You have seen it in the news, the American electorate is more divided, more bitterly divided, than anytime in recent memory. What we have here, “they say,” is a culture war, liberals vs. conservatives, church folks vs. secularists, red states vs. blue.Only maybe we don’t.
Remember that great middle class? Ninety percent of our voters consider themselves part of it. And recent studies reveal that they are not nearly as polarized as some surveys suggest.
According to the forthcoming book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, the political elites, the ideologues of both parties are the ones who are polarized. Meanwhile, according to authors Samuel J. Abrams of Harvard and Jeremy C. Pope of Stanford, “the bulk of the American citizenry is somewhat in the position of the unfortunate citizens of some third-world countries who try to stay out of the cross-fire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other.”
It has not always been this way.
Remember Ronald Reagan. Say what you will about him, he appealed to the broad center, and in the process defeated his opponents handily. Bill Clinton, taking a page from Reagan’s book, did the same thing. And though his opponents tried to convince voters that Clinton was an extremist, it didn’t work. He won two terms.
Then, in 2000, both major parties forsook the middle, courted the extremes, used talk of culture war to raise money for their candidates. And the media, ever alert for an exciting story, jumped all over it.
But when asked, that broad middle, the center, shows a remarkable degree of agreement on things like gun control (for it), affirmative action (against it), fair treatment for minorities (for it), and abortion (not for birth control, but O.K. to save the life of the mother). And they don’t want a single party to control the government.
Most surprising of all, Princeton sociologist Paul DiMaggio has found in his research an “increasing agreement between churchgoing evangelicals and mainline Protestants,” even on abortion and gender roles, as well as “a lack of increasing polarization between African-Americans and whites.”
So the culture war is largely a fiction. Yet in promoting it, ideologues and intellectuals have polarized the parties, and left the largest voter category — the independent — adrift.
And until candidates and their handlers craft campaigns that unify instead of divide, adrift is how the independent will remain.
