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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

I honestly wish there was anyone in Washington who seemed willing or able to lead in a bipartisan manner. Someone who didn't rely on the partisan firestorm of the week to get support.

It's all very disheartening, and hard to explain to my children.

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Prisoner's dilemma. Bipartisanship is "cooperate", divisiveness is "defect". Cooperating with a defector results in losing badly. The right have worked this out and are playing "defect" continuously. And currently "winning".

We have to change the payoff matrix.

The name for this is “asymmetric polarization”. The right polarized and stopped cooperating earlier and more aggressively.

What does "lead in a bipartisan manner" even mean? In what era of this country did anyone lead in a "bipartisan manner"?

Obama did a pretty damn good job.

Agreed, but I think it’s perhaps just an unavoidable outcome of human nature. (Apologies for the pessimism.) It’s my view that humans are most moved by emotion, and the easiest way to produce emotion as a politician is to play up a charged partisan issue.

Would love to hear alternative takes or solutions if anyone has them.

I wish we could ban political parties (pipe dream I know).

What positive are they doing for us at this juncture?

The first step is encouraging local governments to switch away from first-past-the-post voting, which has been mathematically demonstrated to lead to polarization between two parties that are mostly indistinguishable outside of the core polar issues.

Justin Amash might be someone to look for.

When you have one side that has completely lost touch with reality, being bipartisan is a bad idea.

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