Political Polarization (8): Searching for Solutions

Hoping in spite of everything

Throughout this series, I’ve explored the various ways in which our political world seems hopelessly divided. The January 6th hearings have suggested that there are ways of pursuing truth in the face of lies. And yet it also points out how deeply entrenched our divisions are.

It’s hard to think about ways to make things begin to get better. We face deep divisions and the parties have little interest in bridging their differences.

The Perrine Bridge over the Snake River Canyon

This isn’t as easy as simply looking for more moderate candidates who can look for compromise (figuratively standing on the bridge). Last night I went to see Tim Miller do a book talk about his book I’ve discussed in previous newsletters. At Q&A time, I shot my hand up and asked Tim (who worked in Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign) if we’d ever see a time when a Republican candidate could again run on “quiet competence”. He gave me a quick NO and moved on to the next question.¹

The difficulty of “crossing the bridge” is that there is such asymmetry in our polarization. Democrats have attempted Big Policies like Build Back Better only to see them demolished by intra-party disagreements. Republicans have used claims of socialism and economic disaster to demonize all proposals.²

Republicans have used every imagined outrage from some liberal voice (“defund the police”, “drag queen story hour”) as indicative of Democrats key policy commitments. While Republicans have their fair share of crazy positions advocated by the fringe (and not-so-fringe), Democrats seem unable to make those stick to Republicans generally.³

Reading Tom Nichols has been very helpful to me as I’ve written this series. In his Atlantic newsletter this week, he wrote about his frustrations as a conservative (but not THAT kind of conservative).

In fact, I do not trust the GOP to enact conservative policies in any but the most repressive and cruel fashion. I do not trust that their goal is limited government; I believe their goal is limited democracy, and specifically, limited only to themselves and people who think as they do.

Are the Democrats any better? Of course they are. I have never been shy about noting the totalitarian streak on the American left, but the Democrats have not been captured by their fringe. More to the point, they are not institutionally capable of implementing the plans of their young-Stalinist wing. (Let's face it: On most days, the Democrats couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery.) And they are led by Joe Biden, a fundamentally decent man. I disagree with many leading Democrats, but I do not think they are delusional authoritarians, and for now, that’s a lot.

There are limitations to the Democrat’s focus on big policy ideas. It hurts me to say that because I’m on record in an earlier newsletter that I think governance is more important than politics. I’ve had to think deeply about an argument Brian Beutler made today.

The broad left has effectively redoubled its conviction that the best way to deal with the right’s politics of rule or ruin is to pull the policy lever ever harder. Different Democrats have different intuitions about how the policy lever is supposed to work. Progressives imagine transformational, redistributive policies will generate working-class solidarity and an unbeatable rainbow coalition. Moderates believe competent management, along with popular but incremental new reforms will capture the political center, without which Republicans can’t win.

But both believe that good policy, and good execution, are destiny, and that consensus is visible in the party's vast technocratic class, the army of Mr. Fix-its who ride to the rescue after Republicans leave everything in a smoldering heap.

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If every time Democrats won a trifecta, the federal minimum wage increased a few bucks, and the Medicare-eligibility age dropped a couple years—as predictably as Republican trifectas cut rich people’s taxes—it’d be better for the Democratic brand than interrupting long periods of inertia and waywardness with the occasional moonshot. If Democrats and their activist class stopped totemizing dusty old policy objectives, and rooted their governing decisions in their studied sense of national need, we could let progress beget progress in a slow climb to the mountaintop, rather than wait impatiently for a radical reform to fix everything in one fell swoop. Maybe one day along the way a huge Democratic majority will return and the party will enact a blizzard of new programs; but we're not going to get there without a democracy, and we won't have a democracy if Democrats won't build one.

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In light of this asymmetry, can we still build a bridge? Perhaps but it will require discipline from all players (which hasn’t been in strong supply). I have four broad suggestions (some of which I’ve addressed in earlier newsletters).

Starve the Social Media Beast

One of the challenges of our social media environment is that it is so easy to click, like, show anger, retweet, share, and pile on. I enjoyed seeing the memes of the running Senator Hawley set to music as much as the next person, but it probably does more harm than good. It’s great to see AOC protest abortion rights but her hand-behind-the-back pose was designed for clicks. Video clips of outrageous things said on the right or left are tempting to make fun of.

So we need discipline. Don’t pile on. Don’t quote tweet, saying “see how crazy they are?” (even when they’re being crazy).

