For a reminder of where Democrats compromising has gotten us so far: Democrats in the 90s were talking a bunch about single-payer healthcare Republicans realized they needed a policy proposal that...
For a reminder of where Democrats compromising has gotten us so far:
Democrats in the 90s were talking a bunch about single-payer healthcare
Republicans realized they needed a policy proposal that could be an alternative, so the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, came up with a proposal.
Heritage's proposal was implemented in a state liberal enough to accept healthcare reform (Massachusetts) but with a Republican governor (Mitt Romney) so he implemented Heritage's idea
Obamacare's key provisions - the three-legged stool that a) everyone has to buy health insurance; b) health insurance can't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and other bullshit reasons; c) if you're poor the government will subsidize you buying private health insurance - are directly descended from the Heritage Foundation's proposal
So Democrats compromise with Republicans, then Republicans shift farther to the right and start claiming what started out as a compromise they agreed to is a communo-socialist-unamerican plan to burn down the Statue of Liberty.
You can tell the same story about the Earned Income Tax Credit - originally a conservative alternative to the universal basic income proposals of the 70s, championed by Milton Friedman and signed into law by Reagan. A generation later the Republican position has become cutting or eliminating it and the Democratic compromise is simply defending the status quo.
No, it's pretty simple. If you have a negotiation table, and you have one group willing to compromise (A), and another group that absolutely will not (B), eventually they reach a state where A...
No, it's pretty simple.
If you have a negotiation table, and you have one group willing to compromise (A), and another group that absolutely will not (B), eventually they reach a state where A either has to stop compromising (At which point complaints will be heard), or B will get their way.
From what I've been told of the Democrats, they try and play fair and seek a compromise. Filibustering, for example, isn't 'fair', so they don't tend to use it. Whereas the Republicans are absolutely willing to fight tooth-and-nail against a proposal that isn't 100% of what they want. This inherently leads to an imbalance of power. How else can it be?
The answer(s) to that could probably fill several Master's theses in PoliSci / history... One aspect of it is Democrats have up until now had a self-image that they're the reasonable ones, the...
The answer(s) to that could probably fill several Master's theses in PoliSci / history...
One aspect of it is Democrats have up until now had a self-image that they're the reasonable ones, the adults in the room, trying to preserve bipartisan compromise while (in their perception) the Republicans run amok.
So moderate / mainstream Democrats, which still exist, try to compromise in the direction of Republicans, but there's many fewer moderate / mainstream Republicans left, and they know that they're likely to face a primary challenge and get branded as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) if they compromise by giving in to a Democratic position.
All compromise, by its nature, leaves people on both ends feeling that their views have been inadequately addressed. If you were to talk to someone from the right, they might reasonably see it as...
All compromise, by its nature, leaves people on both ends feeling that their views have been inadequately addressed. If you were to talk to someone from the right, they might reasonably see it as though "all compromises seem to favor the left." Because when compromise happens, both sides are giving a bit and losing a bit in order to achieve a shared end.
You're necessarily limiting yourself to "major." And how far back do you want to go? The fact is that only under the Clinton and Bush administrations was there a meaningful shift in the make up of...
You're necessarily limiting yourself to "major." And how far back do you want to go? The fact is that only under the Clinton and Bush administrations was there a meaningful shift in the make up of the legislature from being overwhelmingly Democratic (or dem by slim margins) to being solidly Republican.
Republicans don't have a lot of experience leading the legislature. Even still, you did see a fair bit of compromise and major Republican proposals that were changed by Democratic input. Though its derided now, the "No Child Left Behind" policy was born from a rather bipartisan effort to address problems in education. NAFTA was a bi-partisan effort, negotiated under a republican president and pushed to be passed under a Democrat. Do you think that with both parties involved in both major legislative moments that there was no compromise between the two parties?
It's easy to forget that CHIP was a bipartisan effort, as were changes to adoption laws that made it easier for children with special needs to get adopted by loving families. Are these "major legislative efforts"? Do they not matter to many, many lives?
I agree with how we got to here, but I think it's a real shit situation to be in. We'd all be better off if both sides could compromise on a regular basis.
