Prior to the 60s, maybe even the 70s, US politics was so about common ground and compromise. Pretty frequently, one side felt the other was wrong about how to go about something, but agreed on the end goal.
This is so wrong it’s comical. Political parties were run like crime syndicates in many ways. Local politics was routinely about graft and corruption, especially in poorer neighborhoods. The word “cooping” means “a form of electoral fraud in the United States… by which citizens were kidnapped off the street and forced to vote, often several times over, for an election candidate.”
I didn’t say it was always more polite, and of course there are examples of people using all sorts of illegal tactics to get or retain power. None of that in any way invalidates the fact that we had a very long period of getting things done by compromise and not completely alienating the other side. Today, that’s the norm, not the exception. Sometimes it seems like it’s more important for politicians to keep the other side from scoring a point than getting their own goals met.
This is so wrong it’s comical. Political parties were run like crime syndicates in many ways. Local politics was routinely about graft and corruption, especially in poorer neighborhoods. The word “cooping” means “a form of electoral fraud in the United States… by which citizens were kidnapped off the street and forced to vote, often several times over, for an election candidate.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooping
Also, you know… the whole Civil War thing. Politics is much more polite today. People are no longer beaten senseless on the floor of the Senate.
I didn’t say it was always more polite, and of course there are examples of people using all sorts of illegal tactics to get or retain power. None of that in any way invalidates the fact that we had a very long period of getting things done by compromise and not completely alienating the other side. Today, that’s the norm, not the exception. Sometimes it seems like it’s more important for politicians to keep the other side from scoring a point than getting their own goals met.