Im not sure if the guy who declared "the end of history" in the 90s is really best poised to comment on this. The deep, societal rot that set this polarization in motion essentially kicked off shortly before he famously declared western civilization to be akin to perfection.
It seems pretty clear from this essay that he thinks that polarization is a surface level issue best dealt with by tweaking "how we talk to each other" across the political divide rather than addressing the underlying structural issues that indirectly trigger a deep level of anger and resentment like staggering wealth inequality.
He's such a hack, and the End of History was dumb even back in 92. Guess what he is saying resonates with some people, cause he keeps getting attention despite his work being neo-liberal fanfiction.
Excuse me but what is the point of your comment? Anything general about intellectuals in my comment is all in your own head. And what does some American pundit has to do with anything?
Anybody really worth listening to is probably not going to be as corporate friendly as Fukuyama so they probably wont get much of an airing on the mainstream media.
I like Chomsky, but your criticism makes no sense. You can’t be a serious intellectual unless you hate corporations? Have you looked around lately? People love corporations and the products corporations make. And there is no better system than corporate neoliberalism, that we have figured out, for giving people the material things they want in large quantities. I just got back from Disneyland. It’s neoliberal paradise and people love it. People in my third world home country want to come to America and buy a house in Texas with four bedrooms and a pool and take their kids to Disneyland.
There’s lots of good criticisms to be made of the system. But there’s also a serious intellectual case for why systems that facilitate people getting the material things they want is a good thing. To write that off completely is intellectual laziness; a desire to wish away the difficult parts of your own position.
Chomsky who loves to downplay genocide if done by a leftist party and the political system he advocates is so hilariously unproven and basically can not actually work. But sure he is really worth listing too.
You did not add anything of value to the discussion, and it has nothing to do with my comment. You not even bringing a real argument for anything to the table. An absolute preposterous idea that Fuku being an idiot says anything about other public intellectuals. Don't make me, or anyone else, the target of your own internal discussion. Especially such nonsense.
The Origins of Political Order was a good book. I felt it had a reasonable way of structuring the understanding of how different societies came about and how a different mix of rule of law, accountability to the people, and the existence of a state.
Despite wealth inequality you can have societies which aren’t at each other’s throats. Not to say we want that society, but that is not directly related.
I also think that while the suggestion is facile on the surface, there is something more psychologically substantive —I’m not sure it’s sufficient but it certainly would help.
The root of our issues in the US is the selling out the lower classes’s potential by the government and industry to offshoring, thus reducing their economic power and outlook.
Of course if we hadn’t pursued globalization we’d be less advanced and things would be more expensive —imagine a kind of Switzerland, but while the potential is less open ended the lower classes and the middle classes would be less diverged from themselves as well as from the wealthy. So an executive to staff disparity might be 10x instead of 100x.
I think it's only theoretically possible, in practical terms it is not. With enormous wealth inequality you get an oligarchy class who will use their wealth/power to chip away at the societal stabilizers that would keep the worst excesses of wealth inequality in check like the social safety net, strong labor rights, etc.
In any case, I agree that selling out the lower classes for is pretty much guaranteed to make them angry, resentful and susceptible to the charms of right wing populists wanting to ascend to power upon a platform of blaming one or more convenient minority scapegoats.
> Despite wealth inequality you can have societies which aren’t at each other’s throats.
Can you name just one civilization with staggering inequalities which has not been subject to social conflict?
> The root of our issues in the US is the selling out the lower classes’s potential by the government and industry to offshoring, thus reducing their economic power.
I don't think this argument holds. The US was the theatre or major class struggle long before the neoliberal offshoring waves. Popular riots and massacres by the local authorities is nothing new, see for example the battle of Blair Mountain in 1921: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
More to the point, the GDP/capita in the USA has kept growing over the years despite offshoring. The fact that some parts of the population struggle to feed themselves is due to conscious wealth-capturing schemes from the rich and government-friendly corporations. Or as Warren Buffet once put it, "Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won".
When the people realize how duped they've been with empty promises and scapegoats, they are bound to loose their shit and be at someone's throat.
50 years ago a high school graduate could get a decent job, buy a house and raise a family without too much sweat. Even HS dropouts had a fighting chance. That ain’t happenin no more.
As Buffett alludes to, this is recent. In the last 30 years -as a consequence of offshoring. Cobbling shoes and pickin up garbage ain’t glamorous but they're a living. All the mills closing shop in the south affected working class black employment, in the northeast it affected working class white employment. But add up all the industries affected.
Now we’re beginning to offshore food. The laborers who used to cross the border for jobs now have jobs in their own countries which may be better may be worse…
It’s all done by a greedy gov and greedy industrialists who turned to globalism and away from supporting local economies to the detriment of the lower and middle classes.
Also, with regard to Sweden, they have been a destination for poor refugees who on average integrate less than ideally into their society, given social, economic, political and spiritual differences between host country and new arrivals.
I challenge you to go to anywhere that's not obviously a civil war and say that they're at each other's throats.
That argument makes no sense: a lot of people have very exotic tourism in Paris, New York, or in Guadeloupe. Yet for those who look beyond the surface the situation is shocking and on the right day of BLM / gilets jaunes protests you may believe the entire society has lost their shit (when in fact it's just the logical conclusion of a tiny minority of officials/businesses exploiting the entire population).
People want to find these grand narratives. But if you actually look into the data, the real cost are actually mostly related to health care, car ownership and housing police (or city/town planning).
If the US fixed its city planning, stopped pushing every family to have many cars and managed its health care system with even minimal efficiency the data would look much different.
Offshoring is a bad argument, because that has happened in many places to a large extent and the results are not that American.
You can disagree with what Fukuyama wrote in "The End of History" but what he wrote isn't what most people (who haven't read it) think he wrote. The strawman version that most people think he wrote is "Yay! The Cold War is over! Everyone will instantly become democratic and capitalistic!". What he actually wrote is that democracy and capitalism is the eventual end state of human society, even if it may take centuries to get there for everyone. I think history shows that dictatorships and economic systems that deny market forces are ultimately short lived. Yes, right now democracy and capitalism have a lot of detractors, and it may be that these will temporarily fail even in some Western countries. But even if they do, I doubt these new regimes will last long and eventually people will have to go back to what works.
It's an embarrassingly bad take. "The sociopolitical system that I am benefiting from also happens to be the inevitable final and best one" is something that so many people have claimed over the years, and has failed each time. And that's not to mention the fundamental contradictions between democracy and capitalism, the existential threat capitalism has posed to the entire world via climate change, the fragility of pseudodemocratic institutions past and present, and dozens of other problems. But sure, the system we have had for less then a tenth of the duration of many ancient empires is final and complete, and everyone should just give up on finding solutions to its many problems that might inconvence those currently in power.
When people say things like "the existential threat capitalism has posed to the entire world via climate change" one has to wonder if they know about the horrendous pollution (often far worse than in the West) that existed in the Soviet Union and related countries. The issue isn't about "capitalism" but industrial society in general. If you want to get rid of that, fine, but I don't think you'll find many people willing to go back to an agrarian or hunter-gatherer society.
