By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Modern archaeologists have uncovered a new species in America — homo rejectus, also known as voters who no longer feel they have a political home.
On the middle-right are Republicans who can’t in good conscience consider any of the 15 presidential candidates running for office because they tilt too much at right-leaning windmills that push social, not economic, issues. On t
op of that is a tepid establishment flummoxed over what to do with the reality of three unconventional candidates who are garnering more than half of GOP voters’ favor in a campaign playing out as a daily reality show.
On the middle-left are conservative Democrats who can’t in good conscience align with Hillary Clinton and her continuing political entourage of baggage or with Bernie Sanders, who they know is unelectable by the general public — even with the clowns on the GOP side. These folks are more comfortable with Uncle Joe Biden, but they worry he’s too late for the party.
Blame a two-party system in which the parties no longer really control the message. Instead, people get their news how they choose through self-serving, politically-leaning television networks or partisan websites targeting audiences focused on the narrow picture. Blame the election system where candidates have to get more than half of the votes to win — something that makes it tough for third- or fourth- or fifth-party candidates to exist, much less win. Blame the political gerrymandering across South Carolina and the nation that keeps Republican districts Republican and Democratic districts Democratic.
What’s most worrying is how the increasingly partisan nature of American politics now is driven by the extremes, not the middle where sanity has tended to rule.
“The fact is, the parties only truly represent the activist on the left and the right — and they do so far, far more than for the people in the middle,” one highly frustrated Upstate politico shared. “And yet, it’s those in the middle who inevitably end up deciding elections. So, those in the middle have more power than they realize.”
Nevertheless, the middle seems to be shrinking. A 2015 report by the Pew Research Center showed the left and right extremes growing. In 2000, a survey showed 12 percent of voters identified as “liberal Democrats, a number that jumped to 16 percent in 2012. In the same time frame, those who said they were “conservative Republicans” grew from 17 percent to 20 percent of the electorate. Interestingly, “independents” grew from 25 percent to 29 percent of the mix. But self-professed party moderates in each wing got smaller by about as much as the partisan ends grew.
Two years ago, Chris Cilliza of The Washington Post proclaimed “the political middle has disappeared.” He pointed to a study of congressional vote ratings that compared where individual Democrats and Republicans ranked comparatively. In 1982, there was considerable overlap among voting records by Democrats and Republicans with 344 members falling somewhere between the most conservative Democrat and most liberal Republican.
Fast forward 30 years and there was no real middle. Only 11 members of Congress had rankings between the most conservative Democrat and most liberal Republican, a reflection of just how partisan Congress has become.
State Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, reflected that the two big political parties historically have righted themselves away from fringe elements by adapting to what most people want.
“You’ve seen the parties adapt over time,” Davis noted. “The parties have always reoriented themselves where their members wanted to go. The difference now is that people get their information independently. They’re not as apt to take instruction or direction [from parties] anymore.”
For now with all of the bluster, misinformation and even scandal, it is an open question whether the two dominant parties will right themselves. Candidates often head to the middle after they become a party’s nominee, but the landscape has been so shrill already that something new may be forming, like tropical depression that turns into a political hurricane.
“Can they continue to adapt or are people’s opinions in those big tents so diverse that it becomes impossible for them to coalesce?” Davis wondered. “It’s an interesting time in American politics.’
To say the least.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
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