[Skybird]

Very bullseyed opinion piece/comment by the Neuer Zürcher Zeitung. Think they nailed it (like often).
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The Disunited States of America: Experts Warn of Civil War - But More Likely the Country Will Continue to Drift Apart

The U.S. electoral system has driven polarization. It is now so strong that politically motivated violence has become common. Only far-reaching electoral reforms could help. But the will to do so is lacking.


The storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was unique in its scale and symbolic power. But politically motivated violence has become frighteningly commonplace in the United States. Only the most sensational cases make headlines, such as the attack on the husband of Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the current election campaign or the attack on the Republican candidate for governor in New York, Lee Zeldin, two months earlier. As if America were a country at war, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning of intimidation and violence against voters and poll workers for Tuesday's ballot.

In 2021 alone, Capitol Police in Washington recorded nearly 10,000 explicit threats against members of Congress - 10 times as many as in 2016, reflecting a brutalization of discourse under Donald Trump, who did not shy away even from glorifying physical violence. But the former president was only a symptom, not the cause, of the country's dangerous polarization, which is comparatively recent in this form.

The center has eroded

The United States, which once fought a bloody civil war over the conflict over slavery, has a long history of political discord, for example at the time of the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War. Violence is not an unknown problem either; four presidents have been assassinated.

One phenomenon of the last twenty years, however, is how clearly the divides are drawn along party lines. Once, Republicans and Democrats were so close in content that the American Political Science Association issued a report in 1950 calling for a clearer distinction to actually present voters with an alternative. The country's leading political scientists called for more polarization - today that seems unreal.

At the time, there was a wide overlap in Congress: a Democrat from the Southern states was possibly more conservative than a Republican from New England. In the early 1970s, one in three members of Congress could be classified as moderate, according to the Pew Research Center's analyses of voting patterns. Today, it's only one in 25. The center has eroded.

This is the aftermath of the programmatic realignment of both parties a good fifty years ago. It occurred primarily because of civil rights legislation and resulted in an ideological, ethnic, religious, and geographic "sorting" of the political landscape. Democrats and Republicans alike became more cohesive in terms of content, moving steadily further away from the center and also spatially apart. In the 1992 presidential election, for example, only 7 percent of the population lived in counties where one of the candidates won more than 70 percent of the vote, that is, in counties that were very politically lopsided. That percentage has multiplied; in 2020, 29 percent already voted in such "landslide" counties.

It's a new kind of segregation: most Americans today also live culturally, politically and even medially segregated from dissenters. There is hardly any exchange between these "bubbles," which reinforces the conviction of one's own position and thus the unwillingness to compromise. The resulting conflicts sometimes extend into families. In just over two weeks, before the Thanksgiving holiday travel season gets underway, various media outlets will once again publish their annual tips on how to have a good time with the family and on how to avoid a scandal at the feast.

Only 14 percent of seats are truly competitive

The American electoral system plays a key role in this development. At one time, the majority voting system was considered moderating, because in single-member constituencies, only those who also appealed to the middle could win. This has changed with the geographic "sorting" of recent decades. In addition, there is the drawing of electoral boundaries for their own political advantage (gerrymandering), which both parties practice to the limit of what is legally permissible in the constituent states they dominate.
Every ten years, this redistricting takes place based on the most recent census, including before the midterm elections. It has further reduced the already low number of competitive districts with open election outcomes to the lowest level in the last 52 years, as analyzed by the Brennan Center, which specializes in election law issues. According to the analysis, there is real competition for only 14 percent of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. 375 mandates are practically already assigned, before the polling stations open.

In the vast majority of cases, the real battle for a seat therefore takes place in the intra-party primaries. Until the 1970s, these nominations were made by officials who took into account the overall well-being of the party. Extreme candidates thus had little chance. Today, however, it is the committed and often activist party supporters who decide. This has made the system much more susceptible to ideologues and penalizes centrist, consensus-oriented politicians.

It is no coincidence that most staunch Trump critics in the Republican Party have now ended their careers. Otherwise, their lack of loyalty to the grassroots idol threatened the kind of ignominy Liz Cheney experienced this summer. The prominent congresswoman would have been assured re-election in conservative Wyoming if she had been nominated. But the Republican lost in the primaries to a loyalist of the ex-president.

By contrast, among Democrats, self-identified socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez need not fear for her seat in a very left-leaning New York district as long as she is not challenged by an even more progressive competitor - just as she herself chased a more moderate party colleague from office four years ago.

Breaking this vicious circle of polarization would require far-reaching electoral reforms, for which there is currently no apparent will. The consequences are dramatic. Proper legislation requires a qualified majority in the Senate, which would force bipartisan cooperation. However, such cooperation is not possible even in cases where the will of the people is clear according to polls - for example, for tightening gun laws. The deadlock has now spread to areas such as the budget and foreign policy, where agreement was previously possible. President Joe Biden is likely to feel the pinch next year if, as expected, Republicans win Tuesday's elections. His support for Ukraine will then undoubtedly face more opposition.

America's federalism has become unhealthy

The inability to reach consensus has poisoned the climate to such an extent that noted experts now warn of a slide into civil war. That sounds more far-fetched than it is: according to one poll, about 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans each see the opposing party as a serious threat to America. More than a quarter of the population believes it will soon be necessary to rise up armed against the government. A further increase in violence is therefore to be feared.

More likely than a total escalation, however, is a further drifting apart of "red" and "blue" constituent states - another designation that has only emerged in the last twenty years. Because of Washington's blockade, the states are increasingly taking over the regulation of such far-reaching issues as climate protection, gun control or voting rights themselves. This is certainly in keeping with the federalist principle of the USA. But in what was once a healthy federalism, some problematic excesses have occurred, writes conservative publicist David French in his book "Divided We Fall," published two years ago.

One example is the reaction to the Supreme Court's overturning of the nation's abortion law this summer. The progressive-dominated states of California and Connecticut have passed legal protections for people who are prosecuted in their home state for having an abortion. They will not comply with corresponding requests for legal assistance. Various conservative states, on the other hand, want to punish even those outside their borders who help their citizens obtain an abortion. This would restrict the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of movement within the USA - a taboo violation.

Such diametrically different regulations further deepen the divide. Is the country falling apart, as French fears in an extreme scenario? Perhaps it is precisely the compartmentalized "bubbles" that prevent this. But the United States is hardly united anymore.

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