I'm not sure it makes sense counting societies prior to the industrial revolution because most issues in society before then depended just on the control of arable land. The industrial revolution changed the entire dynamic. Dictatorships, whether communistic or fascistic haven't lasted long in this era, and nearly all surviving monarchies turned into meaningless shows of pageantry (and those that survived as actual rulers like some in the Middle East, did so because they were oil states and are unlikely to last long as the world moves away from reliance on fossil fuels).
> The path out of polarization needs to be a political one
Forgive my guffaw. Politics are the way towards unity? Yeah right, and another drink is the way towards sobriety.
> The only way to resolve this conundrum is through the democratic process itself: that is, through a decisive electoral victory by one party that seeks to promote serious change, and is able to enact it.
Oh my gosh you can't be serious. Just elect a strong party that ramrods change through? That will solve our division?
To be fair, it's more liberal elitism than left wing elitism, but yeah, it's clear his sympathies lie more with technocrats than the great unwashed masses.
> Could such a realigning election occur in contemporary America? It could [...]. Of the two parties, it would for better or worse have to be the Democrats. Though I am now a Democrat, [...]
You don't need sarcasm tags, he's quite serious.
"Just give me power and I'll unify the country and bring us into the 21st century with lots of reforms!"
Seeing how Reddit’s frontpage is becoming more and more left to the point even moderate leftists think it is ridiculous, I don’t have much faith in depolarization.
This is demographics in action. Reddit leans heavily under-30 and educated.
More importantly, why is a more left-leaning Reddit front page your exemplar? The social, moral, and intellectual decline of the post-Trump Republican Party seems far more noteworthy.
That's just how just centrism looks on a global scale. People out here find it hard to imagine how Democrats could possibly move further to the right. If the Overton window leads to America, perhaps you should stop chasing it.
The polarization is wanted and created to prevent actual change away from a festering oligarchy. Even if one totalitarian wing would win, a new split would appear within, to prevent action.
> This weakness is well understood by enemies like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has done everything he can to widen those divisions and has acted geopolitically at a moment when he thought the U.S. was too weak and self-preoccupied to respond effectively.
Not a fan of Putin, and I think the polarization is real, but then this should already be obvious to anyone whose not been asleep for the past few years.
Given the domain name includes the word persuasion, such a claim needs more substantiation, elaboration or citation. This feels like a student paper without much strong arguments beyond general hand wavy sentiments on the state of the union.
Not sure why Fukuyama is taken too seriously - what are the things he's really been right about?
He dismisses rank-choice but mostly because it will take too long to get it everywhere. To me, it seems the best way to allow all sorts of candidates to run, and will likely reduce the chances of the wacko extreme candidates we're getting today.
Finally, he mentions Yang's new Forward Party, which imho likely won't do much good, but has the potential of causing another Ralph Nader-esque impact on a future election. Although we can't tell what would have happened with a Gore presidency, I'm almost sure we would not have invaded Iraq. Let's all hope the Forward Party dies a quick and painless death.
He has a particularly weak reebuttal of Ranked Voting:
> Moreover, it is not guaranteed to facilitate viable third parties; this has not happened in Australia, for example, where it is the rule.
Australia has a Conservative colalition of two parties, Liberal and National with similar but unaligned goals, and a nominally Left (for some value of Left but not Copmmunist and not the trade union party it once was) Party in Labor.
That's three majors.
Australia also has (largely thanks to RC) a number of independants and small parties that also have a voice both the upper and lower houses (of the various States, and in the Federal Government).
The need to negotiate with small players to build numbers to pass desired policy is a major factor in avoiding the kind of extreme polarisation seen within the central north american region.
That's more due to the proportional representation method (STV) used by Australia's upper legislative body. The lower body uses single-seat IRV and for most of the past century has been strongly dominated by two parties. This isn't surprising because IRV (aka RCV) suffers from center squeeze, meaning that it tends to eliminate consensus candidates when there are three or more real contender candidates.
I don't think anyone can possibly take the guy seriously after he wrote _The End of History_. What an absolute joke of a hot take that was. Did he truly believe that just because the Soviet Union and its satellites had a governmental collapse that the entire planet was going to turn into a liberal democracy?
I've read the book, albeit 15 years ago. That may not be the entire thesis, but it is the primary component of it. From Wikipedia[0]:
> Fukuyama argues that history should be viewed as an evolutionary process, and that the end of history, in this sense, means that liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. According to Fukuyama, since the French Revolution, liberal democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives, and so there can be no progression from it to an alternative system. Fukuyama claims not that events will stop occurring in the future, but rather that all that will happen in the future (even if totalitarianism returns) is that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term.
He would say that its not that liberal democracy is some teleological final state. But more like a local optimum that we can't hill climb out of. There simply aren't different ideas about how to organize states "beyond" democracy.
I think the shift is subtle but important. It implies a lack of ideas as opposed to a "prediction" about the consequences of 1991.
I don't think he was necessarily wrong with The End Of History, (un)-ironically historical events weren't on his side. What would have replaced "The War On Terror" if 9/11 doesn't happen? What does China look like if someone less hard-liner than Xi Jinping replaced Hu Jintao? What if Russia's second war in Chechnya lasted a hard 10 years and Putin is pushed out? We could make a huge list of counterfactuals like these.
That being said, the problem with Fukuyama is that for all intents and purposes, forecasting the future in terms of grand narratives is impossible to do accurately.
Rank Choice is a bad idea. Its unnecessarily complex and that complexity actually doesn't mean its better, its actually significantly worse then alternative methods.
Range (Score or Star) voting are significantly better.
Alternative hypothesis: end technocratic censorship and allow for a more federated local approach to dealing with contentious issues. Oh wait, that would mean a government working for the people it governs and not the political donor class. Silly me, I forgot we're only supposed to pretend like we care about the people.
> Moreover, it is not guaranteed to facilitate viable third parties; this has not happened in Australia, for example, where it is the rule.
I don't particularly want a viable third party, I want people who appeal strongly to 30% of the vote and are hated by 30% of the vote not to win and all the goodness that flows from that.
And I want a multitude viable parties so that we can represent the people better. We're not just this or that; we have a wide variety of interests and stances.
Not everything should not be like a football game.
The third parties don't need to be "viable" to have an impact in ranked choice voting, that's kind of the point of it. Just talking about a viable third party is a sign that you're thinking in first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all terms.
You can have the big "we like red things" and the tiny "we like red apples from new zealand" party, and keep the "We like Blue things and hate everything from new Zealand" party out of office because of how voters rank them.
Which then, in strategy meetings, leads to the divisive "We hate everything from New Zealand" policy getting ditched by the "We like blue things" party, because it only appealed to a small minority, who get to vote for a newly created extremist "We really hate NZ" party that reflects their views better anyway.
I still don't get why people like ranked choice so much. Anybody that seriously investigates voting methods can see that it is a highly flawed solution. If we are going to the trouble of changing that, why not reach for the best solutions.
