A Brief History of Politics
Armon Owlia: Coming up on “This American Divide…”
Owlia: “The first thing you need to know about me– I don’t like extremes.”
Todd Washburn: "What we call ‘negative partisanship’ has been rising significantly."
Paul Pierson: “There was a concerted effort to keep race off the agenda. Sometimes, Republicans, to make trouble, would see if they could get the issue on the agenda.”
Owlia: “So how did we get here? Come with me on a little journey.”
John Ehrlichman (recreation): “You wanna know what this is really all about?”
Owlia: Do you like what you see?
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Michael Smerconish: Is social media harmful? That’s the question being raised and debated.
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Joe Fryer: We’ve got families all over the country who are dealing with this.
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Tom Costello: As anti-Semitic content has surged on Twitter after Elon Musk, who emphasized free speech, took full control. Use of the N-word also jumped 500 percent.
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Jo Ling Kent: After close reviews of the President’s recent tweets, it banned him, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
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President Joe Biden: It was an enraged mob that had been whipped up into a frenzy.
Alisyn Camerota: The alleged attacker posted conspiracy theories on Facebook.
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Brian Latimer: The social media business is evolving a lot these days.
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Alisyn Camerota: “Spider-Man” star Tom Holland announcing he’s taking a break from social media for the sake of his mental health.
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Jake Tapper: Cherished ideals of free speech are in the hands of erratic billionaires.
Owlia: It’s time to examine “This American Divide.”
Owlia: I find most people will ask regarding politics, “What are you? A Democrat or Republican?” It makes American politics feel like a game between two teams to see who can gain the most power and influence to push their agendas. Except it isn't a game. Lives are on the line. And yet, the question's asked as casually as "Mets or Yankees?" I've been asked that question a lot. Even after years of soul-searching, I still don't know. How can I even approach such a question or a topic without telling you a bit about myself? So, I want to put my cards out on the table for you, so you can understand where I’m coming from. The first thing you need to know about me - I don’t like extremes. I was raised to practice moderation from an early age. I grew up in a center-right township about eight miles south of Pittsburgh, the son of an immigrant single mother who’s a scientist-by-training and now CEO. She taught me to think critically, keep an open mind, and look at the full picture. If you work hard, you’ll see results – especially in the United States of America. I grew up on the threshold of the upper middle class and the one percent – because of my mother’s success. A key point in many stump speeches from far-left politicians was the lumping of the top one percent of wealth earners in America, including, but not limited to, not paying their fair share of taxes or being an evil, secretive, undesirable group of society that needed to be destroyed. Consequently, raising taxes on all members of the one percent became a popular rallying cry. Now, it's true. There are people in the top one percent who avoid paying their fair share of taxes. However, I know there are members of that top one percent, such as my mother, who immigrated to the United States and worked ridiculously hard for everything she has, and then was punished and vilified for her hard work. On top of that, many of those one percent actively donate their time and money to help their fellow citizens. Warren Buffett has pledged to donate 99 percent of his estimated $94 billion wealth to charity after his death, and has been recognized as the biggest philanthropist in history. Stereotyping and vilifying the wealthy ignores the real issue, which is the need for more effective enforcement of existing tax laws. The nomination by the Republicans of Donald Trump in 2016 and the Party’s constant backing despite his infamous behavior, such as mocking a disabled reporter, misogynistic comments on "Access Hollywood," and his anti-immigration stances towards those of Middle Eastern descent, amongst many others, had, in my mind, solidified my not being Republican. I was excited to see him lose and fade into obscurity. Only that didn't happen. The 2016 near-nomination of Bernie Sanders, perceived by 70 percent of Democrats as liberal, showed many disgruntled Democrats sick of the moderate establishment, much like their counterparts on the right. They felt the best way to fight the fire of Trump was with some fire of their own, otherwise known as the painkiller that is populism. The lack of a succession plan led to a shift within the Democratic Party. I should have seen it coming, but I was so blinded I had forgotten Newton's Third Law, "For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction." And so, in the 2018 midterms, many young progressive Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won their districts and began to change the course of the Party through policies such as a 70 percent marginal tax plan on individuals who earn over $10 million. AOC, who had volunteered with Sanders in 2016, ran for Representative of New York's 14th district in 2018. She campaigned as a more progressive candidate than her opponent and as the underdog being held down by the establishment, as shown by