Opinion: Why political polarization has gone wild in America

[Ducimus]

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/24/why-political-polarization-has-gone-wild/

[em2nought]

Because the average "working" guy always hated the gov't leeches, but just ignored it and kept on working because "it" only cost him just so much. Now he's starting to think that all that working might have been useless if the gov't screws everything up.

The other side are just elitist nut jobs, or in on the take. :D

[Sailor Steve]

I don't think politics in Washington are any more polarized than they've ever been. Hamilton and Jefferson. Adams and Jefferson (who had been friends and would be again). Lincoln and anybody. It's no worse now than it ever was. We just read about it more, and thanks to television and the internet people get involved more.

[yubba]

I don't think politics in Washington are any more polarized than they've ever been. Hamilton and Jefferson. Adams and Jefferson (who had been friends and would be again). Lincoln and anybody. It's no worse now than it ever was. We just read about it more, and thanks to television and the internet people get involved more.
Well there isn't any in Washington that can measure up to the ones mentioned above, at least the fore mentioned cared about the rights and freedoms of the American people and they DIDN'T compromise or spend us into peril.

[ZeeWolf]

I believe the awakening of Americans has created
a much more informed base. A base that before
this time was much easier for the "main stream"
media to get away with their lies.
One area in particular is the push to adapted
international laws that would most Americans
would never vote for.
And the second area here is connected to the
first, and that is as Americans become more
informed they see that both political parties
are guilty of ram-rodding things through that
the majority of Americans would never vote
for. America sees with there own eyes what
the agenda has now been for years. Whether
it's Guns, Free Speech, Private Property etc.
these rights have been under assault by a
determined non-American force and finally
we see some real push back. Push back
that has only begun. THANK GOD!

[Madox58]

It to easy to sit back and be 'informed' by media now days.
We watch the Weather, the latest News, Stock Prices, etc, on and on.
Weather is mostly wrong, the news is canted, Stocks are whacked.
And yet We assume 'all is good'.
:nope:
It's not good.
Nor will it be good anytime soon!

If you buy what is sold on TV in the U.S.A. today?
You'll be a casualty very shortly in one way or another.

[mookiemookie]

I don't think politics in Washington are any more polarized than they've ever been. Hamilton and Jefferson. Adams and Jefferson (who had been friends and would be again). Lincoln and anybody. It's no worse now than it ever was. We just read about it more, and thanks to television and the internet people get involved more.

That may be true, but has Congress been this deadlocked due to partisanship? Has there been an endemic refusal to compromise as part of a faction's platform like this in history? As everything is all relative, how does this compare to the political climates of history that people who are alive today will remember? If you read the OP's article, it lays out very good reasons why today's climate is different than those past.

Not trying to go after you, but asking serious questions that I'm curious about.

[Stealhead]

I agree with Sailor Steve if you read up on how they really where(and not the mythology) even in the early days they where pretty polarized back then and would do some pretty nasty smear campaigns against each other as well.

Thomas Jefferson for example his opponents would spread manner of foul things related to the fact that he had had children with one of his slaves.Funny as when black relatives of Jefferson claimed their relation to him in more recent time it was somewhat doubted at first.Even though it at one time had been public knowledge and Jefferson never denied the fact in his time.

Also look at the issue of slavery it was known for years before what happened in Kansas and Missouri and caused the Civil War that slavery(and to an extent states rights but really the right that they wanted was slavery to be legal so the Civil War was over slavery no matter how some wish to sugar coat it as not having been) was going to be a huge issue but they never effectively did anything about it until a war settled the issue.That times span was over 20 years never really effectively settling the issue,So we have been this polarized for a very long time before.

[Anthony W.]

Because we're in the midst of a political renaissance.

The 2 sides are so extreme and filled with so many falsities that America is going back into a state of patriotism. We've got our ideals, and we're now extremely pissed off that the people we elected lied to us.

We're trying to get back to the last hay day we remember - and - the stability of the mid to late 80's is what we remember.