Ranked choice leads to very non-intuitive outcomes (including spoiler effects) and already has done so in a actual elections. Its complex to fill out and it forces choice on people that don't want to choice.
Because its so much better than what we have, people who care about the real life outcome, not the academic arguments, realise that any of the sensible choices would be better and so other factors, like name recognition or existing usage, dominate over any minor further improvements.
Its not an academic argument. Its a why don't we do something that is simpler and easier to understand and has better outcomes.
He you know how you evaluate restaurants, books, and most other things in live? You give things a score. That's how should evaluate politicians as well.
And guess what, the outcomes will be mostly intuitive rather then confusing as often happens with ranked choice.
This is classic "I'm right, so political systems should cater to me." I'd love to read this sort of thing from somebody who doesn't seem themselves as between two extremes. It'd be more believable. As written, the argument just feels like Fukuyama feels personally unrepresented by the existing parties and concludes that what would represent him would therefore be best for the nation.
Indeed: There are voting systems that are objectively better at delivering representation and safer from causing perverse outcomes. If he were to stick to that, it would be more honest. Up through George H.W. Bush the Republican party represented me just fine. Now I'm a registered Democrat. I've got differences with both parties. I think the electoral college, partisan gerrymanders, and the Senate are structurally unrepresentative, but, under a first past the post system, supporting a mainstream party is what gets you the best representation.
> [Fukuyama’s] view is that the Republicans are hopeless because they support Donald Trump. But that seems like a solvable problem. Perhaps Mr. Trump will not run in 2024. Perhaps he will lose, in either the primaries or the general election, and then no longer be a factor.
> In fact, I think it is fair to say that Mr. Trump moved the Republican Party closer to the center. He did so in part by rejecting libertarian intellectual ideas on fiscal policy, immigration, and trade. From my perspective, not ideal, as the kids would say.
> Many conservative pundits believe that a Republican Party with Mr. Trump’s position on issues but someone else as the standard-bearer could wallop the Democrats in 2024. But Fukuyama does not think in those terms at all.
> I suspect that Fukuyama simply fears and loathes the social class that forms the core of the contemporary Republican Party. Although he thinks that the Woke progressives on the Democratic side are electorally toxic and substantively misguided, I suspect that his class sympathies lie with them. Let me know if you feel that I am being uncharitable toward Fukuyama.
> I believe that the Republican Party could turn away from the personality cult of Trump while retaining and building on the support that he generated. Fukuyama believes that the Democratic Party could turn away from the Woke progressive movement. In that regard, each of us may be guilty of wishful thinking.
> But I would stop well short of claiming that there would be heaven on earth, or the end of polarization, should a Republican other than Trump lead the party to a decisive victory in 2024. Nor would heaven on earth ensue if Fukuyama’s wish for the Democrats came true.
"Polarization" is not, in fact, the "the single greatest weakness of the United States as a country today." I am so sick to death of this sentiment. Fukuyama and guys like him love systems, they love tinkering, they love efficiency, they love "getting stuff done". Never mind the unspoken ideology of the middle, never mind what we're actually trying to achieve has a distinct ideological identity, we're political engineers, here! We're just trying to fix the system! It's almost like they're optimizing for bill passage rate.
I reject the idea that technical moderates are the default, that they're non-ideological, and that a watery combination of left and right ideas is best because it appeals to the most people, if only because we've been doing exactly that since the 80s and it's gotten us here.
I’ve never heard of the author until today, so I don’t have any bias against him, but I think his argument makes a lot of sense.
Personally, my preferred solution to polarization is voting reform (I actually think approval voting would be a better fix than RCV though) but he makes a good point that voting reform is a long term solution to a short term problem. I still think it’s worth pursuing, but there’s no way it will help us with the 2024 presidential election, for example.
The Democratic Party moving to the center could be done much more quickly, and if the strategy was successful in winning elections, might force the Republican Party to similarly adopt more moderate positions.
Another “solution” to polarization in the US is a civil war. This should definitely be avoided at all costs, but would probably eventually reduce polarization when the winning side forces the losing side to adopt their policies (like how the North forced the South to end slavery after the Civil War).
Having a single party dominate politics for a while sounds a little scary, but if they’re democratically elected, I guess that’s what people want, right? And, to me, it’s a much more palatable short-term solution to polarization than Civil War II.
Did the Civil War really facilitate depolarization in the US? The South is arguably still recovering economically from the Civil War, and retains a very strong cultural identity linked to the Confederacy. Walk into the gift shop in the Alabama state capitol, and you can buy Confederate Army uniforms for your kids.
The South was economically speaking essentially very, very, very behind until WW2 and its after match. They didn't recover 'just fine'.
And considering that the South was literally turning into traditional aristocracy including changing low codes and so on, now is much closer to what we would consider the center.
Americans as a whole are right of center on economic issues compared to Europe. But the current tension in America revolves around cultural issues. On that, the Democratic Party is significantly left of center, to the point where they reject political debate on a number of cultural issues where Europeans debate and are willing to compromise.
For example in 2016, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the claim that the “right to marriage” under the EU Convention on Human Rights encompasses same-sex marriage: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-.... In Germany, same sex marriage became legal by legislative vote, with Angela Merkel voting against it (putting her to the right of Donald Trump on the issue). There was no political crisis around these votes. While many in Europe support same-sex marriage, most see it as a political issue, not something beyond the reach of the political process.
Contrast the US, where progressives are talking about “packing” the Supreme Court over its rejecting the notion that the Constitution contains a right to abortion so expansive that it would render invalid nearly every abortion law in Europe. That decision made international news, with countries like France criticizing the Supreme Court, even though their own abortion laws were illegal under Roe, and the case in question, Dobbs, upheld a Mississippi law that was basically the same as the law in France.
There is no appetite in the Democratic party to pack the Supreme Court; it's a fringe position. Both poles of American politics are full of fringe ideas; on the left, you have things like "impeach Clarence Thomas", and on the right you have things like "defund the FBI and then have prosecutors in every red state secure punitive search warrants for Democratic politicians".
It's true that Roe, especially as originally conceived, put America to "the left" of Europe. We're to the left of Europe on all sorts of things: bankruptcy laws, no-fault divorces, exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, same-sex marriage, the right to wear religious garb in public spaces, the insistence that religious education be kept out of public schooling, no mandatory military service, and, of course, the First Amendment.
But your argument here includes a sleight of hand, because you confining your analysis to Dobbs itself, but ignore the state laws that it enabled, many of which are radically to the right of the European consensus. For instance, Ohio bans abortion at the moment a fetal heartbeat is detected, with no exceptions for rape or incest, so that a 10 year old girl had to be smuggled into a neighboring state within weeks of Dobbs passing.
Your point is that Europe doesn't put these questions outside of the political process. But you've run far past the end zone with that (seemingly correct) argument, by trying, and failing, to characterize the positions of the American political poles. It's a shame, because the real point you have to make here is interesting; you shouldn't crud it up with the partisan stuff.
