Via the Washington Post comes a truly depressing article about the polarized state of our nation. According to Alan Abramowitz and Bill Bishop, the problems we’re seeing in Washington are merely a reflection of the larger electorate.
Some of the article rates a “duh”. For instance — it’s obvious that the Republicans and Democrats — the entire nation, in fact — are polarized over the Iraq War…
But the divisions between the parties weren’t limited to Iraq. They extended to every issue in the survey. For example, 69 percent of Democratic voters chose the most strongly pro-choice position on the issue of abortion, compared with 20 percent of Republican voters; only 16 percent of Democratic voters supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 80 percent of Republican voters did; and 91 percent of Democratic voters favored governmental action to reduce global warming, compared with 27 percent of Republican voters.
[snip – my emphasis]
When we combined voters’ answers to the 14 issue questions to form a liberal-conservative scale (answers were divided into five equivalent categories based on overall liberalism vs. conservatism), 86 percent of Democratic voters were on the liberal side of the scale while 80 percent of Republican voters were on the conservative side. Only 10 percent of all voters were in the center. The visual representation of the nation’s voters isn’t a nicely shaped bell, with most voters in the moderate middle. It’s a sharp V.
That bodes very poorly for the future of our country, folks, because hostility rises as positions harden. Ultimately, the odds of one side being willing to tolerate policies from the other fade to nothing.
Thus far, the near-equal balance of the liberal-conservative scale has kept the country from skewing radically one direction or another. However, the resultant gridlock we’re seeing is perhaps the only thing holding the country together now — because if one side or the other becomes ascendant, a full half of the country is going to object. Loudly.
Not only that, but even if the current state of affairs was desirable, this level of polarization can’t continue. Some of the issues our government needs to be addressing are absolutely crucial, and stalling while arguing simply isn’t good enough in the long-term.
Social Security, health care, foreign policy, immigration reform — these are not problems that can be indefinitely ignored. If the government doesn’t act on them, the country will break…. yet acting on them will require cooperation between politically polar positions — evidently, not a possibility — and so it will still break.
Yesterday, I posted about the Mythical Mandate — and obviously, this is why that’s so. However, if half of the country objects at the most basic level to the political solutions from the other half — if it’s true that the Mighty Middle has also gone the way of the unicorn — then there’s very little hope for us.
Polimom’s hoping that Abramowitz and Bishop have this all wrong, frankly, because the middle has been the glue that held it all together; without it, we cannot function.
Without a mighty moderate middle, there’s no United States of America.
* * * * *
Added: Paul Silver has also posted about this WaPo article, and his view (happily) is far less defeatist than Polimom’s.
Michael van der Galien also covers it, and in the course of discussing some other perspectives, writes:
In other words, perhaps the majority of Americans is not ‘moderate’ but moderates are politically important.
Oh my yes. I’d say they are indeed.
Polimom, I have to wonder; who responds to survey questions? How accurate are the results? They polled “voters”? What about those that don’t vote? Most “Joe” and “Jane” six pack that I encounter on a daily basis haven’t seen the inside of a voting booth…………………ever. But all that aside, here’s one way of looking at this. What hath this ever widening divid wrought? Crummier politicians, more rancor, worse gov’t. Worse gov’t in the long run produces bad economic times. Those bad times are on their way.
Great post by the way, I sort of meditated on it and two images came to mind; 1) the roaring twenties followed by the depression and 2) the political state of affairs in Germany from 1923 to 1935.
One last point, have you considered the “effect” of the Internet on all of this? I’d seen a great article where this sociologist analyzed what caused the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon and his conclusion? Television. The same may be true for the Internet in that it may very well be seriously aggravating the breadth and depth of the divide, but (and this is a big “but”), it’s as to those who daily use the Internet and who daily examine political and socio-economic blogs, web sites, etc. I have to wonder what percentage of the people online that might be. The “kids” use the net, Youtube, Myspace, etc. Joe and Jane Sixpack use it to buy rodeo and Nascar tickets. There are 300 million people in the U.S. I wonder what’s the percentage cruising the Democrat/Republican, Left-Wing/Right Wing websites/blog sites/news sites, etc. Honestly can’t be that many; there truly aren’t that many who like to read!
I think this is a good example of the “lies, d*mn lies, and statistics” cliche. Let’s break this down:
* 86 percent of Democratic voters were on the liberal side of the scale (86% of 54%, or 46.4% of the total)
* 80 percent of Republican voters were on the conservative side (80% of 46%, or 36.8% of the total)
* Which means a total of 83.2% of the voters align with their party’s ‘side’.
* 10 percent of all voters were in the center.
* That means we are looking at 6.8% who ‘voted against their party’.
And, IIRC, in most elections the parties are aiming to sway between 5-10% of the TOTAL voters.
The problem with the “Deep V” graph is that I don’t think they got more granular than “agree with party line” or “moderate” – no “slightly agree” or “slightly disagree” or other moderating position, nor any indication on where exactly those 6.8% (which is a significant number) fall within the spectrum. It’s sort of like a rainbow with infrared, green, ultraviolet, and “other” – not a real good picture of what a rainbow looks like, is it?
~EdT.
Gridlock is the natural state of our government. It was very carefully designed that way. The primary fears of the frames were mob rule on the one hand, and an oppressive government on the other.
And gridlock would be fine, if we have no expectations that government’s role is to solve problems.
I think the problem is that, when the government is “running smoothly”, the end result is that more problems are created than are resolved. In fact, much of the legislation that has been passed in the “we have to do something” mode ends up being really, really flawed (USA-PATRIOT, anyone?)
~EdT.
I would rather Congress get very little accomplished due to partisan bickering than for there to be some clear majority that rams everything through that their hearts desire. The more vocal the minority party is, and the more power they have, then the more likely it is that details about a bill are brought to light. This is an ideal situation, but it is not one that would happen with a 65-35 ratio in the senate.
There’s one surefire way to tell you’re a moderate. Your conservative friends think you’re a bleeding heart and your liberal friends think you’re pals with Pat Robertson.
It never ceases to amaze me a lot of people don’t recognize a moderate even when they see it. There’s that wide an ideological gap.
“And gridlock would be fine, if we have no expectations that government’s role is to solve problems.”
Post 911/Katrina, why would we expect gov’ts role to be to solve problems? We do a far better job of solving our own problems without the lumbering beast stepping on us, trampling on our rights and generally balling things up at enormous expense.
Clay — you’re so right. Someday, I’ll have to put up a post linking to some of the disparate descriptions of Polimom politics.
And Glide, as it happens, I totally agree with you. If the governmental disaster that was the Katrina response didn’t snap people out of this “more governmental involvement in our lives” lethargy, though, nothing will.