The last two postings report the overall findings
in Jonathan Rodden’s book, Why Cities Lose.[1] That book claims that winner-take-all
election arrangements – those that determine members of representative bodies (in
national or regional legislatures, congresses, parliaments) – allow overrepresentation
of conservative/rural areas at the expense of liberal/urban areas. That structural element reflects a derived British
bias since Britain and her former colonies, such as the US, all share that feature
in how they select their representatives.
So,
while the US has the added element of gerrymandering, it does not stand alone
in this form of inequality. As a matter
of fact, not only do those other nations not have gerrymandering, their
districts are not drawn by elected officials as they are in the US. Instead, they are drawn by independent
commissions purposely established to make district boundaries neutral and avoid
any imbalances within the resulting legislative bodies. They have not succeeded in that aim.
One
can form that judgement by reviewing election results. For example, ideally, if the population is
60% urban, then representation of those urban centers should make up 60% of the
representatives. The previous postings share
with the reader data that indicates that is not the case in “Anglo”
jurisdictions, at least those jurisdictions at the national (and in the US, at
the state) levels. And in each case, it
is the urban areas that are shortchanged.
In
turn, that gives conservative policy makers a meaningful advantage and this
advantage, mathematically, has been a standard feature in the US since the New
Deal. Initially, those results were
hidden but they have come out of incubation since the onset of the 1990s. A little history will help explain how this
imbalance developed.
The
New Deal policies of the ’30s did encourage a strong population shift toward
the urban areas. But initially, since
the popularity and application of New Deal programs stretched across the
country, the policy differences between urban and rural areas were greatly
subdued.[2] But by 1960, this effect had significantly
run its course.
Yet,
starting in the 1960s, local Democratic pols were sophisticated enough to know
they had to change their messaging. They
drew away from the leftist positions of the national party and, with more
conservative positions, were able to compete with conservative opponents. These conservative Democrats, under such titles
as “boll weevils” or “blue dogs,” won their share of elections beating
Republican candidates. They did this by creating
distance between their espoused positions on most issues and those of the
Democratic presidential candidates.
But Democratic
candidates that maintained an allegiance to national, liberal platforms and presidential
candidates catered to urban constituents, i.e., industrial workers, migrants
from rural areas, and immigrants from other nations. In turn, those areas, geographically, trace
their roots to nineteenth century industrial (and now postindustrial) economic developments.
One
can physically see that evolution by looking at where railroad lines were laid
since the main customers of those trains were industrial producers. They needed to have access to their resource
supplier and, in turn, to their customers who were located more and more in urban
centers. Previously, this blog mentions
that by the time of the Civil War, most lines stretched east to west and linked
the larger cities such as New York, Cleveland, and Chicago.[3]
Labor
unions were instrumental in how all this took shape in terms of the resulting
politics. At first, there was a bias
toward socialist parties (see WWW and the candidacy of Eugene V. Debs) but
eventually shifted to the Democratic Party.
By 1940, the large cities became the bedrock of the Democratic support
and that arrangement still exists today.
But before one accepts this linear progression, as with much of reality,
there is a hitch.
And
that hitch has to do with civil rights.
Part of the Democratic coalition of old, as a product of that party’s
association with Southerners and the slave economy,[4] was the
“Solid South” contingency. That alliance
survived through World War II but with the Truman administration (with the desegregation
of the armed forces) and the advancements in equalizing the conditions of
African Americans with the passage of civil rights laws in the 1960s, Southern
Democrats became Southern Republicans.
Once established, the Democratic Party became the undiluted urban/labor
party of the US – constituting its current public image.
So,
what does that public image mean in terms of policy positions? Well, in total, the party now funnels all
those positions that make up the left side of the divide. Yes, that includes labor interests and civil
rights but it also includes environmental advocacy, pro-choice abortion rights,
gender equity, and more liberal immigration policies. The party is the more secular party in terms
of governmental approach to religion while its rhetoric does not abandon the
religious ties its individual members claim.
While
diverse and by necessity compromising among its various voices, the party does
have its boundaries. And part of this exclusive
element is its unwillingness to bend further to accommodate those Southerners
or other constituents who are not willing to sign onto its liberal agenda.
The “Republican-ation”
of disposed workers demonstrates how true one needs to be to be included into the
Democratic Party; that is, swim along or become a Republican seems to be the
message. In the process one is hard
pressed to find a non-urban, elected Democratic office holder.[5]
Yet,
due to further complicated developments, the Democratic side includes higher
educated urban dwellers. They support
the global economy and at times find their position being counter to the needs
of labor workers. And what this points
out is that the left of center coalition is not only diverse but highly
complicated. The party is striving to
become more congruent within its ranks and to win general elections, it needs
to find the ways by which to smooth out the rough edges between and among its
various constituencies.
This
story, according to Rodden’s research, has more wrinkles to it, but the above
gives a civics teacher a starting point by which to grapple with this side of
the polarized divide. He gives his
readers an extensive description of how this end of the polarized arena
developed, how urban underrepresentation is currently shaping the politics of
the nation, and how the resulting polarization is detrimental to the health of the
overall polity.
[1]
Jonathan Rodden, Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political
Divide (New York, NY: Basic Books,
2019).
[2] Such programs as rural electrification helped in this
liberal trend among agricultural areas of the country.
[3]
Ted Widmer, Lincoln on the Verge (New
York, NY: Simon and Schuster).
[4] A tradition that stems back to the party’s origins and even
earlier – that is all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and solidified under
Andrew Jackson.
[5] One notable exception is Senator Joe Manchin of West
Virginia. His record shows pro
conservative positions in terms of budget restraint and gun rights. But he does seem to hold a liberal bent when
it comes to socially compassionate policy positions.
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