Been Left so Long it Looks Like Center to Me

Eric Alterman wrote a couple of columns recently about the polerization of American politics - here and here. What got him started is the book Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy which maintains that Republicans have moved to the fringe right while Democrats are unchanged. This ties in with What's the Matter With What's the Matter With Kansas? which holds that Republicans exploit fringe issues in order to mask the real issues.

Alterman also quotes a poll showing that Americans align with Democrats on all of the important issues.

In a May survey published by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 65 percent of respondents said they favor providing health insurance to all Americans, even if it means raising taxes, and 86 percent said they favor raising the minimum wage. Seventy-seven percent said they believe the country "should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.'' A September Gallup Poll finds that 59 percent consider the Iraq War a mistake and 63 percent agree that US forces should be partially or completely withdrawn.

If this is so, then why do Republicans hold the majority, not only on the federal level, but also in most state and city governments? Obviously, either Republicans are inhumanly good at exploiting fringe issues or there is something wrong with Alterman's arguments.

One problem is that the parties are not defined by a few issues. Few people are single-issue voters. Most people vote for the people they trust, not the people who promise them the most. This is the flaw in What's the Matter With Kansas. It starts with the assumption that Democrats have the average workingman's best interests at heart and Republicans don't. By assuming that a few hot-button issues define the race (mainly universal insurance), the Democrats cannot understand why voters would turn them down.

Another problem is that there are a lot more big issues than the ones Alterman quotes and many of these do draw single-issue voters. Gun control is high on this list and Democrats are on the wrong end of that one. In fact Democrats are so dismissive of this issue that they seldom recognize it.

Then there is the way that the questions are worded. The one-line questions are pretty simplistic. There are trade-offs on all issues. Would 65% of Americans still agree if you asked "would you support universal health insurance even if it meant that your taxes would rise and the quality of your health care would decline?" What about this one, "the country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment even if it means losing your own job or home?" (A lot of people assume "whatever it takes means that other people will pay.)

Then there is what the fringe issues tell us about a candidate. Gay marriage is often given as an example of a fringe issue. It does not affect most Americans and it is used as a wedge issue, but... it also says a lot about how a candidate views his constituency. Traditionally the family is the heart of American life but the family unit has been under assault for decades. To people who believe in the family, gay marriage is yet one more attempt at devaluing the family. Candidates who support gay marriage are advertising that they have a different value set. On top of that, it indicates that the candidate is willing to make society-wide changes on the basis of tiny special-interest groups.

As for polarization, which party has moved? To me, it is the Democrats. Issues that once used to be limited to fringe elements are now mainstream. Members of Congress have asserted that President Bush caused September 11 in order to push his agenda. If an elected Republican had said something like that, he would have been censured by his own party. Al Gore, the 2000 standard bearer, repeatedly compares Bush to Hitler. Weeks after releasing a movie asserting that Afghanistan was only invaded so that an oil pipeline could be built and pronouncing Islamic terrorists to be freedom fighters, Michael Moore was given a place of honor at the Democratic National Convention.

Democrats are increasingly intolerant of average Americans. Instead of upholding Americans' right to worship, the ACLU has been trying to eliminate religion from public space. Howard Dean has announced that his base is the "Merlot Democrats". When your base is wine-drinking elitist you have left the middle.

The Republicans are having real problems right now. Katrina was a public relations disaster. Bush has a rebellion on his hands over the Supreme Court and spending. The Top Republican Congressional leaders have been implicated in criminal activity (although it is likely that both will be found innocent). The Plame leak investigation continues.

The problem for the Democrats is that public relations are not acting like a teeter-totter. Public perception of the Democrats has not gone up as the Republicans have gone down. Some of this is because people like Alterman keep telling the Democrats that their problems are not internal, they are just the victim of Karl Rove's dirty campaigning. For all their problems, the Republicans are still more in touch with the majority of Americans.