Pop culture is only stimulating it. Now, not only do we have political rifts, but cultural and generational. We're realizing that we're not going in the right direction, and it's a split between which direction we go. Nanny state or superpower, and some minor other factions.

What issue is at the forefront of my mind is all the pressure for us to Europeanize. I hate that. I don't want America to be like the rest of the world. We're Americans - not Europeans. We have the right to behave however we want to, without really caring about what other people think.

In MY opinion, I say that the UN and them military international groups and treaties that we're in are doing nothing but hurting us.

And that was my emotionally charged blow off.

[Sailor Steve]

Well there isn't any in Washington that can measure up to the ones mentioned above, at least the fore mentioned cared about the rights and freedoms of the American people and they DIDN'T compromise or spend us into peril.
The thread isn't about what you think of them, or about it's about polarization. My point was that there was plenty of hostility and antagonism back then, and what we're seeing today is nothing new.

You and I may praise those guys, but others in their own time hated them, and the political fighting then was no different than it is now.

[Sailor Steve]

That may be true, but has Congress been this deadlocked due to partisanship? Has there been an endemic refusal to compromise as part of a faction's platform like this in history? As everything is all relative, how does this compare to the political climates of history that people who are alive today will remember? If you read the OP's article, it lays out very good reasons why today's climate is different than those past.

Well...

1) Redistricting has created safe seats so that for most House members, their only concern is a challenge from the right for Republicans and the left for Democrats. The incentive is to pander to the base, not the center.
In 1812 the word "gerrymander" was coined when the Massachusetts legislature redrew the boundaries of state legislative districts to favor Governor Gerry's party. The Governor's strategy was to encompass most of the state's Federalists, allowing them to win in that district while his party, the Democratic-Republicans, took control of all the other districts in the state. The term eventually became part of world political vocabulary, and the practice is still in use today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridge_Gerry



2) Party primaries have been taken over by small groups of activists who push even popular senators to extreme positions. In Utah, for example, 3,500 conservative activists managed to take the well- regarded Senator Robert Bennett off the ballot. GOP senators like Orrin Hatch and John McCain have moved farther to the right, hoping to stave off similar assaults.
In the election of 1800 Alexander Hamilton, whose support helped John Adams win in 1796, did everything he could to destroy Adams' chances for reelection, and it worked. Later Hamilton would accuse Jefferson and Madison of creating the first political party in America for the sole purpose of ruining his career. He may have been right.


3) Changes in Congressional rules have also made it far more difficult to enact large, compromise legislation. In the wake of the Watergate Scandal, "Sunshine rules" were put into place that required open committee meetings and recorded votes. The purpose was to make Congress more open, more responsive - and so it has become to lobbyists, money and special interests. This is because they're the people who watch every committee vote and mobilize opposition to any withdrawal of subsidies or tax breaks.
Congress has been changing, using and abusing the rules since day one. The Federalists and the Republicans did everything they could think of to destroy each other, and it hasn't changed a lick.


4) Political polarization has also been fueled by a new media, which is also narrowcast.
Media which does nothing but report news is a modern phenomenon. In the early days all papers were privately printed. Their "news" was copied from other papers and passed around, and most of what they called "news" was in fact opinion, and often outright hate speech. Read the headlines from the aforementioned election of 1800. Nothing has changed. It's just that more of us get a chance to give our opinions, so it looks bigger.


Not trying to go after you...
Didn't think you were.

[Tribesman]

We've got our ideals, and we're now extremely pissed off that the people we elected lied to us.


You elected?
After you get the vote and have been through a few elections you will realise that no matter what system or what party or individual is up there you will still be lied to by them.
Though a quick look at any politics in history should show you that already.

We're trying to get back to the last hay day we remember - and - the stability of the mid to late 80's is what we remember.

You remember the 80s?
The late 80s that was just a section of the boom bust boom bust cycle. Going back to an upswing on a cycle only means you are heading for a downturn

What issue is at the forefront of my mind is all the pressure for us to Europeanize. I hate that.
An interesting term...what on earth does "europeanize" mean?