> But your argument here includes a sleight of hand, because you confining your analysis to Dobbs itself, but ignore the state laws that it enabled, many of which are radically to the right of the European consensus.
The European consensus on moral ideology versus politics enables laws (in Ireland until recently, and in Poland still) that are radically to the right of the European consensus on abortion. Nobody in Belgium is showing up to the houses of EHCR Judges over recent decisions rejecting the notion of rights to same-sex marriage and abortion.
The point is that both Ohio and France view abortion as a matter of political line-drawing. People in France manage not to freak out about how people in Poland choose to draw the lines, so long as Polish law doesn't apply to them. In my view that makes Ohio and France more similar to each other than to California and New York, where many folks think that issues like abortion and same-sex marriage should be outside of the political process altogether.
They polled immediately after the Dobbs leak; prior to that poll, it got like 25% support. It's a fringe position, and will get fringier. If you polled Democrats on whether we should impeach Clarence Thomas, you'd get substantial support, because Democrats hate Clarence Thomas, just like you'd easily get Republicans to support impeaching Sonia Sotomayor.
The point you said you were making, about who does the line-drawing, is one I agree with. But, as I said, you misled when you implied Dobbs aligned policy with "Europe" (if you had said Dobbs had the ultimate effect of aligning us with Poland, I'd agree, but you didn't say that because we all know Poland is significantly to the right of the European consensus, and it would have harmed the partisan argument you tacked on).
Many politicians in Europe also take that position—legalized abortion is a delicate compromise in most EU countries. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who briefly succeeded Merkel as leader of the CDU, also staunchly opposed abortion, as did many in her party. In fact, in Germany’s high court has recognized a right to life under the Basic Law that begins at conception. Abortion is legalized in the country under the theory that the constitutional violation doesn’t necessarily need to be punished.
A national abortion ban can’t get 60 votes in the Senate. We’ll end up with a mix of laws at the state level, just like the EU. Public polling shows that Americans favor similar laws to Europe—abortions being illegal after the first trimester except under various exceptions. https://www.vox.com/2022/7/13/23204957/roe-wade-abortion-dob... (“At least three national surveys have shown majorities of Americans favor banning abortion after 15 weeks, even as those same respondents said they wanted to see Roe upheld.”).
> A national abortion ban can’t get 60 votes in the Senate.
David Shor: "Unless we see big structural changes in the Democratic party's coalition, then the modal outcome for 2024 is Donald Trump winning a filibuster-proof trifecta with a minority of the vote." (emphasis his)
(And, of course, the GOP could weaken the filibuster with 51 senators.)
What the public wants and what the legislature’s provide are fairly far from each other on this issue.
The minute the Dobbs decision came down several states laws changed to dramatically limit abortion. Much more limited than the national polls suggest are the desired outcomes. Indiana of all places had to rush a change on the books to make sure their ban wasn’t too limiting.
In that climate, and the way midterm elections go, I think a national ban is a definite possibility.
Meanwhile, an assault weapons ban is very popular with the public, but is effectively impossible to get passed.
Structurally, this Supreme Court is more activist than the public wants and is misaligned with the majority opinions (though I’ll grant that’s not the courts mandate).
It has already aligned several whole states with Poland on the issue; this isn't an abstraction: the population of US states with bans comparable to Poland exceeds that of Poland.
> resistance to RCV is strong in the two existing parties that do not want to see their duopoly weakened.
Of course that's true of all other proposals to reduce polarization too. Is it bad for the current duopoly? Well then it can't be allowed to happen, can it?
Fukuyama's filter bubble is SO obvious reading this piece.
> "The path out of polarization needs to be a political one, given the nature of our democratic system: that is, a realigning election in which one party decisively wins control of both houses of Congress and the presidency and holds on to power through two or three electoral cycles. "
I can't think of any better way to speedrun the collapse of America than this happening, honestly. This might have been viable back in '12-'16, but now? Hell no. Every major political institution has set its social capital on fire in the past decade, and the only reason a lot of them are standing is because they can point to the 'other side' being obstructionist. A thin veneer of 'my team right or wrong' on the part of the least-informed voters (the least informed CITIZENRY don't vote at all) is the only thing keeping people from being radicalized into 'this entire system is bad and EVERYONE IN IT IS BAD'. (Right now we're radicalizing people into 'the system would work if we got rid of the deplorables/libtards'). Particularly since without the kayfabe of Democrats vs. Republicans, the media is going to have to invent a new thing to get people worked up about: The NYT/WSJ/Guardian/Reason/Daily Wire/terrible FB meme groups aren't going to shut down or say "Now that one party is in charge, we should give up the profits that come with outrage for the sake of our ~country~". Nor is such a situation safe from outside meddling; it's even MORE exploitable in some ways.
> "The problem with RCV is that for it to have a major effect, it would have to be adopted in a large number of states for both party primaries and presidential elections."
Yes. And why I think a successful implementation of RCV in the US would involve multiple states having it on the ballot in the SAME ELECTION (ideally an ODD YEAR election). As Fukuyama identifies, the major obstacle to this is the people in power on both sides, but his idea of politics as being only national down is showing here. Basic tactics suggest you fight a centralized, powerful enemy by spreading out your efforts - make them fight on multiple fronts and set up a situation where you can fail and still make inroads. (If 25 states have it on the ballot and it passes in 12, you still have made significant progress and if those 12 show it's viable, then the next run becomes a lot easier. Especially if you can make the 12 swing states.)
"The lack of RCV then affects the prospects of the second path towards depolarization, emergence of a viable third party."
Likewise, Fukuyama shows his idea of 'politics' is pretty restricted to 'national politics' in this case. My idea of a 'viable third party' would look to the history of them in the US, which would suggest that the most likely way to get a viable third party off the ground is to create a strong state/regional party (a la the Minnesotan Farmer-Labor party). That party then gives another viable route into politics for aspiring politicians, which means that the politicians in the Dem/GOP at the state/local have some ability to push back against national interests (e.g. a popular Minnesotan Dem state senator could say they'll run as F+L if the party doesn't bend on thing X, and if that person is on the shortlist for potential governor/national candidacy, then losing them hurts, tactically).
I could also see some major progress happening if a party arose and focused solely on local, officially non-partisan races. A "viable third party" doesn't just mean "a party that immediately has a substantial footprint in national Congress or can win the presidency". What an odd definition.
> "These approaches—changes in institutional rules, third parties, and grassroots organization—are all important components that could contribut...
We need electoral reform because that would enable realignment. How many times do we hear people say "I really feel this way, but I support the Democrats because they aren't evil" or "yeah trump is an idiot and policies x,y,z sick, but I support the GOP because they believe in staying out of my business" or a million variations on that?
We need an electoral system that enables the existence and viability of a host of political parties, so that people can go to the ballot box and vote FOR something instead of against the "other" party.
