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A comment on The two party system is killing our democracy. Parent comment

Re:The two party system is killing our democracy by jfengel on Thursday January 23, 2020 @12:58PM (#22129903)
I believe that the left loves to tie itself in knots trying to address the right. Books like What's The Matter with Kansas[1] and The Righteous Mind[2] are all written from a left-wing point of view, explaining the right-wing point of view and encouraging understanding. These books go at least back to the mid 90s[3], and during that time, the Overton window has shifted almost monotonically to the right. It seems to me that the harder the left tries to understand and accommodate the right, the more the right takes it as an opportunity to make itself less appealing to the left. And politically, it's successful.

I don't want to run down a rabbit hole of blame here. Rather, I wanted to suggest that it's not just symmetrical, and it's not as simple as "if only we on the left tried harder we could solve the problem unilaterally" -- because I don't think I've ever heard any similar accommodation from the right. I think we've tried that, and need to try something different.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansa...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book)

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Re:The two party system is killing our democracy by jkingsbery on Thursday January 23, 2020 @02:54PM (#22131172)
I can't say I've read any of those books. I can say though that as someone who is more conservative working in tech living in New York City, this doesn't match my daily experience. Pretty frequently, I hear flippant remarks where people assume that everyone else in the room must agree with a particular view or else must be an idiot. And my experience from trying to break out of my bubble by reading left-leaning material is that even if there are examples of books out there in which a leftist tries to explain conservatives to other leftists, they seem to have little impact on the general discourse.

I don't think it's a simple case that the Overton Window has moved to the right. When one reads for example the Democratic party platform of the 1990's, many of the proposals are more similar to what some Republicans argue for today.

In any case, my point is: maybe conservatives are to blame. Conservatives are roughly half the country. If the author wants to make some change, he'll half to convince at least some of that half. Speaking only to the favored half won't change anything.

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Re:The two party system is killing our democracy by hootbootscoot on Thursday January 23, 2020 @01:58PM (#22130552)
However, "ranked choice voting"... pretty simple and good idea, yeah?
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