Part two of Why We’re Polarized connects the polarizing public, the subject of part one, to our increasingly polarizing political institutions. Klein wants to show that polarization is a feedback loop: “Institutions polarize to appeal to a more polarized public, which further polarizes the public, which forces the institutions to polarize further, and so on” (136-7). Here, I’ll be a bit more comprehensive and summative than I have so far, because it’s helpful to see how the pieces of the story fit together.
Unsurprisingly, the media is the first locus of institutional polarization that Klein discusses. Also unsurprising is his focus on the fragmentation of the industry and the rise of digital media, and on the ways in which audience analytics enable providers to discern “market demand” with growing precision. The result is a media landscape that increasingly plays to partisan divisions: “For political reporting, the principle is: ‘If it outrages, it leads.’ And outrage is deeply connected to identity—we are outraged when members of other groups threaten our group and violate our values” (149). But audience analytics don’t just reveal pre-existing market preferences. Identities are “living, malleable things” that “can be activated or left dormant, strengthened or weakened, created or left in the void” (156). If this is right, then identity-oriented media content will deepen the identities it triggers and the identities it threatens. And in deepening and threatening identity, a fragmented media armed with sophisticated audience analytics will trigger the forces of identity-protective cognition.
The second piece of the institutional puzzle is “our electoral software,” which, in response to a polarizing public, has shifted electoral strategies away from persuasion-based strategies and toward base-mobilization strategies (196): “As the parties sorted, both demographically and philosophically, it became harder and stranger to remain undecided. It’s easy to be in the middle of a muddle; it’s harder to be in the middle of a chasm. But a more polarized electorate changes the strategies candidates use to get elected” (174). And even as voters have become less persuadable, parties have become weaker, with the primary electorate, rather than party bosses, selecting candidates. Because primary voters are more intensely polarized than general election voters, the primary system now favors candidates with intense support over those with the broad appeal. Meanwhile, the growing influence of highly partisan small-dollar political donors and the influence of negative partisanship conspire to create incentives for candidates to be provocative and to focus on “the polarizing issues that energize donors in every zip code rather than the local issues that specifically matter in their states and districts” (189).
Third is the instability inherent in our presidential democratic system of governance, in which antagonistic parties can concurrently represent legitimate electoral majorities. This is how Klein understands Mitch McConnell’s blocking President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court: “It may sound ridiculous, but both McConnell and Obama represented legitimate electoral majorities, and there was no obvious way to resolve their differences” (204). Drawing on buttressing arguments from the literature, Klein argues that “a presidential political system in which power is divided among different branches works when the parties that control those branches are ideologically mixed enough to cooperate with one another…But now America’s political parties are ideologically polarized” (208). We’re also in a moment of relatively greater competition between the two parties, in which control swings more frequently between the parties. This erodes incentives for any current member of the minority party to cooperate with the majority. And our system of divided government supplies electoral minorities with ample tools to obstruct governance: These include the filibuster and the debt ceiling. In our system, the formal rules of governance “push toward partisan dysfunction, conflict, and even collapse. The system works not through formal mechanisms that ensure the settlement of intractable disputes but through informal norms of compromise, forbearance, and moderation that collapse the moment the stakes rise high enough” (207). Polarization raises the stakes.
There’s one more piece of the institutional puzzle, which concerns the ways in which demographic realities ensure that these first three institutional pieces will generate asymmetric structural incentives for the two parties. I’ll have a bit more to say about that next week, in a final post about this book. For now, I want to consider Klein’s proposed institutional reforms in light of this diagnosis of our institutional ills. He is quite clear: His proposals are not meant to reverse polarization—“the alternative to polarization often isn’t consensus but suppression” (249)—but rather to reform the system so that it can function better despite polarization. His proposals are threefold: First, he suggests that we “bombproof” governmental operations: that we remove from deliberation those items on which gridlock and inaction can be disastrous. For example, we should remove the debt ceiling and introduce economic stabilizers to adjust the level of social support automatically in response to changing levels of unemployment. Second is democratic process reform: Klein advises disempowering or getting rid of the electoral college, introducing more proportional representation, scrapping the filibuster, giving Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico congressional representation, and making voting easier. Finally, Klein suggests “balancing” the parties, including by empowering whichever happens to occupy the minority. For example, he takes seriously the proposal to reconstruct the Supreme Court to include 15 justices: “Each party gets to appoint five, and then the ten partisan justices must unanimously appoint the remaining five. Until all fifteen are agreed upon, the Court wouldn’t be able to hear cases” (260).
