4 ms·

You can even say they are now in their "Attitude" Era.

PaulHoule 4y ago
By the late 1990s the political parties had converged a great deal. Clinton picked up most of Reagan's ideas and led from the center, he didn't mind the unfair attacks from Gingrich and Richard Scaife Melon because long as he was under attack all the liberal groups would get behind him and not ask questions like "what have you done for us lately?" In 2000 Bush and Gore both tried really hard to reach "swing voters" and each tried to pretend that he had some of the attributes that the other guy was famous for. Bush tried to play down the belligerence of his family and Gore played down his environmentalism. They were so equal that they split the vote right down the center and it took weeks to know who won. Then in the Bush years there was no real conflict between the two parties, look how many Democrats bought Bush's lies and jumped into the Iraq war with both feet. People were making analogies with pro wrestling even then in that the conflict seemed "fake" (kayfabe) but it got into real neokayfabe during the Obama and Trump admins. Particularly, the "culture wars" lead many people to believe they have a choice of exactly one party, and politicians can pledge allegiance to an ideology without committing resources, which lets politicians and lobbyists allocate resources to special interests such as https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/candy-coated-cartel-time-kill-us-sugar-program# https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/candy-coated-cartel-tim... (Notably Ralph Nader would agree with the Cato Institute on that one) Insofar as the parties aren't competitive nobody is running on issues that are a concern to almost everyone, such as anti-corruption.
- crop_rotation 4y ago
  > nobody is running on issues that are a concern to almost everyone, such as anti-corruption. I think in modern politics parties don't want to run on such issues because if both of the parties have same views on large % of issues and are talking about the same topics (e.g anti corruption), then you have to fight on execution and delivery, which can be fickle and requires hard work. By contrast, fighting on culture issues is not much work at all, and you don't have to fight on competence, as long as you find issues on which there is a big divide in the populace. It is like a corporate moat, a feature your opponent can't copy. By contrast, fighting on important issues that benefit everyone would lead to a commoditisation of politics. All parties would look similar and people would choose basis who delivers better. Culture politics is good for those who long for power, but bad for everyone else.

By the late 1990s the political parties had converged a great deal. Clinton picked up most of Reagan's ideas and led from the center, he didn't mind the unfair attacks from Gingrich and Richard Scaife Melon because long as he was under attack all the liberal groups would get behind him and not ask questions like "what have you done for us lately?" In 2000 Bush and Gore both tried really hard to reach "swing voters" and each tried to pretend that he had some of the attributes that the other guy was famous for. Bush tried to play down the belligerence of his family and Gore played down his environmentalism. They were so equal that they split the vote right down the center and it took weeks to know who won. Then in the Bush years there was no real conflict between the two parties, look how many Democrats bought Bush's lies and jumped into the Iraq war with both feet. People were making analogies with pro wrestling even then in that the conflict seemed "fake" (kayfabe) but it got into real neokayfabe during the Obama and Trump admins. Particularly, the "culture wars" lead many people to believe they have a choice of exactly one party, and politicians can pledge allegiance to an ideology without committing resources, which lets politicians and lobbyists allocate resources to special interests such as https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/candy-coated-cartel-time-kill-us-sugar-program# https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/candy-coated-cartel-tim... (Notably Ralph Nader would agree with the Cato Institute on that one) Insofar as the parties aren't competitive nobody is running on issues that are a concern to almost everyone, such as anti-corruption.

crop_rotation 4y ago
> nobody is running on issues that are a concern to almost everyone, such as anti-corruption. I think in modern politics parties don't want to run on such issues because if both of the parties have same views on large % of issues and are talking about the same topics (e.g anti corruption), then you have to fight on execution and delivery, which can be fickle and requires hard work. By contrast, fighting on culture issues is not much work at all, and you don't have to fight on competence, as long as you find issues on which there is a big divide in the populace. It is like a corporate moat, a feature your opponent can't copy. By contrast, fighting on important issues that benefit everyone would lead to a commoditisation of politics. All parties would look similar and people would choose basis who delivers better. Culture politics is good for those who long for power, but bad for everyone else.