How did we become so divided? And is that an indication democracy is faltering?

In his 2018 book, “Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself,” co-authored with Yale colleague Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Shapiro argues that the transfer of political power to the grassroots has eroded trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating in the rise of divisive, populist politics in the United States and abroad.

Many people are concerned about the damage that has been inflicted on America’s political institutions. What they are missing is that bad political leadership is a product of bad political institutions. The main trouble is that the United States has very weak political parties. They are weak because they are subject to control by unrepresentative voters on their fringes and those who fund them.

And these people on the fringes have influence due to the role of primaries at the presidential level and the interaction of primaries and safe seats in Congress.

Primaries are not new; we’ve had them since the Progressive era. The basic problem with them today is they are usually marked by very low turnout and the people on the fringes of the parties vote disproportionately in them.

Donald Trump was selected as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 by less than 5% of the U.S. electorate.

A similar dynamic plays out in Congress. The Tea Party’s takeover of the Republican Party after 2009 was driven by candidates who won very low-turnout primaries. We’re talking 12% to 15% turnout.

What’s changed to make the primaries so polarizing is the steady increase in safe seats for the both parties in the House and Senate. If a seat is safe for the party, this means that the only election that matters is the primary. That’s what produces polarization: The primary voters are pulling candidates toward the fringes. If you ignore your party’s fringe, then you’ll get knocked off in the primary. It creates incentives to demonize opponents and embrace extreme policies.

States have now redrawn 327 of the US House’s 435 districts so far as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process and the number of competitive districts is dropping, according to FiveThirtyEight. Just 26 of those districts are considered to be highly competitive, meaning either party has less than a five-point advantage in them.

People think that politicians respond to voters, but that’s an artificial view... Actually, politicians frame issues for voters. Politicians have realized this and game the system.

I think a way out of this might be this. Before the 1830s, the congressional parties chose the presidential candidates. It made the U.S. operate more like a parliamentary system because these congressional caucuses would pick candidates who they believed they could run and win with. America’s first populist revolt began when Andrew Jackson attacked this system as a bastion of Eastern elites after it declined to select him in 1824. In the early 1830s it was replaced by party conventions. I would like to see us return to giving the congressional parties a bigger role in picking presidential candidates. In 2016, there is no way the congressional Republicans would have chosen Donald Trump.

Regards