Zeenia Framroze (Harvard) on How Partisanship Is Hurting Democracy for America’s Millennials

Partisanship has thrown a wrench into the poorly-oiled American political machine, and Washington seems simultaneously stunted and overextended in exercising its governing power. The real casualty of this partisan war, however, is our democracy. We’ve already garnered that Millennials are disappointed and withdrawn when it comes to elections and voting, and in my last blog, I asked, what reason to do we really have to be engaged anyway? Alexander Tocqueville was the biggest trumpeter of America’s grand democracy, but even he might be startled at how partisanship appears to be alienating the group that will inherit this divided country.

Where’s the middle ground?

In a democracy, power is meant to be spread across a spectrum of groups varying in race, religious affiliation, and socio-economic class. But today, power is localized at the very edges of the spectrum along which these groups are divided. Millennials can hardly find space for their views to exist in the sliver of grey between the large swathes of political participants who identify themselves as black or white on an ideological scale. Partisanship hasn’t only thrown a cog into our political works, but into our social system as well. We live in the most polarized era this country has ever seen, and as a result our tolerance for views that are different from our own has severely diminished. Perhaps, earlier generations found that compromise demonstrated too much weakness, or that dialogue meant you were setting yourself up to lose – but I don’t think that’s the way this generation should approach politics or the growth and development of this country. It is in this polarized atmosphere that a democracy that ought to flourish because of the diversity and multiplicity of its ideas, has instead become a battleground of viewpoints where neither side is really winning, and no one’s ready to raise a white flag.

Is anyone listening anyway?

Existing extreme partisanship has no doubt been exacerbated by alterations in America’s socioeconomic structures. Changes in campaign finance have essentially led Millennials to understand that elections can indeed be bought; how can democracy survive when not everyone has a million dollars to donate to their candidate’s Super PAC? How can Millennials have their concerns heard when they’re not even the ones determining what is and isn’t a partisan issue? For example, Millennials don’t seem to think that gay marriage and other forms of same-sex unions are as important an issue anymore; they’re far more concerned about equal economic opportunity and how they’re going to fund going to college and starting their lives. Older generations however, don’t have the same time-limiting concerns, which means they can bring far more attention to a social issue that they’re concerned with, drawing the focus away from the upcoming generation’s needs. As young, not necessarily financially independent individuals, Millennials just don’t seem to have the clout to get their voices heard yet – and that’s not a problem with Millennials, that’s a problem with our democracy favouring the haves over the have-nots.

Can the Millennials bridge the partisan divide?

Some might say that the solution to this kind of problem is to figure out what you want, and will eventually want in life, in terms of social and economic policy and ally yourself with one of the big blocks, or that the solution is to learn to argue for what you want your government to do and how to do it, that you should know where you stand. But the thing about the Millennial generation (at least most of us) is that we don’t know where we stand on a wide range of divisive partisan issues. The survey itself demonstrated that the subjects had difficulty balancing legality and morality when it came to social issues.

The deeper issue, however, is whether or not knowing where we stand is the right thing. I’m willing to admit that I don’t necessarily know where I stand on every political issue that my more politically savvy friends can have endless, hour-long conversations about. But I will also admit that I know that a number of my less campaign-crazed acquaintances and I have strong values that we want to see reflected in our government. Perhaps if Millennials focus on the values that we have, we can steer the conversation away from partisan discourse to real over-the-aisles communication. The way I see it, we really don’t have too many choices. We can either stand on either side of the crevice hurling slurs at each other, or we can try to build a bridge. I know which one I would choose.