Coalition politics as normal, important human behavior

I think one of the consequences of people’s aversion to politics and classifying politics strictly as electoral gameplay is that people end of seeing themselves as separate from the kind of coalition work that politics entails.

To be clear, I think there are some very valid reasons for seeing our political systems as corrupt and disproportionately influenced by oligarchical interests and capital. Our two-party system is not “good,” in my view. However, to the extent that at least part of a party’s function is just as a political coalition of diverse interests, I also think that political alliances and coalitions are unavoidable parts of any democratic system in which individuals are vying for the ability to contribute to the decisions shaping our collecting lives. This is, at least somewhat, the premise of Duverger’s law explaining why the United States has a two-party system, in that when you have a Presidential system like ours where it feels to people that whoever wins the Presidency wins the nation, it makes sense that pluralist interests would eventually converge into two major competing coalitions. (I recognize issues with this theory, but the point that the coalition-ing is just natural in human decision-making stands even in other political theories as well.)

While I think intense focus on this coalition tendency is perhaps unhealthy and could have the consequence of people seeing that work as more important than value work (which I think is a major criticism of party politics), I do think people’s evaluation of policy “strictly on the issues” without consideration of the ideological base they’re empowering is also a problem. We’re seeing a lot of this now, where on both critical race theory legislation and trans rights legislation, a lot of liberals support these bans because technically speaking, on their face, there are some language things in these pieces of legislation that are theoretically supportable. However, looking at any of these policies or actions as singular and disconnected from the way that people you disagree with can mobilize your support to gain more power is just naive. (I also think that even if you support some language in these policies, there is attached language that is clearly anti-justice that should stay your endorsement, but that’s a separate conversation.)

Similarly, there are all these folks who are downplaying the effects of, for example, the critical race theory bans because realistically, and they are right, some of this legislation is frankly unenforceable and just isn’t going to actually translate to educational practice in some tangible ways (especially as they affect colleges and universities). That doesn’t make it a non-issue. Successful adoption of these things is used to mobilize voters, change social norms around political support, and seat people in office who will and have done way worse things. As I’ve said before, I’m not functionally concerned in the slightest about how Georgia’s 1084 legislation (for example) will actually affect my job. What I’m actually concerned about is the normalization of this kind of legislation and what it creates politically opportunity for in this already precarious southern state.