Tit for tat?

 This is a follow-up to my post arguing that American political institutions, which were traditionally held to reduce polarization (and probably did), promote it given the conditions that prevail today (viz., parties that are  distinguished by ideology).  A new book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt that makes the same general argument has been getting attention, so I thought I should say how my view differs from theirs.  Levitsky and Ziblatt say that the main problem is institutions that work against majority rule, like the Senate, the Electoral College, and gerrymandered congressional districts.  As Michelle Goldberg summarizes it "The Constitution’s countermajoritarian provisions, combined with profound geographic polarization, have locked us into a crisis of minority rule."  However, in recent years the institutions that are more majoritarian have been more of a problem.  For example, most of the Republican members of the House of Representatives voted against "certifying" the 2020 election, but only a few of the Republican members of the Senate did.  It's the House, not the Senate, that has tried to use the debt ceiling as a political weapon.  Judges, including judges appointed by Trump, almost unanimously rejected Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  Since the election, Republican-controlled state legislatures have made efforts to change electoral rules to benefit Republicans.  I think that the difference between the Senate and the House and state legislatures arises because Senators have a higher profile--someone who goes against the party may be able to survive, and even to benefit.  But Representatives and members of the state legislature are unknown to many of their constituents.  So the logic of trying to appeal to the "median voter" doesn't hold for them--the median voter probably won't even know what they've done, and will treat them like any other Democrat or Republican.  But party activists will know, and may support a primary challenge or withhold financial support.  

I also want to elaborate on my point about the complexity of the American political system, especially the electoral system.  That provides opportunities to take advantage of the system--figuring out some angle you can use to get your way.  Of course, if you do that, the other party is likely to retaliate, and the possibility of retaliation can be an effective deterrent.   But the complexity of the system also means that there's room for disagreement about whether an action is out of bounds, or how severe an infraction it is.  So the other side commits some offense, you retaliate in what you regard as a reasonable and proportionate manner, and then they are indignant about what they regard as a grossly excessive reaction.  It's even possible to take offense at things that haven't happened, but that you think might happen.  For example, a Washington Post column by Jason Willick discussing the argument that Trump is ineligible to run for president:  "What is sure to be a well-funded and well-coordinated campaign to disqualify Trump from office has begun.... Champions of 'automatic' disqualification have one pragmatic objective in mind: Eliminating Trump from U.S. politics. So what if they turn the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 into a Red Scare instrument in the process? ...  populists will someday have another chance in government. At that point, liberals might come to regret having legitimated the 14th Amendment as a quasi-authoritarian tool for purging political opposition."  During the 2020 election campaign, the Claremont Review talked about how Democrats would try to overturn a Trump victory.  And if the hypothetical action you became indignant about doesn't happen, you don't have to conclude that you were wrong--you can conclude that they surely would have done it if we hadn't called them out.  

 And finally, some data.  In 2016, a CNN/ORC poll asked people if they thought Trump would concede if he lost the election and then asked the same question about Hillary Clinton.  About 65% said that Trump would not concede, and 25% said Clinton would not.   Answers were strongly related to who you favored--Trump supporters were more likely to say that he would concede and less likely to say that Clinton would, and Clinton supporters were more likely to say that she would concede and Trump wouldn't.  But that wasn't the only thing that made a difference:  more educated people were more likely to say that both would concede.  The percent expecting each to concede, by candidate preference and education:

Not college grad                  Trump                Clinton

Trump supporter                     52%                    57%
Clinton supporter                    19%                    92%
Neither/DK                              22%                    63%

College grad                        Trump                Clinton

Trump supporter                     67%                    70%
Clinton supporter                    26%                    95%
Neither/DK                              30%                    77%

Similar questions were asked in 2020, with similar overall results, although I can't get the breakdowns.  The point is that some Trump supporters could justify his refusal to concede by a belief that the Democrat wouldn't have conceded either.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands

In 1959, the Gallup Poll asked "In your opinion, do you think there may be dishonesty in the voting or counting of votes in your district?"  They repeated that question in 1964 (as I once said, it's interesting that they didn't repeat it in late 1960, since that election was very close and there were allegations that voter fraud had made the difference).  That's the only question on voter fraud I can find until the 21st century.  Although the recent questions have been worded differently, I think that they are similar enough to make a comparison useful, so I give it below.  The first column is pessimistic responses--agree that there may be dishonesty or not confident (combining not too and not at all) that votes will be accurately cast and counted.    

 "In your opinion, do you think there may be dishonesty in the voting or counting of votes in your district?"

April 1959    13%    71%
March 1964  13%    69%

"How confident are you that, ______ , the votes will be accurately cast and counted in this [or next] year’s election?"

                    where you vote                     across the country
Oct 2006         8%      91%                                 25%      75%
Nov 2007      12%      88%                                 30%      71%
Aug  2016     16%      81%                                 36%      62%
Oct   2016     14%      84%                                 33%      66%
Sept 2020      21%      79%                                 41%      59%

In 2006-7, negative responses for "where you vote" were below the level of negative responses for "your district" in 1959-64.  In 2016, they were a little higher, and in September 2020, they were clearly higher.  In 1959 and 1964, there were a substantial number of don't know answers--in the 21st century, very few.   I don't think that's specific to this issue--there seems to have been a general decline in don't know answers over the years.  On this question, I'd regard don't know as closer to an optimistic answer--that is, saying that you don't know of any reason to think so.   But if you count some of the don't knows as pessimistic answer, that just reinforces the point that pessimistic answers were more common in 1959 and 1964 than in the early 2000s.  