her lack of endorsements from New York politicians like Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. While I agree with her on certain issues, I found her rhetoric alienating to those who could help find a solution. Amongst my fellow Democratic friends, I encountered voices that were, overall, very progressive, and seemingly uncompromisable. To them, I didn't "sound like a Democrat" because instead of condemning Republicans, I believed in trying to talk and understand the differences, coming to an agreement, even if we agreed to disagree. Sanders' early lead in the 2020 election, however, solidified my fate as a Democrat. Shortly after moving to California in March 2020, I registered as an Independent. I still get flak for it, even from those closest to me at the time. Why don't I choose a side? Don't I understand how problematic the "other side" is? Why would I choose not to be associated with anybody? Aren't I part of the problem? I chose "no side" for my health and sanity. To choose one would be to ignore the evils of the other, and in politics, there's plenty of evil. Independent is my team at a time when such a team is considered unacceptable. It has allowed me to maintain a dialogue with people of various political platforms, a chance to understand multiple perspectives and debate them at will while allowing me to express my complexities without the limiting box of a Party. I have found that I am not alone in my sentiments of burnout with both parties. A Pew study back in August shows that the percentage of Americans who, like me, hold unfavorable views of both parties is at 27 percent, the highest since the first studies in 1994. It's not as if moderates don't exist anymore. They still do, there are just so many less of them, and they operate as either Republicans or Democrats, rather than a third party.
Pierson: I’m Paul Pierson and I teach political science at the University of California, Berkeley. There are far, far fewer moderate members of the House or the Senate. Politicians have good reason to, in most districts, to worry more about the primary than to worry about the general election.
Owlia: Picking one side versus another reinforces arguably the most enduring part of the American fabric: the two-party system.
Washburn: My name is Todd Washburn. I teach a course called "The Polarization of American Politics" that I've taught since the fall of 2019.
Owlia: Washburn teaches the course at the Harvard Extension School.
Washburn: What we call “negative partisanship” has been rising significantly. I don't know if you're familiar with this term, but it's basically, in simplest terms, just hostility to the other party. So both Democrats and Republicans give much lower ratings to the opposing party than they did 40 or 50 years ago. Like, “I really don't like those people."
Owlia: In the last episode, I mentioned that we must look back to look forward. To do so, we must ask ourselves a critical question: "How are stereotypes created?" When the words "Democrat" or "Republican" are spoken, different images come to mind. According to data from the Pew Research Center, a Democrat would most likely be a nonwhite, younger, nonreligious person, often associated more with causes regarding civil rights, diversity, gun control, health care, abortion rights, voting policies, the Supreme Court, climate change, and education.
Washburn: The majority of nonwhite voters in the United, in the country, are today Democrats. It's a little tricky then to say the majority. So, if you look for instance at, it's going back a few years now, but Barack Obama's 2012 election, about 45% of the people who voted for Obama were nonwhite.
Owlia: A Republican, on the other hand, is more likely to be, again, statistically, a white, older, predominately male, religious person, most likely, a Christian. They would be more associated with causes such as the state of the economy, crime, immigration, the right to life, and the power and influence of the federal government.
Washburn: Almost all white Americans, at least, who are religiously observant, have moved into the Republican Party.
Owlia: These perceptions and the statistics that support them are no accident. The parties did not start this way. Various party leaders and members of influence manipulated them to ensure their party reached a desirable level of power. This is because of arguably the most successful, long-term PR campaign in history that has defined American politics and life as we know it. Such a history is essential to understand if you want to answer why America is so polarized.
Washburn: The American public has sorted itself into the “proper” political parties. So, most people who identify as liberals today, almost all, consider themselves Democrats. Most people who identify as conservatives consider themselves Republicans. And again, on top of that, they are much more likely to actually be liberals or conservatives than they were 50 years ago.
Owlia: So how did we get here? Come with me on a little journey.
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Owlia: Welcome to 1950s America. The Democrats and Republicans co-exist with highly similar ideologies, as the country remains united in the aftermath of the Great Depression, New Deal, and Second World War. There are some factors in both parties you may recognize from now that are still there, but one important thing is missing– division.
Washburn: It was very common in the middle of the 20th century when you interviewed Americans about their policy opinions to find that individual Americans would have a range of opinions. They'd be conservative on this issue and liberal on this issue. And it was very hard to find any coherent ideological pattern, patterns to their thinking.
