Political Animals . . . Or, A House Divided

US Capitol

I've been spending some time recently grappling over the apparently schismatic divide in the Congress.  Bipartisanship seems dead and compromise has become the shibboleth of Tea Party and ultra-conservatives desperate to dismantle the Obama Administration.  It feels like a crisis, and in some ways it is.  But in others, it's just another example of how a party out of power curtails the power of the party currently holding the reigns of state. 

When the Republicans lost the White House and much of Congress in 1933, it inaugurated a 20-year rule by the Democrats which Republicans ardently resisted.  Senators like Robert Taft from Ohio made their bones challenging the New Deal.  In many ways, they were right to do so.  The New Deal introduced a level of government intrusion which was genuinely novel.  It was a break from American politics which still resonates.

FDR

Opposition to FDR dragged Republicans into positions which today seem ridiculous--even stupid.  Watching from our side of the Atlantic, Republicans opposed American involvement in the European war then burgeoning.  Germany had recently grown belligerent, and the rise of fascists states signaled an ideological shift away from the centuries long liberal, humanist project Western Europe had been undertaking.  To many observers, the real danger lay to the West as Japan invaded Manchuria and introduced levels of barbarity unknown to the modern world.  Famously, Taft warned that Germany would never be a threat.  Whether or not FDR understood the true danger of Nazi aggression is still debatable; regardless, he dragged the nation into war with a persistence that would bewilder people like John McCain today.

Senator Ted Harkin

So these sorts of schism aren't particular uncommon.  But when reports emerge from Washington that this level of tension hasn't been seen since the Civil War, it inspires wariness.  Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat announced that the dynamic in Congress today is "very dangerous" and reminds him of "the breakup of the Union before the Civil War."

From the National Journal 

On the Senate floor before 10 a.m. Friday, the senator gave a speech describing how American politics have reached the level at which “a small group of willful men and women who have a certain ideology”—read: the tea party and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas—have been able to take over the congressional budget debate in the last week. “Since they can’t get their way,” Harkin said, “they’re going to create this confusion and discourse and hope that the public will be so mixed up in who is to blame for this, that they’ll blame both sides.” [...]

This isn’t the first time the senator has spoken out about the spiraling budget and the fight over Obamacare. Harkin suggested Thursday that Cruz looked “foolish” for his “little tirade” that lasted from Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday morning. Harkin called out Cruz as being part of “the most extreme tea-party wing” of his party, and for his “ideology-driven obstructionism.”

Maybe this is just another bit of hyperbole, but it's struck me in the last few weeks that the dynamic of who votes blue versus who votes red has dramatically shifted in the United States.  And those shifts are largely along geographic lines.  Not so much North/South or even East/West but rather urban/rural.

Population Density

The population shift from farms to cities isn't a new observation.  According to the World Health Organization more people live in cities than on farms, and the trend is likely to continue, with 60% of the world living in cities by 2030.  The numbers in the United States are even higher, with 80% of the population in metropolitan areas.  With most reports on demographic growth in the United States focusing on the low population rate, relative high rate of immigration, and shifts in ethnic composition, they generally fail to analyze the shift in American populations from rural populations to concentrated urban populations.

This has dangerous implications in politics since is presupposes that regardless of where you live, Republicans and Democrats should appeal to the population in roughly equal proportions.  That is, half of a city's population should be democrat, and the other half republican.  The same is true in farm communities and so-called frontier communities in Alaska.  This simply isn't the case.

Voting breakdown by county

The University of Michigan has produced a stunning representation of voting patterns in the United States since the election of 2012.  The maps, the article makes clear, slightly misrepresent the actual dynamic of voting patterns, but the data makes one thing clear: high population density areas tend to vote blue.  I suspect the Republican screed against government interference and personal autonomy appeals to rural voters, who are either ignorant of the interconnectedness of a global economy, or who are able to ignore that interconnectedness by repeating a Golden Myth of personal triumph.

And the divide is likely to increase.  With more people turning to cities, the power of the Democratic Party will grow.  Democratic politics is simply more equipped to respond to urban problems.  Appeals to urban populations will find more and more power concentrated in the Democrats until the GOP itself becomes a shibboleth--obsolete and foundering for voters.  The Tea Party is the first indication that the GOP recognizes its obsolescence.  When any group starts looking backward instead of forward, it will flounder and die.

Young Republicans

The only way to regain Republican strength is to find means of appealing to urban voters who recognize the necessity of some government intrusion in their lives.  Young democrats are educated and innovative.  Young republicans ought to be the same, and find means of addressing the needs of the growing segments of the population occupying an urban landscape.