Maybe the US isn't that divided...
Niall Ferguson has a look at a new book "Culture War: The Myth of a Polarized America."
One of the most striking things to a newcomer to the United States is how very like one another these allegedly divided Americans appear to be. If you fly the 2,588 miles from San Francisco to Miami, as I did last week, the thing that hits you is how fundamentally the same these two places are.
To prove my point, ask yourself where you would end up if you flew the same distance eastward from London. The answer is Baku, Azerbaijan. If an Australian flew 2,500 miles north from Perth, he'd be just short of Kuala Lumpur. Only consider the immense cultural differences that separate these places and you realize at once that the most amazing thing about the United States is not its polarization but its homogeneity.
That's also borne out by serious scrutiny of public opinion. In their book, "Culture War: The Myth of a Polarized America," Morris Fiorina, Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope comprehensively debunk the notion that American society is deeply divided. On numerous issues, which just don't get debated because consensus is taken for granted, Americans have quite similar views. Even on the issues about which the political class gets excited — abortion, homosexuality, religion — it's amazing how much middle ground there is.
This makes sense for two reasons. First, look at the electoral map that breaks down last year's presidential election by county. There are very few parts of the United States that are bright red or true blue. Most of the nation is what you get when you mix the two colors together: a soggy purple.
The other proof is to compare American liberals with their European counterparts. Whether the issue is the economy or G-d, the former are significantly more conservative.
And that's why the real story this week wasn't Schwarzenegger's setbacks in California. It was Mike Bloomberg's landslide victory in his race for reelection as mayor of New York.
New York City is scarcely a Republican stronghold. Its many minorities traditionally have been reliable Democratic votes. Yet Bloomberg has demonstrated in this election that it's now possible for a GOP candidate to win votes across the racial and ethnic spectrum. He won the backing of nearly a third of the Latino voters and, even more remarkable, one of every two black voters.
posted by GayandRight @ 9:34 AM
1 Comments:
Fred, you've made some good points here. Example: my home state, Pennsylvania, would be coloured deep purple. Outside of the city of Philadelphia and a few of the inner ring 'burbs, the hard left liberal does NOT get elected. Democrats who do get elected statewide have at least one strong conservative streak - current Gov. Rendell is a fiscal conservative, the late former Gov. Casey was a conservative on many social issues. But by the same token, Sen. Santorum, who is rightly identified with the right, is an anomaly because righties generally don't win statewide elections here, too. Witness Sen. Specter. Gov. (and former Homeland Security secretary) Ridge was not of the hard-and-fast right, although he was definitely conservative in most regards.
On the other hand, the general philosophical divide across the country is growing. As the hard left (How-weird Dean, the Daily Kos blog, etc.) pulls the Democrats to the edge, the James Dobson/Pat Robertsons are pulling the GOP to the edge. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We can and must only hope that the elastic has enough durability to keep the pullers from yanking the whole thing apart.
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