So I'm sitting here watching CSPAN, and finding myself with absolutely nothing to do as far as schoolwork.
I also find myself struck by the urge to write (or more accurately, to listen to the beauty of my own voice). So, without further ado, I'd like to dispel a common myth about the modern Democratic Party; namely, that Democrats have been cozying up to Republicans in unprecedented ways. I'm going to attempt to cast doubt on the image of the "Republican-lite Democrat".
More on the flip...
The refrain that I hear repeatedly is that Democrats have spent the past couple of decades cozying up to Republicans, and that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the two parties apart, due to the horror that is "triangulation". It sounds plausable, and it's great for fueling outrage. I mean, when you have Joe Biden spouting his mouth about everything, and Chuck Schumer saying he'd still go to war given what he knows now, how can you not think that the Democrats have just become Republicans under a different name?
But is it true? In a word; No. In fact, the political parties are now more polarized and ideologically homogeneous than they have been any time in recent memory.
As a Brookings article from 1996 said
The political center in Congress has shrunk markedly over the past 15 years (þgure 1). Hovering around 30 percent of House and Senate members in the 1960s and 1970s, the percentage of centrists in each chamber began slipping in the 1980s, and it has fallen to about 10 percent today. Centrists now can claim 11.3 percent of the House, down from 20 percent or more during the 1980s.
This decline in centrists has had a marked effect upon voting patterns. From the same article:
The shrinking political center has left Congress increasingly polarized (figure 2). Democrats are perched on the left, Republicans on the right, in both the House and the Senate as the ideological centers of the two parties have moved markedly apart. The change since the late 1980s is most extreme for the Senate, but striking for both chambers. From the late 1950s until well into the 1980s, the ideological distance between the center of the two parties remained relatively stable, even as the parties became more homogeneous. Since the 1980s the distance between the two parties has essentially doubled.
In the 106th Congress, (1999-2000), only two Democrats were more Conservative than the most Liberal Republican (pdf), and only John Breaux was more Conservative than Jim Jeffords (Breaux has since retired, and Jeffords has since become an independent caucusing with Democrats). Note in particular the graphs on page 25 of the PDF file that compare the ideological distribution of House members in 1968 and 1998. There is a significant overlap in 1968, versus a virtual absence of any common ground in 1998.
This polarization is borne out in graph form as well with political scientists Nolan McCarthy, Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, showing that this polarization is real. As the authors state:
Voting in Congress is now almost purely one-dimensional - a single dimension accounts for about 92 percent of roll call voting choices in the 108th House and Senate [Note: that dimension is liberal-conservative] - and the two parties are increasingly polarized.
There are several theories for why this polarization has happened. It has been argued that it is due to gerrymandered districts that favor the craziest person running, primaries voted on by ideologues, a realignment of the South that eliminated Southern, moderate Dems, or a de-emphasis on racial issues. But whatever cause, polarization seems to be real. In the 108th Senate, only Zell Miller was more conservative than any Republican, and even he was more liberal than all but a handful.
So keep this in mind the next time you feel inclined to say that Dems are nothing but Republicans in a different suit. Dems are more divided from Republicans than ever. Turn on CSPAN sometime. Virtually every vote of any importance falls directly on a party line, with at most a handful of defectors from either party.
Dems cast bad votes, and Dems cast stupid votes. And yeah, some Dems voted for War (although a majority voted against). But the conception of a Republican-lite Democratic Party just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.