Political polarization will drop when the U.S. begins to regulate its businesses again in a way that reduces economic pressures on the 99.9%. I realize this sounds like more of a political platform-based take, but it was done 100 years ago & the simple fact of the matter is that people tend to be less politically radical when their economy is functioning correctly & their economic needs are met. Until this happens, it'll only get worse from here.
I guess I agree to some extent, but it also seems like a lot of what's driving polarization is structural rather than tied to specific policies. I happen to subscribe to the theory that our current environment is the result of super-polarized Baby Boomers being the electorate's dominant age demographic for the last ~25 years (hence why it picked up so sharply in the '90s when they overtook the Greatest Generation). If this is indeed the case, then we should expect polarization to ease as more and more Boomers depart and more liberal Millennials/Zoomers reach the age when people start voting regularly. My question is on how this transition will unfold. Are there any suprising places that will start trending Dem in the next few years? (I think NC Yankee has mentioned Mississippi as a possibility.) Will Republicans start to moderate as the market for belligerent Trumpist-style populism shrinks? All in all, given the massive age gaps we've been seeing in recent elections, it's hard to imagine that that's not going to have an impact moving forward...
I disagree. The U.S. has almost always exhibited some degree of political polarization:
However, our current era of such is largely related to economic pressures resulting from income inequality, which drives citizens to choose more ideologically-extreme options. This chart shows the share of pre-tax household income received by the top 1%, top 0.1%, & top 0.01% in the U.S.:
As we can see, the level of income inequality mirrors the level of political polarization: if you look at the beginning of the charts (so, the late-1800s & early-1900s), levels of political polarization & income inequality were high. This obviously coincides with the Gilded Age, an era known for its lack of substantive business-structure regulation & labor laws in spite of there being massive industrial growth. This subjected much of the working-poor to harsh-working conditions & allowed the elite to gain untold riches. This - along with an often jingoistic & dis-informative press - radicalized the 2 flanks of the population until progressive reforms were enacted under Teddy Roosevelt. Polarization later rose slightly during WWI & the year after due to the 1st Red Scare, but decreased during the Roaring Twenties & continued to do so even further when FDR enacted the New Deal in response to the Depression, which further reduced income inequality.
Any of this sound familiar? Well, we're obviously currently in a 2nd Gilded Age, triggered by the ideology of seemingly-perpetual deregulatory reforms that were initiated in the 1970s & cuts to social-spending (outside of health-care) that culminated in Clinton's passage of "the end of welfare as we know it." In the social-issue realm, one of these deregulatory reforms was the 1987 abolition of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, which required all news broadcasters to report only the facts with as little bias as possible. This led to the rise of conservative talk-radio & the subsequent moral panics of the late '80s & early '90s. At that point in the first chart, we can see polarization begin its climb to its current levels today. This was made even worse by the infamous
Citizens United case, which allowed unlimited amounts of corporate PAC money to pour into our elections. This - combined with the fact that the average American family never really recovered from the Great Recession - has created an immense amount of pressure &, in turn, radicalization.
EDIT: forgot to include the link to the 1st political polarization chart lol
