Reactions to story from The New York Times

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  The Case Against Polarization

  http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/the_...
  73 days ago in Matthew Yglesias · Authority: 2,449

  William Galston and Pietro Nivola have an interesting piece on the rise of geographic segregation in political presences, where more-and-more people now live in whole counties full of co-partisans. It ends, however, with a pretty lame entry into the
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  Why local elections may become less and less competitive

  http://themoderatevoice.com/politics/redistricting/19530/why...
  74 days ago in The Moderate Voice - Domestic and international news analysis, irreverent comments, original reporting, and popular culture fea · Authority: 1,408

  Why local elections may become less and less competitive May 11th, 2008 by PAUL SILVER In Vote Like Thy Neighbor William Galston and Pietro Nivola bring to me some new insight on the reason for the partisan divide. And some realism about the remedies. 41
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  Self-segregated America—at least along political lines

  http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/06/selfsegregated...
  52 days ago in Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog · Authority: 261

  ARTICLE: "Vote Like Thy Neighbor: Why the American electorate is more politically polarized than ever," by William A. Galston and Pietro S. Nivola, New York Times Magazine, 11 May 2008, p. 12. This, to me, sounds suspicious as causal analysis, but I'm not sure how to counter the argument, even as I suspect it's an oddity of the Boomers. But here it is: "In 1976, only 27 percent of voters lived in landslide counties where one candidate prevailed by 20 points or more. By 2004, 48 percent of voters lived in such counties." The Boomer age is a weird one, politically, marked, as expert Ron Brownstein argues in his book, The Second Civil War, by a deeply and closely divided electorate, meaning big differences between the parties, but they attract similar levels of popular support. So the Dems and Republicans are less willing and less able to compromise, yielding the Boomers' pathetic record as legislators. So if you accept the Brownstein argument, and I do, then this one by Galston and Nivola indicates that the Boomer age has resulted in a sort of political segregation: we naturally move to counties where we feel politically comfortable. I'm not willing to describe this phenomenon as a permanent hardening of the social arteries of our democracy. People move a lot in this day and age, so the whole thing may be gone in a couple of decades as the Boomers move into their old age. Or maybe not.
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  Political Parties, A House Divided, Quality Leadership

  http://www.successthroughquality.com/blog/?p=142
  50 days ago in Quality Leadership Weblog :-) · Authority: 4

  Self-segregated America—at least along political lines. Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett on June 2, 2008 6:24 AM So if you accept the Brownstein argument, and I do, then this one by Galston and Nivola indicates that the Boomer age has resulted in a sort of political segregation: we naturally move to counties where we feel politically comfortable. Interesting posting in reference to the Article: “Vote Like Thy Neighbor: Why the American electorate is more politically polarized than ever,” by William A. Galston and Pietro S. Nivola, New York Times Magazine, 11 May 2008, p. 12. Political parties, interest groups, et.al., have value in helping identify the polarity in respective issues. The forgotten element is the principle that people will unite and work together to achieve ideal outcomes and will become “segregated” when they work to achieve non-ideal outcomes. I wrote an article a few years ago titled: A Transformation to Quality Government that provides an approach for re-framing the political debate with a focus on working towards ideal as opposed to non-ideal outcomes. Wish I could claim credit for the theory behind the idea but it really belongs to the Founding Fathers — just been forgotten over time. An example of applying the concepts in Resolving Controversial Issues Such as Abortion, may also help illustrate the approach. Also illustrated the concept as it applied to the Motor Voter Law.
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  Vote Like Thy Neighbor - Idea Lab - Elections - New York Times

  http://justinhamilton.tumblr.com/post/34737976
  71 days ago in (sen) (hurd) (sed) ™ · Authority: 1

  + Vote Like Thy Neighbor - Idea Lab - Elections - New York Times Shared by justin hamilton “great majority of voters now fuse their party identification, ideology and decisions in the voting booth” political polarization has become akin to political…
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  You mean Americans are still polarized?

  http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2008/05/you-mean-americans-are-...
  72 days ago in http://www.tuccille.com/blog · Authority: 69

