Balkinization: A Brief History of Wedge Politics

A Brief History of Wedge Politics

Consider the different ways that a political party can gain a majority in a democracy. The most obvious way, and one that the Framers anticipated, was to appeal to divisions in wealth and income, hoping to gain the votes of the poor, working class and middle class against the interests of the wealthier parts of society. (At the time of the founding, people did not speak of class divisions in precisely this way, but the basic idea is the same, and that is one reason why they distrusted parties.)

Because the wealthy are smaller in number, this might seem to be a winning strategy (unless, that is, you can keep lots of poor and working class people from voting.) The party seen to represent the interests of the rich will always lose to the party of everyone else, if the opposition party can manage to split the vote in this way and form coalitions based along lines of class and wealth. The party of the rich can insist that there are no class divisions in America, and it can insist that what benefits the wealthy also benefits the average American. These strategies work suprisingly well in a country that does not like to view itself as divided by class, but they can only take you so far.

Hence the development of a more effective counter-strategy: the use of status conflict and status anxiety to divide the electorate in a different way, and seize the larger piece. A party that is seen to represent the interests of the rich can attempt to break up the opposition coalition based on class and wealth politics by making the most salient issues those that divide people along lines of race or religion, or that promote aggressive nationalism and xenophobia. If the party of the wealthy is successful in this attempt, it becomes the party more strongly identified with the interests of (for example) white people, religious Christians, or the fervently patriotic.

But that hardly ends the matter. This counter-strategy, in turn, leads to a counter-counter strategy. When alliances based on class politics have been fractured by status politics, there are two options. One is to try to make class issues salient once again (this worked during the Great Depression); the other is to find still other issues that can divide the electorate in a different way. There are two such issues: The first is corruption versus good government, the second is losers versus winners. People like governments they think are clean and moral, and they love winners, no matter how the victory is obtained. (Note the potential tension between these two statements). Conversely, people hate to be governed by corrupt officials or officials they think immoral; and even more than this, they hate to be governed by losers.

If the Democrats succeed in taking back one or more houses of Congress today, it will be because they effectively invoked this counter-counter-strategy. The Democrats will have defanged the counter-strategy of status politics and aggressive nationalism that had worked so well for the modern Republican Party since Richard Nixon by arguing (1) the Republicans are corrupt and venal; and (2) the Republicans are incompetent and have dragged America into a war in Iraq that they are losing and don't know how to win. Corruption isn't everything: Americans can forgive rascals who manage to win-- look at Bill Clinton-- but what they cannot abide is losers. And if you are viewed as both corrupt and a loser in American politics, then you are radioactive.

That is why it has not been enough for the Republicans to say that the Democrats don't have a plan to end the war in Iraq. What people understand is that the people in power are clueless, and are losers. Voters whose self-conception is tied up with being a proud part of the world's most powerful nation simply can't abide that. It may sound cruel to say it, but among the many things you can do to make people despise you, being seen as a loser is perhaps the most effective. The Democrats learned that lesson all too well in the past; now the Republicans are learning it too.

For some time Democrats have been looking for the magic elixir that will return them to majority status. Some thought it was becoming more like the Republicans on issues of the economy and religion; others thought it was moving even more strongly to the left, and still others thought it was seeking to heal divisions in society, calling for common values and common sacrifice. What ended up working for them was a little bit of everything, but most importantly, finding a new way to split the Republican coalition: not based on lines of class or status politics, but on the most basic things we expect from governments: don't be corrupt and don't be a loser.

Posted 9:21 AM by JB [link]