Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawtan
Most Republicans don't seem to understand that there was a political realignment during the Nixon to Reagan years, which resulted in the start of polarized partisanship of the parties.
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This well illustrates my point: studying history explains quite well what happened.
That realignment wasn't the start of polarized partisanship.
George Washington himself warned that a two-party system would result in polarization. The realignment you cite was neither the first such realignment to happen in American history, nor was it even the
last one -- we're watching another realignment NOW, in fact.
The very nature of having two political parties means that you're going to have waves of this.
When two parties are mostly in agreement, it's hard for voters to decide who to vote for. In order to get elected, politicians have to rally for an issue to try to get people who care about that issue to vote for them. This pushes the parties towards polarization in order to distinguish themselves.
When two parties are polarized and of roughly equal power, then politicians who want to get elected reach out to moderates to try to curry favor with a broader group of voters, which decreases polarization through compromise.
When two parties are polarized and there is a power imbalance, the stronger party will double down on their platform to hold on to their own voters and encourage them to be active, knowing that the weaker party is going to focus their platform to try to get voters that are less dedicated to the stronger party's cause to care more about the weaker party's cause. This causes more polarization in an attempt to tip the balance of power.
Turns out? That
usually works. In American history,
the underdog wins. The longer the stronger party is in power, more and more people will become dissatisfied. The issues that have been neglected in favor of the stronger party's agenda will become more important, while the issues that the stronger party has been successful in implementing will become less relevant
because they were successful (at least from the perspective of the voters that support it).
And that leads back to depolarization: When the balance of power DOES tip, the dynamic changes. What I said before holds true: The stronger party sharpens their focus to keep their voters, and the weaker party changes their focus to win them back. But if the swing is dramatic enough, the weaker party's policy has to become one of compromise -- they can't abandon their core voters that believe in their current platform, but they can't keep running with the same ideas either, so if politicians on that side want to get their jobs back, they have to reach across the aisle to find a balance that satisfies more people.
Of course, doing that means there will be some faction of core voters that no longer feel that their leadership is following the right agenda, and they turn into swing voters, willing to switch parties if the other party promises to work with them on things they care about, causing a shift in the party's consensus as they move over.