Re: "our contribution to the overall health of the public conversation".
@ Stuart Castle
"This is the basic message Trump used, and also the basic message that the Brexit campaigners used. They also provided a nice big bogeyman (immigration) for people to blame. The remain campaign and Hillary Clinton both pretty much said "Things are generally OK, but some things could improve""
But thats not quite what happened was it? Hillary insulted the lower educated as trump supporters by reasoning that trump supporters were the lower educated. Capturing that group Trump made the inclusive message that yes he does represent a large portion of America that Hillary just rejected. I still maintain that Trumps win could have been due to the Democrats dictating the winner but the Republicans deferring to democracy. The Democrats had their own Trump (Bernie), the outsider with large claims.
Brexit seems very complicated with good reasons to leave based on trade, economy, sovereignty, democracy, immigration, etc. Yet as you point out the argument was claimed to be about immigration (a limit set by remain). This is probably because Cameron supported brexit and accepted it wasnt a problem before the referendum, Carney and Osborne argued against economic recovery they have and are still performing and they have little ground to argue on sovereignty. So they ran a project fear (the official leave campaign sucked bad too) of negativity while leave poked holes in the EU. Even the staunch EU supporting media was accepting it was broken, but we should stay to reform it.
"It's also pushing moderate voters to the right"
I have noticed for some time that the left wing has stopped discussing and stopped debating. If you disagree you are either racist, xenophobe, intolerant, homophobe, transphobe, evil, hitler, etc. My way is the right way and any other opinion is probably one of the above. On the right there is discussion, and not always good discussion. But do you listen to someone who says I am right and everyone else is evil, or do you listen to a reasoned argument?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
