AT 7:46 A.M. ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2006, THE POPULATION OF the United States reached 300 million, of which approximately 210 million were eligible to vote, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. According to Princeton sociologist Paul DiMaggio, 30 percent of eligible voters identify themselves as “strong Republicans” or “strong Democrats.” This means roughly 65 million eligible voters are strong partisans. This minority is at the core of polarization. They are the fierce partisans on the left and right who dominate and define American politics, while the rest of America’s eligible voters are at best marginally engaged in politics.
How does a minority of voters, however dedicated, dominate a country of 300 million? First, they vote in much larger percentages than the moderate, less-partisan majority of voters, and many (but far from all) have a deep and emotional attachment to their agendas. They are politically active, and as a result control the management, organization, and funding of the political process.
Strong partisans have vastly more influence than their numbers indicate. In the 2006 midterm election, approximately 80 million Americans, or about 40 percent of eligible voters, cast ballots. If only 75 percent of strong partisans turned out in 2006 (and given their history of consistently high turnout, that is a very conservative number), they would, using DiMaggio’s 30 percent figure, account for 45 million voters. That would mean over half of the total votes in 2006 were cast by strong partisans representing less than one-third of all eligible voters.
In contested party primaries (usually for open House or Senate seats), strong partisans represent an even higher percentage of the total vote. Nominees chosen by these highly engaged partisans tend to be very conservative Republicans or very liberal Democrats. According to the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, only 15.7 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the 2006 primary elections. That represented the lowest turnout in primaries among eligible voters ever recorded. This pattern of low voter turnout in primaries has been the rule rather than the exception for several decades. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that a large percentage of new members of Congress, elected in the last two decades of polarization, are extreme partisans.
In 2006, despite the low turnout, Democratic nominees proved an exception to the rule. House and Senate Campaign Committees, led by Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), both liberal but pragmatic politicians, intervened in primaries to support the candidate with the best chance of winning the general election. Congressional campaign committees have historically been reluctant to interfere in primaries, but in 2006 Emanuel and Schumer recruited and funded moderate Democrats, and pressured potential liberal candidates to stay out of primaries. Some liberals refused to back down, and forced a primary anyway. In every case, candidates supported by the congressional campaign committees defeated them.
It helped that the districts and states where Emanuel and Schumer recruited candidates tended to be more conservative, with a smaller Democratic activist base. But the fact that both played hardball with the left was another blow to polarization. The irony is that both Emanuel and Schumer have contributed to polarization in numerous legislative battles in Congress. Both may return to polarizing, but they now have responsibility for newly elected Democrats who ran against polarization. It’s unlikely either man will push polarizing issues on their own recruits, knowing that to do so may well cost the new members reelection.
COMMON GROUND POINT TO REMEMBER: Extreme ideologues in both parties are partisans. Partisans are polarized. These same partisans pick the party nominees from whom “the rest of us” must choose. The vast majority of eligible voters are moderates who lean toward one of the two major parties. The majority of voters are not polarized, but their choices are.
Robert Samuelson, economist and longtime student of politics, adds:
The result is a growing disconnect between politics—and political commentary—and ordinary life. Politics is increasingly a world unto itself, inhabited by people convinced of their own moral superiority: conspicuously, the religious right among Republicans, and upscale liberal elites among Democrats. Their agendas are hard to enact because they’re minority agendas. So politicians instinctively focus on delivering psychic benefits. Each side strives to make its political “base” feel good about itself. People should be confirmed in their moral superiority…polarization is really between these politicians and the rest of us.
The polarization crowd goes by many names: extreme partisans, strong Republicans or strong Democrats, political activists, extremists, left, right. We call them, collectively, polarizers. Their mission is to divide the American people along political and cultural lines. Polarizers have intimidated and coerced the press, moderate politicians, and political commentators into believing that polarization is omnipotent. They have done a good job, until recently, in selling their case. But what they are selling is snake oil.