Owlia: However, a concern is beginning to rise– political parties in the United States are not as effective as they possibly could be. The identities, demographics, ideals, and principles of the Democrats and Republicans are too alike to be distinguished. To that purpose, The American Political Science Association publishes a study. The study read, in part…
V.O.: "Popular government in a nation of more than 150 million people requires political parties which provide the electorate with a proper range of choice between alternatives of action. In order to keep the parties apart, one must consider the relations between each and public policy."
Owlia: In other words, the parties were too similar. If American democracy is to survive, the political parties must establish two distinct identities.
Pierson: In the 1940s and 1950s, there was a lot of overlap between the political parties. There were conservatives and liberals in both parties, and there was quite a bit of variation across the country in what it meant to be a Republican or what it meant to be a Democrat. So, this political science commission of of, you know, highly esteemed political scientists argued that this was a problem, that it would be better, both for voters and for governance, if it was easier to tell the parties apart, if voters could see that there was a clear difference between the two parties. And so, they didn't use the language of polarization, but essentially, what they were advocating for was for a more polarized system, in which the parties would be more distinctive from each other, more internally coherent, and that the hope was that that would give voters a better sense of what was going on in the political system, and it also meant that the parties, when they did win elections, they'd be able to govern because they'd have a coherent program that was distinctive from what the other party was offering.
Owlia: Little did people realize that a particular Supreme Court case would turn the 1950 report from an ill-received prophecy to an inevitability. With "Brown v. Board of Education" in 1953 catalyzing the Civil Rights Movement, the party makeup began to change, starting with the Southern Democrats. You see, the political map that you know doesn’t exist yet. The South, now seen as a Republican stronghold, is, in this period, heavily Democratic.
Pierson: If you go back to the, to the 1950s, that's actually sort of the, the tail end of the period before American political parties started changing. And at that point, the map that we're familiar with now, the red state versus blue state map, would almost be completely reversed because the South, which is really I think the most distinctive political region in the country, was solidly Democratic in the 1950s.
Owlia: In the 1930s and 1940s, economic policies such as The New Deal and major events such as World War II helped unify the Democrats and America under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. If there was anything that the anti-integrationist Solid South was not so keen on, it was equal rights for African Americans, and the Democrats of the time were not focusing on such legislation to ensure party unity, including, most notably, President Roosevelt.
Pierson: Yeah, I think FDR and other Democrats, and you could say this really carried through until, maybe 1960, Democrats made the calculation, national Democrats made the calculation that to hold their very strange political coalition together, which included a lot of northern liberals, but also included the forces of white supremacy in the South, that they had to keep race off the political agenda. And there was a concerted effort to keep race off the agenda. Sometimes, Republicans, to make trouble, would see if they could get the issue on the agenda. But certainly throughout the New Deal and even in the years after the New Deal, the Democrats tried to hold their coalition together by keeping, keeping issues of civil rights off the table.
Owlia: There had already been some signs of dissent within the Democratic Party. In 1948, Southern Democrats left to create the States' Rights Party, better known as the Dixiecrats. This third party would cause the Democrats to lose four out of the fourteen Solid South states: Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Alabama. However, they would still win the election, with the leaders of the States' Rights Party returning to the Democrats. These events, however, would end up becoming pivotal and sparked a chain of events that have led us to now. Time to go a little bit forward in time…fasten your seatbelts.
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Owlia: Welcome to 1964, and those seeds planted in the 1950s are now growing into redwoods beginning to crack America's foundations. This is the year of the Civil Rights Act; the Vietnam War protest movement is starting to take shape. This is also the year President Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Republican challenger Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona in a landslide, marking the seventh victory by the Democrats in the last nine presidential elections. With the Democrats firmly in the driver's seat, Republicans realized they would have to change to seize control. But how? Once again, the key would come down to the Solid South, where Goldwater won the vast majority of his states. Goldwater was seen as the first true hardline conservative through his philosophy of anti-integrationist views. Remember, the Solid South was heavily opposed then, and still now, to integration or any addressing of Civil Rights.
