{"id":35746,"date":"2021-05-18T11:15:49","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T15:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=35746"},"modified":"2021-05-25T21:35:15","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T01:35:15","slug":"polarization-of-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"Polarization of Parties and the End of Big Tent Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is the polarization of parties? How did the two major political parties become polarized? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The polarization of parties in the U.S. political system began early in U.S. history. But the demise of big tent parties furthered this polarization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more about the polarization of parties below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Polarization of Parties<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>While these events were happening, major structural transformations were also reordering the composition of the parties themselves. These structural changes both reflected and contributed to the radicalization of American politics and the polarization of parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>For much of the 20th century, both major parties were big-tent coalitions, with their support cutting across religious, ethnic, geographic, and ideological lines.<\/strong> The Democratic Party counted conservative white Southern Protestants, educated urban liberals, and working-class Irish and Italian-American Catholics as key voting blocs; the Republican Party, meanwhile, contained conservative midwesterners, but also liberal New Englanders in its coalition.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As we discussed in Chapter 6, the long era of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/bipartisan-politics\/\">bipartisan cooperation<\/a> that characterized <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/america-in-the-20th-century\/\">20th-century American<\/a> politics largely rested on the bipartisan acceptance of second-class citizenship for African-Americans. But it also depended on the relative heterogeneity and non-uniform nature of the two major parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This arrangement began to unravel as a result of the success of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/black-power-and-civil-rights-movement\/\">civil rights movement<\/a><\/strong>, which began making major gains in the decades following World War Two. Major pieces of legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both of which were signed into law by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson (and which were opposed by 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater), permanently stamped the Democratic Party as the party of civil rights. This prompted a major realignment of US politics, as <strong>white <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/who-were-the-dixiecrats\/\">Southern Democrats<\/a> began moving into the Republican Party as a reaction against civil rights gains.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Aware of the shifting political dynamics, President Johnson is said to have remarked to an aide as he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, \u201cWe\u2019ve lost the South for a generation.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Republican politicians like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan welcomed and encouraged this development, adopting a \u201cSouthern Strategy\u201d of making coded appeals to racially reactionary whites through their rhetoric against school busing, welfare spending, and urban crime. <strong>The GOP became the party of white racial reaction and resentment.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In turn, racial minorities, new immigrants from Asia and Latin America, and liberal white voters began to find their natural home within the Democratic Party\u2014whereas, previously, they had been scattered across both parties. As the decades wore on, liberals neatly sorted into the Democratic Party and conservatives sorted into the Republican Party.&nbsp;This all contributed to the polarization of parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the polarization of parties? How did the two major political parties become polarized? The polarization of parties in the U.S. political system began early in U.S. history. But the demise of big tent parties furthered this polarization. Read more about the polarization of parties below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[275,24],"tags":[291],"class_list":["post-35746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-society","tag-how-democracies-die","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Polarization of Parties and the End of Big Tent Politics - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The polarization of parties has always been a part of American politics. 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When &quot;big tent&quot; parties fell, it became about identity politics.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-05-18T15:15:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-05-26T01:35:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/i-voted-stickers-collection.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"534\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carrie Cabral\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2ababb7c63a94ff5d2190f71dc417d56\"},\"headline\":\"Polarization of Parties and the End of Big Tent Politics\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-18T15:15:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-05-26T01:35:15+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/\"},\"wordCount\":446,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/i-voted-stickers-collection.jpeg\",\"keywords\":[\"How Democracies Die\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\",\"Society\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/\",\"name\":\"Polarization of Parties and the End of Big Tent Politics - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/polarization-of-parties\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/i-voted-stickers-collection.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-18T15:15:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-05-26T01:35:15+00:00\",\"description\":\"The polarization of parties has always been a part of American politics. 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