The Ticking Clock
I have been following along with great interest. I think The Big Sort is one of the most important books to come along in a while, not just because of its analysis of American politics but for its implications for American society and the US economy.
My main worry is that the big sort poses huge implications for US economic competitiveness and a wide range of domestic economic and social issues.
Most commentators see the big sort as a lens into American politics - a window into an increasingly polarized America - red vs. blue, Republican vs. Democrat, McCain vs. Obama, Al Franken vs. Rush Limbaugh.
That's real and important. But it seems to me this split Bill Bishop so correctly identifies has made it nearly impossible to build broad political consensus required for the kind of policy shift needed to ensure the US stays a competitive, innovative economy and can begin to develop a shared economic framework that can build economic strength and provide a reality of more broad based and inclusive economic participation by a wide cross section of American workers.
This is particularly important in an era of broad based creative destruction where the ability to set in place a new set of economic policies and broad economic infrastructure will be important to sustained economic growth for decades to come.
The US economy faces huge issues from its financial sector to its real economy to real estate globalization, never mind rising inequality and sinking living standards which are not being addressed or even talked about. It is in effect running down its long run prosperity. It is incredibly difficult to make the investments required for the future in an era of political polarization.
The really important thing about the big sort is not who wins or loses the election or the partisan composition of the Congress, it is what this is doing to make it difficult or impossible for the country to address real economic and social issues in a broad, pragmatic and timely way.
In the end, the clock of history is always ticking. Sooner or later some other place will come along, just like America did a century or so ago, and put together the framework required to marshall its assets broadly to succeed in the new global economic framework. The big sort makes it more and more likely that the United States with its long track of responding nimbly and remaking itself to meet the needs of technological and economic challenges will for the first time in quite awhile be less and less able to respond.
. . . it seems to me this ["sorting" that Americans are engaged in] has made it nearly impossible to build broad political consensus . . . .
Why?
July 24, 2008 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not at all sure what you're talking about here. Can you name one major policy initiative that we need in order to keep America competitive that we're not getting because of a "big sort?"
And... why do we need a consensus? We just need to implement the right policies. That has nothing to do with reaching consensus and everything to do with winning elections so that our side can do the right things.
July 24, 2008 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why?
Greed, materialism and, ultimately...power.
Those that lust for the preceding cannot win an election in a democracy, but they, the upper 5% in our economic ladder, can and do control the media.
The moneyed class manipulates the pettiness and insecurities of the majority:
Right-to-life
Religiousity
Race
Geographic and Ethnicity Conflicts
Educational Opportunity
Health and Welfare
Job Opportunity
Divide and conquer!
July 24, 2008 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It (the US) is in effect running down its long run prosperity. It is incredibly difficult to make the investments required for the future in an era of political polarization."
I think there are real challenges to building a popular majority, but I don't see how we can tie what we think about our capacity to build such a majority based on the results of the past three presidential elections. Not since 1992, has the economy been front and center in a presidential election. We also don't know what the current candidates will really do when they start to engage with each other, although the economy is currently a little hard to ignore.
I think that for quite some time both parties have been running on cultural issues and on projecting a general sort of feeling about what they stand for. Sometimes they follow through and act on that and sometimes they don't. You can put their so-called "economic policies" in there as well. Democrats profess to support organized labor, but they go along with trade deals organized labor is skeptical about. Republicans profess to be fiscal conservatives-- and their red state fiscal conservatives are seeing how that turned out.
I would tend to see "the sort," as we see it play out in the red state/ blue state phenomena as a product of what the parties themselves have been doing.
In short, run a culture war election/ elections, get a culture war result. It's not that complicated.
It's your representatives. It's the rich and the upper middle class, who don't *want* them addressing economic issues, as most of the rest of the population would define them. I know a hell of a lot of socially liberal blue staters who, when it comes to economic issues, sound just like Republicans.
Some day (soon maybe) a bunch of them are going to be finding themselves in the same position as the people they like to criticize, and not much able to do anything about it.
July 24, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
What Ellen and destor23 said. Based on what I've seen about "The Big Sort", there was some magical time in the past when most people in America LIVED in culturally, socially, financially, educationally diverse neighborhoods and voted for both Democrats and Republicans - I'm not buying it.
This situation may have existed among African Americans or other visible minority groups - before racial segregation was declared illegal. These neighborhoods may have been quite diverse, with a teacher living on the same street as a janitor - but they had no other option!
Whites have always sorted themselves into residential areas by lifestyle factors, the difference is that now everyone else can do that too.
July 24, 2008 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, the numbers are there to see. We track votes by race, by education by whatever measure you want to use. We can see that communities have grown more politically segregated.
We're not talking about racial diversity or religious diversity or class diversity. We're talking about party choice in real elections. And the trends are clear.
