I ENCOURAGE COMMENTS AS MY THINKING ON THIS MATTER IS EVOLVING. FEEL FREE TO BE CRITICAL. WE ALL SEE THROUGH THE GLASS DIMLY.
How do you give Americans the freedoms to think, speak, worship, and organize and think that 330 million people will do this in a way that is anything but messy and at times just plain confounding?
Up until the 1960s, white, male, mainline protestants ran almost everything. As a friend suggested in an email, even cheaply made westerns in the fifties and sixties taught viewers to see the country in a particular way.
That ‘consensus’ would begin to break down in the 1960s, when voices that had been ignored or pushed off to the side began speaking out, sometimes very, very loudly. Future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg finishes near the top of her law school class and can’t get a job at a top law firm in NYC because she is a woman and Jewish.
The Democratic Party until the mid 1960s includes liberals and southern conservatives who still despise the party of Lincoln. The Republican Party includes conservatives and northeastern liberals. This intra-party heterogeneity will slowly change beginning in the mid 1960s, with southern conservatives moving to the Republican Party and northeaster liberals to the Democratic Party. Today the parties present competing visions of the country. This is what America’s polarization is all about.
The Christian Right will mobilize defensively against many of the cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s, including abortion and the role of women, in the family and in the workplace. The Democratic Party will gradually come down on the liberal side of these cultural changes and the Republican Party will come down on the conservative side.
Cultural differences are always harder to compromise than material differences. Today, the biggest divisions in America are cultural, including the role of science and religion.
I have always believed politics is only necessary and needed when a group of people disagree about fundamental things. If we agreed, politics would not be necessary.
In America today we are in the midst of massive changes. Demographic changes that will lead to Euro-Americans becoming a minority, probably by 2050. Cultural changes, such as gay marriage, representing different visions of the family. Abortion, never really settled, is still a powerful source of conflict. Economic changes, leaving some, those with less than a college education, with flat wages for three decades. These are globalization’s losers. But there are globalization’s winners, many living in America’s large urban centers.
America’s politics is a mirror reflecting us back to us. The ‘us’ or the ‘we’ in “we the people’ is bigger and more diverse than ever before. No one wants to take a back seat. No one anymore is ordered to the back of the bus. Everyone feels somehow the country is either slipping away from them or isn’t quite theirs yet.
The American ‘we’ is an evenly divided country where either side can win and so neither side has the incentive to cooperate or to compromise.
Until COVID – 19. This virus doing what viruses do may help American political leaders temporarily suspend their winner take all perspective. Republican Governors (one example is Larry Hogan of Maryland) & Democratic Governors (one example is Andrew Cuomo of New York) have risen to the task. Millions of people, self-isolating, have followed, doing their part.
All of this is taking place at a time of intense, penetrable and necessary polarization. Americans are treated to a real choice at the national ballot box, with each of its two major parties presenting a clear and coherent vision of what kind of country each envisions. The yearning for unity is understandable but except in emergencies a false and dangerous political idol. Division and conflict are the true friends of democracy because they are the true and faithful companions of human societies.
Democracy has never been harder in America. This is because America has never been more democratic.
Reader Comments
What really sets us apart is the very large group of declared independents that outnumber democrats and republicans together. Also that group of disenfranchised under 30 voters. To my way of thinking these groups have nowhere to go politically. I believe most of them understand the shortcomings of the two-party system that leaves them very short of a true democracy that represents its population. America is no longer a democracy, it is an oligarchical political system controlled by a very few who have their own interests at heart. We all know this. My question, can you wave your hands over the crystal ball and explain how this politically floating American majority fit into your last claim, ‘Democracy has never been harder in America. This is because America has never been more democratic. ‘ How do you see this play out over time.
Jack, you ask some very tough questions. I agree that America’s election system, plurality & winner take all, produces only two realistic choices for most elections and that results in fewer parties that can win seats and two does not really represent the diversity of perspectives that exist in America. And I agree there is too much money in politics and that powerful, organized interests tilt too many policy decisions toward their interests. If we could change our election rules, very hard but probably easier than changing other things, and if a future Supreme Court could overturn ‘money is speech’ Supreme Court decisions, America might be better off. However, both problems, two party domination, & powerful interest tilt, have beset America for a long time. You are absolutely right about dissatisfaction bubbling under the surface and I would say one strength of American democracy is the sheer amount of organized interest group activities on both the right and left, from Tea Party to Black Lives Matter, over the past decade. Anger is a sign that people have not given up. However, change is necessary. I need to think more about this. A book that helps this thinking is Breaking the two-party doom loop by Lee Drutman. I will write a blog summarizing the main ideas from this book. Thanks again for your willingness to engage.
I can not disagree with what you have said. However, as I look closely at American style democracy, its strengths, and weaknesses, the vast political divisions, the influence of money, etc., I can not help but think that a third major party with progressive values and small-donor support could/would add clarity and a more diverse perspective to the current political picture that is desperately needed. Sander, Warren, Gabbard and several young Congressional leaders, have clearly paved the way. I also believe that there has never been a better time to form a third major party. It might provide a needed home for many of the disenfranchised voters with a purpose they could support and believe in. I think the time is ripe for such a party to be formed perhaps after Novembers election.
I also wondered if you had read the following article on the worlds-most-democratic countries?
https://www.atlasandboots.com/remote-work/worlds-most-democratic-countries/?fbclid=IwAR31xTSDPuBojvvVlZyytLyW6ZXoqU50q_X0cx81NiaVcYSlk8F88CM7xsE
Thanks for the link; for a third and fourth party to form and stick America needs election system reform otherwise there is little incentive to build the party. That’s where Drutman’s book is so helpful. It would be a big change but can be done without a constitutional amendment. As you say, maybe now is the time. New Zealand I think made an election system change a decade or so ago from two party to multi-party and has arguable improved the representation of diverse interests. The Economist ranking of America 24 among democracies seems right. Thanks again. Paul
Multi-party is the way to go. I have lived under two coalition governments and more people get represented in that system. Norway has something like 12 parties. I don’t remember how many they have in Britain but it is comparatively a lot. Norway’s ranking among other democratic governments is quite high. We already have other parties besides the D and R but they do not get any media attention. You seem to dismiss them as well. True, they don’t seem important unless getting the blame for some other candidates’ loss such as what happened in 2016. Claiming the Greens cause HRC to loose was a big thing back then. Who cares whether neither candidate then was desirable for a lot of voters. Point being there are already more than two parties in the US.
I agree Jack; I have just finished reading Drutman’s Breaking the two-party doom loop. He makes a very compelling argument for exactly that, multi-party. The level of dissatisfaction with the American political system is very, very high, as you have said. He lays out a clear argument. The best political science book I have read in years. Thanks. Paul