Wolves of Babylon;1798606 wrote:I never understood this whole pandering to the base idea then moving to the center. You either have values and ideas you believe in or you are a fraud or liar in my opinion. Which explains both Trump and Clinton.
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While I definitely won't disagree with you on this, I think a big part of it just has to do with the nature of the system; in other words, a sign the whole system probably needs overhauled.
On both the left and right, you have a percentage of people who are really super-passionate about politics. Those people tend to be the more far left and far right people. When it comes to the overly long and drawn-out primary/caucus season, those are the people who are most interested, as I think the average person just gets burnt out by how this shit never fucking ends. Therefore, when it comes to this time of the year, candidates cater to those people, since they're the ones who will be coming out to vote in droves. When it gets cut down to the two nominees, more people towards the center of the aisle get interested, so candidates start moving their talking points to try to cater more towards them.
I think that's a big part of why things are as they are this year, where on both sides, you're seeing larger divisions. On the left, you have the perfect far left candidate in Bernie, who really woke up that group to the degree that a lot of them seem to have no desire to vote for the more centrist-left Hillary. On the right, I think Trump's "take no shit" way of talking woke up a lot of people who are probably politically apathetic most of the time in a "politicians don't really give a shit about us; this guy is an outsider, so he'll be different" way, which has the system Rs back on their heels to where a lot of prominent Rs are, at most, giving him half-hearted endorsements while also being openly critical of him publicly (in an attempt to heel him and get him in their hands).
At the very least, it's very interesting to watch. Makes you wonder if the system will settle down and things will return to how they've been or if both parties will blow themselves up and we might actually get real change in how things operate.