Daily Dose of Depression -- It Shouldn't be About Bumper Stickers, Caps, and Memes

[This was too long for NYT Comment space. So what to do?  It's off to the trusty Reading at the Crossroads blog as part of my resurrected "Daily Dose of Depression" series.]

Thomas Edsall asks:

“Is American political conflict relatively content-free — emotionally motivated electoral competition — . . . “ the answer is: YES!

and Edsall continues:

“or is it primarily a war of ideas, a matter of feuding visions both of what America is and what it should become?” – and here the answer is a resounding, NO!

And why are these key questions so easily answered? Because the media and the press and Thomas Edsall and that wedge of a deeply conditioned public online, and, . . .

all of the above give the electorate much more in the way of political horse race coverage and analysis than close study of the party and candidates programs and bed rock philosophies.

The media, etc, patronize their readers and viewers. They cheapen ideas and dismiss detailed policy program through lack of critical attention. (This is not meant to be a mindless Trump-like attack on the fourth estate. It is a Neil Postman, “entertaining ourselves to death” sigh.)

Read Edsall’s survey of social scientists working on the question of partisanship spread across today’s political landscape. I’m struck by the one characteristic found in their many hours of research. Not one study Edsall reports on drills down to questions of WHY citizens think and act in such a partisan fashion.

If Edsall is being fair in his summaries, here’s the equation found in all: 1. values and principles are settled among citizens and these are at war in America, 2. this war takes place in political settings, 3. candidates are simply stand-ins for these rock solid values and principles, (therefore, and here's Daily's conclusions, 4. because candidates represent the values and principles at war we can all assume each and every election is a two-horse, winner take all race, 5. and I say again, therefore the media (there are always exceptions that serve to prove the generalization) covers the cosmetics (polling data) of the horse race, not the lineage (philosophical underpinnings) , the training regime (historical clues and cues), the intellectual (ideas have consequences) strategies, the goals (what kind of America do we want beyond slogans on bumper stickers, on caps, or online in memes) a victory in the race may or may not achieve.

Just the horse race. Pure and simple. Just the colors and the equipment of the race. Just the incidentals. These are the true “values and principles” of elections in the United States today.

Edsall's column is here: