Wither the Country?

By Dr. Harold A. Black

blackh@knoxfocus.com

haroldblackphd.com

I've always been an optimist with regards to the country. Even though we sometimes make mistakes with whom we elect president, those mistakes seldom took us down a path that threatens the basic foundations of the country. The electorate is suffering from presidential whiplash. From Bill Clinton to George Bush to Barrack Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden the country keeps careening back and forth. It is though we keep saying "whoops" and go from one extreme to the other. Presumably core Democrats always vote for Democrats and the core Republicans always vote for Republicans. That's about two-thirds of the electorate with the other third being independents fliting back and forth. The core of each party has become more dug in as time passes and have scared away the moderates. Today, Senators Joe Manchin, Jon Tesler and Kristin Sinema are "moderate" Democrats and in the few times they go against the rest of the Democrats, they are badgered, yelled at and vilified by those on the left. Yet all three have voting records significantly to the left of the most "moderate" Republican now in the Senate.  The "moderate" senate Republicans, Romney, Collins and Murkowski, have ideology scores well to the right of every Democrat. There is no ideological overlap. Thus when rabid core Republicans refuse to support a "moderate" Republican, they apparently rather have in office a Democrat who will be much farther left than the "RINO" Republican. That makes no sense to me.

The two parties are moving farther apart. I don't understand the math when I read that Biden's approval rating is 37% and yet 87 percent of the Democrats approve of the job he is doing. Shockingly, that is a higher rating than democrats gave either Clinton or Obama. Independents' approval is 35% and 3% for Republicans. I know several Democrats who approve of Biden. They support his actions on the climate, COVID vaccines, the growth of the administrative state, gun control, diversity, inclusion and equity. But it is abortion that drives their support. But they also approve of Biden's policy on transgenders, immigration and critical race theory but those issues are less important to them. I don't know a single Republican who approves of Biden or any of his actions. So where is that 3%?

My optimism about the country's future is lessened by this polarization of the electorate and that of our politicians.  Consider the House bill on transgender athletes. The bill would ban males from women's and girls' sports at schools that take federal money. Every republican voted for the bill and every Democrat voted against it. Of course, it has no chance of passage in the senate and even if it did, Biden would veto it. The House vote depressed me. It would appear that at least one Democrat would have found the bill reasonable and would have voted for it. If the bill were as awful as the Democrat leadership said, then reason would have it that at least one Republican would have voted against it. So 100% of the Democrats thought that transgenders should compete against females despite transgenders being physically stronger and having an advantage over women in most sports. The Republicans argued that they are defending of women's rights because in many cases women and girls are denied the recognition that they would otherwise achieve. Surely at least one Democrat woman in the House supports that view, but apparently not.

Democrats in the main support eliminating some of the basic foundations of the country such as the electoral college. Most Democrats think that the Constitution should be a living document and is outdated written by slave holding old white men with little relevance today. Democrats also in large part dislike capitalism and favor socialism. Democrats are less patriotic. Republicans feel otherwise. If these positions remain intractable, I fear for the future of the country. Before the Civil War the country was referred to as "The United States are." Afterwards, it was "the United States is." Don't be surprised that in the future it reverts back to "the United States are."

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