Medium Dept. - Submitted for your consideration,
some observations--some general, some tied to the moment--of an
American radical, one not tied to the partisan circus in the United
States:
Most people aren’t ideologues. In
political discourse, we speak of “conservatives” and “liberals” but for
most, these are merely inclinations, tendencies that aren’t set in stone
but, bred into us by a combination of nature and nurture, serve as a
general framework for how we see and react to the world. People tend to
hold liberal views on some issues and conservative views on others. A
“liberal” isn’t necessarily someone rigidly committed to some liberal
orthodoxy; he’s usually just someone more liberal than conservative. And
vice-versa. There are, of course, lots of people with strongly
ideological views but most people aren’t in those camps.[1]
The United States is,
fundamentally, a liberal nation. The public is polled relentlessly and
this is a conclusion that screams through the body of that polling.[2]
One is hard-pressed to find a single issue of major significance on
which the public doesn’t, by large margins, hold to a liberal view. A
lot of that is “soft” liberalism and that can be a not-insignificant
caveat at times but that’s where people’s instincts take them. In last
year’s presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders’ politics were treated by
the political and press Establishment as far-left, marginal, way out
there--a political non-starter. In reality, his views represent those of the broad political center of the U.S., many of them shared by even majorities of Republicans.
While the U.S. is theoretically a
liberal democracy, it isn’t particularly democratic in practice. The
views of much of the public are not represented in government, don’t
drive most important political decisions and are virtually never the
deciding factor in any policy dispute. Public influence is relatively
very limited; for politicians, “the public” is mostly just an obstacle
to be overcome.
The government and the elected officials that comprise it are, as a body, always significantly to the right of the public.
The corporate news media are as
well and those who toil within them tend to worship at the altar of a
notion of the political “center” that is always defined as well to the
right of most of the public. Call it the alt-“center.” They tend to
frown upon things that stray too far from this alt-“center.”[3]
Politics isn’t just a matter of
how many agree or disagree with who or what. Much more goes into the
making or breaking of an issue, a politician, a party, a movement.
Even as the Republican party
leaves behind its longstanding conservatism and becomes increasingly
reactionary, it maintains grossly disproportionate power in government.
This is a consequence of structural advantages, not of ideological
preference by the public. There is, in general, very little public
support for right-wing policies.
The President of the United States
is always going to be the most visible politician in the U.S. and
fairly or not, the public is almost always going to associate the state
of the nation and its politics with that president and his party. In
times of prosperity, that party will enjoy good will; when times are
tougher, it will shoulder a disproportionate share of blame for this.[4]
The two-party system confers upon
the opposition party--meaning that party not, at the moment, in the
White House--a structural advantage, as, when it comes to expressing
dissatisfaction with the incumbent party, that opposition party is seen
as the only game in town.
The American political system
wherein campaigns of escalating expense are privately funded by
interests regulated by the state--essentially legalized bribery--bakes
in a huge conservative advantage, both for candidates avowedly of the
right, whose ideological support for these status quo interests acts as a
money-magnet, and for so-called “neoliberal” candidates, who combine
conservative, pro-business economic policies aimed at attracting Big
Money donors with liberal social policies aimed at drawing votes at
election time. Candidates who don’t pander to the established interests
will face the combined money-power of those interests mobilized in
opposition to them.
An elected official’s real
constituency is virtually never the people of his district, state,
country; it’s those who pay for his campaigns.
In presidential contests, the
electoral college--an anti-democratic anachronism of the 18th
century--confers advantage on regions at the expense of people, and most
states award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis; those
who receive 50%-1 get nothing. Two of the last three presidents were, as
a consequence, candidates rejected by most Americans then given the
office anyway. Such outcomes are not only anti-democratic, they
significantly disadvantage an administration so elected, which must then
try to govern without any public mandate a country that doesn’t want
them.
Very few congressional districts
in the U.S. are competitive. This is a consequence of both regional
distribution--supporters of one party are just quite strong in some
places--and of deliberate gerrymandering. Most elected officials never
face a serious challenge from the other party.
Republicans presently hold the
U.S. House of Representatives in an essentially guaranteed lock until at
least 2022 because of widespread Republican gerrymandering in several
blue states.
The system of gerrymandering not
only confers unfair advantage, it helps give rise to extremism. If a
congressman is in a safe district, he isn’t concerned with a challenge
from the other party; he’s concerned about having to face a primary
challenge from his own, in which his opponent would argue he isn’t
extreme enough.
Elected officials tend to like to hold on to elected office. They really, really like it.
People tend to dislike a
politician in direct proportion to how much they’re exposed to him. This
is to the advantage of most congressmen, who, because they’re so
numerous and so few managed to grab substantial headlines, remain out of
most people’s sight and thus out of mind. In fact, most people can’t
even identify their own congressman.
Because so much of congress comes from safe districts, those who do
know their own congressman tend to like him--he’s usually out of sight
and thus out of mind--and to reelect him over and over again. When
people grumble about congress, they’re usually grumbling about the
representatives others elect.
Control of the presidency tends to
retard turnout for the incumbent party in off-year elections. Such
elections lack a nationally unifying figure, get significantly less
press attention and just aren’t treated as if they’re as important,
while the idealistic motivating passions that are so often kindled by a
successful presidential election campaign are smothered by presidencies
that inevitably fail to live up to the hopes people invest in them. A
motivated opposition, even when a numerical minority, is advantaged by
this.
Long-running presidential incumbents, who, while in office, are never
out of sight and thus out of mind for very long, are always a drag on
candidates of their own party. People get tired of the same old thing.
In political contests, the lesser
of two evils is still evil. People want political candidates they can
support. Candidates who offer voters something for which they want to
vote almost always succeed over those who merely try to get people to
vote against their opponent.
Wars always result in the public
rallying behind the president. Terrorist attacks on the homeland lead to
an escalation in support for right-wing policies. Such boosts proceed
from a sort of mania, the political equivalent of temporary insanity;
they prove remarkably resistant to reason but also inevitably prove to
be merely temporary.
--j.
---
[1] For some, politics is, like
religion, merely an inheritance from their parents. Many treat it as a
virtually substance-free spectator sport, dividing up into camps and
rooting for their favored “team,” without much serious thought what
they’re actually supporting or opposing.
[2] In examining
this particular question, ideological self-identification polling has
proven worthless. Our political labels become quite polarized in public
discourse. The big, obvious example is that the political right has
spent decades demonizing the word “liberal,” which has meant that people
are much more reluctant to apply the word to themselves. The word
“moderate” is without real substance--huge swathes of people who may
actually be conservative or, particularly, liberal will see themselves
that way, not only because they aren’t particularly ideological but also
as a reaction against political polarization, which is judged quite
negatively (particularly by liberals).
[3] Part of the
traditional liberal theory of the free press is that it’s supposed to
act as a check on those with power. In the context of the U.S. at
present, the corporate press is, itself, a source of concentrated
power--just another power-player, just another interest. Those who work
in it at the level of regular journalists tend to see themselves as
merely reporting the news rather than, themselves, being major players
in shaping public perception. That’s part of what makes them so
problematic.
[4] There are
exceptions, of course. Even if people confer favor or blame on
presidents, (who really have little control over the course of the
economy, they aren’t entirely irrational about such things. The U.S.
economy was in a horrible state in the early years of Barack Obama’s
administration; polls showed that most didn’t blame Obama for this and
recognized it was a mess he’d inherited from the Bush Jr.
administration.
