[HN Gopher] The Divide Between Political Parties Is Smaller Than...
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The Divide Between Political Parties Is Smaller Than We Think
Author : undefined1
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-02-03 21:58 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (behavioralscientist.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (behavioralscientist.org)
| vmception wrote:
| great graphs for that example
|
| I've found the same thing because I neither deflect talking
| points, nor do I immediately block people that don't match my
| talking point
|
| and then I make the cardinal sin of saying "both sides are doing
| this" and that simply makes both sides dehumanize me
|
| depolarize yourself kthx
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| This would be great news if everyone were invested in minimizing
| polarization and detoxing the political conflicts that we're
| facing. But that's not the case.
|
| The biggest divide between the "parties" (which isn't political
| in nature and has nothing to do with the very real and
| significant differences between the parties) is that one sees
| polarization as a tool and the other doesn't acknowledge that.
|
| On Twitter, this has been exceedingly shorthanded into "tan
| suit". One party is so invested in conflict that they invent it
| by manufacturing a scandal out of a fashion choice. The other is
| so invested in conflict avoidance that it pathologically refuses
| to hold the first accountable for anything meaningful.
|
| In other words the divide isn't political, it's about ambition
| and shrewdness. This won't be overcome by finding common ground.
|
| Edit: added a comma because it would've driven me nuts not to.
| Also to add a reasonable disclaimer that I'm not philosophically
| a member of either party, but I caucus/coalition with the one I
| obviously perceive to not be fundamentally bellicose.
|
| Edit 2: well since it needed clarification, I consider the
| Republican Party to be the bellicose one and the Democratic Party
| to be the spineless one.
| witherk wrote:
| Interesting, what are some things that you think democrats
| could do to hold republicans accountable?
| munk-a wrote:
| I think Dems have an uphill battle to fight - media seems
| strongly slanted against liberal policies as evidenced by the
| lack of deficit spending being anywhere in the debate when
| tax cuts were happening compared to deficit spending to
| address the viral crisis. There are entrenched interests that
| will put a lot of messaging toward suppressing discussions of
| liberal policies.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Pretty sure it goes both ways ;). Which is perhaps why the
| parent didn't specifically mention party names. The statement
| is interchangeable for both parties.
|
| Ps- I'm not a member of any political party.
| jdub wrote:
| It _doesn 't_ go both ways, and that's precisely the point
| the original poster was trying to make. US parties do not
| behave the same way. One has been festering extremism for
| 60 years.
| munk-a wrote:
| The issue is that if you ask different people in the
| country which party that "one" is - you'll get a fifty-
| fifty split.
| vkou wrote:
| > is that _one_ sees polarization as a tool and the other
| doesn't acknowledge that.
|
| Which _one_? I 've seen this argument argued to hell and back
| by people on both sides, and I feel that it misses a bit of
| nuance.
|
| My view is that both parties view this polarization as a tool,
| but they polarize in very different ways, for very different
| issues.
|
| Mind you, by saying this, I am not _equating_ their behaviour.
| I have very little patience for two-sideism.
| munk-a wrote:
| As long as users are watching, clicking or re-tweeting then
| news companies will shout "Keep doing that thing!" I think
| media companies mostly found out that these sorts of petty
| debates were popular when they all starting trying to drag out
| news to 24/7 and found that viewers "cared" more about the tan
| suit discussion than anything else. But there is another big
| factor, advertisers, making controversial statements on news
| (or, god forbid, calling out a corporation that advertises with
| your network) drives away ad revenue and works against the goal
| of media corporations.
|
| Everyone is a lot more comfortable chatting about suit color
| than talking about poverty in our nation and having a complex
| debate over how to siphon some of the excess wealth toward
| addressing the issue. Copy-and-paste this for every other issue
| that politics is utterly dropping the ball on these days.
| vkou wrote:
| > Everyone is a lot more comfortable chatting about suit
| color than talking about poverty in our nation and having a
| complex debate over how to siphon some of the excess wealth
| toward addressing the issue.
|
| I mean, about ~40% of the voter base, and about ~60-80% of
| the political class does not believe that we need to have any
| debate about siphoning excess wealth, because they do not
| believe it should be done.