To succeed in their mission, polarizers need to destroy their opponent’s agenda. The first step to that end, is to attempt to destroy their opponents. Snake oil notwithstanding, a whole lot of people have bought in. The campaign to sell polarization can be heard in the slogans and certain “revealed truths” that are now taken for granted by the political establishment: “Americans are polarized”; “America is a 50/50 country”; “we are divided politically between blue states and red states”; “Americans are engaged in a great culture war.” By repeating these mantras, the establishment continues to perpetuate the conventional wisdom that polarization is an intimidating, unstoppable force.
Intimidating it may be. Unstoppable it is not.
True Believers Versus Secular Polarizers
A certain degree of polarization is to be expected in a democracy. Historically, polarization has been the necessary ingredient for the great ideological battles that have defined America. Our country and our democracy were born out of polarization between the colonies and Great Britain over taxation and home rule. It was polarization between North and South over slavery that led to the Civil War. The polarizing climate surrounding the Scopes trial and the teaching of evolution in the public schools was the preeminent event in the debate over the separation of church and state. All were driven by firmly held convictions by the opposing parties.
But today’s polarization has become more than the product of opposing ideologies. For many—let’s call them secular polarizers (moneyed interests, party operatives, bottom feeders, etc.)—it has become an artificially stimulated environment for the sole purpose of retaining political power, raising money, or making more money. It is the foundation of a rigged system that benefits a few at the expense of the many. While it may be true that some polarizers remain driven by deeply held ideological principles, they are the minority within a minority.
These ideologues may be the real true believers, but they have chosen to share their bed with secular polarizers. Secular polarizers claim fidelity to the ideologues’ agenda, but secretly want to prolong the partisan war, either to maintain the status quo or to shift the power balance in their favor. Recently the marriage is showing signs of strain, as the true believers realize what their bedmate’s agenda is, or rather what it is not.
The former president of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, is a good example. After resigning from the organization, Reed set up a political consulting firm. One of his clients was Jack Abramoff, who was then representing the Mississippi Choctaws, a Native American tribe that wanted the government to deny a gambling license to a tribe (and potential competitor) in Texas. Reed was hired to organize Christian activists in Texas to oppose the license. What these good people never knew was that their efforts would not stop gambling, which they opposed, but instead be directed at protecting the gaming profits of the Choctaws.
By promoting polarizing agendas, secular polarizers such as Reed help keep the partisan base motivated for the sole purpose of winning elections or, in Reed’s case, to make money. To keep them motivated, secular polarizers oppose any efforts at compromise. To compromise means to lose energy and financial resources provided by true believers. The financial resources keep the polarizers in power, while the energy ensures a large turnout of believers at the polls.
The polarization environment creates conflict, and conflict makes for prodigious amounts of press. The political media, which has its well-studied sets of biases, thrives on polarization. So, too, do the bottom feeders who promote conflict for profit and fame. These are the new kids on the block. They are hucksters and shakedown artists who need polarization to draw suckers to their three-card monte games. Could Ann Coulter sell her factually challenged books or Michael Moore sell tickets to his selectively edited films if America was not polarized? Would the so-called new media, particularly talk radio (right and left), be relevant and profitable absent polarization?
As it is, the combined audience for these shows, on a good week, is perhaps 20 million, virtually all of whom are rabid partisans. They thrive on political conflict. As Rush Limbaugh told Bob Beckel in 1990, “If Democrats manage to elect a candidate to the White House, I would become the biggest talk show host in history.” The Democrats did, and to his credit, so did Rush. The fact remains, however, that more than 90 percent of Americans don’t tune in to the so-called new media. If ever there was a case of preaching to the choir, it’s partisan talk show hosts talking to their audience…and laughing all the way to the bank.
COMMON GROUND POINT TO REMEMBER: Polarization is fueled by ideologues, power brokers, and bottom feeders who gain fame and profit from it. These are not natural bedfellows. Under ideal circumstances with polarization at full throttle, they can exist together. The public’s sour mood toward politics, as witnessed in the 2006 elections, is making those circumstances less than ideal.
