The Hoi Poli (blue, red, and otherwise) doesn't understand substantive issues. Substantive issues are difficult, complicated, and sometimes unsolvable. Sometimes they aren't even issues at all, exactly, as much as they are enormous socio-economic evolutions that we have no control over no matter what some blowhard politician wants to promise us.

But red-meat cultural issues? Shit, we can talk about that all damn day. We all just KNOW the right answer on them. So we can argue, and politicians can pontificate, and pundits can opine, and everyone feels like we're doing something important. When, of course, we aren't.