Analysis like this bores me even when it is accompanied by comforting charts.
The polarization resulting from the 2010 Midterms is fundamentally different and more worrisome than what had preceded it. By historical standards, the post-war era stands out as a period of relatively low partisan polarization. This is largely attributable to the coalition between Northern and Southern Democrats. The increase in polarization during the 103rd through 105th Congress corresponds to the tail end of the Southern partisan realignment, a period during which southern districts that had traditionally elected moderate Democrats (a.k.a. Dixiecrats) began electing conservative Republicans. As the Southern Democrats gradually disappeared throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the parties became more clearly defined, thus returning congressional polarization to the historical norm.
The hollowing out of the political center explained the momentous rise in polarization during the Southern realignment. Now that only a handful of moderates remain in the House, polarization can no longer be portrayed as a story of vanishing moderates. It appears the rise of the extremists has stepped up as the driving force behind congressional polarization.
Here’s what I want to know. Name ten Democratic members of Congress who are radical. Find me ten Democrats who don’t believe in evolution, or who don’t believe in climate change, or who think that the president might not be an American citizen, or who think the president wants to euthanize your grandma. Find ten Democrats who want to turn the United States into a Soviet Socialist Republic. Find me ten Democrats who want to do anything far outside of the mainstream. You might find ten in favor of a political system more akin to Canada’s or the United Kingdom’s, but how radical is that, really? How does wanting single-payer health care compare for crazy with freaking out about the ready availability of contraception and the stubborn persistence of masturbation?
Tell me, who’s the freaking radical here?
You want to know what happened? All the loonies left our party. That’s what happened. We deradicalized ourselves. We got rid of the socialists and the segregationists. The Republicans are an extremely radical party, and you can put that on a chart and stuff it in your hat.
Odd juxtaposition there: socialists and segregationists. If SS and Medicare aren’t socialism, I don’t know what is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for socialism.
Both once were wings of the Democratic party…Vito Marcantonio and John J. Sparkman sat in the same caucus.
Erm, wasn’t Vito Marcantonio a Republican?
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“We’re Not the Radicals” is precisely the problem, and why we lost the election. When Americans voted for Change two years ago, they didn’t mean moving a nanometer to the left of Richard Nixon. So they voted for the only bunch that promised change again, however irrational and fantasy-based that promise was.
Actually, our side just stayed home.
And left those looking for change to vote.Those screaming for change brought out the voters. Those defending the status quo didn’t.
Right.
I think we’d do better if we still had socialists in our party.
we have one who caucuses with us.
And who would be center-right in the rest of the developed world.
The way I have tended to view American politics is thusly: We have a Republican Party that is roughly equivalent to extremist right-wing nationalist parties elsewhere in the developed world (think of the British National Party – formerly the neo-Nazi British National Front – as a reference point). Then we have the Democrats who seem like some sort of center-right party (the Tories or Tory-Liberal coalition in the UK or various Christian Democrat parties on the continent seem like the obvious reference points). We haven’t had a viable labor movement in decades, nor have we been allowed a viable socialist alternative thanks to nearly a century of red scares. That leaves a gaping hole in our politics that leaves a lot of potential voters alienated. What else do we have? The Green Party could be a contender, but it has yet to figure out how to transcend its current image as a largely white, upper-middle class party whose members want to save the whales, without addressing the economic realities of our increasingly stratified system.
I’m left at a loss as to a solution. More and better Democrats (read, as I see it, more and better Tories) isn’t exactly getting me to feel enfranchised. I’ve seen calls for some sort of independent left-wing/left-leaning movement over the years (Billmon’s idea of a Popular Front seemed intriguing), but those would require Americans to be willing to try something that they’ve been told is naughty: collective action. If anyone is game for that, great. But then how do we get from here to there?
I believe the central problems are the corporate consolidation of the media, and our pay-to-play political system, both in lobbying and campaigning. They call it “free” speech, but in reality it makes speech very expensive. Really these are one problem — corporate stranglehold over our political system. As long as that holds, political diversification is hardly possible.
And who might be largely responsible of corporate media consolidation? Let’s take a guess.
Yes, but my point is that the situation is so bad, it can’t be solved through the usual political process any more, because that process is corrupted by the very situation we want to correct. The only way it can be dealt with is direct action, like consumer activism, shareholder resolutions, media activism, petitions of all kinds, etc. A recent success was getting Olbermann back on the air, but that is only a tiny beginning.
I don’t want to suggest that GOTV isn’t important. It is. But what we’ve just seen was a contest between a very sophisticated GOTV effort and a very sophisticated media disinformation program, and we know which one won.The best you can say is the GOTV precented it from being even worse. The situation with our media is a disgrace for a civilized nation and a disaster for this country. Effective ways have to be developed to put an end to this crap. i don’t really know what to do, we have to put on our thinking caps.
He is not comfortable being associated with our party.
Which just puts an exclamation on my point re: lack of socialists.
According to Very Serious People, it’s pretty radical. There are climate deniers, there are people who accept science; those two are on equal footing, you see. And then we have the radicals: the eco-terrorists.
right, plus the Tides Foundation and Soros.
The movement conservative envy the British parliament and its “ideological clarity”. They have set out to get that with the Republican Party, but the clarity keeps escaping them and running to the crazy.
Democrats meanwhile have fought that by trying to maintain a big tent party, hoping to pick up the pieces that the Republican leave behind on their gallop over the edge.
In a competitive media environment, Republicans would already be out of the game like they were in the 1960s, but the media environment is both corrupt and tilts to the Republican Party. Hell, it will invent their talking points before they do.
Radicalism is far from the reason that Democrats lost, and anyone who tells you it is most likely is a member of that corrupt corporate media….Or a DLC member.
Frankly, I feel like a radical after talking to most of my poorly informed family/acquaintances.
I would like to point out this is a brilliant new political classification system from a hot new political science professor. I kept wondering how he was classifying people before they got in office and looked him up. He is analyzing their donors.
Here is a PDF of his research.
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~ajb454/files/Bonica_PAC_Ideology_v1_0.pdf