I don’t know if there has ever been a US election that wasn’t about change. It’s an easy thing to promise because the voter can self-insert whatever they themselves think needs to be different. The candidate doesn’t actually have to have a plan beyond that.
The problem with systems-level change is that it usually comes with unexpected consequences and that can cost lives. Small changes may be less satisfying but they can gradually get you the same changes in a slower but safer way.
I think maybe a more helpful descriptor than big or little, as it concerns change, would be ‘meaningful’. People have been yearning for meaningful change. Meaningful changes can be big, but they don’t have to be. Obamacare didn’t bring about socialized medicine, but still brought some meaningful change. That said, it was just one step in the right direction, but failed to be followed with more meaningful changes to a system that we’ve been trying to fix since Eisenhower. The more meaningful change is put off, the more desperate people become and the more urgent the problem becomes, the more people are willing to accept dramatic and unconventional changes as meaningful changes. The Democrats, to their credit, are occasionally capable of small, meaningful changes, such as investment in rail infrastructure. There’s also unfortunately a lot of parading of meaningless change as meaningful, or apologetics as to why meaningful change isn’t convenient just now. Repeat that for twenty years and you’ve basically got the post-2000s DNC platform; a few scattered, meaningful steps on disparate items, couched with a whoooooooole lot of high-octane mediocrity.
I don’t know if there has ever been a US election that wasn’t about change. It’s an easy thing to promise because the voter can self-insert whatever they themselves think needs to be different. The candidate doesn’t actually have to have a plan beyond that.
The problem with systems-level change is that it usually comes with unexpected consequences and that can cost lives. Small changes may be less satisfying but they can gradually get you the same changes in a slower but safer way.
I think maybe a more helpful descriptor than big or little, as it concerns change, would be ‘meaningful’. People have been yearning for meaningful change. Meaningful changes can be big, but they don’t have to be. Obamacare didn’t bring about socialized medicine, but still brought some meaningful change. That said, it was just one step in the right direction, but failed to be followed with more meaningful changes to a system that we’ve been trying to fix since Eisenhower. The more meaningful change is put off, the more desperate people become and the more urgent the problem becomes, the more people are willing to accept dramatic and unconventional changes as meaningful changes. The Democrats, to their credit, are occasionally capable of small, meaningful changes, such as investment in rail infrastructure. There’s also unfortunately a lot of parading of meaningless change as meaningful, or apologetics as to why meaningful change isn’t convenient just now. Repeat that for twenty years and you’ve basically got the post-2000s DNC platform; a few scattered, meaningful steps on disparate items, couched with a whoooooooole lot of high-octane mediocrity.