US politics and the lure of raw red meat

[Gerald]

The politicians hoping to win the US Republican Party's nomination for next year's presidential election have begun a marathon gladiatorial contest that exposes them to piercing and relentless scrutiny.

One of my favourite TV cartoons as a child was Wacky Races.

I hugged the sofa as improbable characters in unlikely vehicles careered around a course, smashing and crashing, plotting and conniving in seemingly endless contests of wills and wiles.

Now I feel like I am having flashbacks. This time it is not Dick Dastardly and Penelope Pitstop but Texan Rick, Mitt the flipper, and the Bachmann Overdrive revving and roaring in the race known as the Republican primaries.

Perhaps I am so enthralled because for years I had a professional disdain for those fascinated with this part of the US presidential race.

When I was the BBC's Europe editor and trying hard to sell a profile of the woman who was about to run Europe's biggest economy, I noted a problem with characteristic hyperbole. It seemed, I grumbled, that some editors would rather run a report about the dog that once belonged to the grandma of the bloke who clearly was not going to be the next president of the United States.

I would still champion the importance of Angela Merkel over Red the Connecticut Coonhound, but now that I am in the States I cannot resist the magnetic pull of politics at its most brutal, most basic - democracy as a demolition derby.

We have already had some spectacular smash ups. Donald Trump, who I picture in a precarious racer shaped like skyscraper, topped by a model of his odd hairstyle, with girls in bikinis hanging of the sides, has ground to a halt and given up.

"An experiment in ultra-democracy that somehow has stuck"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9568353.stm

Note: Page last updated at 11:03 GMT, Saturday, 20 August 2011 12:03 UK

[Torplexed]

I think the problems are the wacky cartoonish extremists on both sides, and unfortunately, the majority are extremists now. Moderates are an endangered species.

Why are we in this spot? I speculate that it's gerrymandering. The incumbents are drawing the lines on the map when the new census comes out, and they are drawing the lines so that they have a solid base to be reelected. So now you have districts that lean heavily Democrat or heavily Republican, but there are very few that are balanced. In a balanced district, you have to appeal to the moderate swing voters to win an election. In a gerrymandered district, you only have to appeal to your base. Add to this the rise of the internet over the last decade or two, and like minded people finding each other on political forums. They get into this feedback loop where they think everyone agrees with them and those other people are the enemy. And then you have the media. The Right seems to have more success at these Rush Limbaugh and Fox news type shows that get everyone marching together in an extremist lockstep formation. But the Left has made feeble attempts to go down that path as well with the likes of Keith Olbermann and the pathetic Reverend Al Sharpton. Right now it all seems worse, because we are in the primaries, and the Republicans are speaking only to their base right now. So they sound like wacko extremists. It will be amusing to watch them try to change their rhetoric in several months when they try to appeal to the middle. I can't see any of them pulling it off. All of these factors are pushing us towards more polarization, and there is little room for moderates.

[mookiemookie]

I think the problems are the wacky cartoonish extremists on both sides, and unfortunately, the majority are extremists now. Moderates are an endangered species.

Why are we in this spot? I speculate that it's gerrymandering. The incumbents are drawing the lines on the map when the new census comes out, and they are drawing the lines so that they have a solid base to be reelected. So now you have districts that lean heavily Democrat or heavily Republican, but there are very few that are balanced. In a balanced district, you have to appeal to the moderate swing voters to win an election. In a gerrymandered district, you only have to appeal to your base. Add to this the rise of the internet over the last decade or two, and like minded people finding each other on political forums. They get into this feedback loop where they think everyone agrees with them and those other people are the enemy. And then you have the media. The Right seems to have more success at these Rush Limbaugh and Fox news type shows that get everyone marching together in an extremist lockstep formation. But the Left has made feeble attempts to go down that path as well with the likes of Keith Olbermann and the pathetic Reverend Al Sharpton. Right now it all seems worse, because we are in the primaries, and the Republicans are speaking only to their base right now. So they sound like wacko extremists. It will be amusing to watch them try to change their rhetoric in several months when they try to appeal to the middle. I can't see any of them pulling it off. All of these factors are pushing us towards more polarization, and there is little room for moderates.

Very insightful, and very true I believe. I think you've nailed it.