Moderate red, blue voices lost in din of extremes
by David Von Drehle
The Washington Post
Ronald Reagan coaxed religious conservatives and Cold Warriors away from the Democratic Party while making it uncomfortable for liberals to remain in the GOP.
WASHINGTON -- The red-blue thesis has a range of critics, from well-read sophisticates in red zones who resent being stereotyped to liberals who feel the framework unfairly portrays them as cut off from Main Street America. Some critics think the model wrongly avoids talking about the millions of eligible citizens who don't show up as either color, because they don't vote.
Actually, red zones and blue zones are demographically similar in many ways. Lots of red voters live in blue country, and vice versa. Gallup pollsters have emphasized what they call "purple states," a geographically diverse atlas in which the total votes cast for President Bush and Vice President Al Gore in 2000 produced a statistical deadlock: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
But the notion of two tribes unhappily sharing a country is gaining strength among analysts. "It's huge," said Hans Noel, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of a paper called "The Road to Red and Blue America." "People in these two countries don't even see each other."
That's partly because of political segregation.
Consider the 1960 presidential election -- another virtual dead heat. Democrat John F. Kennedy captured states in nearly every region of the country. By contrast, in 2000 Democrat Gore was shut out of the South, the Plains states and -- with the exception of New Mexico -- the Rocky Mountain West.
The states Gore picked up from the 1960 Republican column likewise were concentrated in certain regions: the West Coast, the Great Lakes and New England.
According to a recent survey by pollster John Zogby, voters in states that went for Bush were, by clear statistical margins, older, more likely to be married, less likely to join a union, more likely to be regular churchgoers -- mostly at Protestant churches -- and far more likely to be "born again" Christians.
Another prominent opinion sampler, Stanley Greenberg, has made similar findings. Blue Americans, he concluded, are most likely to be found among highly educated women, nonchurchgoers, union members and the "cosmopolitans" of the New York area, New England and California.
"We have two parallel universes," White said. "Each side seeks to reinforce its thinking by associating with like-minded people."
But red-blue is not only a matter of place. To an extent not seen in generations, the political parties occupy distinct philosophical space. There's scant room left in national politics for a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat -- ask Sen. James Jeffords, the former Republican from Vermont who's now an Independent, or Sen. Zell Miller, a pro-Bush Democrat from Georgia. Such figures were crucial to congressional deal-making a generation ago. They are ostracized now.
"I think it's more of a chasm" than a divide, Jeffords said. "There's very little room for moderate voices. ... They are being silenced by the extremes. Three years ago, when I left the Republican Party, I said the president was moving too far to the right. I think he's proven me right, and now we've got gridlock."
Miller, who has leveled similar complaints against the Democratic leadership, declined to be interviewed.
Factions are nothing new. Most of the ideological rifts in American politics today can be traced back over centuries: North vs. South, rural vs. urban, populist vs. elitist, labor vs. ownership, religious vs. secular.
But those rifts haven't always coincided with party divisions. The United States was led for many years by the strange bedfellows of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. Millions of rural, religious, southern voters joined millions of urban, minority and secular voters in backing the Democrats. After Roosevelt's death and World War II, the coalition began fragmenting -- over civil rights and anti-communism, among other issues -- but the breakup took decades.
Experts cite a variety of factors to explain why red-blue has risen in its place. For example:
+ Ronald Reagan. Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford governed essentially as pragmatic centrists, but Reagan framed his presidency in ideological terms. He coaxed religious conservatives and Cold Warriors away from the Democratic Party while making it uncomfortable for liberals to remain in the GOP. "The signals coming out from Washington helped voters sort themselves out into parties that reflected their world view," said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution.
+ Peace. From the outbreak of World War II through the end of the Cold War -- a span of nearly 50 years -- the United States' foreign policy and military policy, two of the biggest responsibilities of the government, reflected the consensus of both parties. Recalling sociologist Daniel Bell's influential 1960 book "The End of Ideology," author John Kenneth White said, "The dominant discussion was about the need for unity in the face of a potent enemy." The collapse of the Soviet Union stripped much of the purpose out of centrism.
+ Bill Clinton. Although he campaigned as a moderate Democrat, and delivered on such longtime Republican goals as a balanced budget and welfare reform, Clinton's administration ultimately proved highly divisive. The first baby-boomer presidency opened a new front in the culture wars that erupted in the late 1960s -- over sex, responsibility, the role of women, the nature of authority.
+ Technology. The rise of direct mail, cable television and the Internet has enabled ideological soul mates to find one another efficiently, to organize, to concentrate their resources and to evangelize. Big Media -- especially network television and daily newspapers -- are rapidly losing their power to shape public consensus and marginalize ideological extremes.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press recently found that the number of Americans receiving campaign news from network television or daily newspapers has fallen by one-quarter since 2000, and by one-third for magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Meanwhile, the audience is growing for niche outlets such as talk radio, cable television and Internet sites.
"People naturally reduce cognitive dissonance by seeking out information that reinforces their existing views," Mann said. "So there's no single cause" of the red-blue divide, "but a number of factors feeding into this."