[Skybird]

While polarisation always seems to have been a part of the binary political system of the US, it always fluctuates a little bit over the years. However, fluctuation seems to have escalated and gone into extremes since Bush II.

Reasons for that:

1. Bush's agenda to go to war over Iraq, the problematic issues about Halliburton and Carlysle interfering with policiy making of the administration, followed by 9/11 and the hastly antedated war in Afghanistan - of which especially Iraq, due to its questionably nature, raised a lot of opposition and meant a formidable damage mounting for the US' global prestige and trustworthiness.

2. The unfolding of the housing and credit crunch, affecting millions, plus a general trend of a widening scissor between the wealth of fewer people at the top and the poverty of more people at the lower end.

3. a black man making it into the white House.

4. a principal self-understanding of orthodox Republicans that althoutgh an electoral system means that one can also lose elections, claim for power nevertheless is a natural right of the orthodox Repuzblicans, and the Obama/Democratic reign is a violation of this right to which they claim right of self-defence - by all means. And many of these means are so vitriolic and acid, and have been so since Palin started to infest the campaign before last elections, that the resuling hate and anger has not really helped to ease the hardening of fronts that came as a consequence form that.

5. Finally, a bigger part of the social middle class is negatively effected by the falling trend of the US then ever before since the great depression, leaving few and fewer people the option to flee into illusions about the future and the assumed superpower status of the US. Americans wake up to reality.

These five reasons, none of them having popped up all of a sudden but having developed over years (regarding the fiscal and debt policies: decades) to me seem to be the main factors that have turned US inner politics into what they are now. Palin, and in her wake the Tea Party movement, maybe additionally served also as a catalyst that helped to accelerate it all. I m not surporised by the current status, not at all. In the end there will be kind of a short-lasting compromise that is so foul that it stinks to heaven. there also seems to be a pendulum effect: ignoring whether or not it was deserved, the protest front against Bush and the hostility he attracted, was immense. Obama seems to get met with a similiar ammount of hostility now, by a logic of "tit for tat". This is not so much an exchange between two men, but between two political or public opinion camps. Not few people opposing Obama's democrats today also seem to take revenge for that their loved leader, Bush II, was met with so much hostility and rejection.

The three major obstacles today are
1.) the tea party's attitude to put their own ideologic positions and desire of damaging Obama before the interest of the people and the nation, no matter what, even at the cost of national interest, in order to have at least a chance in the next elections (thats why they insist on any "solution only lasting until next year, so that the Obama camp's campaign again will need to accept being confronted by an unpleasurable issue before the elections),
and
2. philantropist's desire to ignore that they cannot spend more money forever than what they create in incomes,
and
3. a fulminant lobby work that tries to protect big corporations from tax holes and evasion options being closed. As I linked to earlier, several of the big players do not pay any taxes at all - in fact get even more "returns" from the tax income of the state, than they contribute to it. These parasites must be dealt with.

Both parties must stop to prioritize their own classic client's interests only in order to get their votes (Democrats: blue collar workers, ordinary middle class, Republicans: rich elites at the top, business leadership, military).

[AVGWarhawk]

Because people like this:

http://images.politico.com/global/081215_pelosi_bresnahan.jpg

believe they are saving the world as we know it. First of all, people like this could not save a game on an old Nintendo system let alone the world. Furthermore, where does this individual get off thinking the world today is worth saving?

Then there is this:

Americans become more
informed they see that both political parties
are guilty of ram-rodding things through that
the majority of Americans would never vote
for.


We can begin with the healthcare act voted on Christmas Eve. We can move onto the Dream Act shoved up the wha-zoo.

I have to agree with this as well:


I don't think politics in Washington are any more polarized than they've ever been. Hamilton and Jefferson. Adams and Jefferson (who had been friends and would be again). Lincoln and anybody. It's no worse now than it ever was. We just read about it more, and thanks to television and the internet people get involved more.


