General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A Short Note On The Democratic Party And The Progressive Left.... [View all]The Magistrate
(95,244 posts)Certainly sweet reason is not the stuff of campaigns to gain mass support and weld solid voting blocs. Politics is not a rational business, but an emotional one, and the right seems to have a better grip on this fact than the left does. It is by appeals to emotion, by un-reason, that the right manages to maintain the degree of mass support it does: if people rationally voted their personal and family self-interest, a right-wing party could hardly get a tenth of the votes, if it could even get so many.
But in discussion and debate of the best course for a political body or movement to take, the fights it should engage in, the lines by which it should press those fights, assessment of what goals it can actually achieve, the coldest and most ruthless reason and calculation ought to prevail....