thank you all for permitting me to share my thoughts on the uplifting topic of political polarization in our country I want to make three historical points quickly and I hope accessibly to you uh first uh the way we elect legislators our national legislature Congress uh is mandated in the Constitution and the way we do it has resulted over time in the existence in the United States of two really large political parties okay two really large political parties that's what we're accustomed to here that's not what happens all over the world of course in democracies we
have parliamentary democracies like Germany France Italy Israel many other places where they elect their legislator differently and where they have many parties right they have a spectrum of smaller parties and those parties uh decide to make coalitions together to form governments it's a whole different way of doing things I don't have time to go into details now but the way our system has worked because of the way we elect legislators in single member districts in win or take all elections our system has evolved to have these two big parties and it's what we've had for
the last 160 years since the wigs went away and since we've had the Republicans and the Democrats so that's fact number one two big parties fact number two big Parties by their nature are amalgams of factions right they're amalgams of factions think quickly with me about the history of both of our parties the Democrats started as a southern agrarian party then they became the party of the northern immigrants of the political machines in the cities tamy Hall here in New York most famously the Republican party started as a mostly new england-based abolitionist party then as
the country expanded geographically as the territories of the Heartland became States the new englanders said ah there aren't enough of us to win a national election we better make common cause with these Heartland agrarians so that's how the part is developed again the history is much more complex than that but that's how the parties developed that meant that within the parties there was Division and there were big divisions within the parties let's skip ahead to the 20th century think about the Democrats in the mid 20th centuy what was the Democratic party deeply divided over in
the 1940s and 50s race because the Democrats were Northern liberals and Southern conservatives Southern segregationists the Republican party was divided as well they had the Rockefeller Wing the moderates named for Nelson Rockefeller and they had the Goldwater Wing the conservatives named for Goldwater right so both parties had all these different moving parts now these different moving Parts they agreed on enough things that they could function coherent ly as political parties but there were a lot of Divisions within them and that meant there were a lot of kind of moderate to conservative Democrats back in those
days the 40s 50s and there were a lot of moderate Republicans that meant and this is the third Point historical point and the important point that meant overlap there was a lot of overlap between the two parties and that overlap is what made the compromise possible made the bipartisanship in Washington possible but the differences eventually became too great and so what started in the 1960s was what I call an ideological sorting out process by which the parties went apart this started over race and civil rights when the Democratic party embraced civil rights in 1964 that
started a process that moved the southerners out of the democratic party it took a long time these old habits die hard but it happened and it certainly is a process that is complete today then came the 1970s cultural issues came to the four for the first time in the history of the country abortion wasn't an issue before the 1970s the Christian Coalition entered the political Fray in the 1970s it didn't exist before then mve to the 1980s Ronald Reagan's time big fights over the size and scope and role of federal government there were more of
these examples along the way but I think you see what I'm getting at the fault lines hardened between the two parties and the old overlap disappeared it disappeared there's a magazine called National Journal in Washington which covers Congress and politics and they've been doing this very interesting exercise since the early 1980s they take the voting records of every Senator and they determine the most conservative Democrat and the most liberal Republican now when they started doing this there was a fair amount of overlap uh by 2010 there was no overlap at all the most conservative Democrat
was still more liberal than the most liberal Republican that's why we're polarized folks it's not something in the water it's not that people got mean it's not the attack ads it's not the money it's not the new these things all have something to do with it sure and they all feed into it the viciousness of the news cycle and the corrupting influence of money in politics but it's really these historical forces that have created our polarized situation now having said all that what in the world is the way out of it well there are three
possible Rays of Hope that I can offer you tonight uh that may unfold if we're lucky over the next few years the first is the big demographic change that's going on in this country specifically with reg with regard to growth of the Latino population it's really changing the character of the electorate it's changing specifically the character of the electorate in some key presidential States most notably Florida uh Florida used to be reliably Republican because the Latino population was a smaller and B was Republican it was cuban-american and it was reliably Republican that's changed in the
last decade or so it's now only half Cuban it's half Puerto Rican Puerto Ricans of course are very overwhelmingly Democratic also the younger generation of Cuban Americans are more liberal than conservative much more so than their grandparents so Florida has really changed uh and it's a harbinger of other changes to come in Florida I would say I would not yet say it's unwinable for a republican the polls are still pretty close but but if these Trends continue it will be soon unwinable for a republican candidate and Texas will follow in 2024 28 and once that
happens then the Republican Party really has to look at itself and I think specifically it will have to embrace immigration reform with a pth to citizenship it's going to be a hard fight within the Republic party but I think they're going to have to do it and opposition to immigration reform is like the glue on the hard right and once that glue is dissolved other things will move so that's number one number two also as pertains to the Republican party it is at a Crossroads because of Donald Trump there's a lot of division obviously within
the party over him if he wins I think there'll be a faction within the party that will rise up to oppose some of his more Extreme Measures and that could lead to some moderating Tendencies within the Republican party and then if he loses then that would mean that the Republicans have lost three elections in a row and anytime a party loses three elections in a row they kind of take a look in the mirror the Democrats lost three in a row some of you will recall in 1980 84 and 88 and after the 88 lost
they said all right we really do have to move to the center now and they did so in the person of Bill Clinton there are some reasons to think that the Republicans won't do that there will be great resistance to doing that uh within certain circles of the Republican party but this will be fought out in the party and maybe we can hope that the forces of comparative moderation might Prevail that's number two number three now I'm going to get a little technical on you what we call in Washington process he but number three has
entirely to do with the filibuster I'm sure many of you know the filibuster is a senate rule that makes it possible for a minority of senators just 41 Senators to prevent the Senate from passing anything now this again is going to be a very very difficult contentious process but there is talk in Washington of changing this rule so you no longer need 60 Senators to pass a bill it's ridiculous it's something that in the old days the Senate used to do very rarely but now they do all the time everybody knows it's a problem nobody's
going to be willing to take that first step but you know eventually somebody is eventually somebody is that's why I put put this into the future at maybe 6 7 8 years it's not something that's going to be solved quickly it's not something that's going to be solved easily but you know historical eras do come and go right they do change the era of bipartisan cooperation ended and changed gave way to the era that we're in now this era will end some time too so all is not lost my friends all is not lost thank
you
