One paradoxical aspect of political coalitions/alliances, such as the broad anti-Trump alliance that just won (which included. i.e., progressives, centrist Democrats, and never-Trump Republicans): in order to turn out their faction to coordinate with other factions on overlapping goals (i.e., defeating Trump) each faction actually needs to criticize the other factions to some degree on the non-overlapping goals.
Without that, many people within the factions feel that coordination with otherwise-opposed factions in the coalition is a form of selling out on the parts where the factions disagree.
In other words, a certain amount of in-fighting or at least bickering (within factions and across the entire coalition) is inevitable and even necessary. It’s a delicate balance though. Too much intra-coalition in-fighting and the coalition blows up into shards; not-enough and no faction can allow themselves to work with the others.In-fighting, finger-pointing and recriminations intensify immediately after the common goal is won (e.g., I saw it erupt all over Twitter just hours after the election was called)–when the differences among coalition partners once again become more salient. Even the proposition within each faction that “let’s maintain the unity/cooperation across the coalition” becomes a passionate point of intra-faction contention.
Plus, each faction starts claiming disproportionate influence on the victory, and claims other factions didn’t actually help much, or even harmed the cause and almost caused defeat. Part of all this is motivated by vying for increased leadership/resources.
It has a “fractal” aspect: the in-fighting occurs within wings of each faction + between factions. Factions within factions within factions. It’s a tangled 3D Venn diagram, with confusing and contradictory areas of overlap/non-overlap among multiple factions.
It’s often even hard to tell if it’s even in-fighting or out-fighting. When one wing or faction says (often quite plausibly) to another, “If you say/do X, you’re going to cost our coalition the victory in Y common goal”… it actually feels like rooting out enemies from within.
I’m not diagnosing “too much” vs. “too little” bickering/in-fighting within the anti-Trump coalition now. I’m not sure how much “unity” vs. “back to our old disagreements” within the anti-Trump coalition there should be now. I’m just pointing out that this pattern almost always shows up, across multiple contexts. It’s good to be aware of it, and recognize it’s pretty much inevitable and normal.