This won’t make any difference in the short-term. But if we committed to it, it could make Meta and Twitter and the others adjust their algorithms. To put in crassly, if not sharing that angry story hurts their advertising revenue, there would be fewer angry stories available to share. Our feeds might be full of cute puppy memes.

Commit to the Truth

This is a tough one. It requires knowing more specifics than we generally do. Let me give an example. Over the last 18 months, we’ve seen regular challenges with inflation. Some of this is global in nature. Some results from supply chain disruptions. Some may be due to Covid stimulus funding. All of it is related to oil supplies.

But this isn’t Biden’s fault anymore than the recession of the early 2000s was Bush’s fault of the 2008-10 Great Recession was Obama’s. Sure they get blame because they are in office but 1) the economic challenges take some time to develop and 2) presidents have few levers to tackle the challenges when they arrive.

Furthermore, we need to recognize that economic policy is a matter of tradeoffs. While personal spending is up, meaning that people are trying to cope with rising costs, this is partly a result of low unemployment that places upward pressure on wages. This can be seen clearly when Laurence Summers says that we can beat inflation as long as we accept higher unemployment levels.

We need to tell the truth about our current situation, avoid hyperbole, and be realistic about how little can be done in the short term.

Empathy over Owning the Other Side

We have suffered a loss of empathy in recent decades. This relates in part to social media but goes well beyond that. The coarseness of political campaigns, negative advertising, stump speeches, and daily proclamations from politicians has affected us all.

From the right, teachers have become groomers putting children at risk. Telling the truth about our history of systemic racism is dismissed as “woke”. Hiding behind the guise of protecting children or competitive sports, transgender persons have been treated as national pariahs.

From the left, people are shamed if they don’t support same-sex relationships, if they are uncomfortable with someone using “they” as a preferred pronoun, if they are uncomfortable with the phrase “people who can become pregnant”. They may be called “racist” for an insensitive comment or “Christian nationalists” when they support more conservative religious or political positions.⁴

People don’t like to be told what they have to feel and think. People don’t like being told that their deep concerns are silly and woke. What we are looking at are differences in environment, background, and experience. We would do well to give others the benefit of the doubt before jumping to conclusions.

It’s possible to address the complexities of abortion rights and restrictions without demonizing the other side.

Local instead of National

This can be tough as every campaign has become nationalized. I learned today that a Democratic SuperPac spent more money in the Republican Senate Primary here in Colorado than either of the candidates did.

In prior election cycles fundraising groups like ActBlue or WinRed have tried to generate national financial support for candidates far away (Amy McGrath’s race against Mitch McConnell is a prime example). I am now quickly unsubscribing from those emails and text messages. I will only spend my money in my state or for out of state candidates I know personally.

I want to spend more time following what’s happening with my own candidates: US Senate, Governor, State Offices, Congressperson, State Senator, State Representative, City Council. Reaching out to them can make a difference where my message to an out of state Senator who is big on Twitter really won’t.

I’m committed to find a way to engage in bridge-building at the micro-local level. Back in 2012, I conducted a small research project.⁵ During the last nine months of the presidential election cycle, I bought dinner for a variety of individuals from my then-local congregation. My premise was that telling stories would help us craft new narratives that would replace the more angry stories that make up our political discourse.

I’ve decided to do something similar right here in my own neighborhood. I want to see if the local coffee shop or recreation center will allow such a small-scale gathering for interested parties. I don’t know if it would change our political divides but it might be the beginning of constructing that bridge that maintains our democracy.

1. He was very nice about it. On a person note, I got there early because an accident on my way downtown meant that there wasn’t time for dinner. Tim was sitting outside with a couple of others and I joined him and the others left. So the two of us went to find coffee. He’s every bit as personable as he seems on television.

2. There is a perennial claim that The Green New Deal has hampered our energy and economic readiness in spite of the fact that there is no such thing ever introduced as legislation.

3. The fact that the 2020 Republican Platform was “whatever Trump wants” didn’t hurt them. Senator Rick Scott’s Contract On America is easily brushed aside by other party leaders. McConnell won’t talk about the Senate’s potential legislative agenda should the Senate flip next year.

4. To be clear, there are transphobes, racists, and Christian Nationalists who need to be called out. But I worry that the labels are too quickly applied and without proper empathy.

5. I was grateful for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion that provided a grant that let me pay for the meals.