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Where is [U.S. Politics] going?
Hamurabi
MiamiRegistered User regular
MiamiRegistered User regular
I've been thinking about this a lot lately because of the combination of my Political Parties course (where I got an in-depth look at just how substantially the U.S. political landscape has changed since 1776) and because of all this speculation and GOP "soul-searching" (read: predictable, half-hearted navel-gazing) brought on by last November's electoral loss. There's also this newfound inkling of real progressive change on traditionally intractable issues like immigration, gun control (hey, I said inkling), gay marriage, etc.
For my part, I agree with the conventional wisdom that we'll continue to (slowly) become more and more progressive/"socialist", though in a way different from Europe for institutional (ie. separation of powers, non-responsible government, etc.) and sociological reasons. There's the historical precedent of continual, gradual liberalization across U.S. political history (ie. the Progressives and the breaking of machine politics; the eventual acceptance of FDR's New Deal and later the Great Society programs as the new normal; the shock of the late-60s realignment; etc.). There's also the simpler fact of demographics. Young people in the U.S. are overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic, and because party ID is generally affixed in early adulthood, we can reasonably expect U.S. politics to take a swing to the left when this generation reaches middle age and beyond.
Overall, I think in the next couple of decades, we're headed for dirty European socialism -- with American characteristics. But maybe I'm an optimist.
Where do you guys think we're heading?
EDIT: I guess it doesn't come across in my post, upon re-reading: I don't think the Republican Party is going anywhere. The U.S. two-party system has been nothing if not resilient in the face of tectonic shifts, and I think it will continue to be so. The Overton window, however, is headed decidedly to the left, imho.
For my part, I agree with the conventional wisdom that we'll continue to (slowly) become more and more progressive/"socialist", though in a way different from Europe for institutional (ie. separation of powers, non-responsible government, etc.) and sociological reasons. There's the historical precedent of continual, gradual liberalization across U.S. political history (ie. the Progressives and the breaking of machine politics; the eventual acceptance of FDR's New Deal and later the Great Society programs as the new normal; the shock of the late-60s realignment; etc.). There's also the simpler fact of demographics. Young people in the U.S. are overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic, and because party ID is generally affixed in early adulthood, we can reasonably expect U.S. politics to take a swing to the left when this generation reaches middle age and beyond.
Overall, I think in the next couple of decades, we're headed for dirty European socialism -- with American characteristics. But maybe I'm an optimist.
Where do you guys think we're heading?
EDIT: I guess it doesn't come across in my post, upon re-reading: I don't think the Republican Party is going anywhere. The U.S. two-party system has been nothing if not resilient in the face of tectonic shifts, and I think it will continue to be so. The Overton window, however, is headed decidedly to the left, imho.
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While we are a more "liberal" generation than our parents, the US as a whole has shifted rightward since the days of FDR and LBJ, such that I would contend that the trajectory has very much not been progressively leftward.
I think that the 21st century's trajectory will be thanks to the size and expected longevity of the Millenial cohort, but it could easily slide rightward depending on how our kids or their kids go on in the world. And even at that, Boomers aren't going anywhere until closer to the middle of the century and Gen X is pretty non committal toward an ideology.
So I guess the tl;dr of it all is that I expect the status quo to be maintained, with perhaps a marginal shift leftward.
(I couldn't figure out a way to express my specific timeframe while preserving the structure of that post; I'm specifically thinking a minimum of 50 years from now.)
Gen X's ideological commitment it probably the same as most other generations': non-existent. The U.S. electorate is ~80-90% non-ideological. They have a mishmash of disparate views on issues, which are made even more random by their apathy and lack of information. It's only their politicians who are actually ideological, and who serve to provide cues as to what the "conservative" and "liberal" view of a given issue is.
The very tl;dr version is that segregationist southern whites (ie. Dixiecrats) finally split off from the New Deal coalition and were scooped up by the GOP. The end of the fifth party-system is usually delineated at 1968, or generally the late 60s' culture shift. Politics ceases to be marked overall by a class cleavage, and increasingly by racial + sectoral + urban vs. rural + socioeconomic + issue-based cleavages. The new social issues that come to the fore (Vietnam, women's lib, etc.) cut across the old cleavages; both parties try to ride it out and cling to their old coalitions, but are eventually forced to take sides. The GOP lashes together an ideological platform consisting of (Christian) moralism + neoliberalism + a hawkish, realist foreign policy; their coalition is basically southern whites, rural voters, the religious right, and the upper classes. The Dems just scoop up the leftovers and iirc largely maintain their New Deal coalition of minorities, urbanites, and women.