Among these proposals, automatic stabilizers seem among the most feasible, in part because they have at least been on the mainstream political agenda of late. I first encountered the idea of automatic unemployment insurance stabilizers when Klein and his colleagues from Vox were lamenting the fact that the versions under consideration were looking unlikely to make it into final drafts of Covid relief packages. As I understand the idea, unemployment insurance is itself a form of automatic stabilizer, the purpose of which is twofold: first, to support to person who is unemployed; second, to prevent the economic problems that radiate outward when a person loses employment, like the cost to their landlord of lost rent or the costs to the economy broadly of their decreased consumption.
The new thing would have been triggers to automatically raise or lower the level of benefit in response to changing economic conditions. Those who favor such measures seem to write and talk about them as if they’re a no-brainer, and maybe they are. But there’s a distinction I haven’t seen being made that strikes me as important: This is the distinction between automatic changes to the number of people for whom we provide a fixed level of support, and automatic changes to the level of support that each individual is eligible to receive. I think that this proposal would be an example of the first kind of automatic stabilizer. It enables us to support more people in need when there are more people in need. The proposal to automatically extend and then automatically reinstate the $600 supplemental unemployment insurance from the CARES act, in response to changes in the level of unemployment, would be an example of the second. It enables us to support people more generously when there are more people in need. It ties unemployment insurance to economic conditions and gradually phases out expanded federal benefits as a state’s unemployment rate drops. Both types of stabilizer may be justified in many cases. But I’m not yet convinced that this second type is really a no-brainer.
The flat-footed version of my question is: Why is a person entitled to more support when she is one of many in need of support than when she is one of few in need of support? Some might think that she is likelier to be among the deserving of those in need when she is one of many, and likelier to be among the undeserving of those in need when she is one of few. But the supporters of these stabilizers are not the sort to make such arguments, nor are such arguments defensible. Even supposing there were some defensible distinction between those who deserve support and those who don’t, the empirical premise is doubtful. And even supposing the empirical premise were true, surely what would matter is a person’s actual deservingness, and not what economic circumstances make her deservingness statistically likely to be. In other words: Even if someone could credibly maintain these categories, no one could credibly deny that there will be some whom we owe support even in good economic conditions.
Now, I did say the purpose of unemployment insurance is plausibly twofold: to support the unemployed person and to prevent the economic problems that radiate outward from that person’s unemployment. Maybe automatic stabilizers that change how generous a benefit is are justified on the grounds of the second purpose. But they’re often endorsed with invocations of individuals’ economic suffering during unemployment. I can’t shake the feeling that they might introduce a kind of unfairness to those whose suffering comes in good times. Should it be so much worse to face unemployment in a good economy?
{ 22 comments }
MisterMr 06.08.22 at 11:58 am
“Maybe automatic stabilizers that change how generous a benefit is are justified on the grounds of the second purpose.”
I think that the main point of automatic stabilizers is the “second purpose”, that is to pump up demand when the economy is going down, and they are not really about people deserving them or not.
However politically there are a lot of people who are in general against govenrment spending, and a common argument is that stuff like unemployment insurance pushes people into staying unemployed because they get money from the government anyway.
In a situation when there is an obvious general crisis and increasing unemployment, people who, for whatever the reason, are pro bigger automatic stabilizers will generally use the big crisis as proof that they are giving money to people who would actually work but don’t find a job, and not to lazy dudes (the fear of the anti-spending dudes).
That said, I don’t see how automatic stabilizers can be an anti-polarizing thing: they exist since after WW2 and they are really a textbook keynesian thing, not a new idea.
