I remember in 2000 Bill Clinton had come to the conclusion that Ronald Reagan was right about a lot of things so Al Core and G. W. Bush were trying very hard to run in each other's lanes. Now there was competition for a certain group of "swing voters" but to a lot of us the two parties looked the same, especially in the rush to get involved in the Iraq War, and that was a problem for legitimacy.
Things started to change around 2008 and we had the Tea Party and such and the Democratic Party losing ground in statehouses and then by Trump winning in 2016 we were in a new age of polarization where the legitimacy problem became "almost all Americans live in a one-party congressional district". I hesitate to say the political agenda became dominated by "bullshit issues" because things like abortion and immigration are salient to people, but these are all issues that politicians chose because they would reinforce polarization and keep competition away.
Today there's a new opportunity: if votes perceive an election is an up-down referendum on data centers, the candidate against data centers will win. It's possible that candidates outside the usual polarization lanes can win, and that could be the first sign of breakage in the current regime.
https://archive.ph/ukd1p
I find it remarkable. American politics flips through regimes of politics, see
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393093972
I remember in 2000 Bill Clinton had come to the conclusion that Ronald Reagan was right about a lot of things so Al Core and G. W. Bush were trying very hard to run in each other's lanes. Now there was competition for a certain group of "swing voters" but to a lot of us the two parties looked the same, especially in the rush to get involved in the Iraq War, and that was a problem for legitimacy.
Things started to change around 2008 and we had the Tea Party and such and the Democratic Party losing ground in statehouses and then by Trump winning in 2016 we were in a new age of polarization where the legitimacy problem became "almost all Americans live in a one-party congressional district". I hesitate to say the political agenda became dominated by "bullshit issues" because things like abortion and immigration are salient to people, but these are all issues that politicians chose because they would reinforce polarization and keep competition away.
Today there's a new opportunity: if votes perceive an election is an up-down referendum on data centers, the candidate against data centers will win. It's possible that candidates outside the usual polarization lanes can win, and that could be the first sign of breakage in the current regime.