Texas held their primary elections on March 1st, and voters had a chance to balance in on the 2016 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations. This year’s primaries included stimulating intraparty clashes over seats in Congress and the state Legislature. The down-ballot races have understandably received slight attention compared with a presidential race that turned out to be more interesting than before. But for those paying attention, the rhetoric in local and national races may have sounded strangely familiar. At times, it’s easy to confuse a candidate running for the Legislature with one aiming for the White House.
One should review the Republican race. The concerns at play in the presidential primary run the scale from the rise …show more content…
The United States, of course, is not a monolith, and neither are its two major parties. The historical, geographic, cultural, and circumstantial diversity of the fifty states yields a tremendous amount of regional variation in American politics. That variation hasn’t disappeared, but it has abated. State and local candidates are increasingly setting aside regional priorities in favor of hot-button issues straight off the national party platform, without regard to each state’s circumstances, traditions, or most pressing public needs. A number of European democracies are seeing a similar nationalization of politics; studies have shown that regional variation in election results has diminished since the seventies. It’s proved more difficult to measure the shift in the United States. Our election results dramatize a different trend, political polarization, which may create an exaggerated sense of diversity in public opinion. The red states are becoming redder, and the blue states are becoming bluer; that’s true. But the top-line results of the general elections don’t tell us whether the red states are becoming the same shade of red or whether they have different patterns.
On a qualitative basis, though, the nationalization of American politics is not hard to trace, or to explain. Americans used to get their political news from the local paper. Now we’re likely to turn to sources that are produced far from home, …show more content…
We’re not Washington, or the nation as a whole, or a staging ground for ideological debates. We’re a state with more than five million children enrolled in public schools (most of which are suing the state for lack of adequate funding), with transportation infrastructure strained by population growth, with workforce needs that are evolving along with our economic growth and diversification. And when state leaders, especially legislative candidates, spend more time talking about immigration, which remains largely a federal issue, or defending religious liberty, which is established by the Constitution, the less we will debate and address the very real challenges facing the state. To paraphrase Rick Perry, what’s right for Arizona or Alabama or New York—and certainly what’s right for D.C.—may not be right for Texas. In other words, politics may no longer be local. But perhaps it should
One should review the Republican race. The concerns at play in the presidential primary run the scale from the rise …show more content…
The United States, of course, is not a monolith, and neither are its two major parties. The historical, geographic, cultural, and circumstantial diversity of the fifty states yields a tremendous amount of regional variation in American politics. That variation hasn’t disappeared, but it has abated. State and local candidates are increasingly setting aside regional priorities in favor of hot-button issues straight off the national party platform, without regard to each state’s circumstances, traditions, or most pressing public needs. A number of European democracies are seeing a similar nationalization of politics; studies have shown that regional variation in election results has diminished since the seventies. It’s proved more difficult to measure the shift in the United States. Our election results dramatize a different trend, political polarization, which may create an exaggerated sense of diversity in public opinion. The red states are becoming redder, and the blue states are becoming bluer; that’s true. But the top-line results of the general elections don’t tell us whether the red states are becoming the same shade of red or whether they have different patterns.
On a qualitative basis, though, the nationalization of American politics is not hard to trace, or to explain. Americans used to get their political news from the local paper. Now we’re likely to turn to sources that are produced far from home, …show more content…
We’re not Washington, or the nation as a whole, or a staging ground for ideological debates. We’re a state with more than five million children enrolled in public schools (most of which are suing the state for lack of adequate funding), with transportation infrastructure strained by population growth, with workforce needs that are evolving along with our economic growth and diversification. And when state leaders, especially legislative candidates, spend more time talking about immigration, which remains largely a federal issue, or defending religious liberty, which is established by the Constitution, the less we will debate and address the very real challenges facing the state. To paraphrase Rick Perry, what’s right for Arizona or Alabama or New York—and certainly what’s right for D.C.—may not be right for Texas. In other words, politics may no longer be local. But perhaps it should