I agree with how we got to here, but I think it's a real shit situation to be in. We'd all be better off if both sides could compromise on a regular basis.
I think this is the problem, Democrats compromise with the wrong people. We shouldn't be going after the right, we should be working harder to get those who don't vote at ALL, imo. Democrats and...
I think this is the problem, Democrats compromise with the wrong people. We shouldn't be going after the right, we should be working harder to get those who don't vote at ALL, imo.
Democrats and their lust for destroying or otherwise marginalizing anyone to the left of them has put folks off for decades now imo.
I am all about compromise, but I must admit that I feel like the US policy of “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” should be applied to dealing with the GOP. While this may sound hyperbolic, I do...
I am all about compromise, but I must admit that I feel like the US policy of “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” should be applied to dealing with the GOP. While this may sound hyperbolic, I do stand by the principle. You can’t have a rational conversation with a crazy person, and sadly, the modern GOP is crazy (irrational.) I really wish there were two rational parties at the table, as normal conservatives used to have a valid POV, but that is just not the case anymore, in most cases.
I'll bite, what are some specific examples of Democrats failing to compromise that hurt the country? Not a big fan of the 'both sides' rhetoric when it seems like a problem very particular to one...
I'll bite, what are some specific examples of Democrats failing to compromise that hurt the country? Not a big fan of the 'both sides' rhetoric when it seems like a problem very particular to one side.
I feel like I didn't get my point across well here - I'm not saying "both sides are equally at fault" here. Rather, I'm imagining a situation where the Democrats remain largely where they were a...
I feel like I didn't get my point across well here - I'm not saying "both sides are equally at fault" here. Rather, I'm imagining a situation where the Democrats remain largely where they were a couple years ago w.r.t. compromise but Republicans move more towards compromise as well.
Ah, okay, I see what you're saying. That sentence can be interpreted in a couple of ways and I think I was doing it in a different one than you intended. Still, I'm not sure I buy the premise of...
Ah, okay, I see what you're saying. That sentence can be interpreted in a couple of ways and I think I was doing it in a different one than you intended.
Still, I'm not sure I buy the premise of the article that Democrats don't care about compromise any more. It's just that the kowtowing-for-compromise sort of strategy that the party's favored for the past few decades is going out of style in the face of at least as many decades of bad faith politics from the GOP.
Compromise on what though? People keep repeating these appeals to reason and compromise but nobody seems to ever state what actual compromise that was beneficial was discarded out of political...
Compromise on what though? People keep repeating these appeals to reason and compromise but nobody seems to ever state what actual compromise that was beneficial was discarded out of political spite. It's easy to just blanket demand your political party be nice and compromise to get things done but you can't just repeat that until it becomes reality, that's not how politics works.
Here's an easy example: we could actually try to find judges everyone could somewhat agree on. Instead it's all about finding the most ideologically extreme people you can shove through the...
Here's an easy example: we could actually try to find judges everyone could somewhat agree on. Instead it's all about finding the most ideologically extreme people you can shove through the process.
I despair a bit because compromise here would mean having to cede ground when you're in power and this seems very unlikely to happen anytime soon. You have to actively want to "lose" a little by nominating judges who might not rule in your favor - in exchange for the other side agreeing to "lose" as well, next time they are in power. But people nowadays aren't going to do that because how do you know that ceding ground now means someone will cede it later?
Sorry, but this is super naive. We already tried this, and it didn't fucking work. In 2010, Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, said there was "no question" an appeals court judge named Merrick...
Here's an easy example: we could actually try to find judges everyone could somewhat agree on.
Sorry, but this is super naive. We already tried this, and it didn't fucking work.
In 2010, Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, said there was "no question" an appeals court judge named Merrick Garland would be confirmed by the Senate with bipartisan support, if he were nominated to the Supreme Court.
Then in 2016, Scalia dies, and Obama nominates Merrick Garland to take his place. He doesn't even get a hearing.
Did I say it was going to work? I said I was despairing that it might never work. I truly don't appreciate being called "naive" when I was talking about how hard it would be for compromise to ever...
