And? Eli? Any thoughts on this?

I worry about tribalism and think nobody has really examined the policies of our nominees, yet I'm going to call Hillary part of "the New Left" because I have no clue what her actual policies are not how they differ from either Sanders or Warren. I really enjoy calling everybody else stupid because I'm 24 and can't believe that anybody would disagree with me. Why won't you vote for my candidate?!!?

A huge component of Hillary's strategy is to convince blacks and women that everyone else is out to get them and she is their only defender.
The Left spews 'Racist' and 'Sexist' and 'Homophobe' (serious charges, when true…) at anyone who disagrees with them.
Young folk, not veterans of decades long culture wars, tire of the mindless name calling, and to a surprising extent see thru it.
It is unfortunate that Hillary can't run on anything positive.

The most important strategy of the left is what the right does all the time: Demonize the "other" who doesn't support your views of the world. Disagreement is no longer viable: you must destroy the enemy.

I'm sure this will work out very well in the end.

@3: OK then, but I don't remember people calling McCain and Romney racist or sexist, and today the Republican candidate is both of those in spades. If young people can't see that is true, young people are either stupid or wilfully ignorant.

The average 24-year-old isn't a policy wonk? Shocking.

Those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it.

What lessons can be learned from history? That demagoguery and propaganda are useful strategies for political power. @3 & @4 want the reader to believe that it is the left that uses these tactics. I disagree. Research the "dog-whistle" politics of the late 20th century and decide for yourself.

As a gay man I've seen the GOP embrace the "Religious Right" for decades. I've seen the GOP remain silent while horrendous calumnies were heaped upon my community, not just silent but actual embracing of the hate speech to gain political power.

Now we see the alt-right trying to convince today's electorate that somehow advocating for equality is "racist" because ??? - That the GOP really cares about minorities because ???

The AIDS crisis of the 80's and the callous disregard for our lives was merely one unforgivable sin of the GOP. I proudly declare my disdain for their party and personal disgust of anyone supporting them. This is absolutely identity politics and I'm proud to identify as a Democrat - a bleeding heart liberal democrat at that.

Life isn't easy, we all weigh the sins of others and decide for ourselves how best to proceed. Look at the policy platforms of the two parties and decide for yourself which party best represents your values (at the party's best) - No party is without sin.

@7 I agree with your comment aimed @4. Both sides are very guilty of tribalism and demonization of the other. And they're both great at it.

@5 - As a POW John McCain suffered enough that I can forgive his racists leaning toward North Vietnamese.

As a POW who suffered torture and then endorsed the US use of torture, I cannot forgive him that crime against humanity.

McCain never endorsed waterboarding, torture, or anything of the sort.

Let's face it, there is no way Hillary will lose: but will she be able to govern come January? My money is unless the Democrats take both houses of congress back the answer is a clear no. And I find it amazing that no one on either side will look beyond November 8 at this point. We're heading towards a massive brick wall no matter who wins and this is just a shit show to keep us entertained until reality hits again.

@13, a raging bigot? How about this. I live in Seattle and would like to meet you in person sometime. You name the place and time. Unless face to face confrontation isn't something you want to do. And yes, it needs to be a public place with plenty of witnesses

@13, still waiting .......

@16: I don't know blip actually lives in Seattle, but I do, and I'd be happy to meet you if you like. :)

@3:

Ah, I see that you've now appointed yourself as The Voice of The Youth; is there ANY political, cultural, or racial demographic whose minds and opinions you DON'T purport to know?

And of course, you're wrong again, as usual. Secretary Clinton only needs to convince blacks and women (and LGBTQ's, and Latinx) that the GOP is out to get them, which is pretty easy to demonstrate - all she has to do is point out what they say, what policies they support, and what legislation they intend to enact if elected.

@15: a fistfight will prove you're not a bigot? or pistols at 20 paces? perhaps you are merely proposing a moderated debate over the issue.

@15 Is this like "Meet me out in the school yard after school?" Slapping blip in the face with your glove? Throwing down your gauntlet? Will you be bringing you posse? Your second? You should be more clear here, so blip knows what he's expected to do, like, should he put a ribbon from a fair lady on his hat? Shall the rest of us come watch? We wouldn't want any faux pas, would we?

