Heads They Win, Tails You Lose

Threats of what are effectively self-harm can only drive accountability when the party being held accountable extorted is both free and obligated to place one's interests and benefits above their own.

Negative partisanship, at least as the phenomenon is currently experienced in the United States, directly erodes the ability of the citizens to hold office-holders accountable for looking after their citizen's interests. A lot was made, especially during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last year, of the unhappiness of the Arab (and especially Palestinian) American community with the Biden Administration's approach to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the wake of the October 7th, 2023 attacks on Israel. The requested (demanded?) that a representative of theirs be given a speaking slot at the convention. Convention organizers and the Harris campaign, knowing what would be said, stonewalled them, and in the end, they weren't granted a slot. Feeling disrespected, there were calls within the community to withhold votes from Democrats, the Green vote surged and there were even endorsements of Donald Trump.

That worked out amazingly well for them.

"And they were expecting...?" is the obvious question here. Given that Evangelical Christianity is a large part of the Republican voter base, and for them, the victory of Zionism is effectively a prerequisite for a desired Apocalypse, it seems difficult to imagine that the Trump Administration would be actively pushing Israel to accept something that would be acceptable to the Palestinians. And while voting Green on Jill Stein's promises that she would be in their corner as President, the fact that he candidacy had zero hope of winning made it a poor vehicle for anything of genuine importance.

In a two-party system, voters can be "held hostage" by political parties to the same, or even greater, degree that parties can be beholden to voters. When the only other viable party to vote for is ready, willing and able to completely ignore a community's needs and interests, holding the party one would otherwise support to account necessarily requires a readiness to sacrifice those needs and interests. And I don't believe the American public, is, on the whole, prepared to do that.