How Political Parties Make Us Hate Each Other

Exposing the most destructive and divisive partisan tactics

Candidates and elected officials try to gain the support of voters in one of two ways. Positive politicking involves convincing people that your ideas are good and that you are good at your position or that you would be. Negative politicking entails convincing people that your opponents’ ideas are bad and that they are bad at their positions or that they would be.

There are degrees of negative politics, though. You can limit your criticisms to your opponents’ views and competence, simply making the case that they have bad ideas or that they have performed poorly in office or that they would perform poorly.

Or you can escalate to going after their ethics and character. Specifically, you claim that your opponents have done bad things, either while in office or at other times in their lives, and that this makes them unfit to serve.

Those kinds of attacks fall under the heading of good, old-fashioned “mudslinging,” a long-established tradition in American politics. Mudslinging encompasses everything from blaming opponents for various failures to accusing them of legal or ethical wrongdoing to shaming their personal behavior to exposing embarrassing information about them or their inner circles to other character attacks and insults.

But, if you really want to ramp things up, you can attack your opponents’ intentions. In other words, instead of saying that your opponents’ ideas are bad, you essentially say that their ideas are bad, and it’s all part of their evil plan. You attribute sinister motivations to their policies and claim that they are meant to hurt certain groups.

Attribution of malice

Ever since I became politically aware, Democrats and Republicans have been having the same argument about taxes. Democrats back higher taxes for higher earners. Republicans generally favor lower taxes for everyone.

Both parties have legitimate rationales. Democrats want the additional revenue to pay for programs that are designed to raise quality of life. Many of these initiatives also stimulate the economy, creating jobs and growth, they argue.

Republicans seek to cut taxes for the wealthy, along with everyone else, believing that the money will be put back into the economy through investments, expansion and entrepreneurship. This will create jobs and growth and raise quality of life, they claim.

It’s certainly possible for each side to rationally criticize the other’s policies without casting them as sinister. Republicans make a constructive argument when they question the effectiveness of social programs, just as Democrats do when they question whether rich folk will really reinvest their tax savings into the economy.

Yet, from the way each side portrays the other’s policies, you’d think they believe the other side’s intent is to sink Americans into financial depravity. Republicans routinely characterize Democratic economic policy as “tax and spend,” omitting the fact that the programs those contemptible liberals want to fund are generally meant to help people. At the same time, Democrats decry tax breaks for the notorious “one percent,” waving off the notion that the wealthy are often job producers who, as they acquire more wealth, will produce more jobs.   

In other words, Republicans write off Democrats’ push for social programs as a waste of taxpayer money and a wealth transfer from hard-working Americans to freeloaders. Not to be outdone, Democrats ascribe Republican fiscal policies to wanting to deprive vulnerable people of services, while fattening the wallets of families, friends and campaign donors. 

In one policy dispute after another, the opposing sides attribute malicious intent to each other. To mainstream (i.e. pro-life) Republicans, abortion rights proponents couldn’t possibly be motivated by the desire to maximize women’s opportunities; no, they’re just baby killers. Meanwhile, mainstream (i.e. pro-choice) Democrats couldn’t possibly accept that most people who oppose abortion are driven by the desire to protect what they see as life because, clearly, pro-lifers just want women to remain barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

Or when it comes to police-involved shootings of people of color, many Republicans declare that, rather than being concerned about people of color getting shot, Democrats just don’t care if cops get shot. But, many Democrats won’t accept that Republicans are worried about the welfare of officers because, obviously, all the GOP is doing is aiding and abetting a racist justice system.

Or on the issue of how contested allegations of sexual assault and harassment are handled, Republicans paint Democrats as misandrists who want to redefine rape as regret, instead of recognizing that their purpose is to protect women from sexual violence. But, Democrats, in turn, say Republicans want to promote the notion that women lie about rape, refusing to acknowledge that most Republicans just want to be confident that these cases are handled fairly.

Invoking bogeymen

A companion tactic to attributing malice to your opponents is to tie them to an entity that is seen as diabolical, a bogeyman. Partisans invoke the names of these sinister movements, groups or individuals and link them to their opponents’ proposals, which cultivates hostility toward these ideas without partisans having to make any substantive arguments against them.

On the matter of taxation, Republicans raise the specter of “big government” as emerging from Democrat-backed social programs, and Democrats fire back by charging Republicans with being in service to the dreaded “one percent.” In the abortion and sex crimes arguments, Republicans might invoke “liberal feminism,” while Democrats like to blame everything on “the patriarchy” and “rape culture.” And for police-involved shootings, Republicans’ favorite scapegoat is Black Lives Matter, while Democrats’ go-to is “institutional racism.”

Like mudslinging, attribution of malice and the use of bogeymen worsen partisan hatred. They intensify rage that has been building on both sides for years because, first, they amount to a hit job against people’s character and, second, they are devastatingly effective.

Unlike mudslinging, attribution of malice and invoking bogeymen aren’t textbook terms in American politics. But, they should be added to the list.

Because the essence of political hatred is found in these tactics.

Mudslinging certainly magnifies partisan anger, which, over time, increases national dissension. But, attribution of malice and the use of bogeymen take the animus to another level entirely.

There’s a difference between saying your opponents have done harmful things that should disqualify them from their positions and claiming, in effect, that their intention is to use their positions to harm people or that they consort with entities who intend to harm people. These are the kind of accusations that people in these scary times get scared into believing, especially avid partisans, who instinctively think the worst of their political adversaries.

From there, it’s a small leap for folks to decide that not only are their opponents’ plans despicable, but so are their opponents themselves. Then it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to conclude that all their opponents’ supporters are despicable too.

And so, people hate their political foes. And their political foes hate them right back.

** Portions of this post have been adapted from my upcoming book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down (2024).

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