Jan. 22, 2024
Lee Drutman was referenced in Real Clear Politics on Trump's win in Iowa.
As Morris Fiorina explained in his book, “Unstable Majorities,” absent some dramatic, systemic change, we are stuck in this hyper-partisan purgatory because the winning party always incorrectly interprets its win as a mandate for its policies. That, in turn, alienates the moderates who provide the margins to win closely contested campaigns. At the next election, the disgusted moderate majority takes away the keys from the winning party and gives them back to the other party, and the cycle starts all over again.
Other democracies avoid this doom loop (to borrow Lee Drutman’s term) by having multiple political parties which allows compromises to be brokered, avoiding the winner-take-all aspect of our elections.