July 24, 2008 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
But this doesn't tell us enough. The fact that communities have grown more politically segregated doesn't tell us whether the country as a whole is more polarized, or whether individuals are more extreme in their views.
Suppose some town in that less segregared past era contained equal parts Republicans and Democrats. But suppose the Democrats were all Catholics and union members and the Republicans were all Protestants and non-union members, and suppose the Republicans owned the police force which they sent out from time to time to harass and billy club the agitating union members. Are you counting that as a less polarized situation?
100 years ago, the political map of the country was almost the exact reverse of the 2000 and 2004 maps. Was that less polarized?
Throughout the early half of the 20th century, there were socialist and even communist parties in the US that were able to pull not insignificant numbers of votes. No longer. How do you weigh that factor? Are we more polarized than them?
During he 20th century, Democrats became more evenly dispersed throughout the country. But northern Democrats and southern Democrats developed radically different attitudes about a great many issues. Southern Democrats in 1948 were even more deeply racist and segregationist than far right Republicans of today. While blacks were becoming Democrats in the north, their Democratic party mates were hanging blacks from trees in the South, and persecuting them in countless other ways.
How do you weigh the effect of the whole Dixiecrat movement, which mounted serious third party candidates from Thurmond to Wallace?
The 20th century saw at least two major red scares, with widespread oppression and persecution during each of those scares.
Is there evidence of more political consensus in the past? Or were counties simply more evenly divided, but locally polarized, and with decision being made by majority rule, not consensus?
This picture of a formerly more unified country just doesn't ring true to me, expect perhaps in some parts of the country in the post-WWII period. The unifying effect of the Second World War does seem to have had a temporary unifying and pacifying after-effect among some groups during the fifties, and briefly again during the Reagan-Clinton era.
July 24, 2008 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Big Sort argues that political segregation leads to a polarized congress and greater misunderstanding between groups that have less and less in common. Remember, it's not just neighborhoods that are growing more segregated. So are civic clubs, volunteer groups and, especially, churches.
There is some good research going on regarding polarization. Go to Keith Poole's site, http://voteview.wordpress.com/ to see measures of congressional polarization. Alan Abramowitz and others have found evidence of greater (and quite large) polarization among voters.
You don't have to go back 100 years to see flips in regional party affiliation. Every region has flipped since the end of World War II.
And, finally, we thought as you suggested that the realignment of the South with the Rs caused the movement in political segregation numbers. In fact, the Pacific Coast states grew more politically segregated than the South and all regions showed large increases in residential separation between the parties.
July 25, 2008 9:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
But there are issues so huge that they roll right over the boundaries of the sorted population and create a degree of shared concern across classes and subcultures. Gas prices are one example today. The housing mess is another. That's why we've seen an astonishing submergence of partisan differences in address at least the latter issue-- not that the solutions so far tendered are necessarily wise and good, but that they are being signed on to by a wide spectrum of politicians.
July 24, 2008 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because most Congressional politicians are, when it comes to macro financial matters, as clueless as are their constituents.
Most of them go along with Barney, Chris, and Hank not because they agree but because they don't know enough to disagree. Wisely, they practice the old maxim ---
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. Mark Twain
July 25, 2008 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
"So are civic clubs, volunteer groups and, especially, churches."
I wonder if the level of voter participation has had any impact, meaning have declining rates of voting in all types of elections perhaps led to an appearance of greater political polarization?
Also, I think people's worklives have changed dramatically over the decades - most adults are working outside of the home and those who have time for civic and volunteer groups may be the hardcore activists.
July 25, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think declining voting rates would affect our measurements.
Matter of fact, there's a great deal of argument over the question of whether voting rates have declined at all. My memory of the research is that when you hold everything constant (race, age, etc.) voting rates remained the same during the time of the big sort.
The change in clubs is another matter. People may have less time for this kind of civic life, but what we're saying is that the nature of associations has changed. I used to go to the Rebekah's dinner in the little Texas town where my wife and I owned the newspaper. That kind of association has largely disappeared. Now clubs are based on ideology or point of view. Fewer Masons, more members of Common Cause.
July 25, 2008 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: So are civic clubs, volunteer groups and, especially, churches.
I have to wonder about the chuches part. Wasn't it once true the Catholics voted Democratic almost to a man while the Episcopalian Church was known as the Republican party at prayer? Again, I think you have a point if you restrict your analysis to the second half of the 20th century. Then, the political realignment of the Depression followed by the churning effect of WWII and the suburban expansion temporarily threw eveything into a mixing bowl, and stirred vigorously. But if you go back further I suspect you'll find strong political (and ethnic, and religious and Lifestyle) segregation. In effect, one the uphaevals of the 1930S thru 1970S finally ended everything started returning to a (new) stratification with different groups precipitating out of the mixing bowl in different places.
July 26, 2008 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink