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Comment by msluyter | Hacker News Reader

A similar take on the issue in this old Slate article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/kausfiles_sp...

Choice quote:

"But why should we expect the deadlock to be broken at all? Think of it in ... well, cheap Darwinian terms. Imagine that we have a two party system, and each party is a collection of status-seeking individuals looking for power by winning a greater "market share" of the vote. Imagine that they each have their ideological principles --one is more to the left, one more to the right -- but these principles are quite flexible in the face of imminent or repeated failure at the polls. Over time, as each party crafts its message to maximize its appeal -- and adjusts its message after each election to regain any lost share of the votes -- wouldn't one expect the system to reach a roughly 50-50 equilibrium, in which every election was a cliffhanger?"

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There is no position that either party holds so strongly that they wouldn't switch immediately if it became expedient.

Which party is the 'pro-war' party? Which party is the 'pro-public healthcare' party? Which party is the 'small-government' party? Both parties have been on both sides of these lines in the last two decades.

Yes, and you can see it happening after every election. For example, as soon as gay marriage passed the 50% level of popularity, both parties switched position, saying they favored it to some degree. Democrats switched faster (because of their local politics), but Republicans had a gay speaker at their convention.

One of the toughest issues used to be abortion, until democrats softened on it somewhat, and they let anti-abortion candidates into the party (which is why Bart Stupak, a democrat, held up Obamacare based on opposition to abortion).

Democrats were anti-war under Bush (but they voted for his wars anyway), and Republicans were anti-war under Clinton (but they voted for his wars anyway).

If any view on an issue is clearly a loser, no candidate will espouse that view.

And this is part of why voters are so angry at establishment politicians. They've figured out that politicians have positions, not convictions. Many of the voters, on the other hand, actually have convictions, and want to vote for people that share those convictions.

This is what the Tea Party was about - people got tired of Republicans who were happy to vote for large government spending. Many Republicans quit voting for candidates who wore the "R" label but didn't have any actual convictions (at least, they voted against them in the primaries).

But I think in this election cycle, the anger is higher than it's been in my memory, partly because neither presidential candidate's convictions are what anybody wants.

Hillary doesn't have any convictions, except that she should be elected by any means necessary.

Trump has convictions, though they change from day to day, and many of them are convictions that an honorable man would be ashamed of having ever thought, let alone spoken aloud.

The counter-argument to your point, that politicians would say if they were honest, is that most voter positions have no basis in reality, and make no sense.

So they would say, as politicians, that they have no choice but to pretend they believe the nonsense.

> For example, as soon as gay marriage passed the 50% level of popularity, both parties switched position, saying they favored it to some degree.

Where are you getting that from? The Republican party platform explicitly condemns gay marriage and wants to ban it federally. [0]

The fact that they're willing to accept millions from a gay Republican is hardly evidence of a changing worldview.

[0] http://time.com/4411842/republican-platform-same-sex-marriag...

Read carefully what I wrote, and I don't think you will disagree with it. Some Republicans oppose gay marriage, but so did most Democrats a few years ago, including the president and the current Democratic candidate. Any movement is a change in position.

On the other hand, there are Republicans who've fought for gay rights for a while, see for example: http://bangordailynews.com/2012/05/10/opinion/the-untold-sto...

The libertarian wing of the Republican party has favored gay rights for a long time, even if they didn't openly fight in favor of them.

If you want to see a switch like this happen again, watch marijuana legalization. Right now, most politicians oppose it, but as soon as enough polls come out showing you can win an election based on that issue, both parties will come out in favor of it more-or-less, almost immediately.

> Read carefully what I wrote, and I don't think you will disagree with it.

I don't disagree with you saying the Democrats switched position, but I 100% disagree with the notion that the Republican party is "somewhat" in favor of gay marriage. The party platform explicitly condemns the idea and calls for a complete ban on gay marriages.

I don't dispute that some Republicans support gay rights, but that no more proves that the Republican party supports it than the fact that some Republicans believe the moon landing was faked means the Republican party "somewhat" believes the moon landing was faked.

In practice, what happens when a contentious issue like this gains majority support is that one major party adopts it into their platform and the other party mostly tries to stop talking about it in the general election (thereby avoiding making it an issue while still holding on to the voters who oppose it). That's what you're seeing with gay marriage now and, historically, racism.

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