There's a lot left out, but this is the rough sketch.
EDIT: And as my professor makes sure to remind us on a weekly basis: "IF YOU CONFLATE PARTY AND IDEOLOGY, I WILL FAIL YOU."
I think there's a certain danger that Republicans will be able to maintain a disproportionate amount of power simply because they've set up or continued institutions that perpetuate their power. They can maintain their power even as the minority in the Senate due to the filibuster. The House is subjected to the most current round of gerrymandering that favors the GOP. Both branches have an off-year election advantage due to older voters. Many state governments have become conservative playgrounds, even if more national elections they're even or lean Democrat. The Supreme Court is unlikely to swing from a moderate or leaning conservative status during Obama's second term, and if anyone retires then it might be only the more liberal members being replaced by other liberals.
So in the short term I don't see big changes coming. But even if things do move left over the next 10 to 20 years, history also tells that it will eventually move back. The Democrats have built and are solidifying a coalition that should let them shape the near future. I just don't think it will last.
http://xkcd.com/1127/large/
When did urbanites move into the Dem coalition? The industrial, urban northeast was considered a Republican stronghold for quite a while, at least as late as the 1960s.
Any remarks on the ebb and flow of partisanship and/or the strength of party organization?
I don't really see a rightward shift on that graphic. I also can't reconcile it with the fact that the Dems controlled the House for basically fifty years, until 1994. I mean, I agree if you mean the Republicans in the Congress have moved ideologically to the right, because being in the minority in one chamber for fifty years straight will tend to harden positions.
The Southern Strategy and the New Deal caused the GOP and the DNC to flip who voted for who. Progressives took control of the Democrats and alienated the southern (racist) democrats who had been the party's bread and butter over Civil Rights. They split into the Dixiecrats and then, ultimately, were recruited to be tried and true red staters under Nixon and Reagan.
I'd like to add to my remarks from earlier, with the narrowed timeline of Hamurabi's question, that I would expect to see the US move slightly leftward, but not to the extent where they would tolerate a New Deal style program.
You are conflating idealogy with party, Ham.
That control was won through the south: read conservative yellow dogs and dixiecrats.
I don't recall it ever being a "Republican stronghold." The GOP was competitive in the Northeast and Midwest, and the West was the closest thing to its stronghold; it was not remotely competitive in the South until post-New Deal. Dems' urban strength came largely from the heavy concentration of minorities in East Coast cities, and the fact that basically all the big urban machines were Democratic.
The partisan balance in the Congress was Republican-dominated basically from 1900 to the mid-1930s. The Dems sweep in and implement The New Deal. Then the New Deal coalition frays, the parties stumble around in the dark, and eventually (what I would call) the Sixth Party System settles in and we get pretty much divided government from there. In the electorate, there's not much partisan polarization, but starting in the late '60s you see an increasing degree of polarization and entrenchment.
In terms of organization, once the Progressives wreck the machines, local party apparatuses are weakened somewhat, but the national parties aren't very strong yet. In the late '70s and '80s, you see a movement spearheaded by Ray Bliss and Bill Brock to strengthen the GOP and turn it into a fundraising behemoth. It funnels this new money to the state parties, who build up their own infrastructure. The Dems resist going that route initially, but later cave and ape the top-down model of the GOP.
Are you saying the Dems' 50-year control of the House came from the South? I don't wanna dig up the graph right now, but Southern whites are literally 50% (well, 47%) of the GOP's coalition.
House elections, 1960:
and presidential by county:
There's a lot of counties there which were considered urban in 1960 without being minority-dominated, particular prior to white flight.
You can compare 1996:
I blame Old Age.
Elites are always trying to get more money, right? Because money is power. But they'll also always keep trying to get more non-money power, like, say, regressive taxes, retrenchment of the welfare state, and so on. And they're doing a damn good job of it. Instead of shrugging our shoulders about the apathy of the people, or the ignorance of the people, it is our responsibility (if you do identify as a progressive) to get out there, and talk to these damn people, and convince them that, yes, it really is in your best interest to do this. You don't win by sticking to the failing script, or by writing off the people that don't get it as dumb.
This is important, even if we were heading left anyway. A robust organization of active, informed citizens is necessary to maintain any sort of system that supports them. We can't depend on a benevolent government unless we are willing to do the hard work of making it. And we certainly can't depend on that market, but I'm sure you know that.