|
| Why would they want to debate it, when they can instead talk
| about literally anything else? When you are cheerleading for
| the status quo, ignoring the issue makes it go away - at
| least for another two or four years.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| You could post this as a satire and it would work as is. _Both_
| sides see each other becoming more extreme & polarizing. It
| may not be apparent because it's very easy to ignore
| sensationalism from your own side as sensationalist individuals
| that don't reflect the party/group itself while sensationalism
| from the otherside is endemic of that sides philosophy.
|
| The 'right' ran something about the "tan suit" but I am also
| sure I have read half a dozen articles about poorly fitting
| suits and bad fake hair.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| But where is the left's QAnon? Where is the left's
| birtherism? Where is the left's Marjorie Taylor Greene?
| Election fraud claims that drag on for months, enabled by
| major party players who see an opportunity and refuse to
| clearly shut it down?
|
| _Of course_ the tan suit "scandal" was trivial bullshit,
| but that's the whole point, that that's the source material
| that Fox News is working with to drum up this kind of
| outrage-- the rest is pure fabrications. So it may well be
| that both sides _see_ the other as extreme and polarizing,
| but it 's important to not actually equate them, because that
| is super unfair when one of the sides is in a state of denial
| about basic reality.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| It appears to me completely differently, which I guess is
| something else that feeds into the divide. I get the "they're
| pitting us all against each other" thing from the people I know
| I on both sides, and honestly I think they both have a point.
| The fact that I can't tell which party is which in your story
| makes believe this more so.
| TheGrim-999 wrote:
| Only one party has near complete control over mass media,
| social media, and big tech. If you want to get a first
| approximation of who's driving the "scandal", you should
| pretty obviously look at the ones who control nearly every
| piece of information you consume. The ones who spent every
| second of every minute of every day for the last five years
| straight finding some propaganda to use against Trump and the
| other half of the country. The ones who are actively
| censoring any opposition to their political ideology. The
| ones who have redefined "democracy" to mean them getting
| their way, and "the end of democracy" to mean any other
| political ideas getting heard. Maybe you should start there,
| with the ideology that controls every piece of information
| you're allowed to consume.
|
| Bring on the downvotes, censor me, anyone with different
| political ideas than you deserves to be censored and removed
| from society. Bring on democracy! You're not the ones causing
| scandal, that's for sure.
| munk-a wrote:
| Please don't openly solicit down votes - it's a tactic that
| has no place on hackernews and will end up getting you down
| votes completely ignoring the rest of your statement.
| Daho0n wrote:
| How funny, I was 100% sure you meant the republicans but
| then..
|
| >finding some propaganda to use against Trump
|
| Oh boy.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I don't think there is a political party who owns all the
| media, there is media selling to the highest bidder. How
| can that be with the incredible reach of Fox?
| https://www.foxnews.com/media/fox-news-finishes-2020-as-
| most...
|
| If you're downvoted, it'll be because of asking for
| downvotes and talking about censorship without evidence.
| It's incredible to me that you cannot see right wing bias
| as well as the left bias.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| While using a scale to measure divide on particular issues such
| as open vs closed borders is interesting, the part about
| "disliking" opposing partisans seems to be an inappropriate way
| to measure political distance.
|
| For example a Black Democrat voter probably thinks Republican
| voters don't like her because she's Black, not because she's a
| Democrat.
|
| Regardless this shows there's room for compromise on certain hard
| policy issues, but soft issues (i.e. the culture wars) requires
| more nuanced study.
| Daho0n wrote:
| For the life of me I cannot see why this article is written in a
| positive light. The result is pretty clear: Members of the two
| parties hate each other less in reality than they think they do
| and they are actually closer than they think.
|
| "Hey you know what? The two only real options we have in an
| election doesn't actually disagree as much as you'd think!" How
| is that a good thing? With only two options they better be far
| apart or those left-leaning on the right and those that are
| right-leaning on the left starts to blend together and you have
| one party in reality with two names and two outer wings that hate
| each others guts. At least as one party they might work better
| together (hah, okay sorry that was stupid).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think a common reason behind this (and I've find myself doing
| this) is that when the most extreme elements of _your_ preferred
| party do something crazy and outlandish, you have a tendency to
| push it aside and think "that's only the fringe of my party",
| but when you see it on the other side, you think "Anyone who
| could even think of being on the same side as those nutjobs is
| evil."
