Massively Parallel Partisanship Revisited
Newsletter 261 - August 7, 2024
For years, we have been writing about (and slowly refining our thinking about) massively parallel peacebuilding and the closely related processes of massively parallel democracy building and problem solving. We use these terms to describe the naturally occurring process in which people and organizations that compose complex social systems self-organize around a shared goal of avoiding war, building a democratic society in which they would all like to live, and solving some of the big challenges they all face — such as making good jobs available to everyone, providing quality education for all, or fighting climate change.
The engine underlying these massively parallel processes is a sociopolitical version of Adam Smith's invisible hand – the principal that all problems create opportunities for those who can figure out how to help solve them. We have also long recognized that these massively parallel processes are not quite parallel, because the goals people that people work toward when they are trying to improve the society in which they live are continually evolving and never quite the same. There is seldom clear agreement about what, exactly, the problem(s) are, and what a success looks like. There is, however, broad agreement about the kind of catastrophes that everyone would like to avoid.
In Newsletter 74 we added to this hopeful image the recognition that massively parallel processes are not confined to broadly shared constructive objectives like peace, prosperity, democracy building or effective societal problem-solving. The same self-organizing processes also drive political partisanship and hyper-polarization by coalescing society into a few (sometimes only two) competing camps. The challenge, we argued in Newsletter 74, was to find better ways of strengthening the integrative process of massively parallel peace and democracy building to the point where these forces can overcome the disintegrating forces of massively parallel partisanship.
In this newsletter we revisit the topic of massively parallel partisanship as we try to understand the processes that are shaping the United States' fall election campaign. Massively parallel partisanship has always been a major driver of US politics and it was certainly a major factor in early July, when almost everyone thought we had a race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump for President. Interestingly, though, there were a large number of disaffected, sometimes called "double hater" voters at that time — people who thought both candidates were unfit for the job, and who were seeking (or at least wishing for) an alternative choice. However, the hyper-partisan political machines on both sides managed to stomp out any dissent or significant political challenge. They were able to successfully dissuade (sometimes in highly unethical ways absolutely all potential candidates from running on the independent, "No Labels," "national unity" ticket. While we understand the Democrats' fear that a third party would hand the election to Trump, and the Republicans' fear that it would hand it to Biden, our hope had been that the No Labels ticket might have actually been able to win, by promising real solutions to problems that have a high degree of support among the electorate. (See, for example, the AllSides' "Similarity Hub," which shows that Americans across the political spectrum hold similar views on many of our most pressing problems.) It is the party leaders, supported by a hyper-partisan-media (on both sides) that is making us believe we are hopelessly divided and that the other side (whichever it is) poses an existential threat to "democracy" and Americans' well being. Note, also, that independents are the largest political block in the U.S., ahead of both registered Republicans and registered Democrats. Had most independents voted No Labels, joined by the more moderate registered Republicans and Democrats, they might actually have been able to win.
But No Labels didn't put forth a ticket, and everything changed amazingly quickly on July 21, 2024, when Joe Biden withdrew from the race, and threw his support to his Vice President, Kamala Harris.
This turn of events resulted, as most people know, from the widely acknowledged "disastrous" debate that Biden had with Trump on June 27. Many people from within and outside of the Democratic party had been warning about, or worrying about, Biden's health and fitness for the job for quite some time. But massively parallel partisanship, in the form of the Democratic political machine, managed to keep Biden's troubles under wraps, still believing that Biden was their best hope for beating Trump (as he'd done it before). So they willed away, or ignored all the warning signs that Biden was not up to the task again. They also made no real provision for finding and developing stronger alternative candidates.
This strategy all came apart when Biden's inability to focus, engage, and communicate effectively became apparent to the American public, and indeed, the whole world, during the debate. Suddenly, the massively parallel effort that had been propping up the President pivoted to one calling for him to step down. When polls showed that a Biden victory was extremely unlikely, Democratic partisans quickly coalesced around the need to replace Biden at the top of the ticket. There was an explosion of articles in left-leaning media calling for Biden to withdraw. This was matched by similar shifts in the less visible, but equally important, actions of the Democratic elite. Opposition to this new, dump Biden orthodoxy was hard to find, as people realized that he couldn't win, and they wanted to be seen as being part of the solution, not part of a failing effort, no matter how much they liked Biden personally (as many people do).
