Jon's Soapbox
Why Can't a Conservative Vote for a Democrat?
(posted 6/17/2022) - Politics in the US at the state and federal level is no longer issue based in my opinion. People vote for either team Republican or team Democrat. Probably 10% or less Independents focus on issues and cast votes across parties. The majority of independent voters are really Republican or Democratic party followers for the most part. The independents are more likely (in my opinion) to withhold their vote for a party when they find no candidate they can support.
This article in The Guardian by Thomas Zimmer makes a powerful statement about risks to the continuing operation of the US two-party system and its democratic underpinnings. I truly fear for our country's future if the majority of the Republican party doesn't change its trajectory before the 2024 presidential elections.
A link to Zimmer's op-ed (short 5-pager in PDF format) is Here . I'll be looking back at this post in the future I'm sure.
PS (7/3/2022) -- I've come to the tentative conclusion that one aspect of the conservative mind is the belief that his/her intuition and experience is much more insightful than any professional or expert opinion to which they may object. Conservatives often exhibit an underlying disdain and distrust of both motive and logic of people who have spent years studying / practicing in nuanced disciplines.
We've all heard that snarky "how could X be true when I've experienced not X;" as though an anecdote is proof against expert opinion. Often such anecdotal reasoning fails miserably when viewed in a larger population of counter examples. Even more often the conservative's anecdote is an apple to orange comparison in which the layman is unable to even distinguish the differences that the expert understands quite well.
Again, it all boils down to a mind-set that dismisses expert opinion whenever conclusions don't align with one's viewpoint. I distinguish this from the liberal mind-set which appears to me to be much more open to new data and new conclusions. This is making no assertions about conservative vs. liberal ability to understand nuanced data and logical inferences, only about willingness to entertain new perspectives.