How did American politics get so polarized?

In a nation known for its pragmatic attitude, the American political system has become increasingly polarized and dysfunctional.

The following is an excerpt from my second book Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All. You can order e-books at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase for full price on Amazon.

Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

See my other articles on Electoral Reform:

1. What is the matter with American politics?

2. The Political-Industrial Complex

3. The Primary Problem with American politics

4. How did American politics get so polarized? (this article)

5. To reform our policy, we must first reform our electoral system

6. Is reforming American politics possible?

7. more

My book, Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All is mainly about policy reforms to promote long-term widely-shared economic growth. But realistically there is no way that such a reform agenda can get implemented within our current political system.

Our two-party system has been polarized into increasingly left-wing Democrats and increasingly right-wing Republicans. Both sides are more interested in mobilizing their base than in implementing substantive reforms. While younger Americans may think that this is just the way American politics is, this is clearly not the case. This gives us some hope for improving the situation.

American Parties Were Loose Coalitions

For most of American history, the Democrats and Republicans were not particularly ideological, at least not to the degree that they are today. This was mainly because the United States had an extraordinary amount of regional, ethnic and religious diversity. And that diversity was unevenly spread across the nation. This diversity forced both Democrats and Republicans to cobble together alliances between ethno-religious groups to form a local political majority.

In general, the Republican party represented British and Protestant voters in the North. In the Civil War era, the Republicans added German and Scandinavian voters in the Midwest to their political coalition.

The Democrats represented White Southerners and Irish Catholics in the urban areas of the North. In the New Deal era, the Democrats then added Catholics and Jews to their political coalition. In the Civil Rights era, they added Blacks to their political coalition.

Up until the 1970s, there were many liberals and conservatives within both parties, and, more importantly, both voters and Congresspersons were liberals on some issues, while being conservative on others. Typically, Democrats and Republicans were polarized on only a few issues, while there was great diversity within each party on most other issues. Note that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” had very different meanings in the past, so I am using their modern definition.

Partisan Polarization

Since the 1970s, however, partisan polarization has gradually created political parties that agree on virtually all issues. The polarization process started with the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign of 1964 and the George McGovern presidential campaign of 1972. Both candidates lost miserably, but they each represented the future of their party.

The key institutional reform was the McGovern-Fraser Commission of 1970. After the tumultuous Democratic presidential nomination process of 1968, when a relatively moderate Hubert Humphrey won the nomination despite failing to win a single primary, anti-Vietnam activists demanded change to the nomination process. The McGovern-Fraser Commission radically overhauled the way the Democratic party nomination process functioned, by making primaries mandatory. Soon the Republican party followed.

The McGovern-Fraser Commission effectively established the modern system of primary voters nominating their own candidates. While this may seem more democratic than the previous system, the actual functioning of party primaries handed power over to a small minority of ideological activists.

The midterm election elections of 1974 brought a new wave of liberal professional-class voters into the Democratic party. In a backlash against Watergate, many younger college-educated voters supported the Democrats for the first time. These voters were much more liberal on cultural and foreign policy issues than traditional working-class Democratic voters.

Gradually, the Democrats nominated more and more liberal candidates for the Presidential elections, and the Republicans nominated more and more conservative candidates. With each election, ideological contrarians within the party had a harder and harder time staying competitive. Eventually, they stopped trying.

This process has continued to such an extent that it is difficult to imagine a conservative or moderate candidate, like Bill Clinton, winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Nor is it easy to imagine a liberal or moderate candidate, like Susan Collins, winning the Republican presidential nomination.

As the spectrum of voters within each party’s primaries changed, this had an increasingly powerful effect on Congressional elections. Each Democratic wave election (for example 1974, 1982, 2006, and 2018) tended to end the careers of many liberal and moderate Republicans, while each Republican wave election (1966, 1980, 1994, and 2010) tended to end the careers of many conservative and moderate Democrats.

By the end of the 1980s, the vast majority of elected Republicans at the federal level were conservatives. Today moderates are few and far between in both parties, and there are essentially no conservative Democrats nor liberal Republicans.

Nationalization of Politics

The very high-profile nature of modern media-based presidential elections has also had a powerful impact on lower-level races. Liberal voters, particularly in the Northeast and Pacific coast gradually left the Republican party, while conservative voters, particularly in the South, left the Democratic party. Each mismatched voter who left their party increased the power of the more ideological voters that remained, so the process fed upon itself.

Whereas American media was once dominated by local newspapers, now national newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, cable news networks and ideological internet sites dominate. National coverage of politics has created national brands for each party that are closely aligned with ideology.

Because all of these institutions are national in scope, this ideological polarization has moved down from federal politics to the local level. This process also filtered down to the state level, though the South was slower to change. The vast majority of elected Democrats at the state level are liberals, though some governors have been able to buck the trend. The same goes for state-level Republican parties. Idiosyncratic localism, such as conservative Southern Democratic state parties and liberal New England Republican state parties, are increasingly rare.

Whereas state and local politics were once far more collegial, non-partisan, and non-ideological, this is much less true today. Voters are increasingly voting for one party based on national brand, not upon local issues. Moderates within each party cannot detach themselves from the ideological brands of the national parties. Most either lose primary elections or retire.

Partisan Leadership in Congress

Ideologues are also empowered by partisan leadership in Congress. Until the 1970s, power within Congress was highly decentralized. Power was spread across a large number of committee chairmen. Because this decentralized power structure obstructed much legislation, particularly in the domain of civil rights, Democratic reformers gradually shifted power from the committee chairs to partisan leadership. Then Newt Gingrich in the 1990s further centralized power within partisan leadership to forward the official Republican party platform: the “Contract With America.”

Currently, virtually all substantive legislative business must be approved by the Senate Majority Leader, the Speaker of the House, the House Majority Leaders, and their Whips. Nor can alternative legislation come up for a vote without the support of the House Minority Leader or the Senate Majority Leader and their Whips. Not surprisingly, given the need to accrue seniority to achieve such positions, these leadership roles are monopolized by Congresspersons from non-competitive districts.