AOC Hails President Biden As 'A Good Faith Partner'

[Celerity]

62. It is the truth as well. In a gamed, rigged electoral map, such as the Rethugs have now erected

after decades of gaming the system from the ground up (local to regional, to state to federal levels) via partisan, relentless gerrymandering, voter suppression, propaganda designed to engender conflict and/or apathy in the opposition, we end up having to run candidates so far towards the right (especially in these ginned-up RW slanted swing districts) that even if we end up with nominal control, we are shackled with a minority of candidates and then, if we are successful, elected members that are farther to right than the vast majority of the Party. At that point, we run into some of the issues that we are now experiencing.

That minority that is the farthest to the right in the caucus ends up tossing multiple spanners in the works for the vast majority of Democrats. As the partisan gerrymandering continues to lurch the centre more to right, that entire schema of potential intraparty ideological cleavages will only continue to manifest itself to greater and greater degrees. It creates an inherent paralysis inside the party, where programmes supported and positions held by the overwhelming number of members are stymied by that small, furthest to right cadre. The same, of course, could occur on the furthest left, BUT that has not occurred so far.

The more the electoral map is skewed by the Rethugs with their partisan gaming of the system at local, state, and federal levels, the further to the right the centre point of the American political elected spectrum becomes. A vicious circle ensues, where cause and effect work in a reciprocal, synergistic tandem to further exacerbate the ideological cleavages and tensions with the intraparty environs.

At some point, in this modelling, the party starts to have significant systemic voter haemorrhages on the left flank greater than any potential gains via attempts to grab a larger foothold in the ever rightward-moving centre. Voter apathy and disenchantment kick in, as some voters ideologically inclined to support the left quarter to left third of the our Party hit the wall of programme-enactment failure fatigue.

They simply see no viable outlet for their preferred ideological-based, programme/legislative manifested outcomes. Unlike all (I would hope) of us on this board many simply give up, and are not motivated to vote defensively (ie anti-Rethug as the primary driver) only, or at least in many cases to a large degree.

Even in a de facto 2 party system there are constraints on how ideologically wide and diverse a party can become before splintering starts to occur. Political parties are indeed subject to laws of diminishing returns, just like most mass sociological endeavours are. It is part (definitely not the only component though) of the reason why the US has such poor voter turnout for many elections compared to many other advanced nations. This is all basic political systems analysis.

To end on a positive note, I would say that so far, Biden (overall has been rather magnificent IMHO), Harris, Pelosi (right up there with Biden), Schumer and the leadership in the biggest single caucus in our Congressional delegation (the 96-member-strong House Progressive Caucus) have so far managed to conduct and manage our party's legislative and executive business with a high degree of efficaciousness. May it long continue.