, etc. etc.
Realistically, a third party would have to start locally, spread to a state, then more states, then nationally. They've chosen to try with presidential campaigns first as an attention grab. First...
Realistically, a third party would have to start locally, spread to a state, then more states, then nationally. They've chosen to try with presidential campaigns first as an attention grab.
First you win individual local seats, then you build organization and party around that. Then you build a campaign for regional seats in on or more localities, then you try to have candidates in many then most states, then you go national.
That's how new parties almost invariably come about effectively most places in Europe that aren't strictly first-past-the-post.
The Libertarian and Green parties become more and more disregarded because they aren't getting anywhere by getting some hundred thousand votes, or a couple of million votes in presidential elections.
What they're doing is like a college tennis player trying not just to qualify for, but to win the US Open without ever having won a small, much less a middle-sized or large tennis tournament first. No-one takes that person or party seriously.
US politics is very dominated by the president and national politics, so building a national party is even harder because people don't care enough to know even the names of their local officials. Even though those officials can have a ton to say in the daily lives and development of their local areas.
Right, and that's at least theoretically possible, as can be seen by the success of a handful of independent congresspeople and local officials, although I doubt its something can reasonably scale...
Right, and that's at least theoretically possible, as can be seen by the success of a handful of independent congresspeople and local officials, although I doubt its something can reasonably scale in the US, since you are likely to be crushed by much bigger budgets from the two parties, but what Amarok was suggesting was that there was soon to be some kind of great awakening in the American people, voters from both parties will vote for third parties, Democrat and Republican parties alike will crumble and from their ashes come new parties which are freed from establishment control.
I'm just saying it can happen, and the angrier people get, the more likely that becomes. I'm not very keen on greens or libertarians. The greens barely seem like a party to me, and I'm kinda sick...
I'm just saying it can happen, and the angrier people get, the more likely that becomes.
I'm not very keen on greens or libertarians. The greens barely seem like a party to me, and I'm kinda sick of the anti-tax crazy from the libs. I think if this is to ever have a shot, it's got to be a new party, squeaky clean with no old baggage and old feuds. All it takes, now, is one billionaire to fund it too, thanks to changes to campaign spending.
You could very well be right, but we're never going to know if we don't try. It's crazy to expect republicans and democrats as institutions to last another hundred years, for example. They aren't...
You could very well be right, but we're never going to know if we don't try. It's crazy to expect republicans and democrats as institutions to last another hundred years, for example. They aren't eternal. They'll change and be replaced eventually. We're in a world now where social media can and has begun to take over debates from old media, and the Bulls didn't have it to help them organize. The right kind of viral activity could be quite a boon to a new party.
Old media hasn't got the control they once had, and what control they have is waning by the day. Newspapers and television news is on the way out, while long-form interviews on popular podcasts are on the rise. It's only a matter of time before someone starts holding serious debates in that format, outside of the control of the old guard. The questions that must not be asked, will be asked and answered.
I'd also make the case that no coalition could possibly end up worse than the polarization we suffer from at this moment. I think if that continues, the rifts in the current parties could become irreconcilable and result in these splits. That can give them a leg up, since you're defecting into the new group with plenty of existing expertise and existing politicians, effectively stealing portions of the party apparatus along with the people and politicians in that party.
A good sales pitch can go a long way - providing you've got that figurehead to make the pitch to their constituents. I see a lot of those truisms as being more... negotiable (reframable) than we give them credit for in polsci, especially when tensions are up and problems are making people nervous. In the US, we'd just be changing up the R and D for one or two new letters that are very similar to their parents, yet that upset could put many sacred cows back on the chopping block, or at least, guide them into a better, more modern incarnation.
The biggest roadblock is if this happens to one party, you'd expect the other (which hasn't split and hasn't got the level of disorganization that would cause) to simply landslide the election. Even so, if there are a lot of disillusioned voters in that other party, that split could go the other way very fast, more of a no-confidence vote in both older parties by people seizing on the first real alternative in generations. 'Let's give the new guys a shot' is a real possibility for people who are tired of the old guard - and for new voters who haven't seen anything worth voting for until it happens.
That would be true in a system that wasn't FPTP - but it's not. This isn't a zero cost exercise. When you look at the expected value, I can't imagine it being anything but negative. I think you're...
You could very well be right, but we're never going to know if we don't try.
That would be true in a system that wasn't FPTP - but it's not. This isn't a zero cost exercise. When you look at the expected value, I can't imagine it being anything but negative. I think you're being light on the consequences of simply letting the other party landslide. The Bull Moose party, however good in its intentions, set progressive politics back decades.
