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Jefferson believed that ordinary people, being well informed and engaging in open discussion, would provide the answers to the nation's challenges. Instead we have ignorance and closed minds. We have moved beyond sound-byte politics to hot button politics, which in the nature of people means the politics of intolerance.
The situation now isn't much different from one sponsor offering an unreasonably high level of payment and the others needing to follow suit. Then they need to find a way to pay the bill: welcome shaving, pre-marked cross-sells, etc.
The problem for any centrist party (it's a joke to call the Democrats left wing) is its extremely limited ability even to play this game, let alone win. By definition, hot button politics only works for extremists with emotive messages to deliver. It's the political style of Goebels and the mullahs of radical Islam. There is no medium through which to communicate more complex messages to which people don't want listen anyway.
We are entering the same situation that the UK faced when Margaret Thatcher was in power. The Democrats cannot win an election in current circumstances. Instead, the Republicans will keep introducing ever more radical legislation and go on working for ever more narrow interests, until ultimately they defeat themselves. It's a very painful process from which the country never really recovers.
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