re: #251 HappyWarrior

I can’t imagine being that miserable. I don’t want the policies I want because I want conservatives to be pisesd off. In fact, I’d like to see conservatives see that liberal policies do work and it might make them a little more liberal or open to what we believe in.

Nice thought: but the main problem with that approach on a national-political level in this country is that “policies” are virtually an irrelevance to the hardest of hardcore “conservatives”* - partisan and ideological identifications seem to be far more of a cultural/tribal thing than a political analysis: and said tribe has been -for decades - marinating itself in a self-selecting media brine of hate and resentment: directed in no small part towards liberals (actually strawman caricature “libruls”, but the effect is the same) who that media have relentlessly painted as embodying everything that is Bad Wrong And Evil about America. And unfortunately, that hard core of righties is about 30% of the electorate. Which, given that the other 70% of voters are mainly apathetic or (usually) unmotivated, gives the Hate Tribe a significant political advantage.

*a term which also includes large numbers of reactionaries, extremists and outright bigots, along with genuine “conservatives”: hard to distinguish, though.