Depolarization Is Coming And Democracy Could Suffer
The interests of left-technocrats and right-populists will converge to undermine choice and pluralism by federalizing more policy, all in the name of the people.
The most banal observation a political commentator can make is how badly polarized our society is across a range of axes. These observations and many that stem from them presume that the present is indicative of a trajectory. The fallacy goes that because the U.S. is polarized now, it will continue to be indefinitely. It is reasoned that polarization has an adverse impact because division is, well, divisive (it’s not, but that is a future essay). Observations made by people across the ideological spectrum often take on a left-of-center frame which says that division is bad because it impedes federal action. If the federal government cannot act to address inequalities across states, this inaction is seen as undermining American democracy. However, with a national Republican Party seemingly more interested in operating on the presumed wisdom of central power it seems we’ve bottomed out on polarization and are on the cusp of the polarization wave finally cresting…to mix metaphors.
Though establishment Democrats and Republicans still hold substantial, if not dominant, sway over the direction of federal politics, the progressive left and the populist right have emerged and refined their pitches with doses of realism over the last eight years. Progressives have started to recognize the impracticalities and electoral imprudence of adopting many large-scale social-democratic policies and are compensating for that with a pivot toward technocracy—limitless federal micromanagement of the American economy.
Republicans remain split between their establishment and populist wings — including within the states. But since a coalition of Obama-Trump voters handed the presidency to former president, more figures have put forth a coherent vision for the party’s priorities, signaling greater protectionism and in some cases retreating from same-sex marriage and strict abortion bans. One of these figures is now the vice-presidential nominee for the party, J.D. Vance, who gave a speech at the RNC last month that could have been written by a speechwriter for a Blue Dog Democrat in the 1990s
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The elevation of someone like Vance, even if he never becomes president, all but mark the kind of ideological variation that drives the partisan depolarization we’re seeing peek through not just in each party’s policy priorities but also in the partisan identification of the polity, greater competition in once “safe” jurisdictions, the geographic depolarization of the electorate, and the culture shifts that challenge various demographic presuppositions.
Technocrats on the left may soon find a Republican Party that wants to play, not simply punt the ball on the social safety, privileging unions, creating a new childcare entitlement program, regulating artificial intelligence, nationalizing the union’s three power grids, and ignoring the alarming interest payments on the debt.
This new climate may even be conducive to deals on expanding limited forms of immigration, funding nuclear power initiatives, taxing the rich, and invading your neighborhood with unprecedented federal zoning requirements. It may even produce seismic structural or constitutional changes that seemed unthinkable even years ago, such as eliminating protections for the Senate minority, limiting presidential power, overhauling campaign finance, or even abolishing the Electoral College once Republicans lose the presidency with a larger share of the national popular vote.
None of this is to say the outcomes produced by a depolarized, bipartisan federal government would necessarily be positive. Federal bipartisanship has led to considerable adverse consequences — the Controlled Substances Act, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act, and the Community Reinvestment Act, to name a few. These failures have sometimes excused further counterproductive federal intervention that excludes vast swaths of the polity who do not have the means to seek recourse within the federal labyrinth.
The current moment parallels the Gilded Age, a period of economic displacement and technological advancement, with concerns over inequality, civil rights, and immigration, all told through a highly partisan media. The 1870s and 1880s also saw some of the closest presidential elections in history up to that time. What followed was a Progressive Era that saw new bipartisan coalitions emerge, leading to federal intervention that consolidated federal power that undermined the power of states.
Among the most prominent examples is the implementation of Prohibition under the 18th Amendment, a policy supported across party lines, which led to widespread illicit activities and organized crime, ultimately proving unenforceable and necessitating its historic repeal. Leaving the issue to states to regulate could have allowed for experimentation with regulatory practices and strategies to address issues related to local trends in alcohol-related crime and public health. On antitrust, the establishment of regulatory bodies like the Interstate Commerce Commission was originally intended to curb the excesses of the railroads but often ended up entrenching bureaucratic inefficiency and federal regulatory capture. It isn’t far-fetched to envision a future technocratic left and populist right establishing an Artificial Intelligence Commission to regulate, and thereby entrench, the incumbent advantage of massive tech companies.
