The general theme of American politics over the last several decades has been the degree of polarization between the two parties. In the mid-20th Century, there was a significant ideological overlap between the Democrats and Republicans at the elite level, but over time, that overlap disappeared. The overlap consisted of a combination of Southern Democrats (segregationists), and Northeastern Republicans in Congress. The former retired, died or switched to the GOP. The latter retired, died or in rarer instances, switched to call themselves independents, or Democrats. Mostly, they just retired or died in either case, with Southern Democrats replaced by conservative Southern Republicans, and Northeastern Republicans replaced by liberal Northeastern Democrats. That basically gets you up through the mid-1990s, or so. And the middle is gone from Congress. You've got some polarization there.
And then a funny thing happened. Not, you know, ha ha, funny, but still. Those conservative Republicans kept moving rightward. With no clear explanation. Matt Grossman & Dave Hopkins have an explanation, but it's completely wrong, and obviously so. They say that the Democratic Party is a coalition of interest groups, but the GOP is an ideological movement driven by a desire for purity. Bullshit in nearly every way. First, every party is a coalition of interest groups. That's the bloody definition. Second, conservatism and mass appeals to it are a smokescreen for white identity politics. That's just another form of group interest appeals. This is all just Phil Converse stuff. 1964. The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.
That is why, in 2016, the GOP nominated the most ideologically impure candidate of the field. He was the most aggressively reactionary on race. Smokescreen for white identity politics. Donald Trump's ideology was as pure as anything else about Donald Trump. Sorry, Matt Grossman & Dave Hopkins. but that was a serious empirical problem for the ole' model there.
That did, however, leave open a question. Why did the GOP keep moving rightward after the geographic sorting? (The South/Northeast thing). I... don't know. And for all the attention their model gets, Grossman & Hopkins' model is just plain wrong. So, I got nothin'.
And I have no problem saying so. When you don't know something, admit it. Otherwise, you're Donald Trump, and I hate that guy.
Well, are you paying attention to the Democratic Party these days? Voting scores in Congress take a while to catch up, but judging by the stances being taken by presidential candidates, and the manner in which they compete, the Democratic Party is trying to catch up with the GOP in terms of ideological extremism. They also look like they are trying to lose.
Now, I've said before and I'll say again that if you want to know who will win a presidential election, you are better off looking at factors like the state of the economy than anything silly like the candidates' policy positions. That stuff doesn't have much impact. But, to the degree that it does, the Democrats look like they are trying to lose.
So, a little reminder about what we can say in general. The "spatial" model. This is one of those ceteris paribus things, and the economy is by far the bigger factor in presidential elections, but positioning does matter. A little. Put every voter on a line from liberal to conservative. Somewhere in the middle is the median voter. Whichever candidate is closest to the median has a bit of an electoral advantage.
It's way more complicated than that, and my last book was actually about how people have been screwing up the math on this for about 60 years, but this is kind of a rule of thumb, and as a statistical tendency, there's a there there. So... there. Move to the middle, get more votes.
But, that's not what's happening. The Democratic Party is turning sharply left. Hard left. Way, way, way left. Consider Elizabeth Warren.
At some point soon, I'll do to Elizabeth Warren what I just did to Ta-Nehisi Coates. For now though, I'll point out the absurdity of her comments on replacing all private insurance with single-payer. From an ideological perspective, set aside what you believe should happen. I know that's hard. I wrote about that yesterday. From a political perspective, the idea is a complete non-starter.
During the 2016 Democratic contest, I had to keep reminding Sandersistas that this is not, in fact, Denmark, so whether or not Sanders' policy proposals would be considered mainstream in Denmark is irrelevant. Mainstream is a relative concept, and in the US, this is so far out-there that a) if Warren thinks that the key to getting it passed is "fighting" for it, she is disqualifyingly stupid on a Trumpian scale, and b) she is taking a position in a spatial sense with electoral penalties.
A determinative penalty? Not likely. As I said, the economy is bigger, but... why do this? There is a political notion here regarding leadership and convincing the public, but if you are that far away from the public on policy matters, then to quote Ash Williams, you ain't leadin' but two things. Jack and Shit. And Jack left town.
What is mainstream is relative. What is polarized is relative. If this kind of thing is indicative of the future of the party, it is the end of asymmetric polarization because the Democratic Party will be as far from the center of the US as the GOP. No, it doesn't matter where the center of Denmark, or wherever, is. This is way extreme, in the context of the US.
The other point I'll make about the current direction of the Democratic Party, as indicated by the debates, is the extent to which it has gone all in on identity politics.
