Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
We discussed this very paper in 2014, so I'm more interested in hearing how the findings have been expanded and corroborated since then.
Yes we did, that's how I knew about it. And that was exactly my point, that the findings of your linked research don't do us much good if they are not cross-checked with the findings of the old paper to see which kind of legislation exactly gets the bipartisan support. Bipartisan support is not inherently a good thing after all. If killing five million people got bipartisan support you surely wouldn't celebrate that as a victory of democracy or whatever exactly you were insinuating.

Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
But we're talking about slightly different things, how agendas are constructed (and the 2014 study points out it's lobbying groups in general, not just big business) and how agendas are legislated in the chambers of Congress between parties.
Eh, no, not according to this direct quote:
"When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."
Of course you have to factor in that people who work 3 factory jobs to feed their family have a much harder time organizing politically than those who call their wealth manager twice a day to hear how their money multiplies itself. Of course the latter will also tell you how they work 80 hours a week....in lobbying groups to get more legislation that makes their money multiply faster...

The point that we are talking about slightly different things seems a bit desperate since I was obviously aware of that. I wasn't saying your research is wrong, I was saying it is pointless in terms of achieving the goal of a better democracy if you ignore the other factors and parts of the legislative process. Which brings us right back to the point that your study should have done the corroboration work you asked for and checked what kind of legislation gets the bipartisan support and who benefits from it.