Oh please. Democrats don't benefit the same amount from the same lax lobbying laws?
Pretty much, that's the point - "
both parties to gravitate towards a fairly similar narrow band of policies..." In addition to that artificial right-skewing of politics, there's also the
pollution paradox; filthy or otherwise negatively-impactful industries/companies most at risk of regulation curtailing their business model are most incentivized to spend money on politics if permitted, so politics becomes most skewed towards the worst kinds of business interests.
That may be true, but it's not going to happen. How often do we hear a Democrat call for lower taxes, or talk about reducing the absurd regulatory burden the government places on private businesses?
You're kidding, right? The few
legitimate examples of regulatory red tape are cases in which regulation imposes needless barriers to entry into a market, protecting the corporate interests already there - a direct result of the lobbying/donor influence I mentioned. But in many areas regulation of business is woefully inadequate: Even if you don't give a crap about environmental degradation (it's only the fabric on which the whole tapestry of human civilization is woven, after all), how about the fact that some ten thousand American deaths each year are caused by particulate emissions from coal power plants; some two to five times that number from auto exhaust emissions; almost as many from traffic collisions (which could be drastically reduced fairly cheaply by linking GPS with local speed limits to engine control, at the cost of losing some of the 'sexiness' and 'freedom' of the product)... and those are businesses which for thirty years we've known pose one of the greatest threats to the future of our species to begin with through their disruption of the climate! And you think businesses are
over-regulated?
As for taxes, after the global pandemic which royally screwed over hundreds of millions of people worldwide (but saw billionaires' wealth double or triple) what was the grand plan of the 'leftist' Biden administration? Something like a 2% increase in high-end income taxes, wasn't it... and did it even get passed?
Combustion emissions adversely impact air quality and human health. A multiscale air quality model is applied to assess the health impacts of major em…
www.sciencedirect.com
Radicalism does not "energize", it alienates their base.
Is that why all this 'CRT' nonsense was ignored and sidelined by conservatives? Why no-one ever says "They want to take your guns so they can control you"? Why there was never a 'national emergency' declared over pretty stock-standard rates of undocumented immigration? Why "defund the police" was such an insignificant blip in public consciousness? Why no-one believes that all white people are racist?
Radicalism might alienate the fence-sitters and 'independents,' and it's true that often long-time/establishment members of a party will lag behind or even distance themselves from the radical progressives/regressives/nationalists etc. But there's plenty of evidence that American political rhtetoric frequently - constantly even - tends towards hyperbolic shrillness on those various wedge issues, in some cases even to the point of affecting actual legislation (eg. bathroom laws or anti-'CRT' laws).