Sorry, but this is super naive.
Did I say it was going to work? I said I was despairing that it might never work.
I truly don't appreciate being called "naive" when I was talking about how hard it would be for compromise to ever return to our politics.
You're saying compromise is hard, but it's worth doing. I'm saying compromise is not worth doing, at any difficulty setting, in the current political climate. You also seem to be talking about...
You're saying compromise is hard, but it's worth doing. I'm saying compromise is not worth doing, at any difficulty setting, in the current political climate.
You also seem to be talking about compromise as a goal on its own. I disagree, and that's what I think is naive. Compromise is not a goal. Governing is the goal. Improving people's lives by solving collective action problems is the goal. The structure of the US political system means we are more or less forced to have two parties, and one of those parties is not interested in governing. Compromise is useful when it furthers the goal of governing. When one party is not interested in governing, compromising with them will not be productive.
Other countries have parliamentary systems. You get 51% of seats in Parliament, you form a government, and then you know what you do? You implement your agenda and tell the opposition party to fuck off. You don't need to compromise with them. If you only get 40% of the seats, you form a coalition government with another party that has 15% or whatever. You compromise with them to form the coalition, but once you do that you start fucking governing. And it's probably not a coincidence that the US is a perpetual political shitshow compared to the rest of the developed world which mostly has parliamentary systems.
I mostly agree with you, and would prefer a parliamentary system, but don't oversell them. If a coalition fails to be established, they can experience just as much gridlock as Congress, just look...
I mostly agree with you, and would prefer a parliamentary system, but don't oversell them. If a coalition fails to be established, they can experience just as much gridlock as Congress, just look at the time Belgium went without a government for two years.
EDIT: And they can get gummed up really badly by parties that refuse to participate in coalitions. That's actually what caused the fall of many parliamentary democracies in the 20's and 30's. In Germany, the Communists and the Nazis both refused to participate in government unless they were the sole party in power. Since those two parties held between them a majority of the seats by 1933, it was impossible for the remaining parties to build a coalition, and the rest is history.
Isn't it also the case that Republicans today are not really the same Republican party of the early 1990s? Considering that the party practically forced Romney to give up talking about...
Isn't it also the case that Republicans today are not really the same Republican party of the early 1990s? Considering that the party practically forced Romney to give up talking about Massachusetts' healthcare reform as a good thing, that does seem to be a necessary part of what we're talking about.
The fact is that Democrats brought forward the "compromise" of healthcare in the ACA without really talking to Republicans. The thinking was that Republicans weren't interested in helping make the law, which was reinforced by their later not helping make the law. You can't call something a "compromise" when it doesn't include the lawmakers there at the time and still call it a compromise. That's you making all the changes yourself and saying "WHY DON'T YOU AGREE WITH ME? I COMPROMISED WITH WHAT I THOUGHT YOU WANTED."
A handful of Republicans wanted to be actually included in the lawmaking process. Many more saw it as an electoral strategy to oppose it out of hand, regardless of what it was. Putting forward a law that could be seen as an ideological compromise, even though it wasn't an in-fact compromise at all, was a Democratic strategy to expose the Republican electoral strategy of "just saying no." It also happened to be the approach that could keep the notoriously ideologically broad Democratic base reasonably united, which was absolutely necessary to pass the bill in the Senate over Republican filibuster (at least, this was the thinking before Ted died).
It's an interesting article but the title is misleading. I feel like it glosses over an important fact: that policy compromises require policy details. The article mentions how policy detail is...
It's an interesting article but the title is misleading. I feel like it glosses over an important fact: that policy compromises require policy details. The article mentions how policy detail is dry, boring, and difficult to explain. It also mentions the consistent lack of policy detailing from republicans. You can't compromise if you have no actual plan. Republican (Trump) plans lack any fleshing out, there is no thought to feasibility or execution. The article gives this as a reason Trump flourished in the republican primaries, which is not a bad take on it. Within the democratic primary, there was actual debate on policy because the respective sides had ideas and brought them to the table.
