Politics – 2021
Getting elected used to be about telling voters how they would benefit. “Two cars in every garage, a chicken in every pot” was Herbert Hoover’s successful 1928 election slogan. Obama’s slogans of “Yes We Can” and “Change We Can Believe In,” promised voters a better future. In the heat of battle, John McCain said of his opponent Barack Obama in 2008: “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
But that’s not our politics in 2021. We are not about two candidates with “disagreements…on fundamental issues”. Rather, we are about one candidate who is represented as “Good”, and one candidate who obviously is “Evil”.
It’s not that there wasn’t ugly campaigning before this past decade. In the election of 1800, the first truly contested Presidential campaign, one Federalist newspaper said about Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson:
“(He)writes aghast the truths of God’s words; who makes not even a profession of Christianity; who is without Sabbaths; without the sanctuary, and without so much as a decent external respect for the faith and worship of Christians.”
Talk about “Evil”!
But today it’s not just in campaigns. Or maybe it’s that campaigning never seems to end. There is no respite from election to election, no time when the legislature can, behind closed doors, work the magic of “sausage making” legislation and get things done for the Nation. Now it’s all politics, all “Good” and “Evil”, all the time.
Common Ground
How did we get this way? It used to be that there was a lot of common ground among the political parties. A “Blue Dog” Democrat was a fiscal conservative, much like the “Moderate” Republican sitting beside him. Republicans like Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and actually used the United States government to impose wage and price controls. There was a huge “middle ground” that both parties inhabited. Voting “for the candidate” across party lines was possible without committing ideologic heresy. To win elections you needed to win the middle.
Both political parties always contained the more “extreme” sides. In the Republican Party there was always a struggle between the more moderate “Coastal Republicans” like Earl Warren* of California and Tom Dewey of New York, and Midwest conservatives, led by Bob Taft of Ohio. The Coastal Republicans maintained control, nominating Eisenhower to win in 1952 and 1956, and California’s Richard Nixon in 1960.
*Yep, that’s Earl Warren from the Warren Supreme Court. He was the Republican Governor of California for a decade, including World War II. He was appointed by Eisenhower, who assumed he’d be a good “Republican Chief Justice”.
When Extremism Lost
Nixon’s loss to Kennedy let the conservative wing finally get a chance in 1964, with arch-conservative Barry Goldwater of Arizona winning the Presidential nomination. He suffered the worst defeat in Presidential history, losing to moderate Lyndon Johnson. That silenced the “conservative wing” for the next sixteen years.
The “Liberal wing” of the Democratic Party remained in control from the Roosevelt days. Adlai Stevenson was nominated in 1952 and 1956, and John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were from that section of the Party as well. It wasn’t until the Vietnam War that the Party fractured into the “Old Liberals” and the new “Anti-War” Democrats. The Old Liberals won the nomination with Hubert Humphrey, but the political division cost the general election. Nixon narrowly won the Presidency in 1968.
The Anti-War Democrats got their revenge in 1972, choosing South Dakota’s George McGovern to lead the ticket. He lost to Nixon, in a defeat even worse than Goldwater’s eight years before.
Reaganism
So the extremes of both political parties suffered major defeats, and the moderates of both gained control. Jimmy Carter represented the true moderates in the Democratic Party, and even though he lost the Presidency in 1980, the moderates remained in control. Bill Clinton is the great example. He co-opted many moderate Republican ideas to use in his Presidency, making him popular with the “middle voters”. More Progressive Democrats saw him as “Republican-lite”.
But the conservative wing of the Republican Party found a flag-bearer who could win. Ronald Reagan won the nomination and the Presidency in 1980, and his eight years in office forced the moderate Republicans (like his Vice President, George HW Bush) to choose. They could assume Reagan’s conservative stand, or they could be left out of power.
So while Bush was originally more moderate, he moved to the right to “stay with the Party”. And that has characterized the Republican Party even to today. Every time they had the opportunity to move back to the center, instead they remained loyal to “Reagan conservatism”. Mitt Romney is the classic example: a moderate Governor of Massachusetts (he came up with the plan that became the Affordable Care Act), when he moved to become a national candidate, he also had to move hard right to become electable. (Watch what Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland does in the next few years).
The pressure of Reagan conservatism pushed the Democratic Party to move to the left as well. On issues like abortion, “Pro-Life” Democrats found themselves pushed out of the “Big Tent” of the Party. “Blue Dog” Democrats found that they could no longer get elected, and fewer remained empowered. And so the center of the Democratic Party leaned farther left, as the Republican Party moved hard right.
Obama and the Tea Party (not a children’s book)
But then there were three events that fractured our politics. The first was the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008. He wasn’t incredibly “left”, though he was on the “Progressive” side of the Party. But his election was such an outlier, a Black man as President. For many, his election summoned the future, an event unexpected until the middle of the 21st century. And for others, it was simply too much, too soon.
That “too much, too soon” played a role in the development of the Tea Party, a reactionary, right-wing movement from the fringes of the Republican Party. Republicans saw that movement as a “ticket” back into power, and after the defeat of a not so moderate Romney in 2012, the Party lurched even farther right. They ousted Michael Steele as Chairman of the Republican Party (Steele happened to be Black), and ignored the finding of the 2012 election “autopsy” that stated that the Party needed to appeal beyond white voters.
The Party instead assumed many of the issues championed by the Tea Partiers, who ultimately became “mainstream” Republicans.
Damn Computers
And the third event was the refinement of computer-directed gerrymandering, like the Republican “RedMap” plan. This created legislative districts so dominated by one Party or the other, that the “general election” became just a formality. The real race was in the party primaries, where the most “dedicated” political voters made the choice. This caused the more extreme candidates (in both parties) to have a better chance of winning, and made our legislatures, both Federal and State, more polarized.
Ohio is a classic example of the results of “Red Mapping”. Jim Jordan’s District, Ohio’s 4th, is the 10th most Republican District in the Nation. The only reason for a Democrat to run is to keep Jordan from donating his money to someone else. Meanwhile, Nina Turner, a Bernie Sander’s disciple, is running in the 11th District Democratic primary against the more moderate Shontel Brown, endorsed by Hillary Clinton and other establishment Democrats. The winner of that expensive primary will be the newest Congressman from Ohio, as the District is so Democratic, the Republican doesn’t have a chance.
Driven by Demons
When there are two Parties, so divided, elections become less about persuading the middle (like Clinton did) and more about exciting the base. Rather than two “…decent men or women” running, it’s about demonization. Republicans are Fascists; Democrats Socialists or Communists. “Joe Biden should be ex-communicated from the Roman Catholic Church”. “Mike DeWine is a RINO (Republican in Name Only)”. Voters no longer feel they make a selection based on Jimmy Carter’s ideal – “Why Not the Best”. Instead they go to the polls determined to vote against someone: “Hold your nose and vote”.
Persuasion, changing folks minds, really isn’t “the thing” anymore. Our politicians have discovered that we are more motivated by “the negative” than we are the “positive”. Neither Party has the monopoly on that: the negative of Donald Trump drove more people to vote for Joe Biden than ever voted before. But keep in mind, the negative of Joe Biden drove more to vote for Trump than any candidate for President except one: Joe Biden. Neither candidate got all those votes because people were FOR them.
Until more Americans get invested in the primary processes, then that negative campaigning advantage will continue to dominate our politics. As always, it’s up to us. Neither gerrymandering nor even voter suppression can really stop “We the People” from voting. And if we all did that, we could vote for what we want, not what we hate.