Defenders of the party and defenders of the practice don't like the term, and deny its existence. So, I'll define it. "Identity politics" is (are?) the practice of placing demographic identifiers above all points of logical argumentation, to the point that one's permission to make a claim, argument, or even speak is governed by one's race/sex/etc.
Those who practice identity politics deny that this exists, but it does. Those who practice identity politics claim that all they do is "call out" racism, misogyny, etc., but it goes way beyond that. And it was on display during the debates. The Democratic Party has gotten to a problematic point of embracing identity politics rather than simply tackling racism, misogyny and other forms of bigotry.
The most telling moment was an exchange between Jay Inslee and Amy Klobuchar.
When I mention Jay Inslee, what I should be discussing is climate change.
Remember climate change? That would be the single most important policy issue, bar none, no discussion, no argument, and... um... Oh, I guess we're not talking about that because the Democratic Party just sucks, and no, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn't serious. She's a fool. Maybe if Inslee had whatever makes her social-media-ready, the Democratic Party would pull its head out of its collective ass. TWEET! Inst-whatever.
Oy. We're doomed.
Anyway, other than the fact that he mostly wants to talk about climate change, Inslee is basically a standard issue Obama-era and pre-Obama-era Democrat. That means his position on abortion basically matches that of the rest of the people on the stage. And as governor, he wanted to tell the audience that he signed bills. He did stuff. This is actually the standard campaign theme of governors because legislators often don't have a record of bills passed. That'd require Congress to, ya' know, do something, and they don't do that anymore. So, Inslee said that he had done more for abortion than the other candidates.
So, how does his record of policy action compare to the policy actions and accomplishments of the others? That's actually a really legitimate point to debate! And if Amy Klobuchar had said, hey! I'm right here, and I cosponsored A, B, C, D... and so on, and you are ignoring the important laws that I enacted, and...
Then you'd have a real debate. Who did more? Great thing to debate!
Is that the thing that happened? No. What happened instead is that Amy Klobuchar responded by saying that there were women on the stage who "fought pretty hard." Not that they enacted legislation. She didn't list what they did. She just said they fought. It wasn't a point by point list to show that Inslee was wrong about who accomplished the most. She just tried to negate his record of policy accomplishments by saying that he's a man, and they're women.
That, right there is identity politics. And the crowd applauded Klobuchar, and the left went gaga over Klobuchar for this.
It doesn't matter what you do. Accomplishments aren't the point. Your resume doesn't matter. What matters is that you're a man. We're women. That's what Klobuchar pulled. That's identity politics. Placing identity so far above everything else that nothing else can even enter the discussion.
Yes, Democratic primary voters and left-wing commentators may like this kind of thing, but outside the left-wing bubble, and in the context of any group in which logic matters (OK, that's a very limited context indeed!), what Klobuchar did was bullshit, and this kind of thing is exactly what critics of identity politics abhor. The more of this the Democratic Party pulls, the easier it is for the GOP. The 2016 election had a lot of elements of a backlash against non-white identity politics (white identity politics still being identity politics), and the Democrats want to go more into identity politics?! Really?!
Thank you sir, may I have another?!
There was another incident, although softer. The Biden-Harris moment. This was merely tinged with some identity politics, but shows where the line used to be. Biden, in his stumbling way, was trying to talk about busing. Harris' big moment was the "that was me" line.
In a sense, there was an identity politics component here, but the better reference point was actually from Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. During her confirmation hearings the GOP tried to make hay of a line she had written about how a "wise Latina" could use her life experience to make better decisions. Harris was saying that she had relevant life experience. That's different, to a degree, from simply saying that she is an African-American women. In contexts other than a Democratic primary debate, it can play the same way, just as Sonia Sotomayor faced hostility during her confirmation hearings, but there is substance to the point of having life experience that bears on a policy issue that the other person in the debate lacks.
It's still dangerous, politically, as the Sotomayor hearings demonstrated, and Sotomayor may have been rejected by a Republican Senate even before Mitch decided to backstab and then skullfuck
After all, why are we talking about busing? Could you, maybe, think of another policy issue that's more important? Say... climate change?
Instead, the party is moving far to the left. Far on economic issues, far on the concept of turning into an all-identity-all-the-time party, and none of this is helpful. Not from an electoral perspective, in which the most useful thing to do is to try to claim the "center," for whatever modest gains are to be found there, and not from a policy perspective, given that even if you believe in eliminating private health insurance, it'll never happen.
And while the Democrats fight about this stuff, did anyone notice that heat wave in Europe? You know that's probably connected to something, right? You know there are real consequences for that, right? Like, long term, lives and civilization at stake, right?
But oh, fuck that. Jay Inslee tried to tout his record on abortion. How dare he do that?!
We. Are. Doomed.