A huge way both parties are able to capture support is through fear mongering. Dems shrewdly see some hope for political tailwinds when the GOP blocks abortion. Fox News rallies moderates and right wingers to the GOP by showing examples of the silliest examples of far left behavior (and by lying constantly).
If
* political parties had to campaign on what THEY would do rather than what their opponent does,
* Political parties could be quickly abandoned for failure to achieve those goals, and
* People could vote positively for what they support rather than against what they don't,
This country would be in a better place.
And friends, electoral reform will likely start local. If you like the idea, write your councilman. Get into municipal code and figure out what it would take to put such a system on city elections.
The Democratic Party has completely lost its bearings. It transformed from being a pro-union, center-left party in the middle of the 20th century into a "third way" neoliberal party that is much more well known for its social stances than for any semblance of a cohesive economic policy.
The article denigrates Bernie Sanders and "the Squad" as being extremely out of touch with mainstream American political views, but on average 40% of eligible voters do not vote in presidential elections, not to mention midterm elections with their even worse turnout. American adults are disillusioned, and feel that no matter who wins elections, nothing will change -- and to a large extent, this is true! The biggest economic proposals of any candidate in recent memory were the "Medicare for all" proposal from Sanders, and Obama's healthcare reform.
Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a single-payer healthcare system, rather than Romneycare. Of course the Republicans were going to throw a fit, stomp their feet, and call it socialism -- they've been doing that for decades. Starting from single-payer healthcare would've given the Republicans room to negotiate the bill into something actually bipartisan, but by starting with the furthest-right possible position, all they could do was say no. The desire to pass a bipartisan bill meant only that the Republicans were allowed to criticize the Affordable Care Act as socialism, despite the fact that they themselves had proposed an almost identical measure in the '90s under Gingrich, and Romney had implemented the same in Massachusetts.
Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a New New Deal, rather than the anemic $800 billion that ended up being spent on the Recovery Act. There was so much room for far-reaching infrastructure and green energy spending that just didn't get to happen.
The Republican party thrives on the government implementing half measures. It is worse to have an underfunded and thereby ineffective government program than it is to have no program at all -- look at the NHS in the U.K., which is a perfect example. The Conservative party removed a huge amount of funding from the NHS, and it began struggling. Wait times have increased, and quality of care has decreased. Now the Conservatives get to use the NHS as an example of an ineffective, inefficient, and failing government program, and are proposing private options to "bolster" it. If they just increased the funding and actually hired people and paid them well, this would be a non-issue.
In sum, I think that the Democrats need to show some cohesion and spine for once. They need to come up with a unified economic policy that is well-vetted, and they need to completely ignore Republican criticism, rather than waffling and watering things down. Nothing turns a voter off more than a politician who's views are blown about with the winds of opinion -- a simple, strong message that promises to make individuals lives better can be enough. They also need to stop proposing policies that result in large swathes of the population being immediately turned off -- there are nearly 400 million privately owned firearms in the United States -- it is simply not feasible to ban them at this point. What can be accomplished is regulation around the acquisition of firearms and ammunition: universal background checks, classes with meaningful exams, licensing to be able to buy (but not registration of the firearm itself, which plays right into the "gun grabber" fearmongering).
When Republicans say "this will mean tax raises!", the Democrats should respond "no, this will mean the closing of tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to shelter their profits from taxation".
When Republicans say "this is socialism and will take away your freedoms", the Democrats should respond "th...
They are and they aren't. Both parties have national bodies that vote on a platform which all candidates are ostensibly meant to support. It's not as rigorous as parties in a multi-party parliamentary system, but it's certainly not true that they are only labels.
It may be narrative, but it's also a major component of many people's worldview -- especially of late, as the polarization has increased. The strength of one's bond to that worldview and the number of people who feel strongly both feed back into the party's platform, as those people are the primary voters (or "base").
I disagree that it’s a political problem with a political solution. In my view what we’re seeing is actually seeing is closer to a religious conflict being caused by dechristianization. Increasingly secular elites are replacing traditional religion with a quasi-religious systems of ideas. The contrast between the tolerant liberalism of the 1990s and the moralistic progressivism of today is hard to explain any other way. Folks are trying to get their arms around the scope of it. Wesley Yang, for example, calls it “successor ideology.” https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/opinion-free-expression/the-suc.... Shadi Hamid, who has done fascinating work addressing democracy in Muslim countries, has similarly noted the new strains of thinking resulting from American dechristianization: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america...
Consider immigration, which Fukuyama mentions. Looking at this as a foreigner, I don’t have a hard time understanding MAGA republicans. If Bangladesh, where I am from, were seeing the kind of immigration levels we are seeing in the US today, folks would be reacting in exactly the same way as Trump voters. Nothing about their reaction surprises me.
What does surprise me are folks who dismiss the reaction as “racist” and therefore beyond the scope of political debate. Not the Matt Yglesias types, who favor increased immigration on economic grounds and are willing to engage in persuasion over it. But folks who are so committed to “equality” as an overriding moral principle that precludes distinguishing people on different sides of a border based on cultural or ethnic affinities. That’s a remarkable new idea! Nearly the whole word subscribes to the Westphalian view of a nation state, wherein self governance for distinct ethnic and cultural groups is a human right.
Trump voters can understand the nature of Bangladesh and Japan as Bangladeshis and Japanese themselves understand it. I think for a growing segment of the intellectual elite in the Democratic Party, they really cannot.
96 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadIt seems pretty clear from this essay that he thinks that polarization is a surface level issue best dealt with by tweaking "how we talk to each other" across the political divide rather than addressing the underlying structural issues that indirectly trigger a deep level of anger and resentment like staggering wealth inequality.
You said he's a "hack," I'm saying it's relative. If Fukuyama is a hack, then that doesn't leave many public intellectuals left.
Anybody really worth listening to is probably not going to be as corporate friendly as Fukuyama so they probably wont get much of an airing on the mainstream media.
There’s lots of good criticisms to be made of the system. But there’s also a serious intellectual case for why systems that facilitate people getting the material things they want is a good thing. To write that off completely is intellectual laziness; a desire to wish away the difficult parts of your own position.
I also think that while the suggestion is facile on the surface, there is something more psychologically substantive —I’m not sure it’s sufficient but it certainly would help.
The root of our issues in the US is the selling out the lower classes’s potential by the government and industry to offshoring, thus reducing their economic power and outlook.
Of course if we hadn’t pursued globalization we’d be less advanced and things would be more expensive —imagine a kind of Switzerland, but while the potential is less open ended the lower classes and the middle classes would be less diverged from themselves as well as from the wealthy. So an executive to staff disparity might be 10x instead of 100x.
In any case, I agree that selling out the lower classes for is pretty much guaranteed to make them angry, resentful and susceptible to the charms of right wing populists wanting to ascend to power upon a platform of blaming one or more convenient minority scapegoats.
Can you name just one civilization with staggering inequalities which has not been subject to social conflict?
> The root of our issues in the US is the selling out the lower classes’s potential by the government and industry to offshoring, thus reducing their economic power.
