American political polarization is an important topic that we as a nation must begin to address.
Looking at a 2022 Pew poll, our polarization started to push further apart in both the Senate and House in the 1970s.
Image downloaded from Pew Research at https://bit.ly/3MmivMU.
Our current polarization as a nation is a complex issue to resolve. A 2023 article from Seth Masket and Hans Noel outlines the slide toward polarization that begins with restructuring the way the two major political parties selected presidential candidates during the primaries.
This article does a nice job of defining the problem and diagnosing many of the challenges, primarily that party elites no longer have their thumb on the party nomination process. The primaries have become more democratized. At first blush, this change may sound like a good thing.
Unfortunately, it is not.
The loss of party discipline and control from party elites to the rank-and-file masses has had dire consequences relative to republican (little ‘r’) over democratic (little ‘d’) principles that governed the Founders in writing the Constitution.
The result is that populist candidates with little political experience are now able to cater through digital outlines to the masses and exploit the primary system to bypass party elites. This change has contributed in a significant way to the polarization since a plurality is all that is needed to win a primary election.
The Founders were most concerned about demagogues taking control of the Presidency, which is one of the underlying principles to the Electoral College.
I plan to write more on this later, and this topic will appear in my next book.
For now, if we wish to minimize the polarization levels in our democracy, we can start with ourselves and avoid hubris by villainizing our political opposition.
We should remember that over 70 million Americans supported each side in the last Presidential election. When we participate in the denigration and belittling of one side, we should remember those numbers and remember that democracy is not only a source of liberty but requires an equal measure of responsibility.
