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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

Most city democrats are actually conservatives. They just don't believe it. They'll still vote "democrat" but typically the most conservative ones.

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The problem if you only have row options (liberal/democrat vs conservative/republican) is that totally unrelated things have to fit this incredibly coarse framework. If someone is against constructing anything and afraid "outsiders" will come into the neighborhood, but they are for tighter gun control are they conservative or not? It's just random labels now from a policy perspective.

Anyone who is confused by this should go to a school board or school planning meeting in a deep-blue district. You find "deep blue" citizens absolutely going nuts to ensure their school abides by little of the values we typically think are progressive values.

Well yeah, does anyone really believe people fit into neat little boxes with extremely broad labels? Blue folks can be pretty small government when it comes to police and the justice system, conservative when it concerns gentrification, individualist when it comes to welfare programs, bodily autonomy, drug use, and pornography, and free market when it's about immigration and global trade.

Thank you for this. We pretty much have two main political labels for people in the US, "republican" and "democrat". Sure, some people identify as libertarian, some as independent (which to me means nothing), green, whatever. But either you're a Dem or a member of the GOP, for the most part. And do we really expect that everyone in each of those buckets as the exact same needs, desires, and policy plans? C'mon...

People do not vote for Democrats because they share their values, but because they like free money that Democrats typically promise.

People vote for Democrats for all sorts of crazy reasons, including agreement with one of their many policy platforms. People also vote for Republicans for reasons that aren't "I'm a fascist".

I think it's less about free money and more about the following general policies: no jail for thieves, drugs for everyone, homeless++.

In general democrats seem to be doing anything they can to make society worse in exchange for more votes.

I feel like everyone should find a balance between being liberal and conservative. There is no one size fits all approach to life. Sometimes one needs to be conservative and other times progressive. Explore/exploit if you will.

Moreover, I don't blame people for NIMBY. A house is extremely expensive. It only makes sense to be conservative and protect that investment.

Not sure what the solution is, but I have found it very comfortable in smaller cities. Less commute and hassle than living in a big city, well worth the sacrifices.

Not here to disagree, and I say this all the time, but I feel it bears repeating in this context: Left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative are ridiculously reductive ways of categorizing people's political opinions. Even allowing for people "in the middle" is reductive. That people are so attached to the idea of a single-axis political spectrum in the US plays into the two party system very well and helps keep voters from having any meaningful impact. We ought to be able to place ourselves independently on many axes, i.e. data privacy, gun ownership, taxation, consumer protection, energy policy, and so on. If we didn't lean so hard into the partisan tribalism then you might see movement on more of these issues where it's not such an even split of public opinion.

My intuition is that the inutility of voting afforded by the left vs. right meme may be the end-goal for many reinforcing it, perhaps in support of those with the most money sloshing around in political spheres. If I intended to buy certain unpopular policy with political donations, I wouldn't want voters breaking out of their ideological silos and crossing party lines to oppose the candidates doing my bidding. Maybe that thinking is a bit too conspiratorial, though.

If nothing else, it's a way to lock down a large swath of the demographic you must appeal to, and lets you then pander to only those are are sensitive to an actual position, and not just being endorsed by a group (or even just professing memborship in a group).

In some respect this is useful for the average person because there's just so much going on that being fully aware of the the different candidates stances on many different topics and trying to juggle all that is hard, and doing a good job of it in some cases is next to impossible. That said, it's taken advantage of in the extreme by politicians (of all groups) now, who seem to have purposefully divided the populace so they can rely on this. To all of our detriment.

Not just the house, but the neighborhood itself. I get NIMBYism if only because i understand sticking with the devil you know

It’s not limited to the city. In the countryside you’ll find “conservationists” who don’t want to lose the small-town character and zone everything outside a tiny village as farmland or single family housing on 10 acre lot sizes with huge setbacks. They then take their giant piece of property and put it into a conservation trust - a tax shelter that keeps your land from being developed and taxed at its productive value. But they’re usually democrats so it’s conservation not being conservative.

You can do whatever you want on farmland. Skyscraper? Pyramid? Go for it.

does these labels make any sense any more? Not that they made sense to begin with. Liberalism and conservatism aren't polar opposite. The opposite of conservatism (those who don't like change) is radicalism (significant changes). In general, anyone who favors the long standing status quo is a conservative. Conservative label itself doesn't convey anything about one's political believes without knowing the contemporary social and political history surrounding the person. Every longstanding blue-state democrat by definition is a conservative. On top of all that you have the uniquely american problem of having to pigeon hole everyone into just two labels, and labels gradually losing their values to identities.

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