Perhaps Klein’s idea is that having “automatic” stabilizers instead than having the government debating every increase in spending would be less polarizing. However for this to be true the automatic stabilizers should be much higer than they are today, and therefore the big polarization would happem in the moment of increasing the stabilizers.
I’ll riff a bit on this: there are many “identity” and “ideology” issues today between the left and the right, but one thing that doesn’t change is that the right is the party of the wealthy who fear their wealth might be taken away by taxes and/or inflation.
Automatic stabilizer can cause inflation, so it is the right that pushes this stuff down usually (stuff like the various debt-ceiling limits etc.).
This is a very big example of a case where the real division is economic, but it gets interpreted as cultural/identity because, in this case, people in the right project the idea of lazy bums who live on unemployment insurace, and these ideas are reinforced through identity stereotypes.
So this is a clear case where identity and polarisation really hide the real issues and the cause of contention.
steven t johnson 06.08.22 at 3:06 pm
The general perspective on the role of elections, which is that it is the masses driving politics, seems to me to be wrong. (Unclear if this is due to Klein, the poster or an artifact of conventional framing and wording?) In particular, the emphasis on ideology in the primary rather than the money seems to me entirely misleading.
The notion seems to be that audiences drive media. In media, the audience is sold, it is not the buyer. The people purchasing advertising are investing in an audience and the likes of Fox are projects driven by the investors, not by the audience. Digital media and audience selection are marketing plans, and not so much the inevitable product of the viewers’ bad tastes and low morals.
The discussion of the “electoral software” also seems to me to be misleading. For one thing, single-seat plurality districts are more hardware than software. The system was designed to be two-party, which means in the long run the two parties are, the Ins and the Outs. In most districts, the party favored by the local elites dominates, seemingly has always dominated and seems impregnable to change. It was designed to be that way. So-called parties in the US are more like franchises than parties with programs. I am not even sure it makes any sense to talk about a shift to mass-mobilization? Lincoln’s Wide-Awakes were not an unprecedented phenomenon, a polarizing creation of the ur-Stalinists of the day. The notion that ideological small donors are the problem when the role of big donations for seed money has not actually diminished strikes me as doubly wrong-headed.
The third institutional factor devolves into an attack on bad manners. But the blocking of “governance,” is constitutional, a feature not a bug, as the bitter joke has it. The repudiation of the very concept of majority rule is essential to constitutionalism US-style. It is there directly and openly, as in requirements for supermajorities. And it is there in the representation of acreage, so to speak, rather than people. (You know, where Wyoming=California and this is deemed justice because Wyoming and California are different places on the map.) Even worse, the notion the parties are actually ideologically polarized strikes me as kind of nuts. Again, the parties are not truly ideological, they just have buzzwords and slogans. When it comes to policies and personnel they overlap still, very much so. And neither is a programmatic party. If parties actually carried out their platforms then people might vote for them because they were persuaded to. This does not strike me as something the owners of the country really want.
One alternative explanation of the trend of political polarization is that cultivation of these almost non-political differences is a tactic to keep the real political issues out of voters’ reach. Divide et impera. In particular, the long-standing program of dismantling the Popular Front/New Deal state drives large elements of both parties. Equally both parties are largely dominated by supporters of foreign wars (economic wars are still wars!) Foreign policy is never truly separate from “domestic” policy. For the owners the long term trends in the US/world economy are the driver impelling them to greater and greater extremes. The rich are the ones polarizing. That officer and gentleman DeSantis is a product of Harvard and Yale. But even if DeSantis can’t qualify as “rich” in any objective measure ( both the top and the bottom are out of sight, so to speak,) I do think it is wrong to imagine DeSantis as being pushed around by the filthy masses.
As to impractical recommendations, like “bombproofing” governmental policy, that’s already a key part of the system. Aside from the way the Constitution was devised to limit mere voting’s influence on property, today the stabilizers removed from dirty politics already exist, chiefly in the form of the Federal Reserve.
John Quiggin 06.08.22 at 8:14 pm
Klein talks a lot about what “we” should do, when much of the problem is that there isn’t a “we”.
