RFK Jr. and MTG are using the same dismissive term for major-party differences. I took at look at this phenomenon at New York:
Partisan polarization has been steadily growing in the U.S. since roughly the 1960s. Ironically, during this time, the complaint that the two parties are actually too alike has become increasingly prevalent. For years, right-wing Republicans have called people in the GOP who don’t share their exact degree of ideological extremism RINOs, or “Republicans in name only,” suggesting they’re basically Democrats. Left-wing Democrats occasionally echo these epithets by calling (relative) moderates “DINOs,” “ConservaDems,” or — back when maximum resistance to George W. Bush was de rigueur — “Vichy Democrats.”
Today the term “Uniparty” has come to denote the idea that Democrats and Republicans are actually working for the same evil Establishment enterprise, their loudly proclaimed differences being a mere sham. This contention was the culmination of a five-page letter Marjorie Taylor Greene recently sent her Republican colleagues calling for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s removal, unless he changes his ways instantly. She wrote:
“With so much at stake for our future and the future of our children, I will not tolerate this type of ‘leadership.’ This has been a complete and total surrender to, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democrats’ agenda that has angered our Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority …
“If these actions by the leaders of our conference continue, then we are not a Republican party – we are a Uniparty that is hell-bent on remaining on the path of self-inflicted destruction.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also leaned heavily into the Uniparty idea in his recent speech introducing running-mate Nicole Shanahan:
“Our independent run for the presidency is finally going to bring down the Democrat and Republican duopoly that gave us ruinous debt, chronic disease, endless wars, lockdowns, mandates, agency capture, and censorship. This is the same Trump/Biden Uniparty that has captured and appropriated our democracy and turned it over to Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, and their other corporate donors. Nicole Shanahan will help me rally support for our revolution against Uniparty rule from both ends of the traditional Right vs. Left political spectrum.”
The Uniparty claim is ridiculous, of course, as FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley demonstrates:
“[O]ur current political moment is arguably farther away from having anything resembling a uniparty than at any other time in modern U.S. history. Based on their voting records, Democratic and Republican members of Congress have become increasingly polarized, and both the more moderate and more conservative wings of the congressional GOP have moved to the right at similar rates. Meanwhile, polling suggests that Americans now are more likely to view the parties as distinct from one another than in the past, an indication that the public broadly doesn’t see a uniparty in Washington. Although there are areas where the parties are less divided, the broader uniparty claim is at odds with our highly polarized and divided political era.”
Kennedy’s subscription to the Uniparty notion is understandable on two points. The first is that his candidacy is vastly more likely to tilt the 2024 presidential campaign in the direction of one of the two major-party candidates (likely Donald Trump, according to most of the polling) than to actually succeed in winning the presidency. Maintaining that it really doesn’t matter whether it’s Biden or Trump running the country is essential to maintaining RFK’s appeal as November approaches and the futility of his bid becomes clearer. Second, Kennedy’s pervasive conspiracy-theory approach to contemporary life lends itself to the argument that the apparent gulf between the two major parties is a ruse disguising a sinister common purpose.
MTG’s Uniparty contention also reflects dual motives. In part she is simply echoing Trump’s weird but useful contention that he’s an “outsider” battling a Deep-State Establishment that secretly controls both parties, which is pretty rich since he dominates the GOP like Genghis Khan dominated the Golden Horde. But there is a marginally more legitimate sense in which key elements of the two parties really are in line with each other on isolated issues that happen to obsess Greene, such as aid to Ukraine. If you are a hammer, as the saying goes, everything looks like a nail.
The same is true of other implicit Uniparty claims, particularly those made by progressive pro-Palestinian protesters who adamantly argue that the need to smite “Genocide Joe” Biden for his pro-Israel policies outweighs all the reasons it might be a bad idea to help Trump return to the White House (including the fact that Trump is palpably indifferent to Palestinian suffering). If the two parties do not appear to differ on your overriding issue, then the fundamental reality of polarization can fade into irrelevance.
So we’re likely to hear more Uniparty talk even as Democrats and Republicans head toward another highly fractious election with very high stakes attributable to their differences.
One other comment in response to Doyle’s very good questions:
Using McDonald’s measure of the voting eligible population (at elections.gmu.edu), I find that turnout increased markedly in battleground states but not elsewhere. Turnout rose about 5 points in 11 battlegrounds but was essentially flat elsewhere. In the most hotly contested states such as OH and FL, turnout was up more like 7-8 points. But in lopsided states like CA turnout actually fell. This prevented the national turnout total from setting any records.
OK, here’s a question I hope someone can answer:
Let’s say voter turn-out actually WAS ~60%. Let’s say it was ~50% in 2000. That’s 20% more people – a good-sized increase, but not HUGE. So why were there ENORMOUS lines? I live in Ohio (sorry everyone – we tried) and I’ve never waited in line before, but this time it took almost 90 minutes, and I was one of the lucky ones. I’m sure everyone has seen or heard about the people (in mostly minority and/or college-age precincts) who were in line for 6 hours or more.
But I’m not really accusing anyone of anything (though I’m not letting them off the hook either); mostly I’m just looking for why 20% more people = 1000% more waiting in line.
There are some interesting analyses of data being performed on voting boxes in Florida. I hope you’ll be reading them before further concluding that the compass is properly calibrated towards true NORTH.
A compass isn’t much good if it is off, and while presuming the integrity of the electoral process is one approach, another is to look at the data and see what they say.
Well, one thing is absolutely clear from this election. Higher turnout in and of itself would have meant absolutely nothing.
Some experts predicted that turnout would reach 120 million. So far, with the latest figures it’s at 115.4 million. So, if there were an additional 4.6 million votes and if they broke 55-45 for Kerry (according to the conventional wisdom about new voters), Kerry would only have picked up an about an additional 2.5 million votes.
