There’s a certain tribal strain of political thinking, succinctly summed up in @josie ‘s comment “The duty of the opposition is to oppose”, where one’s political identity derives from opposition to some other entity. In other words, if they’re for it, then we’re against it.
That idea has always been around, but it has usually been tempered by the realization that there are common goals that we can all rally around, and that a good idea is a good idea, even if somebody else came up with it.
Over the past 8 years, we’ve seen the most extreme version of oppositional politics modeled. Here’s the scary thing: as a strategy for getting political power, it has been amazingly effective. Which means that for those whose sole concern is getting power, this has now become the operative model.
Game theory is informative here. It suggests that in situations where two parties can either cooperate to mutual benefit, or one of the parties can “defect” and screw the other party for selfish advantage, the best long-term strategy is cooperation. BUT, if one of the parties does defect, then the best strategy is for the other party to also stop cooperating.
At the beginning of the Obama administration, the Republican party defected from even the pretense of cooperation. What should the Democrats now do?