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OPINION: Full disclosure, most of my family are staunch Republicans and continue to support the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
On the other hand, I have never had the slightest inclination to vote for any Republican candidate since, at the age of 18, I cast my first vote in the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore.
At the time, he couldn’t think of anything more sinister than four years of a Bush presidency seemingly imposed on the nation by an antiquated Electoral College victory against the will expressed by the popular vote.
When Bush’s term was extended to eight years by popular vote, when I began my doctorate in political psychology, I was sure that the United States had reached the lowest point in the electoral system.
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Although the eight years of the Obama administration partly renewed my faith in American democracy, save for the use of drone strikes, the creation of detention centers on the US-Mexico border, and other hawkish behaviors that abound in America’s foreign policy, Trump’s election. confirmed my biggest fear: America is in deep trouble.
Lately, watching American politics from afar is a lot like watching Rome burn. To be clear, I have a great interest in sports. I teach a postgraduate course in political psychology at the University of Auckland, I am the senior editor of the next Cambridge Manual of Political Psychologyand I do research on the psychology of voting behavior. Keeping up with politics is, in many ways, my forte.
But seeing my friends and family suffer at the hands of a leader who, by most accounts, has completely screwed up the response to the Covid-19 pandemic takes on additional meaning for me. As the number of infections continues to rise in the face of increasingly desperate pleas from the scientific community to flatten the curve and wear a mask, I am continually faced with the very real possibility that the next daily increase of ~ 80,000 people diagnosed with Covid-19 can include my whānau.
That is not to say that the 80,000 new cases each day that are not friends and family do not matter. They do. And I’m hopeful that, on November 3, Trump will face a Democratic reckoning not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt toppled incumbent Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election following the latter’s failed response to the Great Depression. .
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Dr. Danny Osborne, an American expat and senior lecturer in psychology, hopes to see the arc of the moral universe tilt toward justice in this year’s American election.
Unfortunately, Trump’s seemingly inevitable electoral loss does little to fix the problem exposed by his four years in office. As much as a lingering cough is now the symptom of a potentially more troubling condition, Trump’s rise to the top office in the country reflects a much more enduring and sinister problem with American democracy.
In fact, the United States has been paralyzed by an increasingly polarized two-party system that has not been controlled for more than 40 years. The work of eminent political scientist Shanto Iyengar reveals a deeply divided electorate, particularly when it comes to warm feelings towards crusader supporters.
Although Americans ‘feelings toward their own party have remained largely stable since the late 1970s, outward affection (Republicans’ feelings of affection toward Democrats and vice versa) has declined sharply over the decades. later. Specifically, the gap between warmth inside and outside the party on a 100-degree Fahrenheit scale was 23 ° F in 1978, but 41 ° F in 2016.
Looking at sentiments toward presidential candidates provides an even more disturbing trend, and one that has risen considerably since my personal political awakening (namely the Bush administration). By 2016, sentiments towards non-party candidates reached a nadir of 15F. On average, Republican voters rated his warmth toward Hillary Clinton, and Democratic voters rated his warmth toward Trump, about 15F on a 100-point scale. It’s hard to imagine feeling much colder with an out-of-party candidate than this (although, mind you, the 2020 data has yet to be released).
Although it is tempting to conclude that the movement has been from both sides of the aisle, the VoteView data, reported by the respected Washington Post, shows that while it is true that Democrats elected to the House of Representatives have contributed to political polarization by moving slightly to the left, much of the move can be attributed to Republicans becoming increasingly conservative over time.
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Dr. Danny Osborne is optimistic that America will rebuild itself in time.
The 2020 presidential elections largely reflect these dynamics. Democratic voters, faced with the most diverse group of would-be presidential candidates in US history (in terms of ideology, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation), nominated a 77-year-old white male. This was a moderate, intermediate selection, particularly given the range of ideological possibilities that were presented in the primaries.
In contrast, Republicans supported a scandal-plagued candidate who, according to The Washington Post, has told more than 22,000 lies since taking office. But he did so while advancing a hyperpartisan agenda that has resulted in three Supreme Court-appointed justices, the last of whom was confirmed in just 30 days. The average time required to appoint a Supreme Court judge for his lifetime term (since 1975) is 67 days.
Like it or not, Trump will leave a lasting legacy in the US, and whatever happens on November 3 will do little to change that fact. But the last four years have exposed the weaknesses of partisanship and the dangers that lie in wait for those left to take back the pieces of this administration.
The once revered system of checks and balances that were carefully established by the founders of modern democracy was in tatters when Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham feverishly packed the conservative appointments courts, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the appearance of Trump countless misdeeds. What remains is a system whose weaknesses have been exposed not only to the Americans, but to the international community.
Although I am optimistic that the United States will rebuild itself from these ashes, it will take considerable time.
However, my biggest fears right now center on the next few days after the election and whether Americans can put aside their partisanship and let democracy decide who will carry the torch for the next four years, even if it is Trump. .
As the great Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Let’s hope, not just for the sake of Americans who are enduring a leaderless struggle through the pandemic, but for the entire international community, that this arc moves a little closer to justice in the weeks ahead.
Dr Danny Osborne is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland School of Psychology and an American expat living in New Zealand.