  Remember all that talk of "political polarization" that was all the rage earlier this decade? Americans were supposedly dividing into bitterly opposed camps, reading one set of political books to the exclusion of opposing ideas and socializing only with like-minded acquaintances. That's all gone now that we're in a postpartisan age in which-- Oh bullshit. Polarization is back. Say William A. Galston and Pietro S. Nivola of the Brookings Institution in the New York Times: The share of Democrats who could be called conservative has shrunk, and so has the share of liberal Republicans. The American National Election Studies asks voters a series of issues-based questions and then arrays respondents along a 15-point scale from -7 (the most liberal) to +7 (the most conservative). These data indicate that 41 percent of the voters in 1984 were located at or near the midpoint of the ideological spectrum, compared with only 28 percent in 2004. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters clustering toward the left and right tails of the spectrum rose from 10 to 23 percent. Most strikingly, political polarization has become akin to political segregation. You are less likely to live near someone whose politics differ from your own. It’s well known that fewer states are competitive in presidential races than in decades past. We find similar results at the county level. In 1976, only 27 percent of voters lived in landslide counties where one candidate prevailed by 20 points or more. By 2004, 48 percent of voters lived in such counties. Galston and Nivola say that Americans are self-segregating into communities that broadly share their values and attitudes. That doesn't just concentrate people in places where they hear no dissenting views; it actually exaggerates the views that already hold. That's because "once a tipping point is reached, majorities tend to become supermajorities. This is consistent with the findings of recent political science and social psychology: individuals in the minority of their group tend to shift their views toward the majority, while members of the majority become more extreme in their views. In such circumstances, discussions within groups often intensify, rather than moderate, the underlying polarization." That squares with phenomena I've noticed among the circles in which I move. I have friends in both Flagstaff (predominantly liberal) and the Verde Valley (mostly conservative). Dropping in on a gathering of either crew can be like visiting an echo chamber -- there's not much diversity of opinion. The Flagstaff types almost never encounter people who favor, for example, loosening economic regulations or firming up property rights. The Verde Valley residents just don't run into people who believe in the right to choose abortion or support teaching kids about contraception. And this isn't exactly a hardcore area; live-and-let-live still holds a lot of sway in Arizona. Many of those Flagstaff liberals are gun owners, for example, and many of the Verde Valley conservatives believe in reining in police power. But in areas where there's common agreement, there's a total inability to comprehend how anybody could come to a countervailing opinion because they just don't usually run into people who voice an opposing view. Take that phenomenon to Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Provo, Utah, and ... well ... Oh, Hell. I used to work in Cambridge. I know exactly what the result is -- think, the Stepford Commies. But why, after over two centuries of American politics, is so much of the electorate now polarizing and drawing into camps so separate that they don't even socialize or live near one another? As I've written before, I think it's because the stakes have grown so large. [G]overnment has so intruded into every nook and cranny of modern life that Americans have real reason to fear the outcome when their opponents control the levers of political power. Take the controversy over gay marriage as an example. Politicians debate the merits of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, but there's no real reason that marriage of any sort should be a public policy issue. New York didn't require marriage licenses until 1908 and many states that required licenses earlier provided for private alternatives, such as publishing banns. Likewise, private ownership of firearms and personal use of marijuana were regulated by states and localities, if at all, into the 1930s. Entangled in federal law in 2004, guns and dope now serve as defining issues for many Americans, and can decide the outcome of elections. Even Americans' mealtimes are subject to official scrutiny. The federal government is rolling out an advertising campaign to nag people about their eating habits, and some public health groups want to impose high taxes on so-called �junk food� to discourage its consumption. Who can blame Americans for being at-daggers-drawn when marital arrangements and lunch menus are at the mercy of the victors in the next election? In his 1955 book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, historian Jacob L. Talmon wrote that liberal democracy "recognizes a variety of levels of personal and collective endeavour, which are altogether outside the sphere of politics." In contrast, "totalitarian democracy treats all human thought and action as having social significance, and therefore as falling within the orbit of political action." That sounds familiar. Over the years, Americans have turned a country in which most areas of human life "are altogether outside the sphere of politics" into one in which every detail of life is treated as "falling within the orbit of political action." This election, we have presidential candidates discussing a government takeover of health-care decisions, talking about marching Americans in unison for the good of some national purpose and otherwise dismissing the idea that anything is beyond the reach of the state. If everything is subject to electoral outcomes, then people who hold views at odds with your own aren't just political opponents; they're enemies who want to reshape your life according to values you consider abhorrent. Why would you want to mingle with them? This isn't the sort of a divide you cross with a warm and fuzzy PR campaign. If you want to reverse political polarization, you have to reduce what's at stake in political contests. Put more areas of human life off-limits to government intervention so that a victory by the political opposition just doesn't matter so damned much.
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  Obama's West Virginia Problem

  http://d-day.blogspot.com/2008/05/obamas-west-virginia-probl...
  72 days ago in D-Day · Authority: 159

