Opinion – Ezra Klein: US elections can be explained by patterns of US politics

I’m not much for post-election narratives. They’re like that flashy jacket that looks perfect when you try it on in the store, but proves inappropriate when you wear it on a daily basis.

After losing in 2012, Republicans knew they needed a gentler, gentler approach to a more diverse country. So Donald Trump offered the exact opposite and won. After the 2004 defeat, Democrats believed they needed a good old man with a redneck accent who could reconnect them with “the homeland.” Then Barack Hussein Obama ran for president and doubled the arc of American history.

The stories we tell, both in politics and in life, leave us stuck in the past, even as we are ruthlessly forced into the future. What interests me most are patterns that explain more than one election, in more than one place. Three of them are on my mind right now: calcification, parity, and cultural reaction.

In September, John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch and Lynn Vavreck released “The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy”. The authors, political scientists, spent two years gathering, cross-checking, comparing, and analyzing data from the 2020 elections. What they found clarifies not just 2020, but 2016 and 2022: Because politics is so calcified, virtually nothing matters, but, because elections are so close, virtually everything matters.

Consider everything that happened between November 2016 and November 2020: Trump became president and ran one of the most chaotic and unusual White Houses in American history.

He failed to repeal Obamacare, but he reduced taxes. Unemployment dropped to 3.5%. The pandemic has killed more than 1 million Americans. The murder of George Floyd sparked protests, then riots, then a national reckoning. Trump was impeached for abusing power and deceiving Congress. I could go on.

Those were years when it felt like whole decades had passed. However, the 2020 election fits almost exactly on the tracks of the 2016 one. On average, there was only a two-point difference in how states voted in those years — a smaller change than between 2008 and 2012 or between 2012 and 2016. . Some key states were closer in 2020 than in 2016.

Sides, Tausanovitch and Vavreck published the numbers of Covid, the economy, the impeachment, the protests by Floyd. The upheavals that reshaped the country — that filled morgues and burned buildings — were barely visible in the vote. Counties with the highest Covid death rates have not turned against Trump; those where Black Lives Matter acts turned violent were at least slightly in Joe Biden’s favor.

So much has happened and so few minds have changed. They call it calcification, writing, “Just like in the body, calcification produces hardening and stiffness; people become firmer in place and harder to pull away from their predispositions.”

The cause is no mystery. As parties diverge, voters stop switching between them. The fact that the Republican and Democrat have kept the names for so long obscures how much they have changed. I find this statistic shocking, and perhaps you will too: in 1952, only 50% of voters said they saw a big difference between the two parties. In 1984, it was 62%; in 2004, 76%; in 2020, 90%.

The vast differences have made undecided voters not only an endangered type, but a bizarre species as well. How confused must your beliefs about politics be to regularly switch between a Republican Party and a Democrat who agree on so little?

You can see that in these midterms. Herschel Walker is a bad candidate: He has a history of infidelity, abuse and abortion — a problem, you’d think, for a candidate running as a Conservative on social issues. One of his advisers said he lies “as easily as he breathes”.

Voters aren’t stupid: they know Walker is a man with flaws. But there’s a reason he got enough support to force a second round with Raphael Warnock.

The most consequential vote Walker would take, if elected, would be for Mitch McConnell for Senate Majority Leader. The same goes for Warnock, by contrast: for all his theological depth and moral authority, the most important vote he cast in the US Senate was the one that made Chuck Schumer the majority leader. In the vote that matters most, Walker is not Walker; he is a republican. And Warnock is not Warnock; he is a democrat.

Put it another way: I’m not John Fetterman’s doctor, and I don’t know the extent of the damage his stroke has caused. Still, the shortcomings he left are visible and, at another time, could have crippled his political career. But if you were supporting him before, switching your vote to Dr. Mehmet Oz because his rival had a stroke is kind of crazy.

Fetterman, at any disability level, will be part of a coalition that protects women’s reproductive autonomy, tries to decarbonize the economy and fights to expand health care. Oz would have been part of a coalition that seeks to do the opposite on all issues.

Calcification alone would produce a truly frozen politics. In some states this happens, with effective one-party rule leading to a policy devoid of real accountability or competition. But nationally, political control teeters, election after election, on a razor’s edge. This is another strange dynamic of our era: persistent parity between parties.

American politics typically had “sun” and “moon” parties. After the Civil War, Republicans dominated for decades. After the New Deal, the Democrats. Between 1931 and 1995, Democrats controlled the House for nearly four years. Since 1995, the House majority has changed four times — and if the Republicans win now, it will be five.

We live in an era of unusual political competitiveness. Presidential elections are decided by a few points in some states. The House and Senate are up for grabs in nearly every election. In 2016 and 2020, less than 100,000 votes could have turned the presidential election.

So even if calcification means fewer people change their minds in any given election, parity means that these small marginal changes can completely alter American policy.

Look at 2016. If 40,000 people in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump, American politics would take a radically different path. Democrats would likely choose Antonin Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court. The GOP would likely blame Trump and his acolytes for spoiling a winnable election and would turn heavily against them and everything they stand for. So much in 2016 resulted in so little.

Likewise, the dominant trend in 2022 was stability. Most surprising is how few seats have changed hands, despite high inflation and Biden’s low approval ratings. But that could mean we wake up in January to find that a lot is different.

Calcification and parity describe the structure of American politics. But another idea, cultural backlash, describes the substance not only of American policy, but of many other countries as well.

The cultural reaction theory comes from political scientists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart. Inglehart, who died last year, is famous for following the post-materialist turn in global politics. Beginning in the 1970s, generations raised in relative wealth began to care less about traditional economic issues and more about issues of personal autonomy and social values. Central political struggles have shifted from the distribution of money to the preservation of the environment and women’s bodily autonomy and equality in marriage.

These changes were generational and constantly moved from the margins to the center. This has led to a backlash among those who oppose — or are simply disoriented by — the speed at which social mores are changing and the rise of a post-materialist right. This has led to a series of right-wing parties that are more concerned with culture and identity than tax cuts and deregulation.

Compare the Republicans of 2010 with the Republicans of 2022. That year, they followed an economic theory that I thought was wrong, but at least it was clear. Obama was overspending. The increase in debt frightened companies and burdened families. Washington needed adults to tighten their belts and bring back fiscal discipline.

Republicans have made their obsession with repealing Obamacare the central struggle in American politics for an entire decade. In 2010, voters angry about the economy could vote for a party that was also angry about the economy and that seemed to have a plan on what to do about it.

Fast forward to 2022. I suspect one reason Republicans have not been able to better use inflation as a weapon is that the post-materialist right is too confused in its thinking on economic policy to converge on a clear message.

Are Republicans the party to spend more or spend less? Yes they are. Do Republicans believe the prices Americans are paying are too high or, as their pledges to revoke Medicare drug trading and Obamacare subsidies suggest, too low? Yup. Is the economy overheating because the government pumped in too much money, or does it need even more support in the form of a full extension of Trump’s tax cuts? Absolutely.

Voters are very good at feeling what parties and politicians really care about. Inflation may be a problem, but Republicans have never credibly presented themselves as a solution. Today’s party is obsessed with critical race theory and whether Dr. Seuss is being cancelled. It is not obsessed with economic growth or health policy.

If you were looking for a three-sentence summary of American politics in recent years, I think you could do worse than this:

The parties are so different that even seismic events don’t change the minds of many Americans. The parties are so close that even small shifts in the electoral winds can take the country in an entirely different direction. And even in a time of profound economic dislocation, American politics has become less about which party is good for your wallet and more about whether the cultural changes of the past 50 years delight or disappoint you.