Reason's Matt Welch and I debate The Bulwark's Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell about partisanship, effectiveness, and social-political-economic change in the age of Trump.
I wish the proposition had been more well-defined. I felt like the two sides were arguing about different ideas completely. I also found Tim impossible to listen to and incredibly counterproductive in the conversation. The bulwark side also never really defined what they were opposing. What does "not choosing a side" look like to them?
As someone who did not vote at the presidential level this time around, I didn't feel like they had any solid arguments against my choice. I don't want to communicate the message with my vote that I support any of the candidates available. I wanted to communicate that if these people want my vote, they're going to have to do better.
In my lifetime the parties have gone from being very similar to very different. Such that choosing a side is important.
1) red states are obviously governing much better then blue states. The quality of life gap on this has grown considerably in my lifetime.
2) red states have school choice and blue states don’t
3) covid was the single most important even of my lifetime, and red states handled it much better. This isn’t just a governance thing, it was also about how people lived their lives individually
4) libertarians have had to grow up on the immigration issue. At some point you’ll come across Hbd and realize inviting the third world isn’t a good thing for libertarianism, at least if you’re not an ideologue.
5) the worst thing about republicans when I was younger, their being pro-war, is now a democrat thing. Dick Cheney campaigned for harris.
If you pick a side, the side you picked will act as if it owns you. And if you don't pick a side, both sides will claim that by not picking a side, you are a tool of the other side.
I wish the proposition had been more well-defined. I felt like the two sides were arguing about different ideas completely. I also found Tim impossible to listen to and incredibly counterproductive in the conversation. The bulwark side also never really defined what they were opposing. What does "not choosing a side" look like to them?
As someone who did not vote at the presidential level this time around, I didn't feel like they had any solid arguments against my choice. I don't want to communicate the message with my vote that I support any of the candidates available. I wanted to communicate that if these people want my vote, they're going to have to do better.
In my lifetime the parties have gone from being very similar to very different. Such that choosing a side is important.
1) red states are obviously governing much better then blue states. The quality of life gap on this has grown considerably in my lifetime.
2) red states have school choice and blue states don’t
3) covid was the single most important even of my lifetime, and red states handled it much better. This isn’t just a governance thing, it was also about how people lived their lives individually
4) libertarians have had to grow up on the immigration issue. At some point you’ll come across Hbd and realize inviting the third world isn’t a good thing for libertarianism, at least if you’re not an ideologue.
5) the worst thing about republicans when I was younger, their being pro-war, is now a democrat thing. Dick Cheney campaigned for harris.
If you pick a side, the side you picked will act as if it owns you. And if you don't pick a side, both sides will claim that by not picking a side, you are a tool of the other side.
I’d rather have listened to Damon or Cathy from the Bulwark lot