  So after locking down the nomination, Sen. Obama is going to get his hat handed to him tomorrow in West Virginia. It's not going to be close; if Obama gets up to 40% it'd be a miracle. Kentucky is going to be the same way. And people are justifiably asking why, and just as justifiably chalking it up to race. Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican. “I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides. I think making it entirely a racial construct misses the mark, however. While there have been a number of stories written with essentially this same racial theme in mind, they're all largely anecdotal. There does seem to be a trend with Obama doing the most poorly in counties in Appalachia. I'm going to attribute this to a couple of factors: 1) Demographics - if you're living in the Appalachian mountains, you're likely to be older than the general population, less likely to have a college degree, and almost certainly white. Demography has been destiny for the better part of this Democratic nomination fight, and these are some of Clinton's most favorable areas. There are plenty of mostly white areas where Obama does well, but they are higher-education whites, more affluent whites, and generally just a different group than you have in Appalachia. 2) The Digital Divide - West Virginia is one of only a few states without a Drinking Liberally chapter. There isn't a very powerful netroots there (there is in Kentucky, but it's largely the product of people in the college towns like Lexington and Louisville). The places that Obama fans congregate online are harder to find in Appalachia. And it's harder to get news of the non-corporate media variety, and we all know Obama has been pounded by corporate media recently. 3) People vote like thy neighbor - this was the subject of a great New York Times piece this weekend, and I've been saying this for years. People have self-segregated to a higher degree than ever of late, choosing to live in the same neighborhoods as their ideological soulmates. This has the effect of doubling any cultural divide or polarization. I think part of this is class and age, and part is just people congregating with who they find comfortable. In bigger states there is more of a diversity of regions within the state to balance these echoing effects out - not so in West Virginia, at least. On the whole I agree with Attaturk - if there are those for whom race is a hurdle they can't get over in choosing the most qualified candidate for President then it's THEIR problem, and they can catch up to the non-racists rather than us having to hold back history for them. But I think he may be overstating how that's playing out in a place like West Virginia. There are other factors at work. And Obama hasn't chosen to really attack these other factors and present himself in a more palatable way to these voters - he's basically checked out on both states. I didn't agree with all of George Packer's disquisition on the subject, but I do think this is sound advice. McCain began his speech in Inez by saying, "I’m not the son of a coal miner. I wasn’t raised by a family that made its living from the land or toiled in a mill or worked in the local schools or health clinic. I was raised in the United States Navy, and, after my own naval career, I became a politician. My work isn’t as hard as yours." His modest disclaimer seemed unnecessary—the local pol who introduced McCain had just finished calling him a son of Kentucky at heart, and the crowd was entirely on his side. But for Obama, who’s bound to strike people in places even less isolated than Inez as alien, this kind of self-presentation might be essential. Rather than analyzing them out loud, or pretending to be one of them, he should speak about the differences (and race is far from the only one) directly, candidly, in the blunt, personal language that made his Philadelphia speech so memorable. He should say that in spite of these differences, in spite of what he doesn’t know about or share in their life, he knows what Presidential leadership can do to improve their lives—as did Roosevelt, who was an aristocrat, and Kennedy, who was rich and Catholic. Obama doesn't need to win West Virginia or Kentucky in the general election but he would do well to use this kind of presentation when speaking to those kinds of voters.
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  Likes Attract

  http://htjyang.blogspot.com/2008/05/likes-attract.html
  73 days ago in Reality Check · Authority: 5

  Study shows that "[i]n 1976, only 27 percent of voters lived in landslide counties where one candidate prevailed by 20 points or more. By 2004, 48 percent of voters lived in such counties."

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