Things Fall Apart (Part 1)
August 8, 2018·10 comments·politics
The American political map has fundamentally changed shape. Where a single center once existed, two separate peaks now dominate. In this new landscape, any candidate or policy occupying the middle ground cannot win. The institutions built to manage disagreement through compromise have become structurally impossible.
• The electorate distribution shifted from single-peaked to bimodal between 2004 and 2017. The overlapping middle where centrists once thrived has shrunk faster than the pure ideological camps have grown. This isn't about voters moving further left or right. It's about the creation of two separate electorates with almost no common ground.
• A centrist politician now faces only two paths: stay silent and gradually surrender your beliefs, or quit entirely.The primary system guarantees that any moderate who speaks up gets challenged from the extreme. The general election guarantees that compromise positions have no winning majority behind them.
• The idea of a third party or a purple wave candidate is mathematically impossible under the current system.Proportional representation could fix this overnight, but constitutional reform requires a crisis most Americans haven't experienced. So long as we have first-past-the-post mechanics, the center is dead.
• This pattern has appeared twice before in American history, and both times it ended in war. The 1850s bimodal distribution over slavery resolved in the Civil War. The 1930s distribution over the Great Depression's aftermath resolved in World War II. The widening gyre doesn't stabilize or self-correct. It accelerates.
• Without an external enemy to unite against, this equilibrium can sustain itself indefinitely, getting progressively more chaotic. Rome spent four centuries in this state. America may be heading for something similar, or it may take a big war with an Other to reset the game entirely.
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