Furthermore, whenever the democrats do compromise, the compromise get treated as the new radical left, dragging discourse further rightward. Time and time again the republicans operate in bad faith. Now, we've reached a point where a significant portion of the country will accept no compromise short of actual crimes against humanity. We have literal, actual nazi's rallying in the streets; we have an administration that at best was infiltrated by several foreign operatives and at worst was actively conspiring to corrupt the election; we have thousands of deaths in Puerto Rico due to complete apathy and negligence, possibly even malice; we have multiple federal agencies (FCC, EPA), acting in the exact opposite of the purpose of their existences; we see nothing but hypocrisy and broken promises. I could go on, but If that's not enough of a reason to refuse to compromise, then I doubt much else would sway someone.
Interestingly, when I saw this article earlier today it was named something similar to the URL:
It's an interesting article but the title is misleading. I feel like it glosses over an important fact: that policy compromises require policy details.
Interestingly, when I saw this article earlier today it was named something similar to the URL:
Forget details, politics today are all about big ideas
If only one side of a duopoly practices compromise, isn't it only logical that they will become less likely to compromise? This is like the Prisoner's Dilema in game theory.
If only one side of a duopoly practices compromise, isn't it only logical that they will become less likely to compromise? This is like the Prisoner's Dilema in game theory.
Not coincidentally, in a game of iterated prisoner's dilemma, one of the best strategies is to assume good intentions in the first round, and then just copy whatever move the opponent last made....
Not coincidentally, in a game of iterated prisoner's dilemma, one of the best strategies is to assume good intentions in the first round, and then just copy whatever move the opponent last made. Refusing to compromise with Republicans as often brings the Democrats more in line with this strategy.
Of course, at this point it's like deciding that maybe we should betray after the last few thousand cooperates were met with betrayals, but it's better than nothing.
Related: Nicky Case's "The Evolution of Trust" goes through several different examples of iterated prisoner's dilemma using different strategies and variables. IIRC, the copycat with some...
Related: Nicky Case's "The Evolution of Trust" goes through several different examples of iterated prisoner's dilemma using different strategies and variables. IIRC, the copycat with some forgiveness for mistakes was the best strategy in most circumstances. However, it doesn't work when most of the others will never cooperate.
True, but when we're talking about actual humans (or at least congress critters), strategies can be adjusted on the fly. So say the GOP becomes irrelevant after the mother of all blue waves sweeps...
True, but when we're talking about actual humans (or at least congress critters), strategies can be adjusted on the fly. So say the GOP becomes irrelevant after the mother of all blue waves sweeps a democratic trifecta into power. They may decide that, rather than the usual changing the electorate to match their agenda, the time has come to change their agenda to match the desires of the electorate, producing a party that is capable of cooperation.
That was purely a hypothetical, I more or less share your views. If anything, I wish I shared your optimism. With the GOP ramping up their incessant battle against democracy, and Russian...
That was purely a hypothetical, I more or less share your views. If anything, I wish I shared your optimism. With the GOP ramping up their incessant battle against democracy, and Russian interference still on the table, I can only hope that the party collapses before the country does. I'm worried that if we don't fix things by 2020, they might not be fixable.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi recently agreed to fast track a bunch of judicial nominations. Had they not done that Kavanaugh's appointment could have been delayed. While potential 2020...
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi recently agreed to fast track a bunch of judicial nominations. Had they not done that Kavanaugh's appointment could have been delayed.
While potential 2020 candidates are starting to copy Bernie's message (though IMO not in earnest), the rest of the Democratic party continues to be a wet noodle.
For a reminder of where Democrats compromising has gotten us so far:
Democrats in the 90s were talking a bunch about single-payer healthcare
Republicans realized they needed a policy proposal that could be an alternative, so the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, came up with a proposal.
Heritage's proposal was implemented in a state liberal enough to accept healthcare reform (Massachusetts) but with a Republican governor (Mitt Romney) so he implemented Heritage's idea
Obamacare's key provisions - the three-legged stool that a) everyone has to buy health insurance; b) health insurance can't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and other bullshit reasons; c) if you're poor the government will subsidize you buying private health insurance - are directly descended from the Heritage Foundation's proposal
So Democrats compromise with Republicans, then Republicans shift farther to the right and start claiming what started out as a compromise they agreed to is a communo-socialist-unamerican plan to burn down the Statue of Liberty.
