The current Democratic establishment is also heavily ideological. Aside from a few outliers like Bernie Sanders, a lot of the Democratic rhetoric is built up around identity politics. You don't have to look far to find it, but to give you one example, listen to how much this DNC vice chair candidate hammers home the 'diversity' message:
On another note, suppose both groups actually are quite similar in how ideological they are. One would be mistaken to then assume that the two groups have equally effective approaches for conducting affairs. Despite the fact that robustly measuring such effectiveness is currently far outside our grasp.
Coming back to reality, I would guess that both parties are not equally ideological. However, I do think there are very large segments of both that are almost entirely ideological, and that, unfortunately, these subgroups often take most of the limelight.
Right, so let's stop talking of theoretical possibilities and look at concrete reality. I don't know of the last time a party embraced ideology as strongly as today's GOP; anyone who doesn't see that will never see ideology anywhere - it hardly could get more extreme.
> I do think there are very large segments of both that are almost entirely ideological, and that, unfortunately, these subgroups often take most of the limelight.
Again, a false equivalence IMHO. Which very large, limelight-stealing Democrat group are you referring to? Hillary Clinton supporters were the largest group; she's almost the opposite of ideological. Obama and his supporters are very non-ideological. The participants in last Saturday's marches were generally non-ideological, AFAICT.
It's late, so I don't have the best examples, but I have a vague impression that there has been an increase of single-dimension, with-us-or-against-us identity politics. Perhaps I'm mistaking noisy for large. Even still, many of these groups do have legitimate claims...
Reflecting a bit, I suppose one main reason I posted was that I didn't like the implication that the mainstream left has become enlightened past the point of ideology. But perhaps that point is too much of a distraction in this conversation. Meh.
Btw, not that it should matter, but I lean left and voted for both Obama and Hillary.
I agree. It's not that the mainstream left is so great and above reproach, it's that their right-wing competition has embraced madness.
Nobody is perfect; everyone is a bit ideological, but some are much more rational and empirical than others. All coders create bugs, but not all coders turn out equal quality code. Everyone is a bit violent, but we aren't all equally murderers. There are major differences, and the current conservative movement is heavily ideological; I think my hypothesis holds up very well.