One Nation, Divisible

NYT reported There is a lot of talk about political polarization in Congress. But is it true? Well, yes. Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, social scientists at the University of Houston and Princeton, respectively, used systematic measures of liberalism and conservatism built around government intervention in the economy to chart roll-call votes in Congress. We have adapted their scores to look at the House and Senate in each decade from 1955 to the present. The result? Thirty-three percent of House members were near-pure centrists in 1955; in 2004, just over eight percent fit that category. Thirty-nine senators were centrists in 1955, compared with nine in 2004. The differences are attributable to the emergence of the permanent campaign, the rise of partisan news media and, most of all, changes in Congressional redistricting.

Allowing a legislature to draw district lines is dangerous. Schwarzenegger has a fairly good idea; he is trying to get the citizens of California to take redistricting out of the hands of the Legislature and let Judges do it. I favor an even more impartial option. Let a computer draw district lines to using population counts, major roads, rivers, and other geographical features, to draw district lines with the area of each district as compact as possible, irregardless of how many Democrats, Republicans, or Independents are in the district.

The expansion in the number of “safe” seats in the House that began in the 1980’s has put an increased importance on primaries, which favor more ideological candidates. A number of these sharp-edged representatives have then moved to the Senate, where they have helped widen the partisan gulf we have talked about — and now can see. There is an interesting graphic here

Jeff Jarvis blogged The NY Times' op-ed graphic illustrates the point, uh, graphically today. It shows that the number of moderates in Congress -- not in the nation, mind you, but in Congress -- has greatly reduced. The system is as broken as the American auto and airline industries. It's time for a political restructuring. It's time for a revolt of the middle. Right now, the middle is simply revolted at "leaders" such as these.