I don't think this argument holds. The US was the theatre or major class struggle long before the neoliberal offshoring waves. Popular riots and massacres by the local authorities is nothing new, see for example the battle of Blair Mountain in 1921: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
More to the point, the GDP/capita in the USA has kept growing over the years despite offshoring. The fact that some parts of the population struggle to feed themselves is due to conscious wealth-capturing schemes from the rich and government-friendly corporations. Or as Warren Buffet once put it, "Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won".
When the people realize how duped they've been with empty promises and scapegoats, they are bound to loose their shit and be at someone's throat.
As Buffett alludes to, this is recent. In the last 30 years -as a consequence of offshoring. Cobbling shoes and pickin up garbage ain’t glamorous but they're a living. All the mills closing shop in the south affected working class black employment, in the northeast it affected working class white employment. But add up all the industries affected.
Now we’re beginning to offshore food. The laborers who used to cross the border for jobs now have jobs in their own countries which may be better may be worse…
It’s all done by a greedy gov and greedy industrialists who turned to globalism and away from supporting local economies to the detriment of the lower and middle classes.
There are no societies, especially unequal or not, without social conflict. If there are no external enemies internal ones will swiftly be found.
“Only the dead are safe; only the dead have seen the end of war.” George Santayana
Sweden has rather high level of wealth inequality (about the same level as the US) while being quite stable politically and socially.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in...
There are riots in Sweden too [0], and what some consider to be terrorist activities from the far left to the far right [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Riots_and_civil_disor...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Sweden
Also, with regard to Sweden, they have been a destination for poor refugees who on average integrate less than ideally into their society, given social, economic, political and spiritual differences between host country and new arrivals.
That argument makes no sense: a lot of people have very exotic tourism in Paris, New York, or in Guadeloupe. Yet for those who look beyond the surface the situation is shocking and on the right day of BLM / gilets jaunes protests you may believe the entire society has lost their shit (when in fact it's just the logical conclusion of a tiny minority of officials/businesses exploiting the entire population).
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
If the US fixed its city planning, stopped pushing every family to have many cars and managed its health care system with even minimal efficiency the data would look much different.
Offshoring is a bad argument, because that has happened in many places to a large extent and the results are not that American.
Yet he's arguing both here and elsewhere about how to defeat liberal democracy's new domestic and foreign opponents.
like 99% of history is monarchies and dictatorships, democracy is a blip on the radar
Forgive my guffaw. Politics are the way towards unity? Yeah right, and another drink is the way towards sobriety.
> The only way to resolve this conundrum is through the democratic process itself: that is, through a decisive electoral victory by one party that seeks to promote serious change, and is able to enact it.
Oh my gosh you can't be serious. Just elect a strong party that ramrods change through? That will solve our division?
What a terrifying article.
You don't need sarcasm tags, he's quite serious.
"Just give me power and I'll unify the country and bring us into the 21st century with lots of reforms!"
Ok Mao.
More importantly, why is a more left-leaning Reddit front page your exemplar? The social, moral, and intellectual decline of the post-Trump Republican Party seems far more noteworthy.
I'm just giving one example, doesn't necessarily mean that I am a Trump supporter and covering up for Trump.
Not a fan of Putin, and I think the polarization is real, but then this should already be obvious to anyone whose not been asleep for the past few years.
Given the domain name includes the word persuasion, such a claim needs more substantiation, elaboration or citation. This feels like a student paper without much strong arguments beyond general hand wavy sentiments on the state of the union.
He dismisses rank-choice but mostly because it will take too long to get it everywhere. To me, it seems the best way to allow all sorts of candidates to run, and will likely reduce the chances of the wacko extreme candidates we're getting today.
Finally, he mentions Yang's new Forward Party, which imho likely won't do much good, but has the potential of causing another Ralph Nader-esque impact on a future election. Although we can't tell what would have happened with a Gore presidency, I'm almost sure we would not have invaded Iraq. Let's all hope the Forward Party dies a quick and painless death.
having ideas and sharing them is of more value.
> Moreover, it is not guaranteed to facilitate viable third parties; this has not happened in Australia, for example, where it is the rule.
Australia has a Conservative colalition of two parties, Liberal and National with similar but unaligned goals, and a nominally Left (for some value of Left but not Copmmunist and not the trade union party it once was) Party in Labor.
That's three majors.
Australia also has (largely thanks to RC) a number of independants and small parties that also have a voice both the upper and lower houses (of the various States, and in the Federal Government).
The need to negotiate with small players to build numbers to pass desired policy is a major factor in avoiding the kind of extreme polarisation seen within the central north american region.
> Fukuyama argues that history should be viewed as an evolutionary process, and that the end of history, in this sense, means that liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. According to Fukuyama, since the French Revolution, liberal democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives, and so there can be no progression from it to an alternative system. Fukuyama claims not that events will stop occurring in the future, but rather that all that will happen in the future (even if totalitarianism returns) is that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
I'm going by his articulation on a recent podcast with Chris Hayes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY9yBZm_57w
He would say that its not that liberal democracy is some teleological final state. But more like a local optimum that we can't hill climb out of. There simply aren't different ideas about how to organize states "beyond" democracy.
I think the shift is subtle but important. It implies a lack of ideas as opposed to a "prediction" about the consequences of 1991.
That being said, the problem with Fukuyama is that for all intents and purposes, forecasting the future in terms of grand narratives is impossible to do accurately.
Range (Score or Star) voting are significantly better.
https://www.equal.vote/star_vs_rcv
I don't particularly want a viable third party, I want people who appeal strongly to 30% of the vote and are hated by 30% of the vote not to win and all the goodness that flows from that.
Not everything should not be like a football game.
You can have the big "we like red things" and the tiny "we like red apples from new zealand" party, and keep the "We like Blue things and hate everything from new Zealand" party out of office because of how voters rank them.
Which then, in strategy meetings, leads to the divisive "We hate everything from New Zealand" policy getting ditched by the "We like blue things" party, because it only appealed to a small minority, who get to vote for a newly created extremist "We really hate NZ" party that reflects their views better anyway.
Ranked choice leads to very non-intuitive outcomes (including spoiler effects) and already has done so in a actual elections. Its complex to fill out and it forces choice on people that don't want to choice.
https://www.equal.vote/science
He you know how you evaluate restaurants, books, and most other things in live? You give things a score. That's how should evaluate politicians as well.
And guess what, the outcomes will be mostly intuitive rather then confusing as often happens with ranked choice.
> In fact, I think it is fair to say that Mr. Trump moved the Republican Party closer to the center. He did so in part by rejecting libertarian intellectual ideas on fiscal policy, immigration, and trade. From my perspective, not ideal, as the kids would say.
> Many conservative pundits believe that a Republican Party with Mr. Trump’s position on issues but someone else as the standard-bearer could wallop the Democrats in 2024. But Fukuyama does not think in those terms at all.