We do have plenty of media to get "the coverage" the media entites want us to see. :doh: You know, balanced and informed. :88)


That may be true, but has Congress been this deadlocked due to partisanship? Has there been an endemic refusal to compromise as part of a faction's platform like this in history? As everything is all relative, how does this compare to the political climates of history that people who are alive today will remember? If you read the OP's article, it lays out very good reasons why today's climate is different than those past.


This is nothing but political jockeying for pointing the finger at 'the bad guys' when the smoke clears. No doubt we will hear about the bad guys in the next election and what they did back in 2011. :doh:


In all reality, people are more informed all be it misinformed in many cases due to media outfits just working for ratings and viewership so to cash in in commercial sales or in some cases...selling a book. Perhaps it seems more polarized now because there is nothing but vitrol and spewing of hate from all parties involved, Dems, Repub and Tea Party. It has become more of a popularity contest than a election on credentials/beliefs.

[Ducimus]

Personally, i don't think adopting a stance of "ho hum business as usual for American politics, just look back at such and such, this is nothing." doesn't make the current situation any less severe.


What disturb's me, is the current political factions unwillingness to compromise. Compromise, is what politics and statesmanship is all about. It's my belief that the lack of, or unwillingness to engage in compromise, is one item that set's up our political system for failure. I say this, because it's always been my thought the way our system exists with its two party politics, sets up a situation where neither extreme gets its way, thereby a middle, more reasonable course of action is taken by congress and the government. It is this middle ground that bennefits the people and the nation. But this only works if compromises can be made. Polar opposites vying for uncompromising control, with a warlike attitude doesn't bennefit anyone, least of all this nation. Right now, we have a system of unstoppable force meets immoveable object. That simply doesn't work.

[AVGWarhawk]

Sometimes over-compromising completely destroys the original intent of legislation. Lines become muddled as well as logic. The Dream Act is nothing but muddled nonsense for a vote in the future and defies logic on many levels. There needs to be clear cut ideal and direction when it comes to certain issues. One being illegal immigration(undocumented persons :doh:). There is none. It's a free for all. People look for direction. Certain parties provide that direction to certain individuals. Eventually like minds flock together. This creates the great divide in parties.

[Ducimus]

Illegal immigration is a poor example of compromises's either for or against the theme. Illegal immigration continues to be a problem because chickens**t politicians are afraid of making a stand on the issue for fear of being voted out of office. Decades of unchecked border hopping and anchor babies have produced a large hispanic vote that can't be ignored now, on top of that you have special interest groups with whatever motives they have.

That's not compromise, or lack there of, that's someone holding puppet strings to make our system do what they want it to do. Until we have politicans who aren't afraid to lose those votes, illegal immigration will continue to be a problem. A problem that gets bigger and bigger with each passing year. Eventually, the problem will become too big to surmount. In california, this is already the case. Illegal immigration there is a dead issue, it's too late for them now.

[AVGWarhawk]

It is a good example. The bleading hearts want amnesty. Grant them everything for nothing. The right loon wants to round them up and dump them back over the fence. IMO there is a clear line that divides. To further that notion look at what Arizona has done and is doing. Sue the government for failing to protect the borders. It has polarized groups into different camps. When Obama decides to take a look at immigration reform the country will polarize more. Personally, addressing immigration is toxic to any group of people or the individual running the country. Crap like the Dream Act divide. It did here in MD when rammed up our arses and signed into law. Signatures were gotten to get the Dream Act on the ballot so the citizens can vote. The signatures were gotten in droves. California needs to do the same. It is never over because there are parties of folks that are polarized on issues like immigration.

[razark]

Until we have politicans who aren't afraid to lose those votes...
There's the problem with the system right there. Politicians don't take a stand for what they believe in, they take a stand for what will get them votes. Career politicians need to be removed from the system.

[AVGWarhawk]

There's the problem with the system right there. Politicians don't take a stand for what they believe in, they take a stand for what will get them votes. Career politicians need to be removed from the system.

