• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Big Picture>
  3. polarization>

It's time to reframe the United States

Dave Anderson
July 09, 2021
Fireworks on July 4, 2021

Independence Day is a time for celebration and reflection.

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.


As we celebrate our independence this month, the vast majority of Americans need to decide to reframe our country.

The polarization narrative has a stranglehold on Washington and the American people. It is nothing less than the reigning paradigm of American political thought. This is unfortunate because the paradigm is misguided, even though there are certainly pockets of polarization throughout the country and considerable hostility between the most vocal elements of both the Democratic and Republican parties, inside and outside Washington.

We need a new paradigm to reframe what America is. There are three main themes that need to be addressed.

The polarization theme is the first.

Poll after poll, survey after survey, show widespread agreement on many major policy debates, including the need for immigration reform with a path to citizenship, protection of Social Security and Medicare, massive investment in infrastructure, funding for paid parental leave, reforming the criminal justice system, confronting climate change, significant support for child care for the middle class as well as the working class and the poor, and more.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

One-third of the 240 million members of the American electorate did not vote in 2020, and 44 percent of Americans, according to the latest Gallup poll, regard themselves as independents. Today only 53 percent of Republicans still believe Donald Trump is the rightful president, whereas this figure was in the 70 percent to 80 percent range in November and December.

That figure is nothing to boast about from the standpoint of national health, but when only 25 percent of the electorate identify as Republicans this means about 13 percent of the electorate do not think Biden is the rightful president. That is nothing to brag about if you think Trump is the rightful president.

The idea that we are a country where Democrats are pit against Republicans the way Southerners were pit against Northerners prior to The Civil War is plainly false. Most of us sit somewhere between the two 20-yard lines of a football field. The media and the politicians, however, give most of their attention to the extremists, especially when it comes to getting elected in primaries and most especially in House primaries in gerrymandered districts.

The polarization narrative is one part of the poor framework used for understanding our country of 330 million people who are a complex mix of urban, suburban and rural voters with ever increasing minority representation.

Washington is definitely polarized as the Democratic and Republican parties are engaged in a bitter battle that concerns not only policy differences but a titanic struggle over the 2020 presidential election and the laws — federal, state and local — that should govern elections. It is the American people who are not.

A second part of the process of reframing America is to accept the fact that we do not live in a society with a capitalist economy. We must acknowledge that we live in a society with a mixed economy. From the New Deal to the Great Society we morphed into a "mixed economy," one in which the government intervenes in a very substantial way in the private sector. We have a massive system of regulation and redistribution, one that gave us and in most cases still gives us everything from Social Security and Medicare to the Affordable Care Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Violence Against Women Act and the Interstate Highway Act.

We, and many other countries, rejected both capitalism and socialism in the 20th century and carved out a middle ground. We do not have a "capitalist mixed economy," which is what most economists would say. We have a mixed economy, plain and simple. When you mix chocolate cake and vanilla cake you get marble cake, and when you mix capitalism and socialism you get a mixed economy.

One of the chief reasons we need to jettison the concept (and word) of "capitalism" is that it enables Republicans to provide a wrongheaded critique of Democrats as raging "socialists" who have rejected capitalism. Since neither the country nor most Republicans are capitalists in any interesting sense of the term, Republicans need to be denied the opportunity to falsely label Democrats as socialists during candidate campaigns. (Less than 5 percent self-describe that way.)

If the public — especially the moderates and centrists, many of whom are independents — could come to understand that our political-economic system is not capitalist or socialist in any interesting sense of the term, then they would not be swayed by unfair, grossly inaccurate labeling and fear-mongering by the hard right.

The third element of the new framework concerns public policy debates about the size of the federal government. It is time to drop it.

In the 21st century, the pressing issue about our federal government must not be framed in terms of its size, although of course there are major questions about the nature and extent of federal spending. Instead, the driving issue is more nuanced and indeed pervasive. It concerns whether the federal government effectively leverages resources across federal agencies to solve problems that cannot be solved by one agency alone, including climate change, systemic racism, family policy, job creation, infrastructure and the pandemic crisis itself.

Leveraging — resource leveraging, financial leveraging and bargaining leveraging — is the dominant way companies, nonprofits, politicians and individuals get things done today. When the Cold War ended, the nuclear family declined and information technology revolutionized business, politics and personal life, traditional lines of authority dissolved.

This was an invitation for resource leveraging, especially of the internet and social media, to take off: If you can no longer order people and countries what to do and your bargaining leverage is weakened, you need to leverage resources to get things done. The most obvious form of resource leveraging is leveraging government investment to generate private investment on a public works project. A reframed America will integrate the concept of resource leveraging across Cabinet departments into the entire framework.

We need to throw out concepts about our country that undermine our ability to live and work together with dignity, compassion and common purpose. It is time to reframe America.

From Your Site Articles
  • American is divided into three parts, not two - The Fulcrum ›
  • Can democratic innovations reduce polarization? - The Fulcrum ›
  • Polarization is more of a cultural problem than a political one ›
  • Our nation is divided. Millennials can fix it. - The Fulcrum ›
  • Let's be clear about when we mean when we say 'socialism' - The Fulcrum ›
  • Critical information shouldn't be hidden in plain sight - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • How political polarization broke America's Covid-19 vaccine ... ›
  • The Impact of Increased Political Polarization ›
  • U.S. is polarizing faster than other democracies, study finds | Brown ... ›
  • Political Polarization in the American Public | Pew Research Center ›
polarization

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow
Contributors

Why does a man wearing earrings drive Christians crazy?

Paul Swearengin

DeSantis' sitcom world

Lawrence Goldstone

Hypocrisy of pro-lifers being anti-LGBTQIA

Steve Corbin

A dangerous loss of trust

William Natbony

Shifting the narrative on homelessness in America

David L. Nevins

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane
latest News

A win for the center

Lawrence Goldstone
12h

Building a resilient democracy: Unmasking the true threats

Kristina Becvar
12h

Commission on the state of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics looks for help

Howard Gorrell
12h

Faith-based communities have a role to play in strengthening democracy

Sofi Hersher Andorsky
07 June

Innovating our way forward

Debilyn Molineaux
07 June

Announcement of the engaged student athletes fellowship

David L. Nevins
07 June
Videos

Video: The Buffalo shooting, how far have we come on race?

Our Staff

Video: Daughters and Sons

David L. Nevins

Video: Why music? Why now?

David L. Nevins

Video: Honoring Memorial Day

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirst Friday YOUnify & CPL

Our Staff

Video: What is the toll of racial violence on Black lives?

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Saving democracy from & with AI

Our Staff
01 June

Podcast: AI revolution: Disaster or great leap forward?

Our Staff
25 May

Podcast: Can we fix America's financial crises?

Our Staff
23 May

Podcast: Gen Z's fight for democracy

Our Staff
22 May
Recommended
A win for the center

A win for the center

Congress
Building a resilient democracy: Unmasking the true threats

Building a resilient democracy: Unmasking the true threats

Threats to democracy
Commission on the state of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics looks for help

Commission on the state of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics looks for help

Pop Culture
Faith-based communities have a role to play in strengthening democracy

Faith-based communities have a role to play in strengthening democracy

Diversity Inclusion and Belonging
Innovating our way forward

Innovating our way forward

Big Picture
Announcement of the engaged student athletes fellowship

Announcement of the engaged student athletes fellowship

Sports