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Comment by shireboy | Hacker News Reader

I'm in that group. I've consciously cut out Facebook and Twitter in part because of the toxic echo chambers they've become. HN is about the only place I'll wade in sometimes because the level of discourse seems higher.

A little rabbit trail though: Looking at the graph in the article, I'm wondering if US isn't ripe for a party system change. It's not _always_ been Republican vs Democrat in our history. Both sides are incentivized away from supporting a 3rd party out of fear it will help the "other side" and primary systems etc. have entrenched the current 2 party system. But with such great and growing discontent, I wonder if a switch like from Whigs or the handful of other parties won't eventually happen.

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The problem is that "first past the post" voting systems inevitably lead to two party dominance.

Change the voting system across a super majority of elections and we will likely get additional parties. But until then third party votes are wasted, and the Republican and Democratic parties are against changing the system

Personally I was encouraged by

> In Gallup's 2021 polling, 29% of Americans identified as Democrats ... 27% as Republicans ... and 42% as independents.

Politics is a dirty but necessary business, and for many of us it's far better to keep parties at arm's length. Of course you can still donate to your favorite candidates regardless. In open-primary states like texas it isn't even necessary to join up, should you feel a need to contribute to certain lesser evils.

> Politics is a dirty but necessary business, and for many of us it’s far better to keep parties at arm’s length.

Studies of voting behavior pretty consistently show that self-identified independents are, on average, either equally or very nearly equally reliably partisan in voting as those who identify with one major party or the other.

I suspect that there are a LOT of disaffected Republicans who are conservative but not Trumpian authoritarians. In the same way, there are a LOT of disaffected Democrats who are liberals but not woke/cancel culture social justice warriors. So, yeah, I agree - there's room for a new party.

As a European, comments of this nature confuse me a little. This comments suggests an equivalency. But from this side of the pond I haven't seen the Democrats you describe actually in power and implementing policy. Can't say that about the other side. So why would any Democrats who are liberal but not "woke" be frustrated since those elements of their party wield little if any influence.

As an American, I'll try to explain how our two parties (and their voters) work in practice.

The Left (voters) have two main platforms: economic and cultural.

The Right (voters) have two main platforms: economic and cultural.

The Left votes for the Democratic Party. The Right votes for the Republican Party. Independents mostly vote one way or another, and a small percentage vote for whoever seems most moderate that particular election.

When governing, the Democratic Party works with the Republican Party to implement:

1. The cultural platform of the Left.

2. The economic platform of the Right.

The cultural platform of the Right and the economic platform of the Left are not implemented.

The Left calls the Democratic-Republican Establishment the "corporate" party and believes the country has moved strongly to the Right over the last 40 years. (They are focusing on the fact that the economic platform of the Right is being implemented.)

The Right calls the Democratic-Republican Establishment the "uniparty" and believes the country has moved strongly to the Left over the last 40 years. (They are focusing on the fact that the cultural platform of the Left is being implemented.)

This is a stable political system because neither a Left voter nor a Right voter wants to vote for the other party, because then they wouldn't even be getting half of what they want! The Democratic-Republican Establishment doesn't care who people vote for, because it wins either way. The important thing is for voters to believe their vote matters—even though it actually doesn't.

The key result is that neither the Left's economic platform nor the Right's cultural platform are ever implemented. (A few legacy cultural issues on the Right, e.g. 2nd Amendment gun rights, still exist. Same with pre-WW2 economic issues on the Left.)

Hope this helps!

Razor sharp analysis, well done.

From my European perspective, I've always considered the Democrats to be a right wing party. Things implemented in other advanced economies decades ago, the very basics of progressive policy, are just nowhere to be seen: a livable minimum wage, universal healthcare, affordable schooling, employment protection, the like.

In other countries, this isn't even called progressive, just "basics". Not even right wing parties try to abolish or undo this foundation.

We do see that media is far more left than the actual population, which is typically center to center-right. The way I see it, the population of almost any developed country is center-right. It makes sense when you think about it. Due to the population pyramid, most people are middle-aged or older. They're already planning for the exit so they want to protect whatever they got. No funny stuff.

The young want to change everything but that's easy when you have no responsibilities or stake in the game. As soon as they acquire the basics of life, they'll join the rest, and try to protect it.

That is the gigantic failure of the left, the inability to connect with the vast majority of the population. Here in Europe, the left has abandoned the (white) working class somewhere in the late nineties, and they've been failing ever since.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Interesting points. I'm still confused about what cultural policies the "woke" left implemented that would encourage other dems to vote for a third middle way part should one exist. I can see the other side easily.

The most recent example I think is when prompted to nominate a supreme court justice, the Democratic president openly said that he would do so with a particular skin tone and gender in mind. That is to say even if he found a better candidate, if they didn't have the type of skin or genitals he preferred, he would not nominate them on that basis.