@15 @16

L O FUCKING L

Internet tough guys still exist!

I bet you get extra mad if someone else honks at you in traffic too.

@15 you are a bigot, you've made that clear with your own posts. Threatening people who point that out won't change anything.

@15 & 16: So does this mean you won't meet with me? Oh sad face emoji.
Maybe you're rethinking what an ass hat you've been challenging blip to a duel?
I hope so, but it's this sort of hot temper that Slog Happy was designed to diffuse, so maybe we all really should get together. Especially during These, Our Troubled Times (tm)?

Just a side question: looking at the flare up above, didn't The Stranger use to sponsor Slog Meetups over drinks? I could be mistaken, it was before I started following the conversations here. And it's been a while, but seems like a good idea. When you can put a face to the person on the other side of the computer, perhaps actually knowing who you are talking to, can help the conversation in a positive way. Just a thought.

I worry that the same thing is happening to a Washington State Initiative - 732. There is some challenging history around its creation that people argue about and become obsessed with rather than looking at how HUGELY FREAKING PROGRESSIVE it actually is as a policy (with a super strong carbon tax and a major low income rebate), like, hello, DUH that would be so great to pass. We seem to have an obsession on the left with snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

@25: Yes you are correct, as I mentioned in my comment just above yours. :)

@27
Oops, missed that. Maybe they'll consider it!

For example;
Showing a photo ID when voting is about as non-controversial common sense a proposal as one could imagine.
Spinning it as a Racist attack on minorities' voting rights is inflammatory, objectively false and poisons the discourse give and take that is critical to the functioning of a democratic society.

@29 It "solves" a problem that doesn't exist (voter fraud), which is exactly the sort of thing Republicans should oppose.

@29 Also, I'm sure a person who wants to commit voter fraud would be unable to obtain a fake ID. And I'm sure the people in charge of voting booths would be experts at determining fake/real IDs. And I'm sure we'll all be continuing to vote in-person and not via mail.

@25, you may be thinking about the Drinking Liberally get-togethers arranged by/through Horse's Ass. They're still happening.

@29: Willing to agree with you that asserting a positive opinion about photo IDs should not automatically result in a racist attack (though not sure how often that actually happens, depending on how you define "attack"). But the proposal is neither common sense nor (obviously) non-controversial.

You do know that many, many people who are eligible and have the right to vote don't have a photo ID, right? How do you propose to address that?

LOL at how easily Cato was called out himself.

@ 29, when there's no problem (such as, there is no voter fraud resulting from false identification), then there is nothing sensible about imposing an ID requirement upon the electorate. It ain't broke, so don't fix it.

@36 Matt! Good to see you again. Oh and the troll you are responding too is particularly stubbornly stupid I wouldn't waste my time.

@28 & 32: Slog Happy still happens occasionally. There's a Facebook group called Friends of SLOG, but it's been since last fall I think since we got one together. I do wish the Stranger staff would be more proactive and throw one rather than relying on me, or the now mostly absent Mr. Harriman.
If they hosted it would probably draw a larger demographic of Sloggers, rather than just a clique of old timers.
The Christmas one the threw at that Bear bar was fabulous, but that was like four years ago.

@38: There was always the nerd happy hour at Raygun Lounge too, but I think that fizzled when Mary Traverse left for greener pastures. (Not that I ever attended, but that was purely because of commute limitations and my work schedule.)

33
Juridictions that require photo ID usually provide a ready means of obtaining one, and all could.

Thank you for the various other comments.

We realize many on the Left see no need for the ID but be aware that a huge segment of your fellow countrymen see it as an absolutely non-controversial common sense proposal, and it is framed as a racist attack on voter rights, and that has a very corrosive effect on dialog between left and right.

@41 there is no need for voter ID laws because there is no precedent of fraud warranting them. They always pop up in nonwhite districts for a reason.

Likewise;

Asking people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the junk they were born with strikes a huge segment of the population as logical and reasonable and fair (and obvious).
Especially since schools and other institutions have been very accommodating at providing facilities for the very small percentage of people with mental health issues that cause them conflict over gender.

