Polarization, Populism, and the Road Ahead: America’s Shifting Political Landscape
Sep 3, 2024
Bill Wu - As Democrats and Republicans sharpen their contrasts, America faces a deeper polarization, with lasting impacts on its society, global standing, and the U.S.-China rivalry.
After this election, American society will be further polarized no matter who wins. While the Democratic Party will presumably continue its practice of collective decision-making, the Democratic establishment will have to balance progressive ideals with their need to continuously appeal to moderate voters. The Democratic Party will continue, however, to be progressive and radicalized. As the Democrats continue to lean left and the Republicans continue to become more populist, the Democrats will probably come out of a period of dominance based on political correctness and cultural progress since the Clinton era, as the Republicans have also begun to build their popularity on the basis of the American Dream and the returning power to the people.
But at the same time, the Republican Party faces a logical dilemma, both the contradiction between the growth of MAGA populism and the excellent development of the country. If the government gets better, it will produce more elites and more educated people, further shaping the opposition between populism and elites, even if the Republicans themselves make these people.
The Republican Party is simultaneously threatened by the unequal growth of its base due to the continued influx of illegal immigrants. Whether the Republican solution is to clamp down on the border, as they are now, or to adopt a more diverse solution is a question worth pondering.
There are more working class than elites in absolute numbers, but that doesn't mean the number of pro-MAGA populists is greater than the number of pro-elites. If they want to have a long-term advantage, the Republican Party needs more specific and newer policies beyond just tax cuts if it hopes to expand to more working class voters.
The middle and rational voters will also continue to decline in the context of political polarization, and the cracks in American society will continue to widen in the context of an American political system that is unfriendly to third parties. It is a well-known fact that being on the defensive is always simpler than being on the offense, especially when there is a clear contrast between the morals and values policies of the two parties, which further elucidates the cleavage in American society. Liberal, right-of-center populists among the youth should be the future of the Republican Party. Internationally, the “America First” approach is not conducive to the United States remaining the sole global geopolitical leader. In the Republican Party's view, even though China is the biggest threat to the U.S. Although China has encountered some bottlenecks in the development process, the Republican Party's policies are unfavorable to Chinese Americans rather than China as a whole. In contrast, the Democrats' international relations policies are more friendly to Chinese Americans but more unfavorable to China's overall development.
The game between China and the U.S. has been one of preparation for a full-scale decoupling struggle in terms of China's behavior. The Chinese government has not implemented aggressive fiscal and monetary policies, the existing economic situation indicates that the government does not consider short-term economic data the most essential matter. The more important thing is to improve China's core competitiveness and make up for the shortcomings of the next world's major technological development trends: AI, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. China's choice of artificial intelligence and the United States in direct competition, means that the latter two are not the focus of development. In the future, China, the U.S., and Europe will foreseeably undergo profound internal political changes, reshaping the world landscape and a systematic weakening of the U.S. global position. After said political changes, conflicts between the two parties will either be solved by force or diplomacy, and who is in charge will have a lot to do with which path is taken.