So Bush would STILL have won the popular vote by about 1 million votes.
Nothing could be clearer. Technical strategies to boost turnout simply won’t work.
There must be a new strategic campaign to give voters a reason to vote FOR democrats and not just against Republicans, starting now and culminating on election day, 2008.
Randi Roades (Air America Radio) has some very important
information on their web site, regarding e-machines and steps that are being taken to have the Black Boxes audited for possible irregularities, several of which have already been found in Georgia and Ohio.
http://www.airamericaradio.com (link The Randi Roades Show)
or
randiroadesshow.com
I certainly want to be careful with this story, but there seem to be some troubling numbers with regard to exit polls being way off in ‘E’states and way accurate in paper ballot states… is anyone watching this? My latest post provides some interesting numbers…
To compare “apples to apples” so to speak (turnout in ’68 vs. ’04), don’t you have to adjust for the larger number of inelligible voters in both years?
I’m sure in the contested swing states that the percentage was very high. In my county in Wisconsin, turnout was around 80% of the census estimate for adults 18 and older.
Was the national average dragged down because CA, NY, TX, and IL were not competitive for the presidential contest?
Shouldn’t we simply be talking about the voting eligible population?
Brookings has something:
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/20040909mcdonald.htm
This was useful:http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm
And this was an valuable collection of state by state voter turnout against the number of eleigible voters….
http://elections.gmu.edu/Voter_Turnout_2004.htm
I wanted to see how being a “swing state” influenced voter turnout–e.g., Ohio was much higher than neighboring Indiana. I’d be interested to see a discussion of the entire 50 if someone is motivated and has time.
More than that, I was interested in how the averages would project. So, if we took the margin in California, and assumed it was representative of the real feelings of the state, and then calculated from the number of eligible voters how many would have supported each candidate, how does it spell out nationa wide? Is it enough to overcome the small-state bias?
Is the difference in turnout between swing states and safe states enough to explain the deviation between polls and the final electoral results?
Sorry, but for what possible reason would anyone quote turnout as a fraction of a population that includes ineligible voters? The only statistic that makes any sense is the fraction of voting-age American citizens, and I’m sure that’s what the Times meant when they wrote “voting-age population.” Perhaps they chould have been clearer, but I can’t interpret it any other way. And the fact that their number agrees with yours when interpreted that way seems to bolster that interpretation.
To be fair to the Center that put out the estimate, I’m pretty sure they first reported the 59% number as a percentage of “voting eligible population,” not voting age, and this was reflected in the first wire stories I saw on it. It may be that the later newspapers that wrote it up didn’t notice the distinction.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/deanfordnc
Howard Dean for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
By Jason Gooljar
It was a solemn day the crowd gathered around the stage where the candidate was to give his concession. Smiles were on the faces of some, while tears fell from the cheeks of others. Rhythmic applause could be heard erupting from the people all in unison. No, this was not the election night of November 2nd , 2004. This was Howard Dean back in the winter about to end his primary bid. For some this moment can now be looked back on as the day we really lost the presidency to our own party.
It has been said “When you trade your values for the hope of winning, you end up losing and having no values — so you keep losing.” The truth has never been more clear than it is now. We must strengthen the newly found spinal transplant of the Democratic Party. We must now take a stand with our democratic values in tow. First, I’ll tell you what we should not stand for anymore. We can no longer be a party who has to move to the center. The right has never had to do it and neither should we. We can no longer be a party who is beholden to special interests. No more of the big money donors, there is a better way. Raise the money from the grassroots.
We need real campaign finance reform. We need to be the party of inclusion and the party of the poor and the middle class. We need to go to middle America and talk to them about what we stand for. We need to show them that we truly have their interests at heart. We need to go to the evangelical Christians and have a real discussion about America. We need to have a real discussion of religion in America. We need to re frame the debate from our perspective and not reinforce the conservative frames already in place.
When Goldwater lost, his backers did not give up. Goldwater actually lost badly. We have not been greatly defeated like they were. It took them forty years to build the machine they have in place now. We let them do it while we snickered at them and laughed at them for being extremists who would never hold power. They continued to work and they continued to organize. They started winning locally at the state level throughout the middle states and then they went national. They threw the moderate republicans out in favor of the new conservatives. There is much to learn from our opponents indeed.
As we rebuild our party we must keep some things in mind. The neo conservatives do not have absolute power. There were millions of Americans who voted against this President. We still have the power, you still have the power. We as the progressive movement can no longer be afraid of losing. In order to win you must loose. As long as you keep your values when you loose you can continue to fight on. If you give them up you have nothing. Either we as the democratic party stand for something or we stand for nothing at all. After all why vote for a right wing lite party when you can vote for the real thing as middle America did.
Terry McAuliffe’s strategy had major flaws in my opinion. The tactic of a shorter primary in my opinion was not a good idea. We could have used the time to truly prepare our national agenda. We could have used that time to allow our democratic ideals to take forefront in the media. Chairman Mcauliffe is an incredible fund raiser this has been said but he lacks the vision to take this party in the direction it has to go. It has also been said that his agenda did not truly involve the south.
With all of this being said I’m asking the people who voted against this President to ask the DNC to elect former Governor Howard Dean as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Howard Dean has a clear vision of where this party needs to be headed. We need his guidance to achieve our goals as a progressive movement. If we loose in the interim if we stay together as a movement we can shoulder the losses and eventually trumpet the wins. I’m asking for the people to write letters to the media and call elected officials in the democratic party to push for election of Howard Dean as the new chairman of the DNC.
If you care to know why we’ll lose again in 2008, read Thomas Frank’s essay in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Frank is the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
If you care to know why we’ll lose again in 2008, read Thomas Frank’s essay in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Frank is the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?