7 ms·

The window is bifurcating. The political left and right have moved so far apart that "middle ground" ideas appeal to very few and the extremes have more viabili

by arise 4y ago

The window is bifurcating. The political left and right have moved so far apart that "middle ground" ideas appeal to very few and the extremes have more viability.

peatmoss 4y ago
Wedge issues have really split us irrationally. Group A tells scary bedtime stories to their children using caricatures of an average Group B position as a way to maintain in-group discipline. What seems to be new now, is that Group B has taken to espousing Group A's caricature as a way of proving their group identity. "Group A says we eat babies. I eat more babies than anyone else, proving my Group B bonafides!" If you want to stand out in the primaries, you can't be a competent, coalition-building centrist. You gotta eat more babies than the next guy. Current political system reinforces extremism. I'm of the camp that believes we urgently need incremental reforms like Ranked Choice Voting and open primaries. It doesn't solve everything, but it's the reform we can do that gives us the most mileage today.
- sdwr 4y ago
  First time I've heard this, great point. (The baby eating thing, not ranked choice voting) I think extremism is a sign things are bad, but haven't gotten worse. Like, normal communication has broken down, but nothing has escalated to the really scary place where everyone shuts up.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Falling off a cliff isn't so bad, it's the impact with the ground that we should worry about.
- wnoise 4y ago
  Although FPTP is bad, it's not at all clear that IRV (the election method that most mean when they say the ballot-marking method of RCV) actually leads to less extremism. It's a chaos monkey in any race that approaches competitive, and changes that one might expect to help A (such as more A > B > C votes) can actually hurt A. That is, its bad results show up precisely when it might produce a different outcome than FPTP. See the recent Alaska house election for an actual case. If you're tied to a full ranking, there are much better choices than IRV; any of the Condorcet methods, for instance. However, rating systems are far more likely to produce compromise candidates. I like Approval, perhaps with a runoff between the top 2. EDITTED-TO-ADD: In practice IRV and FPTP both suffer from the "center-squeeze effect": https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effec...
  - jrgoff 4y ago
    Would you mind explaining more about what you mean regarding the recent Alaska election? The information I have found about it made it seem fairly reasonable and straightforward to me, but perhaps I am missing something.
    - wnoise 4y ago
      Here's a decent commentary: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/x9oupk/2022_alaska_special_general_vote_breakdown/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/x9oupk/2022_alaska... > Two popular suspicions are now confirmed. Nick Begich was the Condorcet winner. Sarah Palin was a spoiler candidate - her presence caused Mary Peltola to be elected, by prematurely eliminating Nick Begich. Here's another, that got down-voted to hell, because of the audience. https://www.reddit.com/r/ForwardPartyUSA/comments/xb119e/its_official_alaskas_first_rank_choice_voting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ForwardPartyUSA/comments/xb119e/its... > If 2913 voters who supported Palin first and Begich second flipped their first and second preferences, they’d have gotten a more preferred result. (i.e. they would have gotten Begich instead of Peltola, by having Palin eliminated first) > Even worse, if instead 5825 of those same types of voters just decided not to vote, they’d have also gotten a better result. So merely participating in the election hurt them. While I do prefer the winner it selected, it's not a great election method. Better than FPTP is a terribly low bar.
      - jrgoff 4y ago
        I see, that was helpful - thank you!
      - peatmoss 4y ago
        Condorcet has arguably worse features: 1. Even harder to explain to the average voter than RCV 2. Greater likelihood of nobody winning / needing to conduct new election I am of the belief that RCV is not great, but that it is significantly better than status quo... and it is possible.
        wnoise 4y ago
eyelidlessness 4y ago
There basically is no political left to speak of and there hasn’t been one for decades. There is a bifurcation, but it’s largely a drift between a broadly rightward shift across political mainstreams on the one hand, and an increasingly contentious concept of who is allowed to exist and to what extent they can exist unperturbed.
- pstuart 4y ago
  The downvotes without refutation are a pity. The Left is effectively absorbed by civil liberty issues (LGBQT+, abortion, and immigration come to mind). Those issues are worthy of support but they're pathetically easy to demonize by the Right. And there's the fact that Trump broken countless political norms so the Left is still stuck in "the old ways" and has effectively brought a knife to a gun fight.
1270018080 4y ago
Since America hasn't had a political left in... let's say 50 years. What's an example of a middle ground idea that doesn't appeal anymore?
- cstoner 4y ago
  I would say that any sense of sane immigration reform is completely unrealistic right now. By "sane" I specifically mean "acknowledges the shortcomings of the current system, at the same time as we acknowledge our dependence on foreign labor"

by arise 4y ago

The window is bifurcating. The political left and right have moved so far apart that "middle ground" ideas appeal to very few and the extremes have more viability.