And, while lots of interesting reforms are suggested, the maintenance of a two-party system is taken for granted. Within the broad constraints of the existing setup, the best chance of breaking that down would be the replacement of plurality (First Past the Post) with preferential (Instant Runoff/Alternative Vote) elections. That could plausibly lead to the election of centrist candidates in districts where the majority party nominates an extreme candidate. I’m working on a paper on this topic
mw 06.08.22 at 11:03 pm
Klein advises disempowering or getting rid of the electoral college, introducing more proportional representation, scrapping the filibuster, giving Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico congressional representation, and making voting easier. Finally, Klein suggests “balancing” the parties, including by empowering whichever happens to occupy the minority. For example, he takes seriously the proposal to reconstruct the Supreme Court to include 15 justices
But these are items at the very top of progressive wish lists — not only is there no way that Republicans would agree to any of them, it’s not all clear how they’d reduce polarization if passed and any serious effort to pass them would dial polarization up to 11 (or maybe 12). These would represent significant changes to the structure and function of U.S. government and therefore really should require a supermajority. But there seems virtually no chance that they’d receive such support.
It seems to me that what we really need are proposals to decrease polarization that don’t disadvantage either party. What kind of mutual de-escalation would both parties agree to? I’m kind of drawing a blank. But let me throw one idea out — reduce the power of the primary system so that parties are again free at their conventions to choose less ideological and more centrist candidates. Trump, for example, never would have won the support of party leaders (or the nomination) without the primary system. It would also have the happy result of reducing the undeserved, outsized political power of ‘effing Iowa. So maybe bring back the smoke filled rooms?
J-D 06.08.22 at 11:20 pm
There’s a huge blind spot in any discussion of these suggestions which doesn’t note that these proposals would be favoured by Democrats and opposed by Republicans, at least partly because of their likely effects on the competitive balance between the parties. Anybody who is serious about saying ‘I want these things to happen’ has to understand that in order to get them to happen requires Democratic control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress–meaning, by Democratic control of the Senate, either sixty Democratic Senators or fifty pro-filibuster-abolition Democratic Senators. Anybody who imagines somehow getting Republican support for these proposals has not been paying attention and will need to stay back after class.
Again, do you think there’s any chance of getting Republican support for preferential voting (which it seems Americans have switched from commonly referring to as Instant Runoff Voting to commonly referring to as Ranked Choice Voting)?
Phil H 06.09.22 at 2:16 am
As Mr Mister said, I think the macroeconomic purpose of benefits is more important when you get above a certain level. Benefits should ensure that people don’t starve, and beyond that, adjustments are a technical economic question.
Moreover, I don’t see any need to keep benefits the same for everyone. There is no question of fairness here: benefits are redistribution, a corrective to some problem with the initial distribution. The only question they have to answer is: How well do these benefits solve the problem the original distribution caused?
KT2 06.09.22 at 3:36 am
steven t johnson @2 “When it comes to policies and personnel they overlap still, very much so.”, probably due to being US centric & WEIRD framing.
From “Putting Within-Country Political Differences in (Global) Perspective”…
“We argue that dissimilarities between Democrats and Republicans may mask some underlying level of agreement, such that disagreements between Republicans and Democrats may be less extreme than they are often perceived. We suggest that placing the views of both parties in global perspective–comparing them not only to each other but to citizens ofnearly 40 countries–demonstrates that political partisans in the United States exhibit markedly more similar views to each other than to citizens of other countries.”
More shared politics than polarized -Dem vs Rep overlap = 70%, when…
“large international surveys and more fine-grained surveys of United States citizens” are used as comparators …”When viewed in the full distribution, polarization between Democrats and Republicans appears relatively small, even on divisive issues such as abortion, sexual preference, and freedom of religious speech.”
The paper also agrees that “…relatively small differences remain differences nonetheless, and it is clear that American politics is polarized.”
“Democrat-Republican overlap for moral issues.”
…
– Alcohol use 0.93%
– Contraception 0.93%
– Homosexuality 0.75
…
[Figure] https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231794.g002
I also have sympathy for steven t johnson’s suggestions that money (proxy audience / market?) is a big factor driving polarization: STJ “the emphasis on ideology in the primary rather than the money seems to me entirely misleading.”