> I suspect that Fukuyama simply fears and loathes the social class that forms the core of the contemporary Republican Party. Although he thinks that the Woke progressives on the Democratic side are electorally toxic and substantively misguided, I suspect that his class sympathies lie with them. Let me know if you feel that I am being uncharitable toward Fukuyama.
> I believe that the Republican Party could turn away from the personality cult of Trump while retaining and building on the support that he generated. Fukuyama believes that the Democratic Party could turn away from the Woke progressive movement. In that regard, each of us may be guilty of wishful thinking.
> But I would stop well short of claiming that there would be heaven on earth, or the end of polarization, should a Republican other than Trump lead the party to a decisive victory in 2024. Nor would heaven on earth ensue if Fukuyama’s wish for the Democrats came true.
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/francis-fukuyama-has-a-wi...
I reject the idea that technical moderates are the default, that they're non-ideological, and that a watery combination of left and right ideas is best because it appeals to the most people, if only because we've been doing exactly that since the 80s and it's gotten us here.
Agreed, but actual problems aren't profitable enough to garner much media attention.
Ok, what are bigger weaknesses than the current polarization?
> because we've been doing exactly that since the 80s
One can do the right things badly.
Personally, my preferred solution to polarization is voting reform (I actually think approval voting would be a better fix than RCV though) but he makes a good point that voting reform is a long term solution to a short term problem. I still think it’s worth pursuing, but there’s no way it will help us with the 2024 presidential election, for example.
The Democratic Party moving to the center could be done much more quickly, and if the strategy was successful in winning elections, might force the Republican Party to similarly adopt more moderate positions.
Another “solution” to polarization in the US is a civil war. This should definitely be avoided at all costs, but would probably eventually reduce polarization when the winning side forces the losing side to adopt their policies (like how the North forced the South to end slavery after the Civil War).
Having a single party dominate politics for a while sounds a little scary, but if they’re democratically elected, I guess that’s what people want, right? And, to me, it’s a much more palatable short-term solution to polarization than Civil War II.
And considering that the South was literally turning into traditional aristocracy including changing low codes and so on, now is much closer to what we would consider the center.
For example in 2016, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the claim that the “right to marriage” under the EU Convention on Human Rights encompasses same-sex marriage: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-.... In Germany, same sex marriage became legal by legislative vote, with Angela Merkel voting against it (putting her to the right of Donald Trump on the issue). There was no political crisis around these votes. While many in Europe support same-sex marriage, most see it as a political issue, not something beyond the reach of the political process.
Contrast the US, where progressives are talking about “packing” the Supreme Court over its rejecting the notion that the Constitution contains a right to abortion so expansive that it would render invalid nearly every abortion law in Europe. That decision made international news, with countries like France criticizing the Supreme Court, even though their own abortion laws were illegal under Roe, and the case in question, Dobbs, upheld a Mississippi law that was basically the same as the law in France.
It's true that Roe, especially as originally conceived, put America to "the left" of Europe. We're to the left of Europe on all sorts of things: bankruptcy laws, no-fault divorces, exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, same-sex marriage, the right to wear religious garb in public spaces, the insistence that religious education be kept out of public schooling, no mandatory military service, and, of course, the First Amendment.
But your argument here includes a sleight of hand, because you confining your analysis to Dobbs itself, but ignore the state laws that it enabled, many of which are radically to the right of the European consensus. For instance, Ohio bans abortion at the moment a fetal heartbeat is detected, with no exceptions for rape or incest, so that a 10 year old girl had to be smuggled into a neighboring state within weeks of Dobbs passing.
Your point is that Europe doesn't put these questions outside of the political process. But you've run far past the end zone with that (seemingly correct) argument, by trying, and failing, to characterize the positions of the American political poles. It's a shame, because the real point you have to make here is interesting; you shouldn't crud it up with the partisan stuff.
Polls show significant numbers of Democrats support packing: https://www.newsweek.com/new-poll-shows-court-packers-will-f.... It's not a majority, but it's hardly "fringe."
> But your argument here includes a sleight of hand, because you confining your analysis to Dobbs itself, but ignore the state laws that it enabled, many of which are radically to the right of the European consensus.
The European consensus on moral ideology versus politics enables laws (in Ireland until recently, and in Poland still) that are radically to the right of the European consensus on abortion. Nobody in Belgium is showing up to the houses of EHCR Judges over recent decisions rejecting the notion of rights to same-sex marriage and abortion.
The point is that both Ohio and France view abortion as a matter of political line-drawing. People in France manage not to freak out about how people in Poland choose to draw the lines, so long as Polish law doesn't apply to them. In my view that makes Ohio and France more similar to each other than to California and New York, where many folks think that issues like abortion and same-sex marriage should be outside of the political process altogether.
The point you said you were making, about who does the line-drawing, is one I agree with. But, as I said, you misled when you implied Dobbs aligned policy with "Europe" (if you had said Dobbs had the ultimate effect of aligning us with Poland, I'd agree, but you didn't say that because we all know Poland is significantly to the right of the European consensus, and it would have harmed the partisan argument you tacked on).
If things swing a particular way you might see a national ban bill next year.
I don’t know how likely that is but it’s certainly a position many Republicans take.
A national abortion ban can’t get 60 votes in the Senate. We’ll end up with a mix of laws at the state level, just like the EU. Public polling shows that Americans favor similar laws to Europe—abortions being illegal after the first trimester except under various exceptions. https://www.vox.com/2022/7/13/23204957/roe-wade-abortion-dob... (“At least three national surveys have shown majorities of Americans favor banning abortion after 15 weeks, even as those same respondents said they wanted to see Roe upheld.”).
David Shor: "Unless we see big structural changes in the Democratic party's coalition, then the modal outcome for 2024 is Donald Trump winning a filibuster-proof trifecta with a minority of the vote." (emphasis his)
(And, of course, the GOP could weaken the filibuster with 51 senators.)
The minute the Dobbs decision came down several states laws changed to dramatically limit abortion. Much more limited than the national polls suggest are the desired outcomes. Indiana of all places had to rush a change on the books to make sure their ban wasn’t too limiting.
In that climate, and the way midterm elections go, I think a national ban is a definite possibility.
Meanwhile, an assault weapons ban is very popular with the public, but is effectively impossible to get passed.
Structurally, this Supreme Court is more activist than the public wants and is misaligned with the majority opinions (though I’ll grant that’s not the courts mandate).
Of course that's true of all other proposals to reduce polarization too. Is it bad for the current duopoly? Well then it can't be allowed to happen, can it?
> "The path out of polarization needs to be a political one, given the nature of our democratic system: that is, a realigning election in which one party decisively wins control of both houses of Congress and the presidency and holds on to power through two or three electoral cycles. "
I can't think of any better way to speedrun the collapse of America than this happening, honestly. This might have been viable back in '12-'16, but now? Hell no. Every major political institution has set its social capital on fire in the past decade, and the only reason a lot of them are standing is because they can point to the 'other side' being obstructionist. A thin veneer of 'my team right or wrong' on the part of the least-informed voters (the least informed CITIZENRY don't vote at all) is the only thing keeping people from being radicalized into 'this entire system is bad and EVERYONE IN IT IS BAD'. (Right now we're radicalizing people into 'the system would work if we got rid of the deplorables/libtards'). Particularly since without the kayfabe of Democrats vs. Republicans, the media is going to have to invent a new thing to get people worked up about: The NYT/WSJ/Guardian/Reason/Daily Wire/terrible FB meme groups aren't going to shut down or say "Now that one party is in charge, we should give up the profits that come with outrage for the sake of our ~country~". Nor is such a situation safe from outside meddling; it's even MORE exploitable in some ways.
