This is a very good topic.
There are a lot of people out there who are "politically homeless" and that's really unfortunate. For Republicans, it's been basically seven years of sweeping generalizations over hunting down Donald Trump. That's just plain exhausting. A lot of Conservatives feel like they are being held hostage as Trump doesn't not represent the total mindset of all Republicans, but the "First Past The Post" system means they have to vote one way versus what amounts to nothing at all. On the flip side, there are probably still 15-20 million Pro Life Democrats in this country who were complete disenfranchised by their Party. And many traditional liberals were dragged along for the ride as the more radical elements of Team Blue took over. Again, you have a lot of people feeling like they are hostages. They can't abide by Republicans but they have to hold their nose to vote for many Democrats on the ballot.
But there's the market share element to all this. Chris Rock once pointed out that many black celebrities in entertainment grimace when a movie like Soul Plane comes out. Because it reduces the mainstream view of African Americans as a type of unrealistic over the top caricatures. But Rock admits that people will make what the audience has shown they will pay to see.
This is something I notice casually with Breaking Points, with Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball. There is a slight tonal shift to make their product more marketable as time goes on. And here is where things can get dangerous. Because marketable often means leaning into hard partisan energy. Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire offer a more pseudo Grantland approach to politics, but it's still hard edged partisan for money. And Grantland failed ( That still bothers me to this day)
Moderate discussion is not profitable, and the best pursuit pathway exists because it's an open niche. But it's an open niche because it's not profitable. When you have a situation like this, you need certain personality types to do the heavy lifting. That's a type of charismatic pull that's hard to find and sustain. You only get an Al Michaels type or a Vin Scully type every so often.
The failures of most moderate discussion and platforms is they don't have a simple guide post. What is the best one?
Well I've said it before - Will supporting X or Y, or alternatively opposing it, create a better world for our children to inherit.
It's the main litmus test that I use. When people see no real loss when they don't listen and don't show empathy, it means nothing to stay brutal. However if they know their children will inherit pain, suffering and death in the generations to come, then it tugs at their view of legacy and duty. Many years ago, when my godson was young, some channel flipping found a reality show called "Bad Girls Club" Where women were just brutal to each other. They lived together and inflicted non stop pain and chaos on each other for sport. My godson asked me, how do you stop them from arguing. I said make an 8 year old little boy live with them. They might still despise each other, but they aren't going to cut each other's throats in front of a little boy. It gives them someone and something to focus on other than their self inflicted drama.
Toeing the middle is close to inoperable without a universally accepted litmus test.
I do think there is some market pathway for the before mentioned "politically homeless" out there. As I've said before, I have great empathy for traditional liberals. My politics don't often align with them often, but I recognize they probably despise the radical left and woke extremism more than even I do. I see them less as ideological opposition and more as reluctant hostages of their own Party's greed and lust for power. The GOP is no less ruthless. Imagine how difficult it might be for a Republican who is also a black lesbian.
In the end, you have to be OK with be non marketable if that's the price for authenticity. I have a top level thread on diesel I support here that I know is just plain boring for most in the forums. But I find it important and interesting and I keep supporting it. Same with Hispanic voters and Brittney Griner. I could pick things that would generate more traffic, but I have the luxury of not being under pressure to keep up a certain number of likes, subscribes, views, etc, etc to generate revenue to keep a platform afloat. I like what I like because I like it.
Effective moderate political discussion needs a better conduit. It's not hard to package hard line tribalism. You could be a hack like Tim Pool and make a living off of that. But it's a struggle to take the mundane and make it interesting. That's an exceedingly rare skill set. Once you add monetization into it, it's close to impossible to maintain financially. Like I said before, Grantland failed and it failed for a reason. But I still loved Grantland. I don't agree with Bill Simmons on everything, but he held to his vision even when it was going to cost him.
Something I said to
@Sigmund Bloom about his podcast years ago was that all that mattered was people understood that he loved football. If people could see the purpose and passion behind that love, in an authentic way, then everything else ( money, viewers, listeners, ads, guests, etc, etc) would take care of itself naturally in it's own course.
I think it's less critical to remove bias but more important to maintain authenticity. That's the path to real dialogue and exchange of ideas. It's rarely moving to people on how you feel on it's own, but more that how you feel translates and impacts how they perceived themselves. It's a type of "necessary vanity" within us all. Or as Shepherd Book says - I don't care what you believe. Just believe in it.
This is a good topic.