|
| That is, most folks have a tendency to personify themselves with
| the middle of their party, but personify those in the other party
| as the extreme of that party.
| neartheplain wrote:
| "Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples,
| while judging ourselves by our best intentions."
|
| https://time.com/4403510/george-w-bush-speech-dallas-shootin...
| minikites wrote:
| I don't disagree with this in abstract but I think the idea
| that both sides have extreme elements that are in any way
| comparable died on January 6th. There's a difference between
| Bernie Sanders and Marjorie Taylor Greene, but a lot of people
| don't see it that way because they're uncomfortable being in
| the same group as Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think the
| Republicans have a responsibility to address this and I don't
| think the Democrats are in a similarly dire situation.
| sxp wrote:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
| is a long but good essay on this topic. Each Tribe judges the
| other based the most extreme case. And the media hypes the
| outliers for the sake of views. Only a small set of BLM
| protesters were setting buildings on fire and only a small set of
| Trump supporters were committing insurrection. But The media
| tends to focus on these extreme parts of the spectrum so people
| have distorted views about the behavior of the other side.
| [deleted]
| lebrad wrote:
| In 2000, Ralph Nader supporters called this idea "the two-headed
| uniparty"
| Daho0n wrote:
| I hadn't head that before. How very fitting.
| EEMac wrote:
| This frustrates a LOT of people who want more political
| difference expressed than the two parties exhibit.
| harimau777 wrote:
| The problem with articles like this is that what matters is how
| people vote not what they say their policy preferences are.
| munk-a wrote:
| But people don't have freedom to vote as they'd like. Voting in
| a two party system is reduced to a "which is worse" question.
| If you're fiscally and socially liberal but feel very strongly
| about preventing abortion you might end up holding your nose
| while voting for the R candidate.
| witherk wrote:
| Great point. Measuring the divide between parties by the issue
| positions their voters misses the more important things like
| "would you rather your party try to hold onto power or admit
| defeat" after an election.
| Daho0n wrote:
| I wish we had a tool, like the political compass, that those who
| run for (re-)election had to fill out by law before they could
| run. As it is now no one have any idea where different candidates
| are on the political spectrum as all they do is talk in
| soundbites and repeat their slogans over and over again.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| It's a perceived difference between two wings of the "capitalist
| imperialist" party stoked by media outlets following the money by
| realizing that people click more when they're outraged.
|
| No, both parties are not the same if you're a centrist, but from
| the fart left side of things, you definitely need your spectacles
| on to see the difference. Granted, one faction tends to be on the
| right side of history/civil rights a lot more.
|
| If we're interested in real reconciliation within the current
| system, I'd definitely advocate for state and nation-wide voter
| reform. Some sort of proportional representation voting protocol
| would allow people to pick representatives that argue on behalf
| of maybe 50-80% of their beliefs, rather than 10-20% of their
| beliefs. I know that when "my person" wins, I never feel like
| they're going to particularly represent me or the people I care
| about in any impactful way.
|
| I think the perception that there are only two real choices
| stokes the divide quite a bit, because being either _with us_ or
| _against us_ is a lot easier when there are only two teams.
| Breaking up the two party system with voter reform would be my #1
| fix. That, and reversing Citizens United.
| monocasa wrote:
| Particularly ever since the New Democrats took over the party.
| Their whole shtick was injecting a bunch of right wing policies
| into the Democratic Party, under the idea that voters had shifted
| to the right and the only way to win was to follow them. Clinton
| made good on his promise to "end the welfare system as we know
| it". Obamacare was an unashamed rewrite of Newt Gingich and The
| Heritage Foundation's 1993/1994 HEART Act, all the way to the
| individual mandate.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats
|
| IMO a lot of the both party's issues right now stem from the fact
| that Democrats have moved so far to the right that only the far
| right positions differentiate a Republican from a mainline
| Democrat opponent.
