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Because politics is largely a negotiating game. It's really not that different from haggling. Formal bills are adjusted in order to be passed, which usually inv

Because politics is largely a negotiating game. It's really not that different from haggling. Formal bills are adjusted in order to be passed, which usually involves making members of both major parties happy. The other reason is that there's a large consensus that believes that we're not in a climate for moderate politics to thrive because some members of congress have a tendency to negotiate in bad faith. There's a widely held belief on the left that the GOP cannot be negotiated with, and any kind of call to the center requires giving them more power.

partiallypro 7y ago
Of course it's a negotiation game...but that tactic works a lot better when the stakes aren't so public. In this political world, you have now tainted your proposal and any future proposal you make because the media on the other side will paint anything and everything as a slippery slow toward your original goal or plan. So this particular tactic doesn't work here, not anymore.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  > The media on the other side... If politicians like Sanders created their proposals based on what the other side was saying, we’d never have major discussions around our culture, policy, or anything else of consequence. In this hyper partisan, bifurcated media environment, we’re constantly bombarded with accusations of Nazism juxtaposed with accusations of Red-scare socialism. I don’t know many people that actually care what the other side is saying because we tend to focus on what our side is saying. The big problem I see is that people want proposals to be perfect on arrival, which isn’t possible because A) perfect is subjective and people disagree on details, and B) in our legal system, just like life, nothing ever goes exactly to plan. As I said earlier, legislation is often passed by making trade-offs, and the ideal is often a moving target. We shouldn’t look at proposals like this and expect them to come out exactly the way they’re advertised because our system has never, ever worked that way. Look at the early drafts of Obamacare compared to what was eventually passed. Was the ACA a failure because dems made serious concessions around several aspects of the bill? How often do you hear that Obama was a failure because he wasn’t able to pass the ACA as he originally envisioned it? Never.
  - partiallypro 7y ago
    No one expects a proposal to be perfect on arrive, they want it to be realistic and grounded in reality.

partiallypro 7y ago

Of course it's a negotiation game...but that tactic works a lot better when the stakes aren't so public. In this political world, you have now tainted your proposal and any future proposal you make because the media on the other side will paint anything and everything as a slippery slow toward your original goal or plan. So this particular tactic doesn't work here, not anymore.

save_ferris 7y ago
> The media on the other side... If politicians like Sanders created their proposals based on what the other side was saying, we’d never have major discussions around our culture, policy, or anything else of consequence. In this hyper partisan, bifurcated media environment, we’re constantly bombarded with accusations of Nazism juxtaposed with accusations of Red-scare socialism. I don’t know many people that actually care what the other side is saying because we tend to focus on what our side is saying. The big problem I see is that people want proposals to be perfect on arrival, which isn’t possible because A) perfect is subjective and people disagree on details, and B) in our legal system, just like life, nothing ever goes exactly to plan. As I said earlier, legislation is often passed by making trade-offs, and the ideal is often a moving target. We shouldn’t look at proposals like this and expect them to come out exactly the way they’re advertised because our system has never, ever worked that way. Look at the early drafts of Obamacare compared to what was eventually passed. Was the ACA a failure because dems made serious concessions around several aspects of the bill? How often do you hear that Obama was a failure because he wasn’t able to pass the ACA as he originally envisioned it? Never.
- partiallypro 7y ago
  No one expects a proposal to be perfect on arrive, they want it to be realistic and grounded in reality.