In the 21st century, they also asked about "across the country" (the different questions were given to random halves of the sample).  Pessimistic answers were consistently higher, but they followed the same course of change over time.  

This is related to the issues I discussed in my last post.  General trust in people and confidence in institutions, especially political institutions, has been declining for a long time.  To the extent that views of elections reflect general trust, you would expect them to be more negative in the early 2000s than in the 1950s and 1960s.  But they weren't, and may even have been more positive.  I've mentioned a question asked in a Washington Post survey shortly after the Supreme Court ruling gave George Bush the victory in 2000:  "Whatever its faults, the United States still has the best system of government in the world":   89% agreed, including 85% of Gore supporters.  That is, a general loss of confidence in institutions didn't lead to a loss of confidence in elections, because politicians and journalists kept up a tradition of not just accepting the results, but celebrating our electoral system and history after an election.  It wasn't until Trump broke from that tradition that public confidence fell.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Crisis, what crisis? Part 2

 In my last post, I said that I didn't think that contemporary political problems in the United States are a reflection of social problems (the loss of meaningful connections) or economic problems (lack of growth in working-class standards of living), but of failures of political leadership.  But that raises the question of why political leadership has become worse. 

One part of the answer is a combination of American political institutions and changes in the nature of parties.  The institutions worked reasonably well when parties were loosely organized and not very ideological, but when the parties are ideological, they create bad incentives for politicians.  One reason is the dominance of the two-party system means that negative partisanship can be at least as effective as trying to make a positive appeal.   Another is that the complexity of the system means that there are lots of ways to try to manipulate the rules to your benefit.  Complexity also means that there are opportunities to take a symbolic stand without worrying about the consequences--you can leave it to someone else (often the courts) to do the "responsible" thing.  An example of that is the Texas v. Pennsylvania suit, which was supported by most Republican attorneys general and members of the House of Representatives:  they knew that the Supreme Court would decline to hear it, so it wouldn't really make any difference but they would get credit with the "base."  But all of these have the effect of making the public more discontented with politics, and therefore more likely to support outsiders who promise to cut through the partisan wrangling but usually make it worse.  

These considerations apply to both parties, but there is a difference between the way that they've responded.  Republicans were more vigorous in playing "constitutional hardball" even before the 2020 election.  Also, there's a difference in their treatment of extreme positions.  Few Democratic politicians expressed support for "defund the police," and those who did tried to say that they didn't mean it literally, they just wanted to move some resources from policing to social service.  But in every race for the Republican presidential nomination, some candidates will propose abolishing the IRS, or several cabinet agencies, cutting the federal workforce in half, etc..  Another way to look at it is that it's fairly common for Democratic politicians or pundits to say that the party needs to move to the center on certain issues, but Republicans almost never say that--even proposals for reform are presented as something uniquely conservative, not as moves to the center.  

I think that the explanation for this difference is that American conservatism sees itself as being in opposition to the "elites."  William F. Buckley is generally agreed to be the founder of the modern conservative movement, and his first two books were not about New Deal policies, or labor union power, or policy towards the Soviet Union, but about Yale University and "McCarthy and his enemies"--that is, both were directed against what he called "our disintegrated ruling elite."  That sense of alienation has grown as "elites" have moved towards the left.  Consequently, conservative politicians don't feel much obligation to be "responsible"--they are just interested in expressing opposition.  

Crisis, what crisis?

I'm returning to the question of whether American values have changed:  specifically, whether there's been a move towards money and careers and away from personal relationships.  Following a suggestion from Claude Fischer, I looked at the World Values Survey.  Starting in 1990, it has a series of questions asking how important various things are in your life:  very important, rather important, not very important, or not at all important.  People are asked about family, friends, leisure time, politics, work and religion.  The average ratings in the United States:

Religion and work have clearly declined, while the others don't show any clear trend.  In 1990, family ranked first, then friends and work almost tied, then leisure and religion almost tied, then politics far behind.  Now it's family, friends, leisure, work, religion, politics.   Whatever you think about the decline in ratings of religion and work, people aren't turning away from personal relationships.

Part of the reason I am interested in this issue is that many people say that the problems in American politics today reflect problems in society.  There are many variants of this analysis, but the idea that people have become more focused on themselves is a popular one.   Nicholas Kristof offered another one  the other day--that they result from stagnation or decline in working-class standards of living--so while I'm at it I'll look at his evidence.  Kristof says:  "Average weekly nonsupervisory wages, a metric for blue-collar earnings, were actually higher in 1969 (adjusted for inflation) than they were this year."  He doesn't link to his source, just says it's from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but I tried to reconstruct it from the Federal Reserve Economic Data.  

He's right--in fact, average weekly nonsupervisory earnings are lower then they were in 1965.  There's been an increase in part-time work since the `1960s, which is related to increased labor force participation by women, so I also show the figures for real hourly wages.  They give a more optimistic picture, but still say that there's been essentially no progress since 1973.  However, there are actually two offsetting periods of change:  a decline from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s and a pretty steady increase since that time.  So any reaction to economic distress should have occurred in the 1980s or 1990s, not in the last few years.  Of course, these figures aren't definitive, but they're what Kristof uses.

So what is the problem?  I agree with another New York Times columnist, David French, that it's primarily one  of political leadership.  Of course, that raises the question of why the quality of political leadership has declined.  I've had several posts that touch on that issue, but haven't addressed it directly--I'll do that in the near future.