A sad reality of polarization is that many decent people are entangled in its web and are desperately looking for a way out. Most fear for their political survival if they dare challenge polarization. They have bought into the many myths polarizers have successfully peddled as fact. Most of these myths would be laughable if they were not so destructive.
Polarizers want you to believe America is split down the middle between the Left (with a big L) and the Right (with a big R)…myth; that Americans are incensed by economic inequality and that class warfare is the solution…myth; that the “religious right” is a unified and powerful political force…myth; that the unions are a powerful unified force…myth; that the blogosphere is a powerful force in affecting voters’ choices…myth.
Then there are the two hottest myths, whose acceptance is essential if polarization is to maintain a stranglehold on politics. First, polarizers have sold everyone the big myth that America is made up of red states and blue states. They claim red states are controlled by partisans on the right and blue states by partisans on the left. The second great myth is that Americans are engaged in a great culture war over values, competing cultural norms, and God. These are the Holy Grail, the revealed wisdom, of the polarization movement. We will deal with some of these issues now, but we will later devote a full chapter to these two myths in order to fully expose them for what they are—pure fiction.
Facts are dangerous to polarizers, because they challenge the polarizers’ myths. Polarizers want you to believe that the Christian Coalition remains a potent force in politics. Its cofounder, Reverend Pat Robertson, could not win a single primary when he ran for president in 1988, including the primary in South Carolina, where the conservative Christian organization was strongest. Nonetheless, during the 1990s, the Christian Coalition used wedge issues like abortion to turn out voters (almost exclusively for Republicans) and raised lots of money. Its president, Ralph Reed, left the organization to become a grassroots lobbyist. Reed ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 2004 and lost. Robertson did not help himself, or the Coalition’s deteriorating reputation, when he agreed with Reverend Jerry Falwell that 9/11 was God’s judgment on gays and abortion.
Today, the Christian Coalition is little more than an office and a post office box to which the deluded continue to send donations. In 2007 the Coalition recruited Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter as its new president. Hunter tried to expand the organization’s narrow agenda beyond moral issues like abortion and gay marriage (the hot-button issues at the core of the Christian Coalition’s organizing and fund-raising prowess). Hunter believed poverty and the environment are also moral issues.
Hunter was out before he was officially in. Roberta Combs, the chair of the organization’s board, said of Hunter, “We’re a political organization, and there’s a way of doing things, like taking a survey of your membership to see what they want.” Apparently, that did not include Christ’s many admonitions to help the poor, since the world’s impoverished masses are not a good fund-raising message. Hunter said he only wanted the organization to reflect the teachings of Jesus. Is there not a contradiction when a “Christian” Coalition favors a narrower and more political agenda over one that better reflects the teachings and example of the One it claims to represent? Not when the primary goal is fund-raising and people will respond only to “hot-button” issues.
Class warfare is one of the favorite rallying cries among liberal polarizers. They contend that the middle class and the poor share a seething hatred for Americans who are rich. Polarizers on the left are constantly calling on the two groups to join forces and storm the gated communities of the wealthy. There is little evidence to support any interest among the two classes to pick up their pitchforks. There is a difference between the authors about why.
Most of the poor and middle class would like to become, if not rich, then at least better off. Cal believes they mostly have that opportunity through education (if they stay in school), family (if they get married and stay married and do not mother or father children out of wedlock), obeying the law, and refusing to take drugs. Those born into difficult circumstances can still achieve middle-class status if they obey “the rules.”
Bob agrees that the poor and middle class obviously want to be better off, but they are attempting to do so on a playing field where “the rules” are rigged toward the wealthy. Those born into poverty are particularly disadvantaged living in neighborhoods with lousy schools and overrun by drugs. For them the rules are mainly survival.
COMMON GROUND POINT TO REMEMBER: Polarization is a tough game with extremely high stakes. Polarization is still the dominant force in national politics, and has been for many years. It is, however, showing its age. Any minority movement in a democracy that adversely affects the majority cannot last. Eventually the majority will rise up and respond. We believe the majority is beginning to stir.