The United States and Europe reveal the contrasting ways in which political systems in advanced democracies cope with factors as diverse as globalization, depressed wages, cultural tension, welfare policy, immigration and nontraditional family structures, along with racial, ethnic and religious division.
In the United States, the besieged two-party system has remained intact, protected by a 200-year-old tradition and an electoral system that cuts short any bid to create a viable third party.
There are two major costs to this stability: recurrent gridlock, which constricts legislative action, and a failure to provide full representation to the most aggrieved constituencies.
.. These parties have adopted a strategy that might seem strange on its face but actually makes sense, according to the logic of their grievances: exclusionary nationalism combined with generous support for safety-net programs available only to legal residents.
.. The traditional European social democratic left and the Democratic Party are both struggling to address the often conflicting interests of a socially liberal elite and an economically pressed lower class.
.. New actors on the far left and far right, as well as astutely positioned conservative and Christian democratic parties, will not hesitate to capitalize on the struggle to craft a clear narrative – however myopic and divisive.
.. These changes, Ford and Goodwin write, “have pushed to the margins a class of voters who we describe as the ‘left behind’: older, working-class white voters with few educational qualifications.”
.. These value shifts have also left older white working-class voters behind, as a worldview which was once seen as mainstream has become regarded as parochial and intolerant by the younger, university-educated, more socially liberal elites who define the political consensus of twenty-first-century Britain.
.. supporters of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Front are, in comparison to supporters of other parties, less well educated, employed in manual and blue-collar jobs and live in rural areas.
.. “The Class Basis of Switzerland’s Cleavage Between the New Left and the Populist Right.”
.. small-business owners and workers prefer cultural demarcation and defend national traditions, salaried professionals strongly favor international integration and multi-culturalism.
.. “the more robust the multiparty system, the less likely the main left party will be able to dominate” among liberal-leaning constituencies.
.. the emergence of “a more profound, if nuanced, politics of identify” is fracturing the European left from two directions.
.. On one side, “middle-class progressive-values voters and the younger generation place an ever-increasing importance on a tolerant society and support equality for gays, promote multiculturalism, and express concern for the environment.”
.. the new politics of identity traps progressives on both sides. Whatever political position they adopt is bound to alienate either their working-class voters, who tend to be more conservative with regards to values, or progressive-values voters and the millennial generation, who are turned off by the more nationalistic rhetoric that appeals to the traditional or core voter base.
.. Populist parties on the right are moving beyond their adamant opposition to immigration, the European Union and the welfare state to become proponents of a more lavish, but also more restrictive, domestic social spending regime under a policy European scholars describe as “welfare chauvinism.”
.. parties of the right support health care, housing programs and other benefits with the explicit proviso that only legal residents qualify and that public spending on behalf of illegal immigrants be eliminated.
.. We will ensure that visitors to the U.K., and migrants until they have paid N.I. for five years, have N.H.S.-approved private health insurance as a condition of entry to the U.K.
.. the American two-party system, when it works, forces politicians and the public to submit to a multi-step process requiring competing interests to compromise. The first stage is the building of Democratic and Republican coalitions with the aim of winning elections
Coulter to Trump: Get Back to Immigration, Trade, Infrastructure, Building a Wall — Not Paul Ryan’s ‘Standard GOP Corporatist Stuff’
“They seem to be Paul Ryan’s priorities, and also just the standard GOP corporatist stuff,” Coulter said.
.. “What made Donald Trump stand apart from the crowd and apart from the crowd from every presidential candidate for 20 years was immigration, trade, infrastructure, building a wall.
.. getting mandated coverage doesn’t mean insurance companies won’t cover it. It means Ann won’t be required to pay for 15 services more like 50 services that I have no interest in
A California waiter refused to serve 4 Latina women until he saw ‘proof of residency’
But the mood soured quickly after the waiter appeared. Before he could serve the four Latina women, he said, they needed to show proof of residency. “I need to make sure you’re from here,” he said.
Flummoxed, the four women handed over their IDs. But as what was happening sank in, they fumed. “I looked at my sister and [my friend], and I said, did he really just say that?”
Why does Donald Trump demonize cities?
Because they show that the liberal experiment works.
He persists in his efforts to slur cities as radioactive war zones because the fact that America’s diverse big cities are thriving relative to the whiter, less populous parts of the country suggests that the liberal experiment works — that people of diverse origins and faiths prosper together in free and open societies. To advance his administration’s agenda, with its protectionism and cultural nationalism, Trump needs to spread the notion that the polyglot metropolis is a dangerous failure... The president has filled his administration with advisers who oppose the liberal pluralism practiced profitably each day in America’s cities. “The center core of what we believe,” Steve Bannon, the president’s trusted chief strategist, has said, is “that we’re a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being.” This is not just an argument for nationalism over globalism. Bannon has staked out a position in a more fundamental debate over the merits of multicultural identity... The Census Bureau projects that whites will cease to be a majority in 30 years. Suppose you think the United States — maybe even all Western civilization — will fall if the U.S. population ever becomes as diverse as Denver’s. You are going to want to reduce the foreign-born population as quickly as possible, and by any means necessary. You’ll deport the deportable with brutal alacrity, squeeze legal immigration to a trickle, bar those with “incompatible” religions... But to prop up political demand for this sort of ethnic-cleansing program — what else can you call it? — it’s crucial to get enough of the public to believe that America’s diversity is a dangerous mistake... A new study of urban crime rates by a team of criminologists found that “immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) and property (e.g., burglary) crime” in the period from 1970 to 2010. What’s more, according to an analysis of FBI crime data, counties labeled as “sanctuary” jurisdictions by federal immigration authorities have lower crime rates than comparable non-sanctuary counties... regional separation in education and productivity “the Great Divergence.”.. In 2001, the 50 wealthiest U.S. metro regions produced about 27 percent more per person than the country as a whole. Today, they produce 34 percent more, and there’s no end to the divergence in sight... Trump took 2,584 counties that together account for 36 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Clinton won just 472 counties — less than 20 percent of Trump’s take — but those counties account for 64 percent of GDP... Trump won a bigger vote share in places with smaller foreign-born populations. The residents of those places are, therefore, least likely to encounter a Muslim refugee, experience immigrant crime.. places where Trump was especially popular in the primaries are places that face little import competition from China or Mexico. Trump’s protectionist trade and immigration policies will do the least in the places that like them the most... But the redistribution-loving multicultural urban majority can’t be blamed for the inadequacy of the safety net when the party of rural whites has fought for decades to roll it back... Low-density America didn’t vote to be knocked on its heels by capitalist creative destruction, but it has voted time and again against softening the blow... Political scientists say that countries where the middle class does not culturally identify with the working and lower classes tend to spend less on redistributive social programs. We’re more generous, as a rule, when we recognize ourselves in those who need help... An exclusive, nostalgic national identity acts like a cancer in the body politic, eating away at the bonds of affinity and cooperation that hold our interests together.