> "The problem with RCV is that for it to have a major effect, it would have to be adopted in a large number of states for both party primaries and presidential elections."
Yes. And why I think a successful implementation of RCV in the US would involve multiple states having it on the ballot in the SAME ELECTION (ideally an ODD YEAR election). As Fukuyama identifies, the major obstacle to this is the people in power on both sides, but his idea of politics as being only national down is showing here. Basic tactics suggest you fight a centralized, powerful enemy by spreading out your efforts - make them fight on multiple fronts and set up a situation where you can fail and still make inroads. (If 25 states have it on the ballot and it passes in 12, you still have made significant progress and if those 12 show it's viable, then the next run becomes a lot easier. Especially if you can make the 12 swing states.)
"The lack of RCV then affects the prospects of the second path towards depolarization, emergence of a viable third party."
Likewise, Fukuyama shows his idea of 'politics' is pretty restricted to 'national politics' in this case. My idea of a 'viable third party' would look to the history of them in the US, which would suggest that the most likely way to get a viable third party off the ground is to create a strong state/regional party (a la the Minnesotan Farmer-Labor party). That party then gives another viable route into politics for aspiring politicians, which means that the politicians in the Dem/GOP at the state/local have some ability to push back against national interests (e.g. a popular Minnesotan Dem state senator could say they'll run as F+L if the party doesn't bend on thing X, and if that person is on the shortlist for potential governor/national candidacy, then losing them hurts, tactically).
I could also see some major progress happening if a party arose and focused solely on local, officially non-partisan races. A "viable third party" doesn't just mean "a party that immediately has a substantial footprint in national Congress or can win the presidency". What an odd definition.
> "These approaches—changes in institutional rules, third parties, and grassroots organization—are all important components that could contribut...
We need an electoral system that enables the existence and viability of a host of political parties, so that people can go to the ballot box and vote FOR something instead of against the "other" party.
A huge way both parties are able to capture support is through fear mongering. Dems shrewdly see some hope for political tailwinds when the GOP blocks abortion. Fox News rallies moderates and right wingers to the GOP by showing examples of the silliest examples of far left behavior (and by lying constantly).
If
* political parties had to campaign on what THEY would do rather than what their opponent does,
* Political parties could be quickly abandoned for failure to achieve those goals, and
* People could vote positively for what they support rather than against what they don't,
This country would be in a better place.
And friends, electoral reform will likely start local. If you like the idea, write your councilman. Get into municipal code and figure out what it would take to put such a system on city elections.
The article denigrates Bernie Sanders and "the Squad" as being extremely out of touch with mainstream American political views, but on average 40% of eligible voters do not vote in presidential elections, not to mention midterm elections with their even worse turnout. American adults are disillusioned, and feel that no matter who wins elections, nothing will change -- and to a large extent, this is true! The biggest economic proposals of any candidate in recent memory were the "Medicare for all" proposal from Sanders, and Obama's healthcare reform.
Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a single-payer healthcare system, rather than Romneycare. Of course the Republicans were going to throw a fit, stomp their feet, and call it socialism -- they've been doing that for decades. Starting from single-payer healthcare would've given the Republicans room to negotiate the bill into something actually bipartisan, but by starting with the furthest-right possible position, all they could do was say no. The desire to pass a bipartisan bill meant only that the Republicans were allowed to criticize the Affordable Care Act as socialism, despite the fact that they themselves had proposed an almost identical measure in the '90s under Gingrich, and Romney had implemented the same in Massachusetts.
Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a New New Deal, rather than the anemic $800 billion that ended up being spent on the Recovery Act. There was so much room for far-reaching infrastructure and green energy spending that just didn't get to happen.
The Republican party thrives on the government implementing half measures. It is worse to have an underfunded and thereby ineffective government program than it is to have no program at all -- look at the NHS in the U.K., which is a perfect example. The Conservative party removed a huge amount of funding from the NHS, and it began struggling. Wait times have increased, and quality of care has decreased. Now the Conservatives get to use the NHS as an example of an ineffective, inefficient, and failing government program, and are proposing private options to "bolster" it. If they just increased the funding and actually hired people and paid them well, this would be a non-issue.
In sum, I think that the Democrats need to show some cohesion and spine for once. They need to come up with a unified economic policy that is well-vetted, and they need to completely ignore Republican criticism, rather than waffling and watering things down. Nothing turns a voter off more than a politician who's views are blown about with the winds of opinion -- a simple, strong message that promises to make individuals lives better can be enough. They also need to stop proposing policies that result in large swathes of the population being immediately turned off -- there are nearly 400 million privately owned firearms in the United States -- it is simply not feasible to ban them at this point. What can be accomplished is regulation around the acquisition of firearms and ammunition: universal background checks, classes with meaningful exams, licensing to be able to buy (but not registration of the firearm itself, which plays right into the "gun grabber" fearmongering).
When Republicans say "this will mean tax raises!", the Democrats should respond "no, this will mean the closing of tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to shelter their profits from taxation".
When Republicans say "this is socialism and will take away your freedoms", the Democrats should respond "th...
It may be narrative, but it's also a major component of many people's worldview -- especially of late, as the polarization has increased. The strength of one's bond to that worldview and the number of people who feel strongly both feed back into the party's platform, as those people are the primary voters (or "base").
Consider immigration, which Fukuyama mentions. Looking at this as a foreigner, I don’t have a hard time understanding MAGA republicans. If Bangladesh, where I am from, were seeing the kind of immigration levels we are seeing in the US today, folks would be reacting in exactly the same way as Trump voters. Nothing about their reaction surprises me.
What does surprise me are folks who dismiss the reaction as “racist” and therefore beyond the scope of political debate. Not the Matt Yglesias types, who favor increased immigration on economic grounds and are willing to engage in persuasion over it. But folks who are so committed to “equality” as an overriding moral principle that precludes distinguishing people on different sides of a border based on cultural or ethnic affinities. That’s a remarkable new idea! Nearly the whole word subscribes to the Westphalian view of a nation state, wherein self governance for distinct ethnic and cultural groups is a human right.
Trump voters can understand the nature of Bangladesh and Japan as Bangladeshis and Japanese themselves understand it. I think for a growing segment of the intellectual elite in the Democratic Party, they really cannot.
A variant: just check off the candidates you prefer, leave the others blank. No need to rank, just approve or disapprove.
By far the easiest way to do the task, and far better than what we do now. It is, at the very least, a significant step forward.