Where are we heading? Hard to tell. We'll likely move left on non-economic issues, with the possible exception of abortion. Economic issues are a tossup, but I'm not optimistic. Capital's mobility makes it very, very powerful. It's not unbeatable, but it's a hell of an uphill battle and will require concepts that are alien to most people now.
Where do I hope we go? Left on non-economic issues, because, recalling an Onion piece, it's going to be embarrassing when future generations read that we were seriously fighting over stuff like gay marriage. Economically, I hope we improve corporate governance, including shareholder rights, then expand employee-stock ownership plans (and those like it) and get the hell away from public stock markets. Employee stock holders get more democratic control over their workplaces, and employees actually capture the value their labor produces. A real strengthening of both labor rights and penalties for violating those rights, to add a credibile threat to workplaces who treat their workers poorly. A general turn away from the sort of economic libertarianism that only actual matters to/ benefits the powerful. And Tobin taxes.
I should point out that the rather more recent reaction against strong shareholder rights occurred precisely because of distaste for perceived corporate raiders overthrowing existing arrangements, in no small part associated with the US left (support which pro-management groups cheerfully took advantage of). Corporate raiders are, of course, shareholders fighting incumbent management.
Unfortunately, you cannot have strong shareholder rights that apply only if they ally with labour against management. The continental model of built-in employee representation is created via vast institutional-shareholder powers that suppress the interests of small shareholders.
Comparing federal electoral outcomes by political party in any part of the United States circa 1960 with results in 1996 is a pointless endeavor because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A massive political realignment took place at the end of the 1960s as the Democratic Party stopped being dominated by segregationist Dixiecrats, and those political elements found a new home in the Republican Party essentially at the invitation of Richard Nixon.
You can see the switch if you compare the map you grabbed from Wikipedia showing house membership in 1960 with the same map circa 1968.
The demographic shifts are an issue, but that right there is fundamentally about political realignment. The process was more gradual at the House and Senate levels because incumbents with seniority that stretched prior to the CRA and VRA tend to have closer political ties and stronger political machines within their own electorates than the Presidential candidates, did, but you can already see it start shifting in the Northeast as minority voters began voting Democrat.
Having said that, nowadays the majority of swing precincts in the majority of swing states are located in exurban counties, where we see the fastest population growth as more people continue settling down and swinging the demographic makeup of that local electorate.
People talk about realignment like it means white people in South Carolina voting for a Republican for the first time since the civil war, period full stop. It also means that black voters in Philadelphia and Camden became a base of Democratic support.
Think "Rockefeller."
To be a little more detailed -- the shape of the Republican Party during the 30s, 40s and 50s was largely determined by their earlier dominance during the Progressive Era. Prior to that period of history, McKinley got himself elected primarily with the backing of industries like railroads, mining, and finance. He's the guy who basically established the GOP as the party of big business, and when the Progressive Era began, moderate Republicans used that same coalition to get themselves elected. The Great Depression put the Presidency beyond reach for any Republican who didn't have "Supreme Allied Commander" on his resume for the next several decades, and it shrunk the middle class to near extinction in a lot of areas, and that was another part of the McKinley coalition, but a lot of the Republicans who survived in the Northeast were still part of that persuasion. Within that base, there was a split. A lot of Republicans approached the Democrats then the same way they do today -- "oppose, oppose, oppose." But many Republicans thought that rather than oppose the New Deal, it was important to embrace it and promise to do it better, and it's no mistake that the only Republican elected President during that era not only declined to attack the New Deal but instead expanded social security and started the interstate highway system, which was arguably a bigger public works project than anything Roosevelt ever conceived of.
Some of it, they had a tenuous alliance between progressives and racists.
It's odd, I know, but it happened and kept happening until the drive toward civil rights and sticking a catholic in the white house pissed off enough southern "yellow/blue dog" democrats into first voting Dixiecrat and then voting for Nixon.
You know all the centrist democrats who love big business and keep the Democrats grounded?
They used to be Republicans.
Care to explain this in excruciating detail? Because to a layman like me you just said that we're more liberal but we're more conservative.
Well, say you start at position A. We'll call this New Deal/Big Society style liberalism. Then, over the years, you move to position D, Reaganomics, Tea Party stuff.
My claim is that we will probably move to C, maybe B, but not all the way back to A.
Or, yes, we are getting more liberal but we are more conservative.