Pierson: The Civil Rights Movement, I think quite consciously put pressure on the Democrats not to bury the issue of civil rights. They made it more and more difficult simply by, by attracting attention to their cause. And I think the arrival of television was important in this respect as well, that it was possible to, to broadcast what was happening in the Jim Crow South and the, the way in which the Civil Rights Movement was and peaceful demonstrators were being, were being suppressed. All of that created more pressure on the Democratic Party, essentially, to pick a side, to decide whether they were going to support the Civil Rights Movement or not. And ultimately, they do make a break in that direction. This is what happens in the early 1960s and then, you know, famously leading to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. And LBJ is, you know, quite, quite visible embrace of the Civil Rights Movement, both in legislation and rhetorically. And that, so that, I think, was a in-turn a catalyst to the parties becoming more distinctive. It's clear to voters that there is a racially more liberal party and a racially more conservative party. It makes it easier for voters and for, for politicians to figure out which party they should be in.
Owlia: With President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, the Democrats became the party of civil rights and diversity, cementing the black vote and consequentially relinquishing up the Solid South, a consistent Democratic stronghold for nearly 40 years.
Pierson: The black vote had already been shifting somewhat in the direction of the Democrat, of the Democratic Party, But certainly, the Civil Rights Movement and LBJ's actions in the 1960s, you know, greatly reinforced that. At the same time, that it led to this counter movement of white Southerners from the Democratic Party into the Republican Party.
Owlia: The Republicans now had an in, so how could they take advantage? Enter Richard Nixon.
Richard Nixon (archival): Well, I'm not a crook.
Owlia: Yes, THAT Richard Nixon. Nixon was no stranger to the Republican Party. He had been Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower, the only Republican to become President in the 36-year-long period, before losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and retiring from politics a few years later. However, he would make a seemingly miraculous return with a winning strategy in 1968: go hard or go home.
Pierson: And so Republicans, eager to break out of that minority status, recognized that there was a pool of voters, especially in the South, though it also included racial conservatives and conservatives more generally in the North, who this new Republican Party hoped to appeal to, and the Southern Strategy basically involved leaning into that, emphasizing the kinds of issues often coded in a way so that the racial valence of them was not too visible.
Owlia: With his campaign's help and his party's endorsement, Nixon executed the aforementioned "Southern Strategy." But how exactly was it carried out? This is an AI voice recreation of John Ehrlichman, the former White House Counsel and Domestic Affairs Advisor under President Nixon, who stated the following to “Harper’s Magazine” writer Dan Baum in 1994.
Ehrlichman (recreation): You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Owlia: Through the Solid South, the Republicans had found their niche, their target to be back on top. And, in fact, they have used that same target ever since. Plus, the adage is true– fear sells, especially ones built on a false or manipulated narrative.
Pierson: Parties decide what kinds of issues that they want to emphasize, how to frame those issues, and, and, you know, Richard Nixon was, was a master at that.
Owlia: Such specific demographic targeting would eventually lead to heavy sorting without much exposure, allowing such views of the opposition to grow and fester. That simple strategy not only put Nixon into the White House but created the image of both parties into what we know today. Once again, Todd Washburn from Harvard University.
Washburn: And so, that is probably, I would argue, the most significant issue–that Ameri– Democrats and Republicans are no longer living in the same neighborhoods, driving the same kinds of cars, working in the same industries, even watching the same television shows, shopping at the same grocery stores; it's not so much that Democrats and Republicans or Liberals and Conservatives or Americans on different sides of our political divide disagree on politics, although they do. It's that they, they, we have nothing in common outside of politics. And it's very easy to dehumanize people with whom you have nothing in common, especially if you already disagree with them on issues that matter to you.
Owlia: To win an election, people decided the best way to gain power was to tear people apart, a theme now common and recurring throughout American history. It achieves, for the select few, the ultimate goal of power and influence so that the process can repeat and grow. There is now a game of "us versus them," but there are no winners here. In fact, the only winning move may be to not play. Mark Twain is often reputed to have said, "History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme." Indeed, history has shown that polarization in America is new, but many factors that led to such division and separation are repeated. The polarization we see today is just the first sprouts of a tree planted centuries prior, and if you know anything about removing plants, especially ones that have grown for centuries, it's never that easy to clear the roots. Now imagine if, in 1968, Richard Nixon and his campaign had the tool of social media at their fingertips. How lethal would that have been? Well, it's not difficult to imagine…because people on both sides of the aisle continue to utilize this strategy more accurately and clinically than ever before. The Southern Strategy on the grandest scale, with the voices of the center being demonized, discredited, and silenced. We know the tricks. But what about the tools used? Well, I guess it's time to dive into the toolbox…you follow me?