From:
“Putting Within-Country Political Differences in (Global) Perspective
April 2020
“The current political discourse in the United States focuses on extreme political polarization as a contributor to ills ranging from government shutdowns to awkward family holidays. And indeed, a large body of research has documented differences between liberals and conservatives–primarily focused on Republicans and Democrats in the United States.
“We combine large international surveys and more fine-grained surveys of United States citizens to compare differences in opinion between Republicans and Democrats to the full range of world opinion on moral issues (N = 37,653 in 39 countries) and issues of free speech (N = 40,786 in 38 countries).
“When viewed in the full distribution, polarization between Democrats and Republicans appears relatively small, even on divisive issues such as abortion, sexual preference, and freedom of religious speech.
“The average Democrat-Republic overlap is greater than 70% of the country pair overlaps across eight moral issues, meaning that 70% of the country pairs are more dissimilar from each other than Democrats and Republicans are dissimilar; similarly, the average Democrat-Republic overlap is greater than 79% of the country pair overlaps across five freedom of speech issues. These results suggest that cross-cultural comparisons are useful for putting differences between political partisans within the same country in context.”
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0231794
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340879762_Putting_Within-Country_Political_Differences_in_Global_Perspective
Hope this helps, not diverts.
h/t astralcodexten
nastywoman 06.09.22 at 5:34 am
@
‘But now America’s political parties are ideologically polarized’
So absolutely
FIRST!
(in order to un-polarize)
We can’t have the ‘nuts’ (Greenwald) ‘notion’ of @2 –
that ‘the parties are actually ideologically polarized strikes me as kind of nuts. Again, the parties are not truly ideological, they just have buzzwords and slogans. When it comes to policies and personnel they overlap still, very much so’.
AND concerning the unemployment problem –
we FIRST! –
need Americans to understand –
(like any European) – that with unemployment payments the ‘gubernment’ isn’t out there to kill ‘the incentive to work’ -(as the crazy Right-Wing US culture suggests)
AND –
that as @1 has explained:
‘However politically there are a lot of people who are in general against govenrment spending, and a common argument is that stuff like unemployment insurance pushes people into staying unemployed because they get money from the government anyway’.
Or in other words – as Milos Forman so un-famously suggested –
You can decide to live in the Jungle (U.S) or the Zoo (Europe) and as long a most Americans are so confused that the believe that the Jungle is the better option and an Idiot
who actually wants to get rid of all ‘gubernment’ -(and ‘political’ parties) is THE Solution there are –
indeed –
very tiny chances for Kleins standard ‘European’ (progressive) programs.
Trader Joe 06.09.22 at 2:13 pm
An interesting series of posts.
I understand why there is an interest in advocating for things like eliminating filibusters, proportional representation etc. They are plainly less-democratic than a full blown definitional democracy.
That said, they do serve a function of moderating the scope of changes and how quickly they can occur. Trump had the necessary majority in 2017 to literally undo every last thing the Ds had done in the last 40 years if there had been no filibuster to shut it down and I believe he would have done so – its not wise to imagine how awesome the power would be for ‘your’ side if you aren’t willing to have that same power done against you.
Just an idea – but perhaps more stark term limits would be a proper de-escalation. Limiting Presidents to a single 6 year term. Limiting Senators to 2 6 year terms and Representatives to a total of 10 years (for example) would promote greater shifting of legislative blocks and accordingly more need to build bridges to get things done. Or maybe not…..most all bold changes have unforseeable consequences, its amazing the Constitution of the US (and many other countries) have made it as long as they have given all of the supposed flaws.
J, not that one 06.09.22 at 3:19 pm
This is a good post.
