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Polar expedition

By Michael J. Smith on Thursday May 11, 2006 01:53 PM

Alan Smithee commented on an earlier JSP post:
It seems to me that a sharp decrease in split-ticket voting would indicate an increase in the polarization of the electorate itself, rather than any effect produced by gerrymandering.

Good grief. Did I just write that?

Alan was referring to this tidbit:
The old Dixie split ticket voting (CD donk / Repub prez) is down from a high in the 60-70's of 40% to a mere 13% today -- practically random error range.
This "polarization" trope -- you hear it everywhere these days. Seems a little strange to me, since at the same time the ideological range of organized politics in the US is probably narrower than it has been at any previous point in our history.

There are no more isolationists, no more protectionists, no more populists; Socialists and Commies are found only in vestigial sectarian pockets, like Gaelic speakers in Ireland. Nobody has a good word to say for unions, and indeed the union movement itself appears to be teetering at the edge of the grave. Republicans and Democrats beat the drum in rock-solid synchrony for air strikes on Iran, and vie only in the fulsomeness and fatuity of their panegyrics to Israel. The "left" cultists of Daily Kos and the "right" machiavels of the DLC disagree only about whether the Kosniks should be allowed into the party treehouse.

So what do people mean when they wag their heads gravely and deplore "polarization"? What are they referring to? I suspect it's just the shrillness of the rhetoric deployed about the sub-microscopic, Brownian differences in vocabulary and emphasis, the angstrom-scale positionings and repositionings of elected officialdom and the parties.

An academic friend of mine once observed that the intensity of struggle in a university English department was always in inverse proportion to the importance of the issue. The less consequential the stakes of victory or defeat, the more vicious and sanguinary the battle. A question of access to the Xerox machine would evoke more rancor and malice than the average fleet action.

Where politics is not really about anything except the organizational rivalry of two opportunist factions, perhaps it's necessary to keep cranking up the volume just in order to keep people's interest.

In this light, I'd think the decline of split-ticket voting has more to do with the unanimity of the parties than with anything you could really call "polarization". In the heyday of the split ticket, a significant chunk of the electorate seem to have picked a President on one set of criteria and an Congresscritter on a different set. The organizational and ideological differentiation of the parties, slight as it was even then by world standards, offered at least some opportunity for this kind of a-la-carte dining.

Nowadays, though, the parties are just "brands". They're both imperialist, globalist, statist, elitist, and corporatist -- just as Coke and Pepsi are both mostly sugar and carbonated water. With the parties, as with soft drinks, brand loyalty certainly exists, but it's based on third-order differences -- a touch of the soft pedal on gay marriage, say, or a tepid, timorous hint that it might be nice if women could decide whether to have babies or not.

Having nothing else on which to base their decisions, people make their brand choices based on these trace flavors, and having made them, there's no reason to vary the diet. Nobody drinks Coke by preference in the morning and Pepsi in the afternoon.

Comments (7)

Excellent post, and I completely agree. I always cringe when people talk about "polarization" between two parties that are so much alike. I think you hit the nail right on the head when you point out that it may be the inconsequential nature of these "differences" that makes them so heated!

Oh, sorry. That's kinda what I meant about "polarization." I was using the dictionary def:

"A concentration, as of groups, forces, or interests, about two conflicting or contrasting positions."

Which is to say: there are more people concentrated in the two parties and fewer willing to vote independently, thus a narrowing of the electorate into two camps.

Although, come to think of it, that whole "conflicting or contrasting positions" thing doen't fit either - since the two parties in question hardly have contrasting potitions.

Drat! Okay, scrap the whole analogy.

J. Alva Scruggs:

Thanks, MJS, for tackling the polarization nonsense. Each minor infamy has to be broadcast louder and with more flourish to keep pace with burnt out emotional capacity.

MJS:

Didn't mean to beat up on you, Alan -- you just had the misfortune to raise one of those slowly-I-turned topics. When I hear the word polarization I go for my -- well, I won't complete the quote, to avoid a visit from the FBI.

I think of poles as being by definition things that are some distance apart -- as in the expression "poles apart." This doesn't really seem very apt for the Republicrats and Demolicrans.

jsp:

no comment is often wiser then fulsome praise
but

i liked this passage in particular very much:

"There are no more isolationists, no more protectionists, no more populists; Socialists and Commies are found only in vestigial sectarian pockets, like Gaelic speakers in Ireland. Nobody has a good word to say for unions, and indeed the union movement itself appears to be teetering at the edge of the grave. Republicans and Democrats beat the drum in rock-solid synchrony for air strikes on Iran, and vie only in the fulsomeness and fatuity of their panegyrics to Israel. The "left" cultists of Daily Kos and the "right" machiavels of the DLC disagree only about whether the Kosniks should be allowed into the party treehouse"
i might add

the pepsi party ..or is it the coke party

has always an uncola brand
waiting in the proper wing

todaythat shapes up as

the nativist repubs
as a right wing

and the job class donks
as a left wing

each middle wing
a cola wing
is ---whats the line
a saw here-----
an evil dum
or
an evil do

jsp:

btw

though i agree with the analysis

i'm a tad uncomfortable with the more heat
must mean less substance line
i think we'd all agree

the sour taste left
by these
' which way do we split the boiled egg wars '

may be the result
of disproportion

once the substance of the debate
matches the volume

then maybe
levels of intensity
that come off as shrill now
will sound then more like a righteous roar

Posted by: MJS | May 11, 2006 04:37 PM

Not to worry. Minor misunderstanding. Anyway, I'm not that thin skinned. (You should have read the reviews for "Hellraiser: Bloodline." Now *those* were some brickbats!)

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