[Note: From time to time, this blog issues a set of
postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous
postings. Of late, the blog has been
looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their
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With this posting, this blog will begin
addressing directly the extreme polarization of the nation’s political arena. The nation is divided into two grand
alliances in which the populous find themselves supporting one side or the
other of various issues they might have never considered important and worthy
of their attention, much less their support in the past.
Why?
Because their side in this polarized landscape support them and they
need the support of those who favor whatever particular issues their side
favors. In past postings, this blog has
explained how this came about and how it continues to be in effect. This posting, and the ones that follow, add
more substance to what is affecting the continuance of this divide.
To begin, the polarization can be
detected by how it manifests itself between the two major political parties. Now parties have been around almost since the
beginning of the republic, but of late their antagonism toward each other has
intensified. For example, a recent Pew
study found that party affiliation ranked as a higher indicator of how people
felt about various issues concerning the coronavirus crisis than other
demographic factors such as race, gender, location (urban vs. rural), and age.
What seems to be highlighted by that
study is how respondents observed the divide between red (Republican) states
and blue (Democratic) states and this finding was particularly strident in Western
states – mostly red ones – since they seemed highly conscious of this divide.[1] Some
have described this as the interior states being at odds with the east and west
coastal states.
In another conception of this divide, long
standing ribbing between “city slickers” and “country bumkins” seems to have escalated
to open hostility among many who represent one side or the other. Those red states are generally rural states
while blue ones have higher proportions of their populations living in cities.
They are even affecting family
relationships and long standing friendships.
And yet an analysis by the journalist Ezra Klein[2]
demonstrates how a recent national election did not demonstrate a sudden change
in how Americans see ongoing issues – to the extent that voting behavior for
one party as opposed to the other reflects such biases or preferences.
For example, the candidate Trump in 2016
did not garner a greater or lesser percentage of votes from various demographic
groups than previous Republican candidates (Romney and McCain). As reported earlier in this blog, the
political scientist Larry Bartels points out, “The 2016
election didn’t look like a glitch, he [Bartels] said. It looked, for the most part, like every
other election we’ve had recently.”[3]
Of
course, no two election turnouts are exactly the same and in 2016 there was a
“sharp” move
toward Trump among noncollege educated whites in certain states like Michigan
and Pennsylvania. Klein interprets this
move as reflecting the polarized landscape and of these voters’ polarized views,
especially among that demographic group, as it reacted to Trump.
He was, according to
American norms, a bizarre candidate and he captured the imaginations one can attach
to some identity groups. Among them is
white, noncollege educated men and the voter data seems to support that general
linkage. It also indicates how
solidified those attitudes and beliefs are.
Since then, the election in
2020 – before any extensive analysis has been done – seems to support a
continuance of these trends. The
difference is that since 2016, the nation has had four years of a Trump
administration. The actions of that
administration – e.g., its treatment of immigrant children at the southern
border, the president’s cozying up to authoritarian leaders, his seeking of
illegal political assistance from foreign leaders, and the perceived
ineffectiveness of the government in meeting the coronavirus pandemic – has
created a counter base.
That is, along with Trump’s
base, there is another base dedicated to his defeat at the polls. That is what happened in 2020. This writer feels that this later development
has not received sufficient attention by the media. He judges that every time Trump engages in
rhetoric, actions, or he issues policy proposals meant to stoke his base, he
simultaneously has stoked the anti-Trump base.
And, as it turns out, both sides have been motivated by that stoking to
at least go out and vote.
The average turnout in presidential
elections is around 60%. The turnout in
2020 was 66.2%. This is a significant
increase, and it translates into the most cast votes of all time in American
history, for the winning candidate, Joe Biden, which is only seconded by the
number of votes for the losing candidate, Trump. And since then, adding to the bifurcated
environment has been the unproven charges that the election was stolen by the
Democrats. Apparently, the Trump base has
readily accepted this charge to be true.
