The nature of our two-party system is such that, no matter which party’s candidate you may vote for in any given election for any given office, for whatever reasons, you are also invariably, inevitably, voting for any number of other constituencies, activists, special interest groups and ideologues, with some of whom you may strenuously disagree – and even those who may not even be officially affiliated with that party but would plainly prefer it to win over the other.

To put it another way: A vote for John Kerry in last year’s election was a vote for the likes of Michael Moore, International ANSWER and the PC crowd, whether or not you actually voted for Kerry because you share the far-left views of those groups. Likewise, a vote for George W. Bush was a vote for the Christian right and the likes of Dr. James Dobson, whether or not you actually voted for Bush because you favor recasting American society along Christian lines, or are even a practicing Christian yourself.

All this means that in any given election campaign – but especially the presidential campaigns – the two candidates’ respective images are invariably shaped by their respective parties’ political bedfellows. (Which, I might add, probably contributes heavily to the ideological warfare brought up by Rafique above.) I wonder how many other voters in last year’s election made their choice not just on the basis of the candidates themselves, but on which party’s bedfellows they found to be the least offensive?

Count me as one of them. Actually, I support the WOT unequivocally, but like a lot of us, I have serious problems with the way Bush has been running things.

I’ve never understood this bloodthirsty ideological war. You’d think the ideologues on the right and the Left would realize there are more important things to focus on. There are more than two sides to an issue, and disagreement is not disloyalty.

The coalitions are ad hoc, the common interest often is absent. But politics is war by other means, and if you spend any time committed to an election, you take your wounds, and you make your enemies, and you stock up on grudges to be repaid. Before long, with many people, the important thing becomes not principle, or common weal, or even personal benefit, but making sure those bastards on the other side are ground into dust, with just enough life left in their miserable carcases to feel the depth of their defeat.

Well said. I know for a fact that there are some who feel this way and they are poisoning the well.

However, I worked with a lot of very positive Democrats in the last election who truly felt our country was simply going in the wrong direction. Those are the type of people who I think can benefit from hearing different voices and understanding what extremism of any stripe breeds.

Look at what “Democrat” has meant over the years: “African-American + New England establishment,” “Southern segregationist + Northern union worker,” “Western farmer + Evangelical conservative,” “slave-holder + Irish immigrant,” etc.

The coalitions are ad hoc, the common interest often is absent. But politics is war by other means, and if you spend any time committed to an election, you take your wounds, and you make your enemies, and you stock up on grudges to be repaid. Before long, with many people, the important thing becomes not principle, or common weal, or even personal benefit, but making sure those bastards on the other side are ground into dust, with just enough life left in their miserable carcases to feel the depth of their defeat.

Ideally no one would fit neatly into any category. This is the label trap. The shrills on both sides have their checklists of positions you are supposed to hold in order to be orthodox. Orthodox – hah! – we need to anathematize them.

The labels became useless when they became binary. What is a conservative? A Tory or a Whig – an royalist or a free-marketeer?