Why is the New Deal more liberal tha- waaaaaaaaaaaaait we're talking economic side of politics and not social politics.
In the Northeast in particular, a lot of the politics was machine oriented or personally-oriented as opposed to demographic in nature. For instance, the Republican party in Massachusetts during that period was largely dominated by the Republican Party basically as an extension of the Lodge family's political dynasty until John F. Kennedy unseated Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. in 1952. Lodge had held that seat since the 1930s except for a brief period of time where he resigned to serve in the Army during the second world war, when he deigned to allow a Democrat to warm it for him until he returned and won the seat back in 1946. The importance of the Lodge/Kennedy rivalry during that period of time really would be difficult to overstate; Teddy Kennedy also had to defeat a Lodge to win his own Senate seat.
But if I were to give you a basic biography of all the Lodge and Kennedy menfolk, you'd have a hard time distinguishing them. White, wealthy, tied deeply into the business community, Ivy League educated. The only difference was that the Lodges had been around longer.
Well, to be frank, yes. Liberal is perhaps a soft term here, it's be better to say Leftist. Top down, government doing for the people what they cannot do for themselves kind of stuff.
Even big government liberals are for smaller government than they were under FDR.
In the near future, I think Dems as a party are gonna move a bit more towards the middle-right an try to gain the cut-the-deficit votes, while those to the left of them collectively tear their hair out in frustration. They're a "malleable" bunch, they'll try to move to a position that seems moderated and measured, stuff the undecided voters who might self-identify as "Moderates" may like to hear, even though it means making policy decisions and taking a platform that are bumfuck stupid. I would also expect that after an initial spat with this "moderation policy", enough young guns will start to work their ranks up in the party protected by some of the old progressive stalwarts, and they'll shift more towards a "social democracy" style party again.
The GOP will probably double down on the notion of ideological purity up until 2016, and perhaps even longer. It depends on how close they get in the presidentials and if they gain any seats in the house and senate elections. If they gain some, and the election is close, I fully expect them to feel emboldened by their newfound "success" and "unfair defeat" respectively and keep trying to purify the ranks with real republicans. This'll go on until they face an absolutely massive and undeniable defeat due to shifting demographics, at which point the voices in the party calling for real republicans will probably get shushed pretty promptly. After that, it wouldn't surprise me to see the party take up some of the old positions of the Democrats, and perhaps abandon most of the Jesus and USA rehtoric in favour of more intonation on, say, businesses and states rights.
Shit, I need to come back to this post in a couple of years and see what, if anything, I got right.
SECRET ENDING:
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
There is almost no alignment between winning an election and producing meaningful legislation. Political parties primarily exist for the purpose of winning elections. So until that misalignment is fixed, I'm not sure what else there is to do. I'm guessing we won't see anything significant until something horrible happens, but I struggle to identify a situation that would count as a wake-up call for a legislative body. 9/11 was a tragedy, and look what Congress did after that...
I agree with the first half of the statement -- the way this system is designed, no one should be surprised by what it produces, and that's largely accounting for some basic facts of human psychology, primarily the fact that the majority of voters utilize heuristics to simplify complex ideas into something they can understand (Obama bad! GOP good! and vice versa) as well as the fact that the overwhelming majority of us won't adapt new, contradictory facts to a previously established world view. I think to some extent, the fact that our politics are flawed is an extension of the fact that we are each individual flawed as people.
Which is okay, I can still love my neighbor while accepting the fact that he is statistically likely to be just as flawed as the rest of us.
I disagree with the second half of the sentiment. While it's true that there is a weak correlation between those traits that make someone a good candidate, and it's also true that political parties exist to win elections, those parties exist to win elections because strategically, the only way to be assured of getting legislation you like enacted into law, or at least preventing legislation you hate from being enacted into law, is to win seats. And we definitely do get some legislation enacted into law -- overturning Don't Ask, Don't Tell, for instance. Also, the Affordable Care Act -- and since I'm bringing up Obamacare, I think it's important to point out every so often that while I would have loved a public option, the legislation that actually made it out of Congress was actually more liberal than what the President proposed during the primaries, as Hillary was the one backing a public option and mandate, and Obama backed neither (he did back a mandate that children had to be covered and that employers be required and incentivized to offer plans). And I remain cautiously optimistic that Latino participation in the last Presidential election will directly incentivize meaningful immigration reform to get through the Senate.