In the article the very first problem stated is redistricting. This is done for votes. It happened in my own county. Draw the line on the map bit different for the district and all of a sudden there are 20000 more votes for that candidate. It is the oldest trick in the book. It's a game of votes and keeping a job. It is power. It is having people stand up when they enter the room(not sure why...these idiots work for me). It's the benefits and perks. In short, life is damn cushy for those in these positions.

[mookiemookie]

It is a good example. The bleading hearts want amnesty. Grant them everything for nothing. The right loon wants to round them up and dump them back over the fence.

This is exactly where a compromise would come in. Don't give them everything for nothing, and don't round them up and dump them back over the fence. Unfortunately, a certain segment of the population has the idea that compromise is failure in politics.

[AVGWarhawk]

This is exactly where a compromise would come in. Don't give them everything for nothing, and don't round them up and dump them back over the fence. Unfortunately, a certain segment of the population has the idea that compromise is failure in politics.

Compromise, as we know it, is not failure. It takes a little to get a little as it were. We can only hope the segment who see compromise as a failure is insignificant.

[Ducimus]

It is a good example. The bleading hearts want amnesty. Grant them everything for nothing. The right loon wants to round them up and dump them back over the fence.

While im sure everyone here on the general forum think's im some bleeding heart liberal though i maintain to be neither extreme, immigration is one of those issues where you can count me amongst the right wing loony bin. If i had my way, the southern border would look like the Korean DMZ.


There's the problem with the system right there. Politicians don't take a stand for what they believe in, they take a stand for what will get them votes. Career politicians need to be removed from the system.

Good point.


This is exactly where a compromise would come in. Don't give them everything for nothing, and don't round them up and dump them back over the fence. Unfortunately, a certain segment of the population has the idea that compromise is failure in politics.

Illegal immigration is one of those issues where i don't see how compromise applies. In my mind, Illegal immigration is nothing short of an invasion of foreign nationals that compromises the Sovereignty of our country. However, between American's, be they left or right, i'm all in support of finding the middle road. Regardless of political belief's, its our country, we should act like it.

[AVGWarhawk]

While im sure everyone here on the general forum think's im some bleeding heart liberal though i maintain to be neither extreme, immigration is one of those issues where you can count me amongst the right wing loony bin. If i had my way, the southern border would look like the Korean DMZ.


I'm in the bin with you. Enough is enough. When my kids could possibly have any type of financial assistance offered for college as a result of doing well in school jeopardized by illegals then I take great issue with the problem. Therefore, both my wife and I signed the petition to put the new passed Dream Act bill on the ballot letting the citizen decide. There is great unrest in MD with this bill and getting the correct amount of signature to have it entered on to the ballot was obtained.

[Skybird]

There's the problem with the system right there. Politicians don't take a stand for what they believe in, they take a stand for what will get them votes. Career politicians need to be removed from the system.
My talking exactly. And truer not on ly in the US, but all Western nations and the EU. Career politicians are by definition in a conflict of interest over their courses.

Since I admitted to myself that I have understood that some years ago, I have relativised the value of democracy in my personal value system tremendously.

It is meant well, but all ideas to im0plement the well-meant idea in praqctice so far have showed to mess up the very idea, in the end. In ancient Athen they were evn so desperate that they did not vote sanymore, but had lotteries to bring people into offices. But even random chance as a prinmciple did not battle corruption. Instead many people rwalised they were noit fit to run offices, and accepoted offers of wannabe poltiicans to hire these and let them run the office obligations. Which of course again gave birth to a caste of corrupt career politicians - this time corrupt poltiicians who became corrupted by even legal means! And since we have found out that we cannot really vote unwanted names out of influence and office, but that these nasmes who get kicked tend to reappear in another office some time later, maybe even falling the ladder upwards, the argument that we could at least get rid of bad guys by voting them out of office, is convincing only if you are pretty much naive and shy away from the grim conclusions about how it really is. That said poltiicans are given the power to even tailor the system to protect them and serve their interests to put themselves out of reach for legislation or the ordinary electorate, does not help to improve things, of course.