The Left demands that the discomfort of transgendered folk be accommodated, while running roughshod over equally valid and strongly felt discomfort felt by individuals preferring gender specific facilities.

Why is the discomfort many feel when people of the opposite biological gender share facilities attacked as bigotry, intolerance and hatred?
Why is their fear any less valid than that felt by transgendered people?

When the Left attacks jurisdictions and seeks to economically ruin them for making reasonable accommodations to both groups it is seen as unreasonable overbearing tyrannical cultural oppression by many.

42
The jurisdiction where we vote is 89% caucasian and we cheerfully provide photo ID as required by law when we vote.

Simple solution to the Voter ID "issue": universal vote-by-mail. Problem (such as it is, which is to say, NOT an actual problem) SOLVED.

Also, of note: every single, solitary bathroom in every house, apartment, condo, and double-wide in this country is unisex - people have been sharing them their entire lives, and nobody ever gets their hate-rage on because of their being accessible to everyone, regardless of gender identity. If you can handle that (and you most certainly CAN), then you can certainly handle someone using the stall next to you without succumbing to the temptation to peek over the top.

And if you're going to play the "bu - but, what about rapists disguised as women?" canard, all I can say is: YOUR rape-fantasy shouldn't be the standard by which these policies are created.

@41: "The jurisdiction where we vote is 89% caucasian and we cheerfully provide photo ID as required by law when we vote."
The Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina specifically targeted black voters.

The reason Commitatus and other rightwing wretches favor voter ID is that the very people who sometimes don't have such ID (poor/minority/immigrants) are the people that he and other rightwing wretches don't want voting. He wouldn't admit that, but that's it.

@46
Good point.
So you're saying Transgender folks should be able to use whatever bathroom local law requires without any problem.
I think we are already starting to bridge the divide….

@47

So what?

The Supreme Court is blatantly political and has lost it's moral authority as an unbiased referee in the eyes of an increasingly large percentage of Americans.
It has squandered that authority in it's greedy haste to force the Leftist agenda on society.

Rulings can be overturned.

Or,
if the next president shares Obama's contempt for enforcing laws he finds inconvenient, ignored.

@2

Yep, you pretty much nailed it!

Millennial writes in expressing concerns about the inability of the electorate to move past tribalism and identity politics, and the comment thread naturally is awash in tribalism and identity politics.

"Common sense" as is often used by right-leaning media outlets is an example of what Stephen Colbert quipped "makes sense unless you think about it". Voter ID requirements is a canonical example of a solution in search of a problem. The truly 'common sense' approach to governance is to not pass laws that address problems that cannot be supported by evidence as actually happening.

While the comparison with transgender bathroom access laws is a canard, there is in fact evidence that transgender people face violence and sexual assault far more often than other members of our society. Conversely, there's no evidence at all that granting transgender people access to their bathroom of choice has anything at all to do with the incidence of sexual predators entering opposite sex bathrooms. The "common sense" solution is to address the thing that's actually happening, largely on the principle that one of government's functions in a democratic society is to help safeguard minorities from the whims and prejudices of the majority.

As to the Supreme Court, yes it has taken more and more cases that have political impacts. This is in large part because Congress has failed to do it's part in governing and building national consensus for decades. When Congress fails to address any of the hard issues, they ultimately get left to the President to try to ameliorate through executive orders or as court challenges that end up in narrow margins at the Supreme Court. The failed institution here is Congress, which is ultimately the fault of voters who punish representatives who do their job which requires crafting compromises.

@50: "The Supreme Court is blatantly political"
In other words, they make decisions you don't like. Say, if it's so political, how come their decisions go either way? If it were really all that political, you'd expect whoever has the ideological majority to win every decision, right? And yet a court with 5 conservative-leaning and 4 liberal-leaning justices handed down decisions that pleased conservatives and angered liberals (like Citizens United) and also vice versa (like Obergefell v. Hodges). Maybe they're actually just interpreting the Constitution and the law?

Also, it is well-documented that state legislators accessed data regarding ID type ownership by race, and then JUST SO HAPPENED to write laws that disallowed the kinds of ID predominantly owned by African-Americans. And despite that sequence of events, the Supreme Court ruling that legislators targeted racial groups with the law, and North Carolina's history of suppressing the black vote, you want me to believe that it's all just one huge coincidence? Your argument doesn't pass the laugh test.