What was the one before that? Free crack pipes for racial equity, I think.

But the crack pipe thing was completely made up.

And that criticism of the supreme court thing depends on the belief that ability can be narrowed down to a single quantity and he isn't picking out of a bunch of basically equally qualified candidates. I'd disagree with that.

> But the crack pipe thing was completely made up.

Can you let the New York Times know?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/us/politics/biden-harm-re...

> there is no evidence that the Biden administration intended to pay for distribution of pipes

> the White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said glass pipes were “never a part of the kit,”

Seems like they know. And that doesn't even get into the ridiculous "for racial equity" part of that sentence.

What else would "safe smoking kits" for "under resourced populations" mean? They provide a definition for under resourced:

"Under-resourced populations can be defined by the following factors:

• By race

• By ethnicity

• By gender (including transgender populations)

• By sexual orientation (including lesbian, gay and bisexual populations)"[0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220207225346/https:/www.samhsa...

> What else would "safe smoking kits" for "under resourced populations" mean?

Is that a real single quote from somewhere, or is that quoting things from entirely different sections? I see safe smoking kits in the big list of harm reduction equipment. But that list of under-resourced populations is over in the "Addressing Behavioral Health Disparities" section, and is next to the list of social determinants of health:

• Economic Stability

• Education Access and Quality

• Health Care Access and Quality

• Neighborhood and Built Environment

• Social and Community Context

Tracking those sets of data seem like a good way to make sure no subgroups are getting missed, including "groups of people who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health".

Singling out one of those nine separate factors and acting like the "equity" goal is focused on bad behavior, and possibly even encouraging it, rather than "ensuring that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible", is a pretty misleading way to talk about this program.

Also "A safe smoking kit may contain alcohol swabs, lip balm, other materials to promote hygiene and reduce the transmission of diseases like HIV and hepatitis"

From the New York Times article linked above:

> Some harm reduction programs do include sterile pipes — which are used for smoking methamphetamine and fentanyl as well as crack cocaine — in such kits, with the intent of preventing infectious disease or injury in drug users who might otherwise rely on contaminated paraphernalia.

Perhaps evidenced by my use of a throwaway, let me give a personal example

For most of my life, I identified and voted largely democrat. Over the last 5-10 years I've found myself far more independent aligned due in part to the issues mentioned of the parent poster. Some of the points of conflict include affirmative action. I am fully supportive of helping underprivileged groups, dedicated funding and corrective policy changes to remove things keeping them down, but do not think explicit affirmative action is the right way to go about that, and in fact feel it weakens ones position and seems clearly hypocritical from one ostensibly seeking equality.

I also take a broad issue with the sheer amount of effort the democrats have focused on issues of identity as opposed to class. Not that one should ignore the former, but I find the latter to be a far more central, immediate, and critical issue that needs addressing, and that the way the democrats are implementing their approach to the former, like their position on affirmative action, is instead driving a wedge and fighting against their best intentions.

> I'm still confused about what cultural policies the "woke" left implemented that would encourage other dems to vote for a third middle way part should one exist.

I don't think there are any, but a lot of "independents" are fundamentally moderate and Democrats typically have a lower party-id than Republicans, so they need more independents to break their way to win a national election, hence "distancing" from far-Left/woke positions at election time.

Biden, for instance, made "equity" his priority literally Day 1 in office, and that's a "woke" position. It has only hurt him with voters on the Right, who don't like the Left's cultural platform anyway and can be ignored.

Both the Right and Left frequently talks about 3rd parties because literally half of what they want is never implemented. The Left is far more active in politics, so they tend to actually do something about it (DSA, Green Party, etc.). Republicans mostly just occasionally vote Libertarian, but there's also the occasional Tea Party if the Left gets anything that even looks like a win on economics.

> It has only hurt him with voters on the Right

Unless you are referring to the Democratic neoliberal center-right, which has been and remains Biden’s main base of support (and I don’t think you are), Biden didn’t have any support on the Right to start with.

> Both the Right and Left frequently talks about 3rd parties because literally half of what they want is never implemented. The Left is far more active in politics, so they tend to actually do something about it (DSA, Green Party, etc.).

That’s why the strongest minor party in the US is…the right-libertarian (with candidates frequently ex- and/or future-Republican candidates) Libertarian Party. The DSA isn’t a third party, and the Green Party is smaller (in both membership and, at 0, elected state-level or higher representation, than the Libertarian Party (also the Independence Party of New York, and the Independent Party of Oregon, and on at least one and possibly both than the Vermont Progressive Party; it is also recognized in fewer states than the Libertarian Party.

The Right is more active in politics in general in the US, more active in major party politics in the US, and more active outside of major party politics in the US.

This is really helpful thanks, you've articulated it so well it seems like it was obvious the whole time

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