American politics is heavily divided by race. The numbers may not be 100%, but I think about ~50% of democrats are people of color while only about 10-20% of republicans are (and many of them are hispanic, very few blacks are republican).
Last time we had severe polarization it led to the civil war. I doubt it gets that bad.
I think state and city governments will get empowered. People will realize their morals are not compatible, so more power will shift to the states and cities so people can engage in their own ideological agenda.
Americans are very easy to divide though. Race, religion, class, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, etc. are all very successfully used to keep the working class divided and the plutocrats in firm control.
Hell, the civil war consisted of tons of poor whites in the south going to war so rich people could own slaves. They did it willingly. Its not going to stop anytime soon.
Sadly, even in blue states the issues with income inequality are still there. New York State or California both have high levels of income inequality. Even cities like SF or NYC have huge issues with it, and they are one party cities. Even in places like SF or NYC where the public are open to fighting the plutocrats, the plutocrats aren’t fought. What chance does Mississippi have?
I think one large part of the progressive agenda is going to eventually be shown to be unachievable: the abolition of poverty. Not in the sense of people being homeless and hungry- that’s solvable by raising the standard of what’s considered “poor” in America. To be “poor” in the United States is the envy of people working 14-16 hour days in the Third World. What I think will eventually be shown to be impossible is the elimination of relative poverty- that is, the very existence of a class below middle class. The basic premise of the progressives for over a century now has been “there but for the grace of God go I”. That the poor are just like you and me, only unlucky enough to have been born in worse circumstances. The theory goes that with enough boosts up- with adequate food, adequate housing, adequate education, adequate health care and equal opportunity- everyone would be middle class. But I think that’s ignoring the inevitable bell curve distribution of traits. I think that a significant fraction of the population (5%? 10%?) are dysfunctional enough that they’re never going to do much of anything. To be sure some real improvement is possible; eliminating the insidious effects of lead exposure comes to mind. But unless you can completely eliminate low IQ, depression, predisposition to addiction and a host of personality disorders, there are going to be poorly functional people for the foreseeable future.
First off Whites are actually not so polarized between the two party IDs: 33% R and 26% D - with 37% I. Go by “and leaners” and you get 51% R to 43% D. The division by race is mainly that few Hispanics, few Asians, and very few Blacks call the GOP home. (Shocking aint it?)
Of course American politics is also divided by gender. 39% of women identify as D compared to only 25% as R. And by education: college and no postgraduate education leans R 35% to 24% D while postgraduate education leans D 41% to only 19% R. And looking just at Whites the education polarization is even more stark:
And of course by religious affiliation (or lack of), by generation, and rural/urban.
Shoving the polarization into racial/ethnic boxes really is missing most of the picture.
Not all white people are bad obviously. But the major divisions tend to occur within white people that do not occur in other groups.
You talk about the rural/urban divide. That is true, but it only seems to apply to whites. There are rural counties filled with non-whites (mostly in the south or southwest). They are blue counties. It is only the white rural counties that are red. The sparsely populated rural counties in the south that are full of blacks or the ones full of native americans or latinos are pretty deeply blue.
Same with religious affiliation. Among whites, being religious makes you far more right wing. Among non-whites, I don’t think it has much impact. Highly religious black people are democrats the same as secular blacks. Highly religious whites are republicans generally, while secular whites are democrats.
Same with education. Among whites, having a college degree makes you 30-40 points to the left of those without a college degree. Among non-whites (according to the exit polls I’ve seen) the college educated and high school educated vote the same.
Same with age. Whites who are younger are more leftward, older whites are more rightward. Among other racial groups, there isn’t much difference. Blacks and latinos who are under 29 gave Trump and the GOP about the same % of their vote as blacks or latinos who were over 65. Among younger non-whites according to 2016 exit polls, they didn’t vote for Clinton as much as the older generation, but that is because they voted 3rd party, not because they supported the GOP candidate. The GOP candidate did about the same across age groups among non-whites.
So yes there are massive divisions within the american electorate regarding things like rural/urban, religious/secular, college educated/less educated, generation, etc. But these divisions only apply to white people. Among non-whites these divisions are mostly irrelevant.
To my knowledge, the only division among non-whites that actually plays a factor in voting habits irrelevant of race of R vs D is gender. Among black men, about 13% voted for Trump while only about 4% of black women voted for Trump. I think among all races, men are about 15-20 net points to the right of women. But gender (from what I know) is the only division that applies across racial groups.
So my original point still stand. At root, racial division is the real issue because all these secondary divisions only apply within white people. The only division that applies across all racial groups from what I’ve seen of the exit polls is gender. Every other division (religious/secular, education, generation, rural/urban) are mostly irrelevant among non-whites.
Ideological polarization doesn’t lead to civil war unles the differences are so vast and at least one side doesn’t even accept the legitimacy of the constitutional system. That’s what happened in Spain.
What happens where there is a sharp divide in a normal democracy is that eventually one side elects a President who changes the game. He or she is popular enough to get a lot of voters to change their habits.
Assuming you mean in 1936, there were actually multiple sides which did not accept the legitimacy of the government and of the legal system. Each of the two “sides” of the 1936 Civil War was formed of multiple factions, among them some which had already been causing “civil disturbances” (including the second biggest terrorist attack in Spanish history) for decades (anarchists, nationalists); others whose history of being against the legal system was shorter simply because the ideology itself was younger (communists and socialists). In the National side (not nationalist FFS!), the Carlistas took several days to join up, specifically because their ideology put Law above King and Country: they didn’t like the laws of the times, but they respected them - until they received the promise that their first tenet, that God which was under direct attack by many of the other factions, would be defended and restored if they did join up.
