The current trend of American politics falling into most left/right, conservative/liberal with a weakened center continues:
Next year’s Congress might be the most polarized yet thanks to the loss of centrist lawmakers — a trend emphasized in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primaries.
“The middle is getting squeezed,” ex-Rep. Tom Davis (Va.), a former head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told The Hill on Wednesday.
Retirements are thinning centrist ranks. Several centrist lawmakers — including Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) as well as Reps. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) and Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) — have opted to retire instead of facing tough reelection bids.
On top of that, most of the top targets in each party are the centrists: Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) on the Republican side and Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) for the Democrats. The two Senate seats most likely to flip, in Nebraska and North Dakota, were held by centrist Democrats who are now retiring.
Many centrists face constant challenges because they tend to represent swing areas where the other party is favored. Because of this they are susceptible to wave elections, as happened to many such Republicans in 2006 and 2008 and to centrist Democrats in 2010. They also are more likely to face primary challenges.
Why is this happening now? Part of it:
Davis said a combination of factors had contributed to this: gerrymandering that packs partisans into one district or another for a party’s political benefit, campaign finance laws limiting how much parties could influence races while allowing hard-line outside groups to spend unlimited amounts, and a 24-hour news cycle dominated by voices on the left and right.
Outside groups also have played a major part of party polarization, particularly the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a super-PAC that targets incumbents of both parties.
But it’s more of that. Our political media culture is now set up to focus on parties, the two political ideological sides. You have to look no further for proof then on most cable and TV political shows where (except for occasionally such as on CNN with John Avlon) the main news/talk model is to set up a “discussion” between a talking head D and a talking head R or a highly predictable liberal and a highly predictable conservative.
And if they yell or name call or show angry emotion so much the better (how many times do we see a host looking smugly and then say, “We’ll have to have the two of you BACK!”).
Centrists are now under fire in both parties, where each party’s base is pushing their part to be more ideological pure and centrists who may strike deals or find part of what another side is advocating useful are painted as partisan traitors. This could shift — but right now the trending is towards an increasingly weakened center in an increasingly polarized America. Which ironically will need the center to win elections since America is now so polarized with people whose minds are made up on issues before a full discussion is made.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.