Asleep at the Switch

In his post about the tension between trade and immigration on the one hand and our two party system on the other, Mark Aspinwall provides this accurate and helpful history lesson at The Conversation:

The U.S. has had “big tent” or “catch-all” political parties for much of its existence. They are two broad mainstream parties, each capturing a wide variety of opinion on all kinds of issues. Big tent parties had an easier time consolidating views among their members and producing unified platforms during the 20th century, when the focus was on domestic questions of social welfare and redistribution versus deregulation and market freedoms.

I think he runs astray when he characterizes the two parties’ views on trade and immigration:

However, when the issues shift to drawbridge topics like immigration and trade, the parties are less stable. Like a sticky weathervane, they are buffeted by crosswinds in which party members who are poles apart cannot unite behind a single policy. Within the Democratic Party, the left of the party is opposed to free trade because of the effect on workers. Within the Republican Party, the right is opposed to immigration because of the effect on national security, jobs and public services. For different reasons, both of these groups want the drawbridge up.

If Democrats object to free trade, I haven’t seen it. They object to what we have which is managed trade that works to the benefit of the few rather than the many. And the polls overwhelmingly suggest that not merely Republicans but Americans more generally object to our present immigration laws being enforced selectively or not at all. Characterizing those positions as opposition to trade or immigration is a bald-faced lie.

The framing of these issues as “drawbridge topics” is clever (he attributes it to The Economist—never take your advice on immigration and trade from a publication that operates from an island separated from the mainland by a distance of no less than 20 miles) but inaccurate. It would be better to characterize them as “asleep at the switch” issues. Or maybe “robber baron” ones.

IMO we have a problem but not the one to which Dr. Aspinwall calls our attention. Our problem is that both of our political parties are so insulated from democratic discipline that they have adopted policies that benefit wealthy patrons rather than their rank-and-file members.

3 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    “If Democrats object to free trade, I haven’t seen it. ”

    More Democrats voted against NAFTA than voted for it.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/09/history-lesson-more-republicans-than-democrats-supported-nafta/

    For the South Korean free trade vote, the majority of the Democrats in the House voted against it. In the Senate most of the Senators voted for it.

    https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/112-2011/h783

    At least in terms of their actual votes, Democrats have opposed (mostly) recent trade bills. Since we have not had a vote on “free trade” hard to know how they would vote.

    Steve

  • Since we have not had a vote on “free trade” hard to know how they would vote.

    That’s my point. Disagreeing with the terms under which trade is to be managed and opposing free trade are not the same.

  • Guarneri Link

    “Our problem is that both of our political parties are so insulated from democratic discipline that they have adopted policies that benefit wealthy patrons rather than their rank-and-file members.”

    Perhaps you define the Chicago Teachers and other public sector unions as wealthy. What we have is a nation of people promised a disproportionate ability to feed at the the taxpayers, their neighbors really, trough in exchange for their vote or campaign contribution.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-01/blatant-union-greedchicago-teachers-set-strike-date-oct-11

    It’s not just banks, Ag companies, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet and so on. Next up, a bankrupt ObamaCare bailout.

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