If you really want to make something like this work, you need enough conviction to look into a immigrant family's eyes and tell them "Hey, there's a high chance life will become significantly worse for you - you may even be deported. But we have a plan, and a amazing reward for success". To accept that there's a high chance you set what limited time we have left to solve global warming years behind, perhaps so far behind there's no coming back. Trans people, who are now the primary target of social conservatives now that gay marriage is too popular to focus on. Abortion rights?
No amount of "both sides"-ing it will end the reality that these are real issues, that the two parties have diametrically opposing visions, at least in the short term, that in the short term will effect swathes of people. Real people's lives.
And let's be honest, the Republican party, for all the fractures it has now, has a much stronger connection to each other by virtue of its immense strength in identity politics than the D coalition. They literally barely have any policy goals for the last 6 years or so, just held together, and evidently pretty strongly at that, by the (yes, fairly abhorrent) identity they represent.
It's almost certain that if it's over policy matters, like policy sacred cows that leaders refuse to hear, it'll be the Democrats fracturing, and the Republicans landsliding. I don't even think Republican voters have sacred cows anymore. If you look at all the issues the McCain and Romney were pushing in their platform, most of them have just vanished, hell, Trump casually favors high spending and federal control, not exactly pillars of conservatism, and the voters cheer.
As to whether the party's are eternal, on some level that's a Ship of Theseus question. The Republican and Democratic party's do not truly have ideological sacred cows that have lasted centuries. Really, on many issues they're already "new" - the post-Southern strategy versions of both parties are completely different from the ones prior to it.
But to be honest, I feel like this is mostly moot. Would I necessarily be opposed to voting for a third party that in one fell swoop completely absorbs the Democratic caucus? No. Do I think trying to do this is a good idea? Not really, unless there's some much stronger evidence that it's feasible in a way that doesn't set back my own policy beliefs decades. Do I think it's likely to happen (and thus worth arguing against according to the prior answer) in the next two cycles? Also no.
Like I have an extremely hard time believing the timeline you said earlier, namely that the movement would have enough members by Summer, I believe, when it doesn't have a name, a leader, and I've never heard of it other than other casual anti-establishment mutterings throughout the years.
I'm thinking of 2024, not this summer - though we're already hearing rumblings about new parties. See our latest contender, The People's Party, and you're right, it's progressive. By 2024, if the...
I'm thinking of 2024, not this summer - though we're already hearing rumblings about new parties. See our latest contender, The People's Party, and you're right, it's progressive. By 2024, if the democrats make a mess of things, we might see this start to take shape. If they do a good job this term, I'm much more skeptical about it. People need that reason to switch, and if dems are making good things happen, it's far less likely.
The conservatives aren't as bulletproof as you think. The right pitch can certainly peel off the libertarian wing of the RNC, and Yang already managed to prove they are willing to take a look at progressive politicians and donate tens of millions to them in large numbers - if the platform is pitched in libertarian-friendly language, like his was. They brought him money bombs, just like they did for Ron. He had them eating out of his hand with a highly progressive platform, and that surprised the hell out of me. Libertarians are extremely progressive on social issues, it's only when it's time to tax and spend that they get prickly.
I'm a little skeptical about the people's party, if only because it seems to have attracted quite a few prominent grifters. there's some good voices involves that will hopefully lead the way
I'm a little skeptical about the people's party, if only because it seems to have attracted quite a few prominent grifters. there's some good voices involves that will hopefully lead the way
I'm skeptical too, but they are off to a decent start. It's being pushed way too hard in the 'manosphere' right now, mainly by libertarians who defected into humanity forward for Yang, and to some...
I'm skeptical too, but they are off to a decent start. It's being pushed way too hard in the 'manosphere' right now, mainly by libertarians who defected into humanity forward for Yang, and to some extent in more progressive circles by the disillusioned Bernie bros. There are an awful lot of popular podcasters on board already.
This sounds pretty depressing to me, I am inclined to interpret this as "most voters do not have their own opinion, may not have the capacity to form their own opinion, and instead just tow the party line in a tribalistic manner". Tribalism is part of the problem, no?
Related: I don't understand why everyone is so focused on ideology, or rather why political ideological divides are based on solutions. It seems to me that before you start throwing solutions around, you need to agree on the problems, and that once you have a measurable definition of a problem then you can evaluate different solutions and just choose the most effective solution without getting pissy 'cos "it goes against my ideology" -- what value does bringing a solution-set into your personal identity provide to anyone? I don't think it's controversial to say that homelessness is a problem and nobody should be homeless, so can't we look at different ways to solve that as a single policy issue and then just fix the fucking problem please?
I think it's more hopeful than that. It means the 'tribe' is stronger on some level than the 'issues'. While that seems like bad news, it goes both ways. The party group can shift opinions, it's just a question of what opinions they are shifting and in what direction. This can be used for good just as well as bad policy.
