: The difficulty you're having picking sides is easy to resolve. Choose neither. Vote issue by issue and always pick candidates with views most similar to yours to ensure you're best represented. Partisanship creates false loyalties. That would only be possible in a direct democracy, however, we live in representative democracies...
A post from another place:
A remarkably prescient piece from Hegel, writ in 1802
"It is well to remember that the exercise of a wholly occaisonal calling, like
that of being a voter, easilly ceases to be of interest in a short time and in
any case depends upon an accidental attitude and monmentary preference. This
calling is exhuasted by single action, an action occuring only once in a few
years; when the number of voters is large, the individual may regard as very
unimportant the influence of [their] own vote, all the more because the deputy
who [they] elect is [themself] in turn only one member of a numerous asssembly
where only a small number give much evidence of being of much importance, and
where in any case the contribution made by one vote out of many is
unimpressive...
"But experience has shown that the excessive gap between the importance of the
effect which is supposed to ensue, and the extremely small effect that the
individual seems to [themself] have, soon produces the result that the
enfranchised become indifferent to this right of theirs."
"The electors appear in no bond, no connexion with the civil order and the
organisation of the state. the citizens come onto the seen as isolated atoms,
and the elctoral assemblies as unordered inorganic aggregates; the people as a
whole is dissolved into a heap. This is a form in which the comunity should
never have appeared at all in undertaking any enterprise; it is a form most
unworthy of community and most in contradiction with its concepts as a
spiritual order. Age and property qualifications are qualities affecting only
the individual [themself], not characteristics constituting [their] worth in
the civil order. Such worth [they] have on the strength of [their] office,
[their position], [their] skill in craftsmanship which is recognised by
[their] fellow citizens, entitles [them] accordingly to be described as a
master of [their] craft, etc."
Now, this is an early, and devastating critique of representative (formal)
democracy, which i think as a great bearing on the recent Euro-poles. What
Hegel was unaware of (it not being present at his time) was how factions,
(Parties, etc.) would arise as mass movements, based around social bonds,
specifically class representation, to serve the necessary mediating role
created by the flaws he accurately observed in the system.
Now, political scientists will tell you, however, that a recent
phenomeneneneneonononon call 'Voter Disalignment' has occured, in which people
no longer vote acccording to their class/group, but rather float between
parties and their policies- hence the insidous (and invidious) re-creation of the 'silent majority' argument by the Blair project (Party members are all
more extreme than the mainstream voter, therefore we must reeach out beyond
(above) our party membership, to embrace the mainstream voter). This breaks
the social bonds of voting, and elections, and means that the dissociation of
affect that hegel notes above begins to occur.
The clear example being the US- wherein only about half of all people vote,
largely because there is no representation for their class, no social link,
etc.
The fantasy of politics without parties
is inimical to the represenative system, we cannot vote on issues, on specific
policies, we can only vote on the sort of people we want to represent, i.e.
vote and decide on our behalf, us in Parliament.
