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Misc

Understanding In-Fighting Within Coalitions

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.

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