You can tell the same story about the Earned Income Tax Credit - originally a conservative alternative to the universal basic income proposals of the 70s, championed by Milton Friedman and signed into law by Reagan. A generation later the Republican position has become cutting or eliminating it and the Democratic compromise is simply defending the status quo.
Why do the compromises seem to favor the right? Do they have more money? More people?
No, it's pretty simple.
If you have a negotiation table, and you have one group willing to compromise (A), and another group that absolutely will not (B), eventually they reach a state where A either has to stop compromising (At which point complaints will be heard), or B will get their way.
From what I've been told of the Democrats, they try and play fair and seek a compromise. Filibustering, for example, isn't 'fair', so they don't tend to use it. Whereas the Republicans are absolutely willing to fight tooth-and-nail against a proposal that isn't 100% of what they want. This inherently leads to an imbalance of power. How else can it be?
The answer(s) to that could probably fill several Master's theses in PoliSci / history...
One aspect of it is Democrats have up until now had a self-image that they're the reasonable ones, the adults in the room, trying to preserve bipartisan compromise while (in their perception) the Republicans run amok.
So moderate / mainstream Democrats, which still exist, try to compromise in the direction of Republicans, but there's many fewer moderate / mainstream Republicans left, and they know that they're likely to face a primary challenge and get branded as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) if they compromise by giving in to a Democratic position.
Compromises usually favor conserving the status quo since that's easier and people fear change.
They do have more money and their platforms tend to appeal to people's fears of losing what they already have under the status quo.
All compromise, by its nature, leaves people on both ends feeling that their views have been inadequately addressed. If you were to talk to someone from the right, they might reasonably see it as though "all compromises seem to favor the left." Because when compromise happens, both sides are giving a bit and losing a bit in order to achieve a shared end.
You're necessarily limiting yourself to "major." And how far back do you want to go? The fact is that only under the Clinton and Bush administrations was there a meaningful shift in the make up of the legislature from being overwhelmingly Democratic (or dem by slim margins) to being solidly Republican.
Republicans don't have a lot of experience leading the legislature. Even still, you did see a fair bit of compromise and major Republican proposals that were changed by Democratic input. Though its derided now, the "No Child Left Behind" policy was born from a rather bipartisan effort to address problems in education. NAFTA was a bi-partisan effort, negotiated under a republican president and pushed to be passed under a Democrat. Do you think that with both parties involved in both major legislative moments that there was no compromise between the two parties?
It's easy to forget that CHIP was a bipartisan effort, as were changes to adoption laws that made it easier for children with special needs to get adopted by loving families. Are these "major legislative efforts"? Do they not matter to many, many lives?
I agree with how we got to here, but I think it's a real shit situation to be in. We'd all be better off if both sides could compromise on a regular basis.
Why should we compromise with theocrats and fascists?
I think this is the problem, Democrats compromise with the wrong people. We shouldn't be going after the right, we should be working harder to get those who don't vote at ALL, imo.
Democrats and their lust for destroying or otherwise marginalizing anyone to the left of them has put folks off for decades now imo.
I am all about compromise, but I must admit that I feel like the US policy of “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” should be applied to dealing with the GOP. While this may sound hyperbolic, I do stand by the principle. You can’t have a rational conversation with a crazy person, and sadly, the modern GOP is crazy (irrational.) I really wish there were two rational parties at the table, as normal conservatives used to have a valid POV, but that is just not the case anymore, in most cases.
I'll bite, what are some specific examples of Democrats failing to compromise that hurt the country? Not a big fan of the 'both sides' rhetoric when it seems like a problem very particular to one side.
I feel like I didn't get my point across well here - I'm not saying "both sides are equally at fault" here. Rather, I'm imagining a situation where the Democrats remain largely where they were a couple years ago w.r.t. compromise but Republicans move more towards compromise as well.