It is not the job of the Court to "address hard issues" that Congress and/or the people have not addressed quick enough or in a manner that suits the court.

The nation was working toward a consensus on abortion when the Court snatched the issue away and imposed a verdict. Ditto homosexual marriage.

When the court pre-empts the healthy functioning of democracy (even if it is slow, or messy; in fact especially when it is slow and messy) it leaves unresolved open wounds, and creates huge resentments.

The Court is not some band of Deities handing down Wisdom; their job is to referee the free market of ideas and laws as The People make laws to govern themselves.
It is not the job of the Court to be smarter than The People, to impatiently instruct them in Righteousness.

When the Court gets too far in front of (or away from) the broad consensus it loses it moral authority, which ultimately is the only authority it has.

And as it does that it opens the door for the other branches to ignore it, knowing they will face little backlash or repercussion from the population.

Obama has set dangerous precedents with his capricious failure to enforce laws he didn't like; what will be the next step a President Trump will be emboldened to take?

The Courts loss of legitimacy is just one more piece of the scenery along the way in the nation's journey into chaos and dissolution.

@54: First off, you've completely ignored the gaping hole in your argument. IF the Supreme Court is, as you say, "blatantly political", why then did the same group of 9 justices issue rulings favoring such a wide range of ideological positions? Explain that.

It is not the job of the Court to follow the national consensus, "referee the free market of ideas", or clutch pearls about "moral authority". It is the job of the Court to decide cases brought before it, and to rule on whether the laws in question pass Constitutional muster.
It really doesn't matter what laypeople THINK about a certain case; it must be decided in accordance with the law. That means it is ABSOLUTELY "the job of the Court to be smarter than The People"; deciding whether or not a law is Constitutional is complicated and controversial in most cases, and so it is left to dedicated professionals rather than the lay public. And if you're worried about a branch of government straying from the popular will, look no further than Republicans in Congress blocking universal background checks (a measure supported by 80%+ of Americans) and refusing to even hold hearings, much less a vote, on Merrick Garland's appointment to the Supreme Court (two thirds of Americans think he should get a vote).

Also, when Roe v. Wade was handed down, a strong majority of Americans believed that abortion should be legal. And in 2015, when Obergefell v. Hodges was decided, 60% of Americans supported marriage equality. You've got quite the chutzpah, complaining about SCOTUS rulings that affirmed the popular will as if it's some huge affront to "The People".

Hey there, kid-who-wrote-this-letter. Good job, thanks. I'm a genX and have been struggling to put into words what you are calling "tribalism". I also hadn't thought much about what the DT vote means for future elections, even if he loses. Hope you find a job soon and when you do, they appreciate your thoughtfulness.

@49:

Thanks for trying to put words in my mouth, but what I'm actually saying is Transgender folks should be able to use whatever bathroom corresponds to their gender identity without any problem.

My Husband and I attended the Seattle Caucus events in March. At the time all Hillary supporters were will willing to support Bernie, but sadly not the other way around. We too were torn as to who we liked better not who was worse than? FIRST LESSON: You change the rules (as they should be) BEFORE or AFTER a Presidential Election not during. Use a sports analogy if you care? I wish I had seen all of the same shining, young faces from the protests last night. When we were canvassing door to door, making phone calls, registering voters etc. I can’t tell you how many of you said I hate Hillary—Let it all Bern!? Very grown up behavior people! Seriously we each gave a minimum of close to volunteer 200 hours. Where were you then—Ha, where the fuck were you? Your in-action and naive belief in the criminal, sexist attacks on Hillary are what brought this shit storm. Hillary adopted 75% of Bernie’s Platform. Would have made her cabinet 50% women including Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. Now we get Sarah Palin and a bunch of old white men. Thank you Bernie-Bro’s across the country I lay this blame at your feet. If you really want to do something NOW start a movement to get rid of the Electoral College (she won the popular vote) and overturn Citizens United. Yes we are a gay couple who have been together for 20+ years and now even our marriage could be taken away from us? Let alone what is at stake with healthcare, women’s rights and the environment.