Prof. Altschuler talked to us yesterday about the upcoming midterm elections. It was interesting to hear his perspective on the chances of the Democrats taking over Congress or the Republicans staying in control. Political polarization is strong, but I disagreed with him that it is the strongest it’s been since the civil war. Just looking back to the 1960’s, lynchings still happened in the south, JFK and MLK were assassinated, the Vietnam war was forcing involuntary servitude to the government on young men, large-scale protests and even riots were common, and bombings happened every day across the country. People are certainly polarized now, but violent clashes have typically been small-scale between Antifa thugs and neo-nazi thugs. Most people are not partaking in violent protests or riots. If people were so ideologically polarized that they were willing to kill each other over it 60 years ago, then they were more polarized than we are now.

One thing I was impressed with Prof. Altschuler for was his relative non-partisanship. He justifiably made fun of Trump a few times, but he didn’t vilify the Republicans or glorify the Democrats. He said that independents were ignorant, but he meant it as a statement of fact, not as an insult. I can’t remember his exact prediction for how the midterms would turn out, but it sounds like they will be pretty close, or at least that there is still a large amount of uncertainty. I the election is a referendum on the president, as Prof. Altschuler said, then I would expect Democrats to do well, but it seems like the Democrats might not be able to fix their voter turnout problem. If I had to make my own guess, I think that the Republicans will probably hold Congress, maybe not both houses, but overall they will keep enough seats.

I’m not entirely sure which is a better result for the United States. If the Republicans hold on, then they will continue trying to push Trump’s incoherent agenda, but probably won’t cause too much damage. If the Democrats take both houses, then we’ll have gridlock and nothing will happen for two years since Trump can veto everything. The election seems a lot less important framed this way, but I think that is the correct framing. I guess the real fear is that Trump will go nuts and start a war or cause a recession, but if he hasn’t done that yet, I don’t expect him to do so soon.

One last point I was thinking about was how much political scientists think that everyone should care about politics as much as they do. I recognize that I am a crazy person who cares too much about politics, and I think political scientists should realize the same thing. Politics doesn’t actually affect people’s lives very much, and most people are busy trying to make a living and take care of their families to worry about whether the blue team or the red team is in charge.