(I think it doesn’t really persuade me Klein’s book has any use for me though. I think it’s a good synopsis of things I’ve read other places, many more than once.)
nastywoman 06.09.22 at 3:24 pm
BUT as KT wrote
‘Hope this helps, not diverts’ –
and I always also had tried – very hard:
“Putting Within-Country Political Differences in (Global) Perspective –
(especially to Italy and Germany – but also France)
I will begin to write to ALL the Right-Wing Racist Science Denying Idiots I got into some kind of…
of… ‘polarized’ discussion in the last years – that ‘placing the views of both parties in global perspective–comparing them not only to each other but to citizens of nearly 40 countries–demonstrates that political partisans in the United States exhibit markedly more similar views to each other than to citizens of other countries” – and I will tell that Donald Greenwald – and I hope very much – that we will agree much more with each other – perhaps in the way I agree with German or Italian -(or even French) Conservatives –
who also believe –
that Racist Right-Wing Science Denying Warmongering Idiots are THE WORST –
and that –
the World isn’t flat –
and that there is something called ‘global warming’ –
and that ‘masks’ and vaccinations -(in a pandemic) are… ‘cool’ –
and that we shouldn’t have to get out of the State or Country in order to get an abortion –
And KT –
I will report –
how such… ‘markedly more similar views to each other than to citizens of other countries” – works out.
(and hopefully – perhaps the HUUUGEST ‘Trump Fans in our family will join – or even invite US
– again
for Thanksgiving?)
nastywoman 06.09.22 at 3:29 pm
AND as I forgot the most important think
NOT hopefully – just join – or even invite US – again for Thanksgiving?
BUT
to all of these – statistically agreeing with each other people out there –
STOP shooting at each other
and killing so much more people than in so many other countries –
if
y’all
actually
AGREE!!!
politicalfootball 06.11.22 at 3:15 am
Klein’s three proposals aren’t possible without something else happening first: Republicans would have to stop being horrible. And if Republicans weren’t vile, that would obviate the need for Klein’s proposals.
So it would just be simpler to wish for Republican decency and, while we’re at it, for a pony.
Fake Dave 06.11.22 at 11:38 am
“And even as voters have become less persuadable, parties have become weaker, with the primary electorate, rather than party bosses, selecting candidates.”
If this were true and party primaries in the undefined past were really a sort of “managed democracy” controlled by entrenched machines, then wouldn’t that make “polarization” closer to the natural state in a democracy? If so, defining it as the source of all our strife seems like a backhanded defense of oligarchy. I’m not sure what to make of this line of reasoning, but it strikes me as extremely sketchy.
It’s true that huge swathes of the Dixiecrat South and numerous company towns and immigrant ghettos in the North and West were ruled by Mexico-style “perfect dictatorships” in the recent past. Some places still are. Somehow, that all changed (mostly) and it’s generally agreed that the Civil Rights movement had something to do with it. That’s where things get murky though.
In the first part of this, we were told it all goes back to Nixon and the Southern Strategy. I wondered about that assumption then and am just baffled by it now. It strikes me that the same changes in law and society that broke the back of the segregationist cause are also what ended the machine era of party politics. Not only is it a little bizarre to define segregation as in any way depolarized, but that would mean that the Southern Strategy was just the Republicans’ way of adapting to changes that began on the Democratic side. The 1960s saw nothing short of a revolution in the Democratic Party both in who their electorate was and the kind candidates they picked. Segregationists didn’t fit into the new party, so they went elsewhere. Why this would be a cause of increased polarization rather than a symptom of existing polarization is unclear to me. The polarization “feedback loop,” if it exists seems like it must have started long before 1972.
Michael Cain 06.12.22 at 8:46 pm
@9
Re tougher term limits… You might start by investigating the states that have implemented such. I worked for my state’s legislature as permanent non-partisan budget staff at about the time term limits really started to bite. That is, at the beginning of each two-year session, 25-30% of the legislators were new. At least anecdotally, the result was a substantial transfer of effective power from the members to the staff simply because the staff understood the budget process from day one, and too many members didn’t.