| minikites wrote:
| I think this is a great analysis. One factor I would add to
| both your comment and about the political divide in general is
| earmarks. Eliminating earmarks (political "pork" in bills)
| seems like a great way to eliminate wasteful spending. Except
| now we're in a situation where many of our representatives and
| senators can't point to a new bridge and say "I'm the reason we
| have that, now re-elect me" so they move to culture war issues
| as a way to fire up the base. This effect, combined with
| gerrymandering for House seats, means that the only thing many
| politicians have to fear is a primary fight. In an effort to
| avoid primary challengers, the Democrats and Republicans both
| ran to the right, leaving us where we are now: Biden, a
| Republican by 1960s standards, is painted as a "radical
| socialist" against all evidence, because it turns out the base,
| because there's literally nothing else for politicians to offer
| to their constituents. I've heard rumblings that earmarks might
| be coming back and I really hope they do.
| adventured wrote:
| The Republicans have moved very far to the left over the past
| 30-40 years, from where they used to be.
|
| Topics no longer up for serious discussion in the Republican
| Party that used to be very common:
|
| Doing away with Social Security / replacing SS. Getting rid of
| Medicare and Medicaid, replacing them with entirely private
| systems. The gold standard, going back to it. Cutting spending
| (actually attempting to do it, not just paying rare lip service
| to it). Getting more aggressive with the war on drugs.
| Increasing punishment for crime, putting people into prison for
| longer sentences.
|
| It was George W Bush's administration that implemented the
| successful Housing First program for homelessness assistance,
| which would have been considered an exceptionally bad welfare
| state program by the 1980s Republicans. Back then it would have
| been considered to encourage homelessness, they would have said
| it entrenches it.
|
| Today's Republicans support rampant welfare give-aways in the
| form of stimulus checks. That would have been considered a
| crazy Socialist program universally by Republicans just as
| recently as the early 1990s. Giving people checks during a
| recession was unthinkable by Republicans as recently as 20
| years ago (eg the 2001-2002 recession).
|
| Trump - with wide Republican support - just implemented the
| best criminal justice reform in US history. That would have
| gotten near zero Republican support in the 1980s.
|
| The Republicans in Reagan's time were very militantly against
| gay marriage, and any form of sexuality being shown anywhere at
| any time. In the early 1990s Murphy Brown - a fictional TV
| character - deciding to raise a child on her own was a very
| controversial matter among Republicans, so much so that Dan
| Quayle made it a prominent issue. Republicans just 30 years ago
| were radically more conservative than they are today and that's
| putting it mildly.
|
| Those same Reagan era Republicans were almost universally -
| with very few exceptions - strongly in favor of the war on
| drugs. Every other word out of their mouths was about how to
| further criminalize drugs. Today the exact opposite is true,
| very few Republicans are in favor of the war on drugs. Trump
| just came and went and the Republicans barely lifted an eyebrow
| at trying to roll back the positive momentum of drug
| liberalization.
|
| If people on the left think Republicans today are far right,
| well, ha. They don't remember what Republicans were like back
| then apparently. Today's average Republican is a centrist
| Democrat circa the mid 1980s and early 1990s.
| minikites wrote:
| >Cutting spending (actually attempting to do it, not just
| paying rare lip service to it).
|
| When did this actually happen?
| flamble wrote:
| I agree with your point about the Democrats' disastrous
| rightward slide but I don't think that the resulting problem is
| that Republicans now struggle to distinguish themselves.
| They're still the party of further tax cuts and deregulation,
| even if the Democrats have become the party of the status quo
| ante (or a "return to the Obama years"). I do agree, however,
| that economics deeply receded in importance for a decade or
| two.
|
| But during that time, parties were quite content to focus their
| message to voters on cultural issues: patriotism vs
| multiculturalism, religious freedom vs tolerance, etc. The
| problem that the Republicans had was that after decades of the
| conservative media stoking their voters' rage to searing
| intensity, Trump came along and gave the base what it wanted,
| which was an end to the restraint and doublespeak, and
| posturing / policy which produced as many "liberal tears" as
| possible; politics as punishment. Now in the aftermath of his
| presidency they have to figure out how to appeal to the mass of
| their voters' who are still fiercely loyal to Trump while
| continuing to serve the interests of their donors, who would
| like someone more stable.
|
| The Democrats, for their part, are trying to figure out how to
| digest the left wing of their party and appeal to its voters
| while spending as little as possible (see the $1400 vs $2000
| debacle).
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