It's unrealistic but a person can dream, no?
Ah, okay, I see what you're saying. That sentence can be interpreted in a couple of ways and I think I was doing it in a different one than you intended.
Still, I'm not sure I buy the premise of the article that Democrats don't care about compromise any more. It's just that the kowtowing-for-compromise sort of strategy that the party's favored for the past few decades is going out of style in the face of at least as many decades of bad faith politics from the GOP.
Eh, the obvious one would be something like the ACA, absolutely full of compromise.
I said:
I think for the longest time their biggest failure as a party was being addicted to compromise, and the ACA embodies that.
Okay, I read that wrong. I was thinking you were looking for examples of their failures caused through compromise.
Agreed.
That's a really interesting perspective I'd never thought about before, and it gives me a bit of hope. Thanks!
Compromise on what though? People keep repeating these appeals to reason and compromise but nobody seems to ever state what actual compromise that was beneficial was discarded out of political spite. It's easy to just blanket demand your political party be nice and compromise to get things done but you can't just repeat that until it becomes reality, that's not how politics works.
Here's an easy example: we could actually try to find judges everyone could somewhat agree on. Instead it's all about finding the most ideologically extreme people you can shove through the process.
I despair a bit because compromise here would mean having to cede ground when you're in power and this seems very unlikely to happen anytime soon. You have to actively want to "lose" a little by nominating judges who might not rule in your favor - in exchange for the other side agreeing to "lose" as well, next time they are in power. But people nowadays aren't going to do that because how do you know that ceding ground now means someone will cede it later?
Sorry, but this is super naive. We already tried this, and it didn't fucking work.
In 2010, Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, said there was "no question" an appeals court judge named Merrick Garland would be confirmed by the Senate with bipartisan support, if he were nominated to the Supreme Court.
Then in 2016, Scalia dies, and Obama nominates Merrick Garland to take his place. He doesn't even get a hearing.
Did I say it was going to work? I said I was despairing that it might never work.
I truly don't appreciate being called "naive" when I was talking about how hard it would be for compromise to ever return to our politics.
You're saying compromise is hard, but it's worth doing. I'm saying compromise is not worth doing, at any difficulty setting, in the current political climate.
You also seem to be talking about compromise as a goal on its own. I disagree, and that's what I think is naive. Compromise is not a goal. Governing is the goal. Improving people's lives by solving collective action problems is the goal. The structure of the US political system means we are more or less forced to have two parties, and one of those parties is not interested in governing. Compromise is useful when it furthers the goal of governing. When one party is not interested in governing, compromising with them will not be productive.
Other countries have parliamentary systems. You get 51% of seats in Parliament, you form a government, and then you know what you do? You implement your agenda and tell the opposition party to fuck off. You don't need to compromise with them. If you only get 40% of the seats, you form a coalition government with another party that has 15% or whatever. You compromise with them to form the coalition, but once you do that you start fucking governing. And it's probably not a coincidence that the US is a perpetual political shitshow compared to the rest of the developed world which mostly has parliamentary systems.
I mostly agree with you, and would prefer a parliamentary system, but don't oversell them. If a coalition fails to be established, they can experience just as much gridlock as Congress, just look at the time Belgium went without a government for two years.
EDIT: And they can get gummed up really badly by parties that refuse to participate in coalitions. That's actually what caused the fall of many parliamentary democracies in the 20's and 30's. In Germany, the Communists and the Nazis both refused to participate in government unless they were the sole party in power. Since those two parties held between them a majority of the seats by 1933, it was impossible for the remaining parties to build a coalition, and the rest is history.
I'd be curious to know how you compromise with a position like "You are a literal demon running interference for a cabal of secret pedovores."
Isn't it also the case that Republicans today are not really the same Republican party of the early 1990s? Considering that the party practically forced Romney to give up talking about Massachusetts' healthcare reform as a good thing, that does seem to be a necessary part of what we're talking about.
