Comment by devinplatt
11 hours ago
I learned recently that there's actually a name for this concept. Murc's law states that in American politics, only Democrats are assumed to have agency.
Presumably democratic reforms could help change the dynamic if they changed the incentives. Right now, it's a politically viable strategy to just obstruct the other party when out of power, and politically unviable strategy for Congress to oppose a president from the same party. Both of which lead to a lot of dysfunction.
As an example, if Congress had multimember districts with an appropriate voting system (e.g. ranked choice voting for all members at the same time), then you can effectively nullify the power of gerrymandered voting districts (the current system, where effectively politicians choose voters rather than the other way around). Doing so would elevate the influence of general elections over party primaries. Then representatives would be less afraid of challenges in those primaries, which is currently one of the major disincentives in opposing the president of the same political party (fear of being "primaried").
That is just progressive vs conservative, ie changing things vs conserving things, humans are biased to conserve things unless the set of changes are overwhelmingly better.
So conservatives win when progressives push for too many changes, not changing things is the default. So saying that the democrats lost the election by pushing too fast is not weird, that is just how humans works.
There's definitely an asymmetry in how the systemic dysfunction benefits the Republican party over the Democratic party. (Overall the system benefits both parties though since it entrenches partisanship.)
I'd argue that the asymmetry has less to do with change vs. no change and more to do with the Republican party currently being an "anti government" party (pivoting to that post New Deal). So less is expected of them in terms of functional governance.
With respect to change: I've heard a lot of commentary that the Republican party today is more of an instigator of change than the Democratic party (being seen as a defender of the status quo), despite the traditional alignment of Republican/conservative/no change. Democrats are seen as pro-institution and Republicans anti-institution.
In case it matters, I personally don't identify with a political party. I just want functional government and politics and I see a lot of dysfunction. I'm an engineer so naturally I gravitate towards systemic solutions to systemic problems.
> That is just progressive vs conservative, ie changing things vs conserving things.
Conserving distraction == wars, progressive distraction == LG, then B, then T, there are still letters in the alphabet to progress to - mandatory for school children to study in detail.
Conserving inflation same as progressive inflation, the small group benefiting form it - the same too.
Changing presidential candidates a few months before election and doing everything to let the other side win? Very progressive.
Promising no-more-wars and delivering more-wars? Very conservative.
Moral of the story - while 'progressive' and 'conservative' are used haphazardly, lacking precise and concrete definitions in terms of specific, measurable goals and commitments, using them for political analysis is just mud in the eyes.