An Overview of the Present Political Crises

We are well into, perhaps near the end, of a partisan political realignment.

Photo by Ryan Kwok on Unsplash

It always helps to take a wider, longer, view.  At 1000 feet the world will look different.  Being unashamedly modern I prefer a drone with a camera rather than a hot air balloon.  Not that there is any present shortage of hot air. 

Let’s launch the drone, install a time machine, and survey the political landscape over the past 250 years. 

Interesting!

It looks like we are having intense political wars at present.  We see them repeated at regular intervals in the past.  A lot of shouting, even at family gatherings.  Some violence.  Large numbers of people dissatisfied with their party leadership.  Some doubling down on party loyalty; others thinking about whether there is room for a third party. 

Gridlock in Congress.  More partisanship much less governing.  It’s a process political scientists call partisan realignment.  A what? Simply the underlying mechanism by which a democracy or a republic, if you prefer, like the U.S. constitutional system survives for 250 years. 

With essentially just two viable political parties (given the electoral system) and a lot more than two significant political and social interests in the society, political forces are always fighting to see who will work through which party.  As traditional party leaders age and as new political forces are created by dramatic changes in society (remember we have a very dynamic social and economic landscape and a rather rigid and limited political system) the battle lines are drawn and both the leadership and the policy directions of the two party are at stake.

Change of this kind is never orderly, peaceful and civil.  There are extremes. 

And when each party occupies beachheads and is fighting for supremacy, little real governing (patient search for compromise) gets done and the critical issues of the day—the suffering of many, the loss of status and meaning for others, failures to act before critical problems become toxic, the growing chaos of an unstable and unequal world composed of many sovereign nations and revolutionary factions—are not effectively confronted. 

Given that even a government with the limited powers bequeathed us by the founders is essential for keeping some degree of peace and order in America, there comes a turning, as more and more people demand responsible and effective leadership, and line up with what they see as the party most likely to provide this. They begin to see the preservation of the system itself, of democracy, as the most important issue of their times.

Traditionally, this has resulted in a completed “realignment,” as one Party becomes an effective majority Party, able to take action to facilitate a more or less peaceful resolution of some problems and manage the ongoing dynamic of continuing change. Such a party invariably becomes “the big tent,” once described as a link of sausages, a coalition of many different interests, bargaining with each other for partial redress of grievance and a share of government assistance. 

The other party articulates alternative ideas, stays alert to marginal gains and comes to more or less accept the core policies of the government coalition (Party).  Then, until the next realignment, the political waters appear to lap peacefully on the favored shores of “one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice …..”

I think we are nearing such a point. I see the Democratic Party as the “big tent.” I see its extremes settling for less than they had hoped, but more than they can get outside the “tent.”

We are hearing a majority begin to call for renewed attention to what matters.  A steady hand on the wheel.  The ship rerigged and ready to sail.  A temporary peace of sorts. Not everyone satisfied.  Not everyone included.  Not all good ideas on the agenda.  Good people on the sidelines.  Opportunities missed. 

But stable and democratic and ongoing. With lots of good people, living in diverse communities, discovering once again that they can get along with people who have different ideas, who are neighbors not enemies.