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[Guest post] Asymmetrical Polarization

It isn't your imagination: Political polarization has risen sharply in recent years. The Pew Research Center confirmed it in a recent poll.

Interestingly, Pew's survey shows no similar rise in polarization along racial gender, or religious lines — only political affiliation. What seems to have happened is not a change in value systems but a sorting of those value systems into more ideologically cohesive political parties. Conservatives have become Republicans; liberals have become Democrats. It's not just self-identified partisans. Poll Watch notes that it's happening to Independents as well: "Independents who say they lean — but are not committed to — either party have grown further apart from each other, particularly in their views on the role and effectiveness of government."

This process — not any decline in "civility" or whatever — explains the passing of the supposed Golden Age of Bipartisanship. Cooperation across party lines used to be more possible because there were regional idiosyncrasies in the U.S., conservative Democrats in the South and liberal Republicans in the Northeast. Those idiosyncrasies are being ironed out and the parties are becoming more internally homogenous. What's more, the process appears to be inexorable and irreversible. Polarization is the new normal.

This is well-understood by political types and even, I think, by the Average Joe and Jane. There's just a lot more fighting now, a lot more heated tempers, petty sniping and point-scoring, hacks on TV yelling at each other. Americans are also sorting geographically, so personal exposure to other points of view is declining. Politics is becoming one of those things that you don't mention in mixed company lest feelings get bruised.

What is much, much less well-understood is that the process of polarization is not symmetrical. The parties have not become equally ideologically homogenous or moved equally far toward their extremes. They do not behave in the same way or share the same attitude toward established social and political norms. Republicans have moved farther right than Democrats have left. More than 70 percent of Republicans in the electorate identify themselves as conservative or very conservative, while only 40 percent of rank-and-file Democrats call themselves liberal or very liberal. It is far easier for congressional Republicans to forge and maintain a united front than it is for Democrats.

In April, longtime scholar of American governance Norman Ornstein, about the farthest thing from a leftie firebrand one can imagine, wrote an op-ed stating flatly, "Republicans are the problem."

The U.S. cannot address its political challenges — and they are many — until its pundits, public, and politicians understand the shape of the situation we're in. Asymmetrical polarization is the defining feature of American political life. As George Will might say, "deal with it." The sides are drifting farther and farther apart, one far out into the choppy waters of reactionary lunacy. Those attempting to find a place between them are increasingly, well, at sea.

Posted at 20:50 by Rich Stelt   [/guest/rich]   Comments | Perm Link |   |   Tweet