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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy progressives shouldnt despair over Trump
By Barton Swaim January 18 at 2:15 PM
Barton Swaim is the author of "The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics" and a contributing columnist at The Washington Post.
Remember wedge issues? You still see the term from time to time, but its popularity has diminished since the 1980s and 90s. Thats probably just as well; Metaphorical expressions like this one usually confuse more than they clarify, although it seems to have been replaced by the equally figurative and probably more confusing dog whistle.
A wedge issue, if you dont go back that far, is a controversial topic used by one campaign to create dissension within an opposing campaign. If I sense that a significant number of my opponents voters disagree with him or her on some question, I will raise it in an attempt to get them to doubt their support.
The salient characteristic of a wedge issue, at least in the common usage by commentators and journalists a generation ago, is its substantive unimportance. The wedge issue was almost always a social or cultural issue: something about race, religion or sex. When a journalist referred to gay rights, say, as a wedge issue, the implication was usually that the candidate raising the issue didnt really care about it. The issue didnt affect voters lives in any direct or appreciable way, but the candidate forced it into the debate in a cynical attempt to disunite the other sides constituency.
This is more or less the way Thomas Frank uses the term in his 2004 book Whats the Matter with Kansas? Franks argument, if I could oversimplify, is that Kansas voters naturally tend to the left on subjects such as education, taxes and health care, but that Republicans have learned to use cultural issues school prayer, smut on the airwaves, abortion and so on to fool Kansans into abandoning their own interests and voting GOP.
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thucythucy
(7,983 posts)ALL his cabinet picks have been abominable from any progressive point of view.
The CEO of Exxon as Secretary of State? A rabid anti-environmentalist as head of the EPA? Someone who wants to undermine public education as Secretary of Education?
I wonder if this writer isn't one of those folks who told us not to worry, Trump didn't stand a chance of a) winning the nomination and/or b) assuming office.
The alt-Right has and will benefit from any attempt to minimize the danger Trump poses.