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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Lee Drutman
Read between
March 16 - March 23, 2020
Society was changing. The Supreme Court had declared state-sponsored school prayer unconstitutional.35Roe v. Wade was a political earthquake. It legalized abortion, which helped Protestant Christian right activists build a coalition with religious Catholics.
And without reference to a written constitution
Later, in a 1973 book, Political Organizations, Wilson observed that political organizations could rely on three types of incentives: material, solidary, and purposive.
voters in charge. Political scientists have long lamented the parties’ decision to give away their most important responsibility—serving as the gatekeepers who ensure candidate quality—to the public.67
Can't trust the people so you need more "democracy"!
And some of the programs seemed to backfire: If urban riots followed the War on Poverty, might there be something wrong with the initial program?
Republicans solidified a new coalition that spread the appeal of “limited government” beyond economic conservatism, where it had traditionally lived.
“Universalist weltanschauung, in which all peoples, all faiths, and all lifestyles were embraced (at least in principle).”
But advancing the status of some groups in society meant a demotion for other groups in society.
The party of zero sum
No one factor alone explains the reordering of American party politics.
Refusal to follow the constitution, limit government, and respect states rights
By most accounts, the era from the mid-1960s through the early 1990s was a period of peak performance for the US Congress—careful committee hearings leading to an impressive list of landmark, bipartisan legislation.
As long as you believe in unlimited government
From 1969 to 1992, Washington experienced an extended period of divided government, a period unique in American history for its prolonged split decision on which party should rule. Democrats controlled the US House for the entire period and the Senate for most of the period.
Democrats had a lock on the House. Republicans had a lock on the presidency. The American people collectively wanted Democrats and Republicans to work together.
Or they thought split was the best limit they could get
reinforcing doom loop.
For unlimited government
weak first branch makes for a powerful second branch: the president steps in and grabs the power a dysfunctional Congress abdicates.
And an authoritarian deep state
In retrospect, it’s easy to be nostalgic for the George H. W. Bush administration, the last sustained era of genuine bipartisan lawmaking.
1992, 40 percent of Americans said they couldn’t articulate a single important difference between the two parties, and 49 percent believed there was no difference in the parties’ abilities to solve pressing problems.46 If it didn’t matter who won, then why vote?
The strategy worked. Vulnerable Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act paid a measurable electoral penalty.
The fact that many folks healthcare costs went from $10k to $30k may have also been a factor!
In just twenty years (from 1996 to 2016), America went from being a nation where two-thirds (65 percent) of its citizens were white and Christian to a nation where barely four in ten (43 percent) were both white and Christian.
Finally, the 2010s marked the completion of the half-century partisan realignment that began with the civil rights revolution, with one party (the Democrats) fully becoming the party of diversity and cosmopolitan values, and one party (the Republicans) fully becoming the party of white, Christian America and traditionalist America.
National politics is always about difference. In healthy periods, it is about reconcilable differences. In toxic periods it is about irreconcilable differences.
You mean like murder the baby or the Jew, or decide life is sacred?
Historically, democratic fights over national identity have been extremely bitter. They do not always resolve peacefully. In earlier times, these conflicts were primarily about religion and race. Today, the conflict over national identity is at heart a clash between cosmopolitan and traditionalist values and identities. This is the conflict now roiling Western democracies.25
Group identities and moral values drove most of the switches; economic interests drove few.
that will only help the poor,
If broken homes, high crime, high addiction rates are "help", then gov does a super job!
Liberals, it turns out, also put principles and identity above objective economic self-interest.
Or they see liberalism as a virtuos relibion
For most people, self-worth comes from attaching to something bigger and grander than one’s simple material well-being.55 We are “groupish, rather than selfish.”
Gridlock then prevents Congress from solving public problems, including rising economic inequality.
or creating more problems as new deal and great society did!
social, economic, and political forces.”75 Cramer met people who had immense pride in their communities and rural identities, who worked incredibly hard. These rural residents felt ignored by political elites and government bureaucrats and disrespected by city folks who they were sure controlled everything for the benefit of their fellow city folk.
Maybe they felt they were viewed as deploreable?
“In the frameworks they provide, the demons are not affluent people but, rather, the government, the people that work for it, and urban areas that are home to liberals and people of color. . . . In these narratives, people are telling each other that there are people that do not value what we value, do not work as hard as we do, and are actively sucking away the livelihoods we have worked so hard to create.”
DC wealthiest counties?
When Donald Trump disparaged immigrants as criminals,
ILLEGAL Imigrants! By definition are criminals!
When the “Who are we?” conflict dominates the two-party system, it raises the stakes of every election, driving the doom loop of toxic partisanship.
Christians are Christians … party is a 3rd or less consideration. However, increasingly, for Democrats, "liberalism" IS their religion, and unbelievers must be forced to convert!
But was this just ordinary partisan politics?
The Walker recall?
to
Like how the dems "tolerated" Trump?
So far, this hardball has been asymmetric.5 Republicans have been more aggressive than Democrats.
In your alternate univese maybe
When the character of the nation is at stake, who brings a knife to a gun fight?
Obama?
For now, Democrats have mostly exercised restraint.
???
But now, in an era of toxic politics, if everything is “unfair” to somebody, then who is left to judge? Like
Exactly why Roe removed the concept of an "impartial" judiciary
Republicans, whose confidence decreased dramatically. A decade of conservative propaganda about voter fraud had made a deep and dangerous impact.30 When
Tragically, Canada and Mexico sucomed to the propaganda and have voter id!
In two-party politics, these “moral imperative”–style justifications have a particularly pernicious lesser-of-two-evils doom-loop quality.
It's like you might need a "higher power" than politics! (Adams)
But the lower the standards go, the more nihilistic the morality.
So what IS the "moral standard" of post-modernism?
the most factually challenged president ever
In a post-modern world, "fact" is an oxymoron …its all power and privileg
In November 1972, the New York film critic Pauline Kael is said to have joked, “How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him.”38 It was funny because Nixon had just won by an overwhelming landslide.
We are even adjusting our lifestyles to fit with our partisanship, including, most profoundly, how religiously we raise our children.43
We repeatedly override our own judgments to conform to our peer groups.49
Unless we have a religion
Why would we possibly want to escape our bubbles when our bubbles reaffirm our sense of community and self-worth?
if you cared more for eternity than this short lifr?
75 They have been told repeatedly that Democrats will take away their guns and radically transform the country if they get into power.
Often by democrats !
Third, how many parties do we want? Between four and six parties is the optimal range.
