The last elections dramatically illustrated how deeply polarized American society has become.
For years, analysts fretted about how bitter the partisan discourse has become. That is just the tip of the iceberg. The partisan discourse is bitter because the electorate is irreconcilably divided on a large number of issues.
Over all other demographic measures, political party preference most deeply divides Americans.
Political party preference creates the deep chasm between the South and the Northeast, the Pacific Coast and the Midwest, the rural and the urban, the young and the old, the male and the female, the religious and the not so. For instance, among those who attend church services every week, Republicans win two-to-one. Among those who do not regularly attend church services, Democrats win by the same margin.
There is likewise a sharper racial content in political party preference. Whites tend towards the Republicans. Ethnic minorities tend towards the Democrats.
The Democratic Party builds its base among younger, urban and female voters. The Republican Party draws from older, more rural and male voters.
There are states that reliably vote Republican and states that vote Democrat. In the dialect of American politics, they are referred to as the “red” and “blue” states respectively.
Because of that, presidential campaigns focus tightly on a handful of so-called “battleground states” — those where party preferences are nearly always even. They are also called the “swing states” because they determine the electoral outcome in a system where the popular vote needs to be converted into Electoral College votes.
The polarization of US politics is not a new development — although it is a feature that has worsened rather than alleviated. The last few elections demonstrated this trend, beginning from that memorable contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The Democratic candidate won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote after Bush won Florida by a handful of ballots in a hotly contested manual count.
The nearly even distribution of party preference in the popular vote reflects at the institutional level. The Senate is reliably expected to remain in Democratic control while the Republican Party is not about to lose its grip on the House of Representatives. This is because incumbents enjoy an overwhelming advantage in elections for seats at the US Congress.
Whoever wins the presidency will still face the congressional gridlock in Washington. This is less a matter of personal leadership style or propensity for working across the aisle. The ideological differences between the two parties have simply become more severe.
The worsening ideological chasm between the two parties is driven less by the political personalities involved and more by the nature of the issues that have emerged.
Principal among these issues are those that relate to lifestyle choices. Both legislation and judicial rulings over the years, for instance, increased the women’s control over their own bodies — including abortion on demand. The liberals support this trend, the social conservatives want to reverse it.
Legal protection for those choosing alternative lifestyles, such as gay marriage, is another social issue where the chasm between liberals and progressives becomes more irreconcilable by the day. That adds to the cultural gap between, say, the Bible Belt southern states and the more cosmopolitan big cities on the coasts.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the deep recession that followed it, it is no surprise that the economy is the principal concern for the majority of Americans. On economic issues, as well, the ideological gap between the two parties seems to widen with each electoral cycle.
Republicans, personified by vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, advocate drastic cuts in spending, including rolling back the costly mandatory medical insurance program instituted during the Obama administration. These drastic cuts resemble the tough austerity programs instituted in the financially troubled European economies.
The drastic cuts in spending are indispensable to avoid falling off the “fiscal cliff” — the point at which the huge US debt becomes completely unserviceable. However, massive cuts in spending at this point will likely undermine the economic recovery. It could push the US economy back into recession.
Even if Obama wins reelection, he will very likely have to move harder than he did to tame the budget deficit. He will have to do both budget cuts and revenue boosting measures to achieve that, careful always to avoid jeopardizing the fragile US economic recovery.
It is bad enough that the rest of the world is hampered by Europe teetering on the brink of another recession. It will be worse if the tenuous American recovery is torpedoed by drastic budget cuts.
During the campaign debates, the candidates sparred over issues like Israel and Mali. The fact is the rest of the world will be most affected by rise or fall of US economic prospects.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, the outstanding US debt is far too large to be effectively manageable. The urgency of reducing the debt notwithstanding, much of the US’ feeble recovery depends on public spending. Any prospect for economic expansion could be negated by efforts to control the debt.
There is not much policy room for maneuver on the matter of budgets, deficits and the debt. Narrow as the policy options might be, Americans are divided with a passion. Any economic policy package is likely to be trapped in the divided US Congress.
We are not sure if, regardless of the electoral outcome, this elections brought the US closer to a national consensus over what to do with the debt.