Hi Walter, thanks for your comment. And nice review BTW of the Sam Rosenfeld book The Polarizers. I particularly found this part interesting: "Prior to this ideological sorting, the parties were more like fraternities or other clubs–though without membership fees. You joined one or another party because a bunch of your buddies were already involved with it. Maybe a local boss or “ward healer” might give you a job if you joined. Or perhaps you naturally thought of one party first because your parents or your neighbors belonged to it and assumed you would too eventually. Like the Crips and the Bloods, their main distinguishing factors were those sorts of family or geographic ties. There certainly didn’t have to be any issue-related affinity. After all, Dwight Eisenhower was as liberal as any Presidential candidate being put forward by the Democrats, and Strom Thurmond was as conservative as any Republican."
The ideological sorting began with Barry Goldwater, would you say? And also with the Democracts new-found conversion to the voting rights agenda, at which point Thurmond moved to the GOP. Given the overwhelming weight of events in the 1960s, I question how much the E.E. Schattschneider-led American Political Science Association study impacted any of this drive toward polarization. After all, who listens to political scientists? LOL Thanks for your interesting thoughts.
Not sure how much the report can be blamed, really. But at some point every Dixiecrat (except Manchin I guess) has become a devoted Republican. And since Trump, even the Lincoln folks have become (reluctant) Dems. "Anti-elitism" has so taken over the "lunch-bucket" crowd that probably a good third of Barry Sanders supporters during his last run are now Republicans, and Trump has realistic chances of getting the support of "anti-woke" xenophobic union members.
My favorite polarization scholar is Nancy Bermeo who views polarization as an elite-led process. I think that is particularly important to consider when answering the question, are American voters polarized? Yes, but that could easily be rectified by more responsible political leadership, and that is where the need for proportional representation enters the picture. If you haven't already, you should check out the report from Scott Mainwaring for Protect Democracy on proportional representation in the House of Representatives.
Nice, I would add, though, that the 1960 APSA report on "responsible parties" was also a significant contributor to current polarization. The idea of Dixiecrats and Rippon Repubs seemed confusing and "irresponsible" to the experts. They wanted the parties to be entirely sorted/purified. That might be useful in a multi-party system, but here it has led to visceral hatred. https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/sam-rosenfeld-the-polarizers-postwar-architects-of-our-partisan-era?c=a-hornbook-of-democracy-book-reviews
Hi Walter, thanks for your comment. And nice review BTW of the Sam Rosenfeld book The Polarizers. I particularly found this part interesting: "Prior to this ideological sorting, the parties were more like fraternities or other clubs–though without membership fees. You joined one or another party because a bunch of your buddies were already involved with it. Maybe a local boss or “ward healer” might give you a job if you joined. Or perhaps you naturally thought of one party first because your parents or your neighbors belonged to it and assumed you would too eventually. Like the Crips and the Bloods, their main distinguishing factors were those sorts of family or geographic ties. There certainly didn’t have to be any issue-related affinity. After all, Dwight Eisenhower was as liberal as any Presidential candidate being put forward by the Democrats, and Strom Thurmond was as conservative as any Republican."
The ideological sorting began with Barry Goldwater, would you say? And also with the Democracts new-found conversion to the voting rights agenda, at which point Thurmond moved to the GOP. Given the overwhelming weight of events in the 1960s, I question how much the E.E. Schattschneider-led American Political Science Association study impacted any of this drive toward polarization. After all, who listens to political scientists? LOL Thanks for your interesting thoughts.
Not sure how much the report can be blamed, really. But at some point every Dixiecrat (except Manchin I guess) has become a devoted Republican. And since Trump, even the Lincoln folks have become (reluctant) Dems. "Anti-elitism" has so taken over the "lunch-bucket" crowd that probably a good third of Barry Sanders supporters during his last run are now Republicans, and Trump has realistic chances of getting the support of "anti-woke" xenophobic union members.
My favorite polarization scholar is Nancy Bermeo who views polarization as an elite-led process. I think that is particularly important to consider when answering the question, are American voters polarized? Yes, but that could easily be rectified by more responsible political leadership, and that is where the need for proportional representation enters the picture. If you haven't already, you should check out the report from Scott Mainwaring for Protect Democracy on proportional representation in the House of Representatives.