What Barack Obama famously called the Democratic party's "circular firing squad" has been visibly at it again in the recent contretemps over front-runner Joe Biden's comments, reminiscing fondly about collaborating easily with the segregationist old-guard in the 1970s Senate Democratic caucus. If nothing else, this dispute highlights the increasing rift between the multitude of Democratic voters, who care more about issues like health care and immigrants's rights and defeating Trump and the (overwhelmingly white and well off) "woke" elite who seem so much more preoccupied with expressive politics than with either Democratic policy goals or effectively defeating Trump.
That said, however, Biden's nostalgic gaffe has highlighted a significant transformation at the core of contemporary politics that Biden's nostalgia for civility and bipartisanship ignores. In his June 19 New York Magazine, "The National Interest" column ("Joe Biden's Segregationist Nostalgia Is Even More Ignorant Than It Sounds"), Jonathan Chait illuminated this better than most of the commentary and punditry which has largely focused more on agreeing or disagreeing with the "woke" elite's attack on Biden. (To read Chait's full article, go to: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/biden-segregationist-riff-ignorant.html),
Biden's comments, Chait contends, suggest "that he has not grasped any of the tectonic changes in American politics" since Biden's early political formation.(Since I am only five years younger than he, I too was formed politically in that same era, and much of what was formally taught about American politics in college and graduate school reflected that widespread consensus about American politics, even as early signs of its impending erosion were already visible.)
Chait's basic contention (backed-up by an easy-to-read graph) is that in the 20th century, "while the Republicans were moving right, and the Democrats were moving left, there was a long period in which the parties overlapped. During that time, bipartisanship was the norm. Biden came of political age during the period when polarization had reached its historic nadir." Any American of my age can well remember that partisan overlap and the bipartisanship which it facilitated. At the time political scientists and others prognosticated about the prospects of partisan realignment. For better or for worse (almost certainly for the worse), that realignment has since become a political fact. After a realignment process that took the greater part of the 20th century, the once more conservative Democrats have become the liberal party and the once more liberal Republicans have become the conservative party. And so we have arrived at a realigned political party system that resembles the 19th century more than the 20th. "Today's partisan division," Chait argues, "reflects the same elemental conflicts between Yankee socially progressive advocates of energetic central government and Southern 'strict constructionist' defenders of the existing social hierarchy that divided the political system of the 19th century."
Moreover, from the New Deal until the 1990s, while the presidency oscillated back and forth between the two parties, Congress remained fairly consistently under Democratic control. As a political science professor in the late 1970s, I complacently assumed that state of affairs was permanent. Indeed, the Republicans seemed to be a permanent minority party in Congress - until Newt Gingrich changed that in the 1990s. But, once that changed, then with it went away any incentive for the minority party to be bipartisan. As Chait correctly notes, when the parties cooperate voters tend typically to reward the party in power. When the opposite happens, they typically reward the opposition. "To ask the opposing party to compromise with the majority party is to ask it to undermine its own political interest."
It is this reality which Biden himself experienced in the massive Republican obstructionism during the Obama Administration, which he seems to be forgetting (or pretending to forget) in his 20th-century nostalgia for civility and bipartisanship. Perhaps, Chait suggests, Biden "shares the inability of many old people to surrender the lessons of their youth."
Whatever the explanation (and there may be better ones that stereotyping us older people), Biden is, I think, almost certainly wrong in thinking that there is any serious prospect for civility and bipartisanship - as long as the Republican party retains control (or any realistic prospect of control) of either house of Congress. And, given the inherent gerrymandering which is constitutionally mandated by the existence of the states and the US Senate to represent them, that is not likely to change any time soon.
Biden's comments, Chait contends, suggest "that he has not grasped any of the tectonic changes in American politics" since Biden's early political formation.(Since I am only five years younger than he, I too was formed politically in that same era, and much of what was formally taught about American politics in college and graduate school reflected that widespread consensus about American politics, even as early signs of its impending erosion were already visible.)
Chait's basic contention (backed-up by an easy-to-read graph) is that in the 20th century, "while the Republicans were moving right, and the Democrats were moving left, there was a long period in which the parties overlapped. During that time, bipartisanship was the norm. Biden came of political age during the period when polarization had reached its historic nadir." Any American of my age can well remember that partisan overlap and the bipartisanship which it facilitated. At the time political scientists and others prognosticated about the prospects of partisan realignment. For better or for worse (almost certainly for the worse), that realignment has since become a political fact. After a realignment process that took the greater part of the 20th century, the once more conservative Democrats have become the liberal party and the once more liberal Republicans have become the conservative party. And so we have arrived at a realigned political party system that resembles the 19th century more than the 20th. "Today's partisan division," Chait argues, "reflects the same elemental conflicts between Yankee socially progressive advocates of energetic central government and Southern 'strict constructionist' defenders of the existing social hierarchy that divided the political system of the 19th century."
Moreover, from the New Deal until the 1990s, while the presidency oscillated back and forth between the two parties, Congress remained fairly consistently under Democratic control. As a political science professor in the late 1970s, I complacently assumed that state of affairs was permanent. Indeed, the Republicans seemed to be a permanent minority party in Congress - until Newt Gingrich changed that in the 1990s. But, once that changed, then with it went away any incentive for the minority party to be bipartisan. As Chait correctly notes, when the parties cooperate voters tend typically to reward the party in power. When the opposite happens, they typically reward the opposition. "To ask the opposing party to compromise with the majority party is to ask it to undermine its own political interest."
It is this reality which Biden himself experienced in the massive Republican obstructionism during the Obama Administration, which he seems to be forgetting (or pretending to forget) in his 20th-century nostalgia for civility and bipartisanship. Perhaps, Chait suggests, Biden "shares the inability of many old people to surrender the lessons of their youth."
Whatever the explanation (and there may be better ones that stereotyping us older people), Biden is, I think, almost certainly wrong in thinking that there is any serious prospect for civility and bipartisanship - as long as the Republican party retains control (or any realistic prospect of control) of either house of Congress. And, given the inherent gerrymandering which is constitutionally mandated by the existence of the states and the US Senate to represent them, that is not likely to change any time soon.
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