[The Washington Post - Nation & World: Monday, May 24, 2004]
The Washington Post
Ronald Reagan coaxed religious conservatives and Cold Warriors away from the Democratic Party while making it uncomfortable for liberals to remain in the GOP.
WASHINGTON -- The red-blue thesis has a range of critics, from well-read sophisticates in red zones who resent being stereotyped to liberals who feel the framework unfairly portrays them as cut off from Main Street America. Some critics think the model wrongly avoids talking about the millions of eligible citizens who don't show up as either color, because they don't vote.
Actually, red zones and blue zones are demographically similar in many ways. Lots of red voters live in blue country, and vice versa. Gallup pollsters have emphasized what they call "purple states," a geographically diverse atlas in which the total votes cast for President Bush and Vice President Al Gore in 2000 produced a statistical deadlock: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
But the notion of two tribes unhappily sharing a country is gaining strength among analysts. "It's huge," said Hans Noel, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of a paper called "The Road to Red and Blue America." "People in these two countries don't even see each other."
That's partly because of political segregation.
Consider the 1960 presidential election -- another virtual dead heat. Democrat John F. Kennedy captured states in nearly every region of the country. By contrast, in 2000 Democrat Gore was shut out of the South, the Plains states and -- with the exception of New Mexico -- the Rocky Mountain West.
The states Gore picked up from the 1960 Republican column likewise were concentrated in certain regions: the West Coast, the Great Lakes and New England.
According to a recent survey by pollster John Zogby, voters in states that went for Bush were, by clear statistical margins, older, more likely to be married, less likely to join a union, more likely to be regular churchgoers -- mostly at Protestant churches -- and far more likely to be "born again" Christians.
Another prominent opinion sampler, Stanley Greenberg, has made similar findings. Blue Americans, he concluded, are most likely to be found among highly educated women, nonchurchgoers, union members and the "cosmopolitans" of the New York area, New England and California.
"We have two parallel universes," White said. "Each side seeks to reinforce its thinking by associating with like-minded people."
But red-blue is not only a matter of place. To an extent not seen in generations, the political parties occupy distinct philosophical space. There's scant room left in national politics for a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat -- ask Sen. James Jeffords, the former Republican from Vermont who's now an Independent, or Sen. Zell Miller, a pro-Bush Democrat from Georgia. Such figures were crucial to congressional deal-making a generation ago. They are ostracized now.
"I think it's more of a chasm" than a divide, Jeffords said. "There's very little room for moderate voices. ... They are being silenced by the extremes. Three years ago, when I left the Republican Party, I said the president was moving too far to the right. I think he's proven me right, and now we've got gridlock."
Miller, who has leveled similar complaints against the Democratic leadership, declined to be interviewed.
Factions are nothing new. Most of the ideological rifts in American politics today can be traced back over centuries: North vs. South, rural vs. urban, populist vs. elitist, labor vs. ownership, religious vs. secular.
But those rifts haven't always coincided with party divisions. The United States was led for many years by the strange bedfellows of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. Millions of rural, religious, southern voters joined millions of urban, minority and secular voters in backing the Democrats. After Roosevelt's death and World War II, the coalition began fragmenting -- over civil rights and anti-communism, among other issues -- but the breakup took decades.
Experts cite a variety of factors to explain why red-blue has risen in its place. For example:
+ Ronald Reagan. Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford governed essentially as pragmatic centrists, but Reagan framed his presidency in ideological terms. He coaxed religious conservatives and Cold Warriors away from the Democratic Party while making it uncomfortable for liberals to remain in the GOP. "The signals coming out from Washington helped voters sort themselves out into parties that reflected their world view," said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution.
+ Peace. From the outbreak of World War II through the end of the Cold War -- a span of nearly 50 years -- the United States' foreign policy and military policy, two of the biggest responsibilities of the government, reflected the consensus of both parties. Recalling sociologist Daniel Bell's influential 1960 book "The End of Ideology," author John Kenneth White said, "The dominant discussion was about the need for unity in the face of a potent enemy." The collapse of the Soviet Union stripped much of the purpose out of centrism.
+ Bill Clinton. Although he campaigned as a moderate Democrat, and delivered on such longtime Republican goals as a balanced budget and welfare reform, Clinton's administration ultimately proved highly divisive. The first baby-boomer presidency opened a new front in the culture wars that erupted in the late 1960s -- over sex, responsibility, the role of women, the nature of authority.
+ Technology. The rise of direct mail, cable television and the Internet has enabled ideological soul mates to find one another efficiently, to organize, to concentrate their resources and to evangelize. Big Media -- especially network television and daily newspapers -- are rapidly losing their power to shape public consensus and marginalize ideological extremes.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press recently found that the number of Americans receiving campaign news from network television or daily newspapers has fallen by one-quarter since 2000, and by one-third for magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Meanwhile, the audience is growing for niche outlets such as talk radio, cable television and Internet sites.
"People naturally reduce cognitive dissonance by seeking out information that reinforces their existing views," Mann said. "So there's no single cause" of the red-blue divide, "but a number of factors feeding into this."
[The Washington Post - Nation & World: Monday, May 24, 2004]
posted by Rev. Rick Mitchell, PhD at 1:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home