Change can feel glacial, but as JFK said, we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Unless they can find a way to swing Hispanic voters (which looks fairly unlikely as of most recent polling I've seen), the GOP is in trouble no matter how far left they go on social policy. Specially as they lose votes from the crazy christian right fringe as they move left on those issues.
Change can feel glacial, but as JFK said, we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.[/quote]
I definitely see where you're coming from. There has certainly been legislation passed, and some of it has been truly important. That being said, the gap between the amount of legislative work that clearly needs to be done and the amount (and type) of legislation of that is actually being produced is huge. We are a society that is growing more numerous and more heterogeneous each day, fueled by an unrelenting technological pace and constantly shifting demands on resources. The Congress we have is not adequate for the job, period. The big ticket items like immigration reform and healthcare get all the play (and all the subsequent acrimony and electoral focus), but the reality is that we need to revamp a huge number of laws and policies which are not even being reviewed in subcommittee, let alone put on any dockets.
What I fear is that the true business of the U.S. Congress - to create, maintain, and update the federal laws of the land, is not actually being done. There is no longer any capacity for it to be done. At best, for the politically important policies, you have a blatantly partisan public "debate" on complex issues which leave no room for nuanced analysis and discussion, where the true issues are never addressed and the only thing that matters is scoring political punching bag points. At worst, whole swaths of relevant legislative need are not just left untouched, but end up being captured by their respective business and capital interests, and the political process ends up being usurped by sheer greed. There now exist laws which were written entirely by industry lobbyists, with virtually no edits made between their proposed bills and what was actually passed. Does anyone actually think that this is a legitimate political process for passing laws in a modern country? What ever happened to being a deliberative body?
Yea, I feel that progressives are winning on social issues (like gay/minority rights) and losing on the economic ones. America's class system is getting worse every decade and that trend isn't stopping. And I wonder, in 30-50 years when half of the workforce has been replaced by robots or computers, what will happen when America's two groups are the rich dudes who own everything, and the 'customers' who don't actually have any money any more.
Both parties have been successful with reinventing themselves, but I don't think either party has had to reinvent itself with what modern society allows for. They didn't have to deal with the fact that the worst members can say stupid shit, that becomes known nationally in a matter of seconds. That it is very hard to hide such fuck-ups, even though people are good at self-selection a vast majority register anything reported by the mainstream media. I'd argue it's also harder to kick undesirable members to the curb or keep them quiet. We already see what happens when more appalling members of the GOP don't agree with the more sane members, they make use of social media to remind people that their party is currently awful.
We'll see what happens in the next 15-20 years. It's possible that the GOP might be able to reinvent itself once again regardless of how badly their most awful members shit the bed. If it happens then both the dems and GOP will be around till either something fucking drastic happens or until the two party system gets destroyed.
On that note, I'm more interested in seeing surveys on how public opinion fluctuates in regards to the doing proportionally representation. Not gonna turn this into a discussion about gerrymandering, but I think that might be one of the more interesting things to track. Even if a majority comes out in support for ditching districts and going to a PR system, you'd still need to get enough elected officials aboard with the idea. History shows that there are many people that are loath to give up power even if it puts them in contradiction with past beliefs.
As for other aspects of American politics. I think the GOP's awful bullshit has insured that we will shift to the left. I also think people becoming less religious will be a factor in this as well. Some things like abortion, LGBT rights, certain forms of speech and a few other morality issues cease to be an issue when one no longer believes that some higher power compels them to care if they don't want to burn in hell or whatever equivalent they may have to it.
Yes, abortion rights are becoming a thing again, but I think that's more a result of the teapotists and other christofascists starting to realize they aren't going to be the majority much longer and they are trying to impose their bullshit on the rest us in hopes that they can use garbage like the filibuster to keep it around.
As for the dems, I'm not sure they'll go much further right. Obama is already getting push back on a few things and now it's getting harder to prove that austerity during recessions isn't bullshit. I don't the dems will pick up the deficit hawks of the GOP, who want to cut everything. I'm sure they might go rightward on a few issues mostly concerning with foreign policy. Honestly, there isn't much on the right left for them that would be worth grabbing given the demographics changes.
That was always the common knowledge. It seems to be complete bullshit though. Can't remember the studies done on it right now, but there was alot of data on that coming out of the last election if nothing else and all of it pointed to hispanic voters just being flat out pretty liberal people.
Hispanics in general trend socially conservative (but not as much as you'd think given the narrative), but it doesn't influence their votes much. They consider other issues to be more important, according to a few polls post-election.