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John Feffer
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John Feffer
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The most remarkable fact of President Donald Trump’s impeachment is the partisan nature of the vote in the House of Representatives. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the two articles of impeachment. Of the two Democrats who voted against the articles, one of them had already pledged to cross the aisle and join the Republican Party.
In light of these numbers alone, it would seem that the vote on impeachment was not based on the merits or defects of the case but entirely on the party affiliation of the lawmaker.
As the case moves to the Senate, the same partisan divide is expected to hold true. Republican leaders in the Senate have preemptively dismissed the case for impeachment, even though they have taken an oath to review the evidence impartially. They would also prefer to speed through a trial, without calling any additional witnesses, who might introduce new and possibly damaging evidence. With the exception of one or two mavericks, the Senate Democrats are also expected to close ranks and vote for impeachment.
Donald Trump, of course, is a divisive political figure. And much has been written about how polarized politics have become in the United States. The decline of bipartisanship, however, is not new.
Remember that Barack Obama rose to prominence with his speech at the 2004 Democratic Party convention in which he challenged the already prevalent notion at the time that the United States was divided into red states (Republican) and blue states (Democrat). When he became president, Obama had great difficulty overcoming the partisanship that he’d decried. In the wake of the financial crisis in 2008-9, Obama put together a stimulus package to rescue the economy that received absolutely no Republican votes of support in the House.
Indeed, the Republican Party pledged at the time to do everything possible to block Obama’s agenda. “We're going to do everything ― and I mean everything we can do ― to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can,” said future House Speaker John Boehner.
A major reason for the greater partisanship has been the changing nature of the two parties. Centrist Republicans have left the party, either resigning or losing in elections to more right-wing opponents. Conservative Democrats the “Blue Dogs” lost big in the 2010 elections and haven’t recovered.
But political polarization and greater partisanship are actually two different things.
While Obama was famous for his attempts to bridge divides in the United States blue states and red states, whites and African-Americans, liberals and conservatives Donald Trump has gone in the opposite direction. He has demonized anyone who dares oppose him. He labels his opponents communists.
But Trump is not, strictly speaking, partisan. He has often criticized other Republicans. He has offended the sensibilities of his party leaders. He has deliberately gone against longstanding elements of Republican Party doctrine by running the national debt to historic levels and by currying favor with the leaders of countries identified as primary U.S. adversaries like North Korea and Russia. He has praised any Democrat who sides with him (like presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard).
Even before he became president, Trump upended assumptions about the partisan divide in the United States. He managed to win the votes of between six and nine million people who voted for Obama in 2012. Perhaps even more surprisingly, nearly one out of eight people who voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in 2016 ended up voting for Trump in the general election. Michigan, a blue state for the last six presidential elections going back to 1992, switched to Trump in 2016. The same was true for Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
What Trump has done, in other words, is expose the fluidity of political opinion in the United States. His support transcends political parties, as does his opposition. He has remade politics to be about himself, not about his political party. Thus he has transformed the Republican party in his own image. Less than 10 percent of Republicans currently support his removal from office. Even though the Republican party leadership was very skeptical about Trump’s candidacy in 2016, to say the least, the “Never Trump” faction within the Republican Party will not likely field a candidate in the 2020 Republican Party primary who can challenge Trump.
The two major political parties have become more ideologically homogeneous. They are increasingly voting along party lines. And Trump has personalized politics more than any politician in recent memory. So, the impeachment vote is no surprise.
But the electorate is not polarized in the same way. For years, more Americans have identified themselves as “independent” (around 40 percent) than Democrat (30 percent) or Republican (30 percent). On a number of issues that supposedly divide Americans, there is a great deal of consensus: a solid majority favors stricter gun control laws, a similar majority favors legal abortion, an even larger majority wants a national health insurance system, a majority opposes building a larger wall at the border with Mexico and overwhelmingly supports a path to citizenship for the undocumented young people known as the “Dreamers.”
The Democratic Party is unified in favor of removing Trump from office. But it hasn’t taken the same position as the Republican Party did to block Obama’s program at all costs. So, in recent weeks, the Democrats helped Trump push through a revised trade deal to replace NAFTA. They supported a defense bill that created Trump’s treasured Space Command. Last year, the Democrats supported a major overhaul of the criminal justice system that Trump wanted.
The problem on the legislative end has been with the Republicans. The Democrat-controlled House has passed 400 bills that have gone nowhere because the Republican-controlled Senate has ignored them. Trump has called the Democrats “do-nothing,” even though the roadblock is in his own party.
Trump is not the only reason why politics has become super-partisan and super-polarized. Social media has raised the volume of invective and hyperbole. The “ground truth” established by mainstream media has come under attack by conspiracy theorists and extremist talk show hosts. Thanks to developments like the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United which allows corporations and wealthy individuals to plow more resources into political campaigns money plays an overwhelming role in electoral politics.
In comparison to reversing any of these trends, removing Trump from office seems like a much easier task. Electing a president and a Congress committed to achieving a political consensus on issues supported by a majority of Americans will be even more challenging in the post-Trump era.
By John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy In Focus
The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