One example that comes to mind is France before World War II, which was divided along those lines for many decades with ugly results. By the 1930s, the split was very toxic, some right-wing Frenchmen felt “better Hitler than Blum” (the left-wing and Jewish premier of the era). The old French right became discredited with the Vichy Regime, and a new more centrist right emerged under De Gaulle after the war. I sometimes feel the U.S. is going the way of early twentieth-century France.
I was thinking of the French experience too, but as with Spain the core issue was the legitimacy of the constitutional/legal order itself. Many of the French right had never accepted the legitimacy of the Third Republic. Some subsumed their idea of France in service in the Army (as somehow representing a better idea of France), hence in part the bitterness of the Dreyfus controversy. Some of that rather hung over into the disappointments of the Fourth Republic and the struggles over the colonial legacy, until de Gaulle managed to draw the sting.
In the US you argue about what the Constitution means and how the legal order should run, but neither side wants to tear it up and start again, as far as I can see. Since it has an inbuilt tendency to stasis, that’s the most likely result of increased political division among the electorate and the political class.
If there is a natural bell curve for human outcomes then why do corporations and oligarchs try to distort it and fix outcomes for their benefit? Aren’t they just fighting against nature?
I said the bell curve was for capability, not outcome, and I conceded that outcomes can be improved on an absolute scale. In a forgiving enough environment even the screwed-up can get by; the non-screwed up just do even better. And there is of course a significant hysteresis between capability and outcome, but not indefinitely; if corporations and oligarchs stop being capable they can coast for a long time on the power and position their predecessors built but they will eventually go bankrupt and get deposed, respectively.
Had Gore won in 2000, I think it likely that he would have lost reelection in 2004, mirroring two terms of Reagan and one of Bush Sr. “W” might have run again, arguing that his close finish merited a second shot but more likely McCain. The big “X factor” is if 9-11 had gone the same, differently, or even not at all.
Didn’t you just say that progressives aim of changing the outcomes was unworkable? Make up your mind.
Also you said that the elimination of poverty was a progressive plank. I thought it was universal. No? It is not in the “right” agenda? I see.
The problem is that the underperforming humans are supposed to be, under the RW philosophy, the chattel of the corporations, who you are priveleging above humans. IOW humans in their failings are a good hook for you to point out at, but corporations are above this debate and their hand on the scale is supposed to be “invisible” to us. It is not. The corporations have failings, and infirmities like people, but they show themselves in diffferent ways. I suppose the goal of RW philo is to deny deny deny.
What I’m claiming is that the poor aren’t just like you and me. IOW, there will be a class of people who will be fed, housed, kept healthy, and maybe even have make-work pity jobs, but by the standard of how much continual assistance they’ll need, they’ll remain “the poor”.
If we rid them of economic anxiety of being insecure in their housing, their food, their clothing, their education, and at least moderate forms of entertainment, then they still may have a relative wealth disparity against those who attain more, but there will be a decrease in the suffering.
Also, if people have fewer economic anxieties, they are more able to work on personal growth and improvement. If all their energies go towards fighting for basic survival with very arguable results, they will not be able to become “just like you and me.”
The first time the US went through a great cleavage between populations & regions which valued tradition & supremacy over others and populations & regions which emphasized cosmopolitanism & equality of treatment , the two sides tried to tip the political system to their advantage until the side in favor of tradition & supremacy realized it was headed to lose that fight and tried to secede.
This later resurfaced in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The side favoring tradition & supremacy largely lost the fight over civil rights, the role of women, sexuality and the place of religion. That fight was largely decided in the courts. It was the birth of the modern Republican Party centered in the South & hinterland and the Religious Right as a movement.
The RR and core GOP wanted the WASP ethnic group to retain its traditional master position in the US. With the economic agony of the hinterland and thriving of cosmopolitan cities, the election of a black president, gay marriage and pot legalization, it’s becoming increasingly clear that their political power is waning and they’re going to be one voice among equals rather than the chief, most powerful tribe. Obama might seem unrelated to the Religious Right but when white evangelical Christians talk about “losing our country”, they don’t just mean Christian; The “W” in WASP is as important as the “P” although it can’t be admitted to as openly.
If you see the core Trump supporters as being influenced, knowingly or not, by the Christian Identity worldview, it becomes clearer. Christian Identity - Wikipedia
“The poor”? Why are you assuming you are talking to a fellow class member? Is a poor person able to log in here and participate?
You should say how the poor are not like you and me to make a point. What is the distinguishing thing? How do you know someone who is poor is different from you? Are you only speaking to a putative class cohort?
There’s some truth to this, but the issue of race has to include economics. The debasement of blacks, and indeed racism itself, is a product of capitalist economics. Whites wanted cheap labor. There weren’t cheap Hispanic immigrants in those days, but there were Africans willing to capture and sell other Africans to Whites in need of labor on the cheap.
In the post-reconstruction and at the dawn of the Jim Crow era, some of the race riots in the late 19th Century weren’t strictly about race per se. In Louisiana, for instance, some massacres were the result of whites trying to brutally suppress economic freedom of black farmers who were trying to negotiate labor contracts with white land owners. The East St. Louis and Chicago riots were a reaction to cheap black labor migrating north and competing with white laborers, some of whom were immigrants.
Historically, the federal government has been a better moral compass for the country than state and local power. Returning power to the states is encouraging states to take flight on their own. I don’t see how that ends well, for either the states with a secessionist bent or the Union as a whole. Keep in mind that foreign powers hostile to the United States would love nothing more than to capitalize on a new states rights movement, and would do whatever’s in their power to influence a favorable outcome.