As thing stand in 2024, most elected Democrats have very similar positions on almost all issues, and those positions are to the left of most Americans. Both of those things are recent developments, and they have happened alongside similar developments in the Republican party. That's polarization.
As thing stand in 2024, most elected Democrats have very similar positions on almost all issues, and those positions are to the left of most Americans. Both of those things are recent developments, and they have happened alongside similar developments in the Republican party. That's polarization.
Now you are free to argue that one side is a lot better than the other one, or that one side is more strongly in the tradition of the postwar consensus on most issues, but that's still polarization. There are two very distinctive nodes in American politics in 2024, and you can't decide one of them gets to be on the equator because you prefer it to be so, or because there are 15,000 left-wing ideologies held by a total of 30,000 people in this country, or because saying so implies that the Democratic node is equivalent to the Republican one.
Similarity, that is, coalescing, has nothing to do with movement towards an extreme, or pole. You are confusing the two. I thought I had demonstrated that. To elaborate on my perhaps clunky analogy, if we Equatorians all lived in a band between 15°S and 5°S, and if they all move to near 10°S, or even to -15°, or even to 20°S, while your lot moves to 85°N, and in many cases entirely off the surface of the planet, that is not polarization of everybody, and the Equatorians are not living at a pole.
That the median Equatorian is now far removed from the median Polarist does not imply polarization of everybody. There has been an absolute movement of Polarists, resulting in an increased relative difference, but not general polarization.
This article sounds a lot like your claims in its framing, but is undermined by its own data, which shows a slight absolute leftwards movement of Democrats and a much larger absolute movement of Republicans.
The Wikipedia article on polarisation is also worth reading for a quick overview of academic usage of the concept
Are we done with 'polarization' now? I don't think you can back up your claims. And I think you should give some thought to why it is so important for you (and so many others) to bang this particular rhetorical drum. Hint: you don't want to face up to the extremist nature of Republican governance and goals, particularly in a time of an explicit embrace of authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and whatever the latest Trumpist obsession is. It's a rhetorical device deployed in the service of intellectual cowardice.
And to repeat an earlier point, if the Equatorians resist the efforts of the 85° Polarists to force them to live in a Polarist world, that is not polarization, that is resistance to forced movement to one pole.
As to the relation of the Democratic ideological or policy positions to median American electorate views, you're going to have to give some polling evidence for your claim that Democrats are to the left of 'public opinion'. I can't find it, framed as a general claim, and with any robust attempt at capturing 'public opinion' as a singular entity. I don't think self-identification with broad labels is very clarifying. Certainly on a number of issues you could make a case, but generally? How would that case be made?
The only really interesting poll at the national level IMO is the popular vote. You know who won the popular vote 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2000, to take the last 25 years.
As thing stand in 2024, most elected Democrats have very similar positions on almost all issues, and those positions are to the left of most Americans. Both of those things are recent developments, and they have happened alongside similar developments in the Republican party. That's polarization.
Now you are free to argue that one side is a lot better than the other one, or that one side is more strongly in the tradition of the postwar consensus on most issues, but that's still polarization. There are two very distinctive nodes in American politics in 2024, and you can't decide one of them gets to be on the equator because you prefer it to be so, or because there are 15,000 left-wing ideologies held by a total of 30,000 people in this country, or because saying so implies that the Democratic node is equivalent to the Republican one.
Similarity, that is, coalescing, has nothing to do with movement towards an extreme, or pole. You are confusing the two. I thought I had demonstrated that. To elaborate on my perhaps clunky analogy, if we Equatorians all lived in a band between 15°S and 5°S, and if they all move to near 10°S, or even to -15°, or even to 20°S, while your lot moves to 85°N, and in many cases entirely off the surface of the planet, that is not polarization of everybody, and the Equatorians are not living at a pole.
That the median Equatorian is now far removed from the median Polarist does not imply polarization of everybody. There has been an absolute movement of Polarists, resulting in an increased relative difference, but not general polarization.
This article sounds a lot like your claims in its framing, but is undermined by its own data, which shows a slight absolute leftwards movement of Democrats and a much larger absolute movement of Republicans.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/
The Wikipedia article on polarisation is also worth reading for a quick overview of academic usage of the concept
Are we done with 'polarization' now? I don't think you can back up your claims. And I think you should give some thought to why it is so important for you (and so many others) to bang this particular rhetorical drum. Hint: you don't want to face up to the extremist nature of Republican governance and goals, particularly in a time of an explicit embrace of authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and whatever the latest Trumpist obsession is. It's a rhetorical device deployed in the service of intellectual cowardice.
And to repeat an earlier point, if the Equatorians resist the efforts of the 85° Polarists to force them to live in a Polarist world, that is not polarization, that is resistance to forced movement to one pole.
As to the relation of the Democratic ideological or policy positions to median American electorate views, you're going to have to give some polling evidence for your claim that Democrats are to the left of 'public opinion'. I can't find it, framed as a general claim, and with any robust attempt at capturing 'public opinion' as a singular entity. I don't think self-identification with broad labels is very clarifying. Certainly on a number of issues you could make a case, but generally? How would that case be made?
The only really interesting poll at the national level IMO is the popular vote. You know who won the popular vote 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2000, to take the last 25 years.