The other party
This is dumb reporting: Kim Hart at Axios on what “Democrats” think of “Republicans” and vice versa.
Many Americans think people in the other party are ignorant, spiteful, evil and generally destroying the country, according to a new Axios poll by SurveyMonkey, aired on HBO on Sunday night. 61% of Democrats see Republicans as “racist/bigoted/sexist.” 31% of Republicans say they view Democrats in the same light.
Why it matters: If Americans are this convinced that the other side isn’t just wrong, but dumb and evil, they’ll never be able to find enough common ground to solve real problems. And they’re more likely to elect leaders who can’t do it, either.
So we should have one party instead of two or more?
But even more to the point, that’s not what the survey asked, at least not if the article is accurate. The question was:
What words would you use to describe the other party today?
Not “Republicans/Democrats” but the other party. The party is not the people who vote for the party. I vote for Democrats but that doesn’t make me a Democrat, and I’m not one. I’m well to the left of the Democratic party. I do think people who voted for Trump did a bad wicked thing, but I don’t assume they’re all Republicans, much less that they and the Republican party are the same thing.
The suspicion runs so deep that a third of all Americans say they’d be disappointed if a close family member married someone whose partisanship didn’t match their own, according to the poll for “Axios on HBO.”
And?
This is the same bullshit as that stupid bald-headed meme about voting having nothing to do with friendship. Political views are closely related to moral views, and yes it is an obstacle to friendship (let alone marriage) to have radically different moral views.
Yeah, aren’t you supposed to want to marry someone who shares your values? (I mean, assuming you want to marry anyone at all.)
I’m baffled when pundits bemoan the division of America into blue and red teams, and yet wax nostalgic for the days when the parties didn’t really mean much. When the existence of liberal New England Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats meant that party labels were — well, arbitrary is going too far, but closer to arbitrary than today.
Right? Oh yes, the good old days, when the Democratic party was packed full of Southern white racists. Wasn’t that a time.
As if the existence of the Party of Trump isn’t a “real problem” in of itself…
I’ll also note this lamentation is coming in during the era of ‘both sides’ rhetoric by the Dumpsterfire-in-Chief. The Right has always been delighted to inform their children not to marry outside their niche; it’s only when you have white nationalists losing their jobs for appearing in pro-Confederate marches while chanting racist slogans that suddenly they discover the virtue of “let it be”.
Sometimes the morals aren’t that different, but rather it’s a question of the means to the end.