peatmoss 4y ago

Wedge issues have really split us irrationally. Group A tells scary bedtime stories to their children using caricatures of an average Group B position as a way to maintain in-group discipline. What seems to be new now, is that Group B has taken to espousing Group A's caricature as a way of proving their group identity. "Group A says we eat babies. I eat more babies than anyone else, proving my Group B bonafides!" If you want to stand out in the primaries, you can't be a competent, coalition-building centrist. You gotta eat more babies than the next guy. Current political system reinforces extremism. I'm of the camp that believes we urgently need incremental reforms like Ranked Choice Voting and open primaries. It doesn't solve everything, but it's the reform we can do that gives us the most mileage today.

sdwr 4y ago
First time I've heard this, great point. (The baby eating thing, not ranked choice voting) I think extremism is a sign things are bad, but haven't gotten worse. Like, normal communication has broken down, but nothing has escalated to the really scary place where everyone shuts up.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Falling off a cliff isn't so bad, it's the impact with the ground that we should worry about.
wnoise 4y ago
Although FPTP is bad, it's not at all clear that IRV (the election method that most mean when they say the ballot-marking method of RCV) actually leads to less extremism. It's a chaos monkey in any race that approaches competitive, and changes that one might expect to help A (such as more A > B > C votes) can actually hurt A. That is, its bad results show up precisely when it might produce a different outcome than FPTP. See the recent Alaska house election for an actual case. If you're tied to a full ranking, there are much better choices than IRV; any of the Condorcet methods, for instance. However, rating systems are far more likely to produce compromise candidates. I like Approval, perhaps with a runoff between the top 2. EDITTED-TO-ADD: In practice IRV and FPTP both suffer from the "center-squeeze effect": https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effec...
- jrgoff 4y ago
  Would you mind explaining more about what you mean regarding the recent Alaska election? The information I have found about it made it seem fairly reasonable and straightforward to me, but perhaps I am missing something.
  - wnoise 4y ago
    Here's a decent commentary: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/x9oupk/2022_alaska_special_general_vote_breakdown/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/x9oupk/2022_alaska... > Two popular suspicions are now confirmed. Nick Begich was the Condorcet winner. Sarah Palin was a spoiler candidate - her presence caused Mary Peltola to be elected, by prematurely eliminating Nick Begich. Here's another, that got down-voted to hell, because of the audience. https://www.reddit.com/r/ForwardPartyUSA/comments/xb119e/its_official_alaskas_first_rank_choice_voting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ForwardPartyUSA/comments/xb119e/its... > If 2913 voters who supported Palin first and Begich second flipped their first and second preferences, they’d have gotten a more preferred result. (i.e. they would have gotten Begich instead of Peltola, by having Palin eliminated first) > Even worse, if instead 5825 of those same types of voters just decided not to vote, they’d have also gotten a better result. So merely participating in the election hurt them. While I do prefer the winner it selected, it's not a great election method. Better than FPTP is a terribly low bar.
    - jrgoff 4y ago
      I see, that was helpful - thank you!
    - peatmoss 4y ago
      Condorcet has arguably worse features: 1. Even harder to explain to the average voter than RCV 2. Greater likelihood of nobody winning / needing to conduct new election I am of the belief that RCV is not great, but that it is significantly better than status quo... and it is possible.
      - wnoise 4y ago

eyelidlessness 4y ago

There basically is no political left to speak of and there hasn’t been one for decades. There is a bifurcation, but it’s largely a drift between a broadly rightward shift across political mainstreams on the one hand, and an increasingly contentious concept of who is allowed to exist and to what extent they can exist unperturbed.

pstuart 4y ago
The downvotes without refutation are a pity. The Left is effectively absorbed by civil liberty issues (LGBQT+, abortion, and immigration come to mind). Those issues are worthy of support but they're pathetically easy to demonize by the Right. And there's the fact that Trump broken countless political norms so the Left is still stuck in "the old ways" and has effectively brought a knife to a gun fight.

1270018080 4y ago

Since America hasn't had a political left in... let's say 50 years. What's an example of a middle ground idea that doesn't appeal anymore?

cstoner 4y ago
I would say that any sense of sane immigration reform is completely unrealistic right now. By "sane" I specifically mean "acknowledges the shortcomings of the current system, at the same time as we acknowledge our dependence on foreign labor"