The partisan divide is manufactured, and it’s time we start looking past it.
Our systems of government are not functioning in a way that the majority of America supports. According to the Pew Research Center, public trust in our institutions has been largely declining since the 60’s and was near a historic low in June of last year. Growing partisan divides and instability are no doubt driving this metric, but if you ask me, those things are only surface-level symptoms.
This decline in trust is natural when people’s best interests aren’t represented by those they elect. Even more than that, I argue this instability exists due to the underlying problem — corporate interests in politics.
Politicians, especially at the federal level, are incentivized to appeal to their corporate donors’ interests. It’s built into the campaign finance systems, and there’s little getting around it. The more incentive there is from corporate donors, the less our politicians have room to represent our best interests. Often, when these interests collide, corporate donors win out.
This is best represented by a study out of Princeton in 2004, which found the effect of the bottom ninety percent of voters’ opinions had nearly zero effect on policies passed in the House, whereas the opinions of the wealthiest Americans had a substantial effect. This is the real reason why our congress feels so inefficient — it isn’t representing us anymore.
Restrictions on campaign finance and lobbying have dwindled over the years, meaning that the influence of these donors is growing. Given that corporate interests are often at odds with voters’ interests, as their influence grows, our impact on actual policy declines.
So how can a politician who can’t properly represent their constituents’ best interests win? The answer: to tell you what your best interests are. In the 80’s, the Republicans began dismantling regulations for corporations, lobbying, and campaign finance. These policies weren’t individually popular, but they made up for this by appealing to fundamentalist Christians and taking up divisive stances, asserting themselves as the party of God.
Representing the interests of protected groups, the Democrats opposed this. Over time, as the fights over civil rights and other issues began to accelerate and both sides grew more divided, the Democrats began easing up on the working-class issues their corporate donors abhorred. As both parties moved into more divisive territory, they both found themselves able to win support by simply wagging their finger at the other side of the aisle.
This toxic dynamic between both parties is mutually beneficial. Under a two-party system, this divisiveness allows them to gain favor with voters without the need to challenge their donors and lobbyists when their interests collide with ours.
So, here we are today with the cost of living exploding, wages stagnating, people getting angrier, and neither party passing much legislation which improves the lives of the average American. It’s time we start looking past the partisan divide.
While these divisive issues are more important than ever, if we only focus on them, we’ll keep reliving the same elections term after term. The base issues are the two-party system and the corporate money, and it won’t be solved if all we can do is fight the same fights.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust-in-government-1958-2024