Because the tribalism gets so strong that members will work to deny reality to avoid agreeing there is a problem to be solved, or having to work together to solve it.
I've had numerous people (including many Democrats) that say that being homeless should be criminalized, because you should just go to prison instead, as your obviously a drain on society. As if that won't make the problem worse.
Both sides tell me not to be idealistic, that the world is mostly fine, and we shouldn't try radical solutions to what they see as minor problems.
Confirmation bias plays a strong role. Person in rural area sees someone on disability or welfare driving a nicer car? Well obviously all people getting assistance are worthless drains on society.
Link to the study.
@stu2b50 - I didn't take the time to properly respond to you yesterday about my truisms comment from the other thread. This is why I think that way. Political views are more fluid than we've expected.
While that makes sense as a reason to have a multi-party coalition government as the smaller parties can better support their own ideology without being swept as hard by the larger coalition's party's (although, with something like Brexit, I find it hard to believe a similar phenomena does not happen when you are a minority party in a larger coalition that is going 100% on one issue like the Tories with Brexit), it doesn't really answer the other cruxes of the question, since the above cannot exist without a better voting system, and the problem of liquid partisan beliefs exists in multiparty systems anyway (the study was done in Denmark, after all)
Namely, if you perturb the two party political system, does it actually result in different parties, washed of establishment members and righteous in their fight? I find it more likely any significant perturbation is either mostly Republican or mostly Democrat, and it goes the way of the Progressive/Bull Moose Party in 1912 - first, it's full of establishment politicians from the party it split off of, and second, it cost the Republican party an election by splitting the vote nearly 50-50 and then gets slowly reabsorbed into the Republican party as the defeat kills enthusiasm. To be honest, the Progressive Party sounds exactly like what you were talking about.
Additionally, I am doubtful of any significant anger building now or in the future against mainstream party's that's going to manifest as anything, especially since if such a large movement were brewing, there would be far more, well, advocation for it - it's very difficult for an amorphous third party with a substantial enough voting bloc to just exist suddenly - there needs be organization, a figurehead to rally around, donations, etc. etc.
Realistically, a third party would have to start locally, spread to a state, then more states, then nationally. They've chosen to try with presidential campaigns first as an attention grab.
First you win individual local seats, then you build organization and party around that. Then you build a campaign for regional seats in on or more localities, then you try to have candidates in many then most states, then you go national.
That's how new parties almost invariably come about effectively most places in Europe that aren't strictly first-past-the-post.
The Libertarian and Green parties become more and more disregarded because they aren't getting anywhere by getting some hundred thousand votes, or a couple of million votes in presidential elections.
What they're doing is like a college tennis player trying not just to qualify for, but to win the US Open without ever having won a small, much less a middle-sized or large tennis tournament first. No-one takes that person or party seriously.
US politics is very dominated by the president and national politics, so building a national party is even harder because people don't care enough to know even the names of their local officials. Even though those officials can have a ton to say in the daily lives and development of their local areas.
Right, and that's at least theoretically possible, as can be seen by the success of a handful of independent congresspeople and local officials, although I doubt its something can reasonably scale in the US, since you are likely to be crushed by much bigger budgets from the two parties, but what Amarok was suggesting was that there was soon to be some kind of great awakening in the American people, voters from both parties will vote for third parties, Democrat and Republican parties alike will crumble and from their ashes come new parties which are freed from establishment control.
Which I just don't see happening.
I'm just saying it can happen, and the angrier people get, the more likely that becomes.
I'm not very keen on greens or libertarians. The greens barely seem like a party to me, and I'm kinda sick of the anti-tax crazy from the libs. I think if this is to ever have a shot, it's got to be a new party, squeaky clean with no old baggage and old feuds. All it takes, now, is one billionaire to fund it too, thanks to changes to campaign spending.
You could very well be right, but we're never going to know if we don't try. It's crazy to expect republicans and democrats as institutions to last another hundred years, for example. They aren't eternal. They'll change and be replaced eventually. We're in a world now where social media can and has begun to take over debates from old media, and the Bulls didn't have it to help them organize. The right kind of viral activity could be quite a boon to a new party.
Old media hasn't got the control they once had, and what control they have is waning by the day. Newspapers and television news is on the way out, while long-form interviews on popular podcasts are on the rise. It's only a matter of time before someone starts holding serious debates in that format, outside of the control of the old guard. The questions that must not be asked, will be asked and answered.
I'd also make the case that no coalition could possibly end up worse than the polarization we suffer from at this moment. I think if that continues, the rifts in the current parties could become irreconcilable and result in these splits. That can give them a leg up, since you're defecting into the new group with plenty of existing expertise and existing politicians, effectively stealing portions of the party apparatus along with the people and politicians in that party.