Charles Hatten 06.13.22 at 12:49 am
I read Ezra Klein’s book and I’m enjoying this discussion of it, but with a caveat. I feel that the issues raised here are addressed, in more persuasive ways for the most part, in Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s book “Let them eat tweets: How the right rules in an age of extreme inequality”. Now granted there’s some parallels and overlap in what the two books cover (both are concerned about the archaic and dysfunction-prone American political system), but Hacker and Pierson have a much more convincing argument about how partisan polarization has been used as a political strategy by the right. They speak of “plutocratic populism” which is to say pro-elite economic policies coupled with “populist” themes directed against liberals, the government, minorities, immigrants and so on. They argue the Republican party uses the three Rs–resentment (fostering dislike of cities, intellectuals, government), racialization (anti-minority politics) and rigging (voter suppression, gerrymandering). With these three strategies, the right maintains enormous political power despite minimal popular support for their economic agenda. For a summarizing discussion of their argument, see the following youtube interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47QUSTwipzQ Looking through your archives, I noticed Henry had a long response to this book back in 2020, but I still think the book is worth reading–and discussing further. With all respect to Ezra Klein, I think he misses a huge part of what’s driving polarization. And basically Hacker and Pierson argue that polarization is less the danger than a gradual subversion of majority rule–in other words, of democracy itself.
TM 06.14.22 at 2:44 pm
Most of the “institutional reform” proposals are, as others have suggested, common sense proposals that most progressives agree with and have been proposed many times before but have no chance to be enacted as long as the GOP continues to behave irresponsibly and the Dems don’t win some landslide elections. And that just highlights the hollowness of Klein’s whole argument. The problem Klein is trying to solve isn’t polarization, it’s that one of two major American parties has gone insane, but somehow this cannot be said openly in polite company. None of his claims and arguments about polarization are even much related to these proposals. The argument in favor of the filibuster has always been that it promotes bipartisan compromise so abolishing it can’t be a remedy for partisan polarization.
I don’t see how the automatic stabilizers supposed to be related to polarization. I agree there is no good reason why the level of unemployment benefits should depend on economic factors. Many countries do however increase the eligibility period in times of economic crisis on the grounds that in better times, the unemployed will more quickly find a job. During Covid, there was an additional consideration: if workers need assistance because the state orders businesses closed, the state also is responsible to provide that assistance.
“Unsurprisingly, the media is the first locus of institutional polarization that Klein discusses. Also unsurprising is his focus on the fragmentation of the industry and the rise of digital media, and on the ways in which audience analytics enable providers to discern “market demand” with growing precision.”
Again, the problem isn’t “the media are polarized”, the problem is Murdoch and Fox News. There is no left/liberal equivalent to the right wing media propaganda machine. The liberal media is going out of its way to treat open fascist as if they were respectable politicians, and never tires of two-sideism. (A random example: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/06/normalization-and-denial)
It is a fitting coincidence that this discussion thread coincides with the January 6 hearings. A fascist coup attempt openly supported or retroactively played down by part of the GOP leadership? Sure, let’s just pretend it’s both sides.
“Earlier this year at the National Prayer Breakfast, to give another example, President Biden praised Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “man of your word” and a “man of honor.”
“Thank you for being my friend,” said Biden to a man who is almost singularly responsible for the destruction of the Senate as a functional lawmaking body and whose chief accomplishment in public life is the creation of a far-right Supreme Court majority that is now poised to roll American jurisprudence back to the 19th century.”
(Jamelle Bouie via https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/06/the-gerontocrats)
Which confirms that what we actually need is more polarization and less attempts at “getting along” with fascists, or “learning to live well” with the armed white supremacist Qanon conspiracist next door.
steven t johnson 06.14.22 at 3:37 pm
Charles Hatten@16 “…. a gradual subversion of majority rule–in other words, of democracy itself.”
But the notion that majority rule is a defining feature of democracy is precisely what is contested. The notion that mere majorities cannot change the kind of society we live in in deemed to be the guarantee of freedom. That’s why everyone else here is outraged at the existence of today’s Venezuela and consider it to be the dictatorship.
The OP upholds the notion that policy should be insulated from politics. Again, that is a vital principle of the contemporary US system, notably in the existence and powers of the Federal Reserve. Any government that can redistribute property in such a scale as to really change society is defined as “totalitarian.” I still think the very concept of totalitarianism is a propaganda amalgamation like “cultural Marxism,” devoid of actual meaning. But the view here is that totalitarianism is a real concept and invoking it is a signal of all the virtues, including wisdom. And shielding policy from majorities is repudiation of majority rule.
