Nasty Politics and "Low-Information Voters" Are Nothing New

[Draggingtree]

Mises: Nasty Politics and "Low-Information Voters" Are Nothing New

16 HOURS AGO Ryan McMaken

During this year's election cycle, the mainstream media has told us to believe that there is something shockingly nasty about the tone of this year's contests. CNBC typifies this line of thinking with an article titled "Trump v Clinton: Why this election could be the nastiest in history."

 

For anyone with a working familiarity of past political rhetoric, this claims strikes one as rather implausible. After all, accusing someone of being likely to destroy the world in a nuclear holocaust, as Johnson clearly did of Goldwater in 1964, is a pretty"nasty" thing to do. Moreover, critics of Ronald Reagan were not exactly known for their reticence, with Reagan and his advisors being called racist, "feeble-minded," "senile," "demented," and "hypocritical," in both public and private comments by his detractors.

 

Things were far "nastier" in the 19th century, when voters often identified with a specific political party on an emotional level that far surpasses what people report today. Moreover, heavy-handed and emotional attacks on candidates were fueled by the country's thousands of partisan newspapers which were like today's blogs and constantly churned out emotionally charged content.

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

All of these factors led to a very robust, raucous, and even bawdy culture around elections and partisan politics that would strike many modern Americans as violent and barbaric today.

Unfortunately, detailed treatments of the culture behind 19th-century politics are relatively hard to come by, but in a new book by Jon Grinspan titled The Virgin Vote, readers can get a glimpse at what American politics looked like in an age when partisanship was far more intense than it is today, and in which the rhetoric was at least as apocalyptic.1

1 History...History...History. You need to know (at least) something about the history of a particular subject, otherwise you'll be clueless.

2 Donald Trump (and the Republicans) have spent the last couple of weeks complaining about the biased treatment of the 2 campaigns. This has never happened before...well except for 1948 1950 1956 1960 1964 1972 1976...and on and on and on. Jan 2008 John McCain was the greatest thing since sliced bread Oct 2008 John McCain was The Worst Person In The World. How many times does the Rightwing Media need to see this before they figure it out?

 

/rant #750,173.664