A good sales pitch can go a long way - providing you've got that figurehead to make the pitch to their constituents. I see a lot of those truisms as being more... negotiable (reframable) than we give them credit for in polsci, especially when tensions are up and problems are making people nervous. In the US, we'd just be changing up the R and D for one or two new letters that are very similar to their parents, yet that upset could put many sacred cows back on the chopping block, or at least, guide them into a better, more modern incarnation.
The biggest roadblock is if this happens to one party, you'd expect the other (which hasn't split and hasn't got the level of disorganization that would cause) to simply landslide the election. Even so, if there are a lot of disillusioned voters in that other party, that split could go the other way very fast, more of a no-confidence vote in both older parties by people seizing on the first real alternative in generations. 'Let's give the new guys a shot' is a real possibility for people who are tired of the old guard - and for new voters who haven't seen anything worth voting for until it happens.
That would be true in a system that wasn't FPTP - but it's not. This isn't a zero cost exercise. When you look at the expected value, I can't imagine it being anything but negative. I think you're being light on the consequences of simply letting the other party landslide. The Bull Moose party, however good in its intentions, set progressive politics back decades.
If you really want to make something like this work, you need enough conviction to look into a immigrant family's eyes and tell them "Hey, there's a high chance life will become significantly worse for you - you may even be deported. But we have a plan, and a amazing reward for success". To accept that there's a high chance you set what limited time we have left to solve global warming years behind, perhaps so far behind there's no coming back. Trans people, who are now the primary target of social conservatives now that gay marriage is too popular to focus on. Abortion rights?
No amount of "both sides"-ing it will end the reality that these are real issues, that the two parties have diametrically opposing visions, at least in the short term, that in the short term will effect swathes of people. Real people's lives.
And let's be honest, the Republican party, for all the fractures it has now, has a much stronger connection to each other by virtue of its immense strength in identity politics than the D coalition. They literally barely have any policy goals for the last 6 years or so, just held together, and evidently pretty strongly at that, by the (yes, fairly abhorrent) identity they represent.
It's almost certain that if it's over policy matters, like policy sacred cows that leaders refuse to hear, it'll be the Democrats fracturing, and the Republicans landsliding. I don't even think Republican voters have sacred cows anymore. If you look at all the issues the McCain and Romney were pushing in their platform, most of them have just vanished, hell, Trump casually favors high spending and federal control, not exactly pillars of conservatism, and the voters cheer.
As to whether the party's are eternal, on some level that's a Ship of Theseus question. The Republican and Democratic party's do not truly have ideological sacred cows that have lasted centuries. Really, on many issues they're already "new" - the post-Southern strategy versions of both parties are completely different from the ones prior to it.
But to be honest, I feel like this is mostly moot. Would I necessarily be opposed to voting for a third party that in one fell swoop completely absorbs the Democratic caucus? No. Do I think trying to do this is a good idea? Not really, unless there's some much stronger evidence that it's feasible in a way that doesn't set back my own policy beliefs decades. Do I think it's likely to happen (and thus worth arguing against according to the prior answer) in the next two cycles? Also no.
Like I have an extremely hard time believing the timeline you said earlier, namely that the movement would have enough members by Summer, I believe, when it doesn't have a name, a leader, and I've never heard of it other than other casual anti-establishment mutterings throughout the years.
I'm thinking of 2024, not this summer - though we're already hearing rumblings about new parties. See our latest contender, The People's Party, and you're right, it's progressive. By 2024, if the democrats make a mess of things, we might see this start to take shape. If they do a good job this term, I'm much more skeptical about it. People need that reason to switch, and if dems are making good things happen, it's far less likely.
The conservatives aren't as bulletproof as you think. The right pitch can certainly peel off the libertarian wing of the RNC, and Yang already managed to prove they are willing to take a look at progressive politicians and donate tens of millions to them in large numbers - if the platform is pitched in libertarian-friendly language, like his was. They brought him money bombs, just like they did for Ron. He had them eating out of his hand with a highly progressive platform, and that surprised the hell out of me. Libertarians are extremely progressive on social issues, it's only when it's time to tax and spend that they get prickly.
I'm a little skeptical about the people's party, if only because it seems to have attracted quite a few prominent grifters. there's some good voices involves that will hopefully lead the way
I'm skeptical too, but they are off to a decent start. It's being pushed way too hard in the 'manosphere' right now, mainly by libertarians who defected into humanity forward for Yang, and to some extent in more progressive circles by the disillusioned Bernie bros. There are an awful lot of popular podcasters on board already.