The recent vogue for acknowledging the influence of replacement theories is not the only form rejection of the principle of majority rule takes. The US Senate is much more important.
David in Tokyo 06.15.22 at 1:21 am
Charles Hatten wrote:
“a much more convincing argument about how partisan polarization has been used as a political strategy by the right.”
I just noticed this quote: “‘The Republican Party… has radicalized into an extremist, antidemocratic force that imperils the U.S.…” (Foreign Affairs)
This strikes me as exactly right. I know the holier-than-thou lefties think the Clintons were the Devil Incarnate twice over, but (as a 70-year old don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts McGovern supporter) I think we on the left have largely had the right ideas all along, really aren’t very far apart, and only seem apart and shifting left because of a few of us are in someone’s pocket (e.g a certain Senator with enormous coal holdings and income) or insane (a certain Senator from Arizona), and what’s actually possible (e.g. Obamacare) is less than what we’d all like. And that knowledge changes.
So my take is that the Republicans have always been repugnant, but have become radically more so of late, and the apparent leftward shift of the Democratic center is due to more knowledge (e.g. we know that climate change is far worse a problem than anyone thought, the dream of globalization (e.g. Japanese consumers shouldn’t be forced to buy rice 10 times more expensive than Vietnamese rice) isn’t as shiny as we thought (oops)). Going back and reading the people I supported in my youth, they don’t seem all that great. But looking more closely, much of that is due to new knowledge and ideas. At the time, they were doing the best they could to make life better for the weaker members of society, the environment.
Whatever. Sorry that this doesn’t deal with the arguments being discussed. I think the question as stated is simply wrong.
nastywoman 06.15.22 at 11:14 am
How True:
@ ‘The problem Klein is trying to solve isn’t polarization, it’s that one of two major American parties has gone insane, but somehow this cannot be said openly in polite company. None of his claims and arguments about polarization are even much related to these proposals’.
and as a ‘very polite company’ – I (ME!) – in the – supposedly – ‘lesser polarized times’ responded ‘very polite’ to all the Crazy Insane Right-Wing Racist Science Denying Stupid Stuff of my fellow homelanders
BUT NOW! –
if one of them tells me – that actually ‘trump’ had won the ‘Erection’ –
(or all the crazy and stupid Right-Wing Dreck)
I like to tell the Idiots – HOW incredible INSANE and STUPID they are –
@’Which confirms what @17 wrote:
‘that what we actually HAD needed – was and ‘is more polarization and less attempts at “getting along” with fascists, or “learning to live well” with the armed white supremacist Qanon conspiracist next door’.
nastywoman 06.15.22 at 11:28 am
AND –
furthermore –
in tolerating such Racist Science Denying Right Wing Dreck for faaaar too long –
(especially from the devastating successful Right-Wing Media Propaganda Machines)
We gave the US Idiots free range to a dimension that even a ‘FF von Clownstick’ became
‘erectable’ –
and how truly ‘STUPID’ is that?
and as –
INDEED –
the liberal US media is going out of its way to treat open IDIOTS as if they were respectable politicians, and the media -(and even commenters of ‘Crooked Timber) never seems to tire of blaming ‘POLITICAL’ (and NOT ‘cultural’) two-sideism the only solution I see to this crazy polarisation that my fellow American – slowly start to get as openminded and well informed as just the standard GREEN European.
J-D 06.16.22 at 1:58 am
I think the left has had the right values all along.
I think ‘always’ is somewhat of an overstatement (although perhaps an excusable one). The people who voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 made a good choice. I don’t know of any good reason for voting Republican in the last six decades, at least.
What I want to vote for are not necessarily people who are going to implement my ideas, but rather people who are going to make the choices I would make if I were better informed (and who are going to inform themselves for that purpose). The best choices are still limited by the information available. The people I’m going to vote against are the people whose values are wrong.
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