After Yet Another Attack on Democracy
Plus all the links.
Jake Grumbach has a must-read up at Slate about polarization and the demise of the Voting Rights Act.
So…I only half agree with him.
Basically, I agree with everything he says about the woefully misguided campaign against political polarization and the campaign to center it in both academic and political discussion. He’s absolutely right that a lot of resources have been directed towards this so-called problem, resources that could have been directed towards the actual problems with democracy in the US over the last thirty years.
It’s all hogwash. Political polarization is real, but it’s also (as he says) pretty much the natural order of things. It’s not, in and of itself, a problem that some people are Democrats and others are Republicans; that they mostly vote the party line; that politicians mostly support their parties; and even that people deeply involved in politics tend to strongly dislike the other party.
It’s a phenomenon that’s worth some study, yes, but it’s hardly the most important thing going on in US politics recently. If it’s a problem at all.
Of course, focusing on polarization has two big advantages for many people. One is that it avoids placing responsibility on any single set of political actors, which is inevitable if one studies Republican dysfunction and Republican attacks on democracy. Plenty of people, for a variety of reasons, don’t want to do that.
The other advantage of centering polarization is that addressing the real problems with US democracy requires support for two very unpopular institutions – Congress and the parties. That goes against the grain of US political culture.
In all of that, I agree with Grumbach.
I’m just not sure how important any of it has been to key political outcomes. I don’t think the Republican Justices and the Republican party actors who have worked for this outcome since at least the Reagan administration care at all what democracy supporters have to say about it. They’ve worked to do it, and once they had the votes, they did it. I think it’s exactly the same as overturning abortion rights – or, for that matter, on the other side, securing marriage equality.
And while it’s possible, I don’t think the unfortunate obsession with partisan polarization prevented a quicker coordinated response by the rest of the nation to the court’s designs – or delayed the Democrats from developing and implementing a democracy agenda. The party was mostly ready by 2021, but didn’t have the votes in Congress; they were not ready, to be sure, when they had the votes in 2009-2010, but I think it’s hard to chalk that up to concerns about partisan polarization.
Nor do I think better “neutral” appreciation of the threat to democracy would have changed any election results, or convinced Democrats on the Court to retire more strategically.
But whether I’m right or wrong on all that, on the big question here Grumbach is absolutely correct.
More links, but first: Seth Masket’s invaluable “Tusk” is about to be “the @smotus report.” Subscribe, bookmark, etc. Oh and also don’t miss Julia talking with Noah Berlatsky about her recent book and everything else.
1. Rick Hasen on the “worst decision in a century.”
2. Dave Karpf on the Supreme Court and the democracy agenda.
3. Don Moynihan on the Court and democracy.
4. Matt Grossmann talks with Jennifer Gaudette about trust in US elections.
5. Lindsey Cormack on what Congress talked about in April.
6. Nadia E. Brown at Good Authority on domestic violence.
7. Mattthew Shugart on the Hungarian elections.
8. Matt Glassman on why a larger House wouldn’t be a better House.
9. Dan Drezner on Trump’s famous victory over Iran.
10. Nadia E. Brown at Good Authority on domestic violence.
11. Mattthew Shugart on the Hungarian elections.
12. Never miss Daniel Nichanian’s rundown of the upcoming month’s elections.
13. And Jennifer Victor at Mischiefs of Faction on what political scientists talk about. For what it’s worth, I heard a fair amount of democracy (and midterms, etc.) talk in that same lobby; what I heard less of than usual was complaints about dysfunctional departments. So maybe that’s what was bumped for the AI talk. Don’t know.