Political Mayhem Thursday: What the Right and the Left are getting

Just because I can (and also kinda because I will be in the area anyways) tomorrow morning I am going to head over to Uncle Nancy's Coffeehouse in Newton, Iowa for a meet n' greet with Montana Governor Steve Bullock, who as of this week is running for president. Perhaps I will get to meet "Uncle Nancy" too!  

That election is a long ways away, though, and we still have time to think more broadly about bigger issues. 

At the broadest level, I was captivated by a book review in the New York Times by David From. He was reviewing Adam Gopnick's book "A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism." At the center of the piece, this quote from the book jumped right out at me:

“The basic American situation in which the right wing wants cultural victories and gets nothing but political ones; while the left wing wants political victories and gets only cultural ones. … The left manages to get sombreros banned from college parties while every federal court in the country is assigned a far-right-wing activist judge.”

How true is that? I was almost toppled over by the insight that the right wants cultural victories and gets political ones, while the left wants political victories but is winning the culture war. It is so true! 

But isn't that unsustainable? Eventually, won't both sides see the disconnect and change either what they want or their tactics?

Or, perhaps more ominously, the right winning the political war-- and the judge-picking that goes with it-- will allow them to enforce cultural norms not held by the majority of the country. That, of course, could lead to their loss of political power but (because of lifetime appointments) not their hold over the judiciary, where culture can be capped and controlled.

What do you think?