Abroad, escalating conflict with Russia, but particularly China, could accelerate the kinds of toxic unifying nationalism that bulldoze legal and other structural impediments to central power on the pretense that doing so is vital to American national security interests. Conflict with China could induce bipartisan American leaders to centralize power to greater extents than during the first Cold War. Whereas the first Cold War was fought against an economically destitute yet nuclear-armed power with little to envy, a Cold War with China — a swift-moving totalitarian economic heavyweight — may entice American leaders impatient with democracy to advocate policies that seek to counter China with dystopian Chinese-style centralization, like increased central planning, an expansion of domestic surveillance, pressure on American tech companies to censor specific content and speech, or establish a federal digital currency.
The looming federal law seeking to ban TikTok by the winter if Chinese Communist Party-backed company ByteDance does not divest is a prime example. The bill won swift bipartisan support before being signed by President Biden. Though the intent of the law appears limited to TikTok, it also includes language that could conceivably ban any apps deemed to be subject to the “direction or control” by foreign adversaries. A future political party that wants to misattribute the outcome of a future American election to a foreign adversary’s use of an American social media platform might find the law to be convenient.
Ideological and partisan differences will persist. There will still be a partisan media. But in the coming decades, it won’t be unusual to see young liberal career journalists in their fifties finding themselves defending Republican redistributive policies in 2034, or foreign policy hawks defecting to the Democrats over a looming Cold War. We’ve seen this already in the culture wars, and we’re beginning to see it in the policy realm.
It seems we’re in a period now where the union of states is on a path toward centralization or what advocates might call “unity” or “consensus” in the name of the glorious “national interest”. But if this new era serves to place more material decision-making power into the hands of fewer people it would constitute democratic backsliding in a way that a state requiring a photo identification to vote does not. The future rift in American politics will be framed as between left and right, populists versus establishmentarians, college and non-college education, working class versus business class. Instead, it may come down to those who believe the means still matter and those who believe the ends are all there is.
That Patchwork is a first-of-its-kind newsletter about democracy, economics and culture from a decentralist angle. Today, fewer people are seeking more power over American life. To preserve a pluralist democracy will mean challenging the entrenched premise that observations, ideas and solutions are best made with a federal or national interest.
Beyond That Patchwork
Last week, I marked ten years as a Texan. I remember a few years or so ago a local Austinite asked me how long I had lived here and I answered, I think, with “seven years”. She replied, “Oh okay, so you’re one of us now” and my heart welled up a little bit. Here’s “Stonecutters” by Dope Lemon.
This is a well-argued piece. But the current polarization is better understood as a rift between partisan identities, not ideologies. Most people, and especially committed partisans, have incoherent positions on the “issues,” and coalitions form mainly around keeping the evil bastards in the other party out at all costs. I think that nuance explains some of the statistics you cited better than “depolarization” does — voters do view their own party less and less favorably, but statistics show they also dislike the other party more than ever.
It’s true that ideological variation exists within both parties, and policy priorities often align. But policy conversations happen almost entirely within parties and not between them. In DC, most congresspeople simply give up on making any legislation when their party is out of power. Voters don’t punish politicians for not trying to get policy done; their main priority is preventing other politicians from taking the reins.
I’m also skeptical that two sub-coalitions in opposite parties tend to unite to pass more centralized and heavy-handed policies. Marijuana legalization has seen some actually successful alliances of the type you describe, while many of the potential policies you listed are on the back burner.
Last thing — there’s robust evidence that polarization does indeed have a snowball effect. Just plug “political polarization self reinforcement” into Google Scholar. So it’s not a fallacy to treat polarization as something that, all else equal, will increase in the near term.