What's the deal with hyperpartisanship, and so what? Part I

Hyperinflation is an economic condition with rapid, out of control price increases which destroy the value of the currency and generally wreak economic havoc. As a public policy matter, obviously it is critical that conditions don’t degenerate this far as there are no easy solutions.

In U.S. politics, we may have arrived at an analogous condition known as “hyperpartisanship.” This term describes when ordinary partisanship evolves past reasoned and principled differences on policy into something more purely vitriolic.

Essentially, hypartisanship is the political version of a heated rivalry in sports — a visceral hate that, for example, Duke basketball fans have for UNC basketball (a view that is reciprocated) having nothing to do with rational assessments of the players and coaches involved.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind suggests: “People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.” Political scientist Lilliana Mason, in Uncivil Agreement, chimes in that politics have become our identity, not unlike our identification with favorite sports teams.

Haidt and Mason argue that partisans have become locked into their preferred “tribe” largely irrespective of objective realities, changing circumstances, or facts. There is evidence to support that idea.

Pew Study of political attitudes

In 2021 the Pew Charitable Trusts conducted a sampling of more than 10,000 people to analyze the range of policy positions and cultural affinities represented. Looking at the data, the policy distinctions between Republican- and Democratic-leaning voters aren’t as stark as one might suppose.

Pew breaks the population into nine groups, with only one group on the Republican side — so-called “faith and flag conservatives” — having little or no policy overlap with Democratic-leaners. These faith and flag conservatives even differ from most of their Republican friends in wishing to see government reflect Christian values and in believing that compromise is tantamount to a sell-out.

In general, the policy views of the other eight groups — three leaning GOP, four Democratic, with one (“stressed sideliners”) evincing no partisan lean — are a surprising mix on immigration, social issues, social programs, taxation, etc. Notably the “sideliners,” comprising 15% of the population, are the least politically engaged.

Two groups comprising about 16% of the population – the “outsider left” and the “progressive left” – espouse strongly liberal views across the board, but even that set of views finds common cause in some stalwart Republican-leaning groups that support legal immigration pathways (some of the “committed conservatives”) or generous social programs and taxing the rich (the “populist right”).

So the policy positions of the two sides leave room to find common ground. But, at the same time, just as scholars maintain, partisans just don’t like each other. Pew finds tremendous distrust for the other side on fundamental dimensions such as morality, patriotism, intelligence, open-mindedness, and work ethic.

What’s at stake

Oxford Academic suggests that “[e]xcessive partisanship can undermine democracy by weakening and ultimately displacing the deliberation necessary to compromise and find common goods in political institutions like legislatures.”  Lee Drutman of the New America Foundation describes an electoral legitimacy doom loop, where hyperpartisans may challenge the legitimacy of election results.

The profound lack of trust between the two parties’ members combined with a demonization of the opposition thus leaves the political system facing two major potential problems:

1.        A legislative process that grinds to a halt, unable to find common ground and move forward on major issues.

2.        Members of at least one party prone to resisting the results of elections.

Where we stand: Has Congress ground to a halt?

As for #1, it is fashionable, to say the least, to ascribe dysfunction to the Congress. In fact I did that in a previous post, arguing that Congress isn’t doing its job when it falls behind on reauthorizations and fails to pass appropriations bills on time. I blamed that at least in part on partisanship gone wild.

But there are two responses to the common argument (represented well by Steven Pearlstein in Politico) that Congress has become almost irredeemably dysfunctional.

First, Congress has never been terribly functional. It is not built for speed; friction is integral to the framework of bicameralism. Instead, lower your expectations; you can’t grade Congress on any normal standard of efficiency.

Second, as has been seen this year, Congress often does get it done, albeit slowly and maybe not on the preferred timetable. By large bipartisan majorities major foreign aid legislation and omnibus appropriations passed both houses and were recently signed into law.

In a 2022 Roll Call article, Jim Saksa cites Princeton political scientist Frances Lee arguing that congressional productivity has not decreased in recent years. While there are fewer bills, they are longer, more comprehensive, and may have, in aggregate, more substantive provisions than in some previous years.

When Trump was president, even with a Democratic House (116^th Congress), Roll Call’s Saksa notes that Congress passed “a series of significant laws [including] the 9/11 victim compensation fund, a revamp for retirement plans, a ban on surprise medical bills … billions for restoring and upgrading America’s national parks[, and] a new trade deal[.]”

In addition to the omnibus appropriations and the foreign aid bill, Congress during the Biden administration can boast of the Inflation Reduction Act, a huge infrastructure bill, and the CHIPS Act, to name a few. Almost all of the major bills passed in both the Trump and Biden administrations were bipartisan, often with majorities of both parties in support.

Where we stand: Are our elections threatened?

Lee Drutman’s Vox piece, cited above, was written in 2017. He accurately anticipated a potential crisis if Trump were defeated for reelection in 2020.

Indeed it has become an article of faith among many Republicans, maybe as many as 70% according to a recent CNN poll, that Biden’s win in 2020 was illegitimate. Obviously then-President Trump thought so, and he was backed by a majority (147) of House Republicans when the vote to certify Biden’s electoral college win was finally held on January 6, 2021. (Only seven House Democrats objected to the certification of Trump’s win in 2017. Of course Hillary Clinton accepted the result.)

Conclusion

As to point #1 above, Congress has not ground to a halt, and it does find common ground and move forward on at least some major issues. Furthermore, bipartisanship lives when it comes to agreements on major bills. Congress is never pretty, and it is in some ways damaged (chronically late appropriations and lapsed authorizations), but it has not (yet) degenerated to the point where partisanship has destroyed its ability to compromise or find common goods.

As to point #2, one cannot be so sanguine. Trump has not backed down from his position on the 2020 election, and has not ruled out the possibility of political violence if he loses again. Some other prominent Republicans are similarly noncommittal when it comes to accepting the results this fall. Lee Drutman’s “electoral legitimacy doom loop” is real.

Hyperpartisanship presents Democrats with a special problem, which is the subject of Part II of this short series coming next week.