The fact is that Democrats brought forward the "compromise" of healthcare in the ACA without really talking to Republicans. The thinking was that Republicans weren't interested in helping make the law, which was reinforced by their later not helping make the law. You can't call something a "compromise" when it doesn't include the lawmakers there at the time and still call it a compromise. That's you making all the changes yourself and saying "WHY DON'T YOU AGREE WITH ME? I COMPROMISED WITH WHAT I THOUGHT YOU WANTED."
A handful of Republicans wanted to be actually included in the lawmaking process. Many more saw it as an electoral strategy to oppose it out of hand, regardless of what it was. Putting forward a law that could be seen as an ideological compromise, even though it wasn't an in-fact compromise at all, was a Democratic strategy to expose the Republican electoral strategy of "just saying no." It also happened to be the approach that could keep the notoriously ideologically broad Democratic base reasonably united, which was absolutely necessary to pass the bill in the Senate over Republican filibuster (at least, this was the thinking before Ted died).
Weren't UBIs themselves a conservative proposal to begin with? Supposedly Nixon pushed a sort of UBI back in the day called FAP (heh).
It's an interesting article but the title is misleading. I feel like it glosses over an important fact: that policy compromises require policy details. The article mentions how policy detail is dry, boring, and difficult to explain. It also mentions the consistent lack of policy detailing from republicans. You can't compromise if you have no actual plan. Republican (Trump) plans lack any fleshing out, there is no thought to feasibility or execution. The article gives this as a reason Trump flourished in the republican primaries, which is not a bad take on it. Within the democratic primary, there was actual debate on policy because the respective sides had ideas and brought them to the table.
Furthermore, whenever the democrats do compromise, the compromise get treated as the new radical left, dragging discourse further rightward. Time and time again the republicans operate in bad faith. Now, we've reached a point where a significant portion of the country will accept no compromise short of actual crimes against humanity. We have literal, actual nazi's rallying in the streets; we have an administration that at best was infiltrated by several foreign operatives and at worst was actively conspiring to corrupt the election; we have thousands of deaths in Puerto Rico due to complete apathy and negligence, possibly even malice; we have multiple federal agencies (FCC, EPA), acting in the exact opposite of the purpose of their existences; we see nothing but hypocrisy and broken promises. I could go on, but If that's not enough of a reason to refuse to compromise, then I doubt much else would sway someone.
Interestingly, when I saw this article earlier today it was named something similar to the URL:
If only one side of a duopoly practices compromise, isn't it only logical that they will become less likely to compromise? This is like the Prisoner's Dilema in game theory.
Not coincidentally, in a game of iterated prisoner's dilemma, one of the best strategies is to assume good intentions in the first round, and then just copy whatever move the opponent last made. Refusing to compromise with Republicans as often brings the Democrats more in line with this strategy.
Of course, at this point it's like deciding that maybe we should betray after the last few thousand cooperates were met with betrayals, but it's better than nothing.
Related: Nicky Case's "The Evolution of Trust" goes through several different examples of iterated prisoner's dilemma using different strategies and variables. IIRC, the copycat with some forgiveness for mistakes was the best strategy in most circumstances. However, it doesn't work when most of the others will never cooperate.
True, but when we're talking about actual humans (or at least congress critters), strategies can be adjusted on the fly. So say the GOP becomes irrelevant after the mother of all blue waves sweeps a democratic trifecta into power. They may decide that, rather than the usual changing the electorate to match their agenda, the time has come to change their agenda to match the desires of the electorate, producing a party that is capable of cooperation.
That was purely a hypothetical, I more or less share your views. If anything, I wish I shared your optimism. With the GOP ramping up their incessant battle against democracy, and Russian interference still on the table, I can only hope that the party collapses before the country does. I'm worried that if we don't fix things by 2020, they might not be fixable.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi recently agreed to fast track a bunch of judicial nominations. Had they not done that Kavanaugh's appointment could have been delayed.
While potential 2020 candidates are starting to copy Bernie's message (though IMO not in earnest), the rest of the Democratic party continues to be a wet noodle.
Wait what? Someone have a link for this, how did I miss it?
Schumer’s deal to fast-track Trump judges makes progressive activists furious