While some Democrats hoped for an open convention and the opportunity to consider a number of other possible candidates on their merits, that approach did not jive with the goals of the party elite and the massively partisan Democratic machine which didn't want to take the chance on a divisive convention. Given the tight time frame, they felt it imperative that the party coalesce around a replacement candidate as soon as possible so that they could start campaigning for an election that was just over 100 days away.
In the absence of any other candidate with more unifying potential, Biden, who is still widely respected, endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris. This signaled to Democrats that they had no real choice but to unite behind Kamala, if they were to have any hope of defeating Donald Trump in November. So this produced a rapid shift in the direction of the Democrat's massively parallel partisan system — a shift that produced an immediate change in election coverage and public opinion. The result was an explosion of puff pieces explaining how quickly Harris blossomed into a formidable candidate. The other thing that largely disappeared (on the Democratic side) were articles that were critical of Harris and the way in which she ascended to the Vice Presidency. Now, if you want to have any influence within Democratic circles (or if you just want to be seen as a responsible community member within left-leaning communities) you have to get on the Harris bandwagon.
While it is tempting to argue that this stunning and sudden shift is a result of some conspiracy driven by a few powerful leaders (Obama and Pelosi are, for example, often mentioned), we think that what's happening is the natural result of the way complex systems work. The structure of the system which is built around a binary choice between only two potentially viable candidates forces everyone to pick sides and then do all they can to make sure that their side wins. Social pressures then reward those who are seen as being especially supportive of the partisan effort while condemning those who are seen as undermining that effort.
All of this is further driven by the complex array of coalition-building, quid pro quo's that have long cemented US political parties into a vast web of "I'll help you, if you help me" promises. While this is a system to which small incremental changes can be made, it is also a system that people recognize cannot be disrupted without unleashing the kind of intramural conflict that would inevitably cost them votes going into an election that could easily be decided by a few thousand votes in critical places. So, very few people are willing to risk that kind of disruptive behavior (which is the big reason why the No Labels initiative failed). This is also a big reason why political coalitions tend to support one another's demands, even when those demands are the kind that are likely to be seen by objective observers as unreasonable.
Massively parallel partisanship isn't just a Democratic process, of course. Republicans are driven by the same pressures. Consider, for example, the number of people who used to be what were called "Never Trumpers" (Republicans who insisted that they would never support Trump) and then switched to being strong Trump/MAGA supporters when it became apparent that aligning with Trump was the only path to status and influence within the party. (For our readers outside the United States who might not be familiar with the acronym "MAGA," it stands for "Make America Great Again," and it is the core slogan that summarizes the movements reactionary rebellion against the many ways in which the progressive left has transformed US society in recent decades. Likewise, consider the fairly large number of people who denounced Trump on January 7, 2021, condemning his apparent support for the Capitol riot, who later voted against his impeachment, and now support his candidacy for a second term, despite his calling the people incarcerated for their role in the riot "hostages," and vowing to pardon them as soon as he gets into office. Why would so many people support one man instead of the institution of democracy? Massively parallel partisanship.
Another factor that reinforces massively parallel partisanship Is the fact that it occurs within two almost completely closed information bubbles. Democrats listen to, watch, and read one set of news sources; Republicans a different set. Usually the stories they present about the same event are vastly different. (You can see the differences at a few comparison websites such as Allsides or Tangle.) Each side also accuses the other of distorting the truth (Democrats call it dis- or mis-information, while Republicans call it "fake facts.") This increases the level of distrust, fear, and hatred each side holds of the other, and makes them even less inclined to contemplate compromising or even considering the interests or needs of the other side (let alone supporting the "golden rule" view of democracy we talked about in Newsletter 256).
The upcoming election promises to take another step in the long process of amplifying massively parallel partisanship. The result is certain to be increasing dehumanization of one's political adversaries and dismissal of their interests and needs. As the interests of these adversaries are no longer seen as worthy of consideration, it will become even easier for the two sides to support political platforms that oppose pretty much everything that the other side cares about. This process has, over time, led party platforms to evolve into us-vs-them documents, each advocating things that are unacceptable to the other. This, then, has the effect of turning the two parties into genuine threats to each others' interests. This, in turn, takes political opposition out of the realm of political rhetoric and posturing, and into the realm of real substantive threats. In other words, it is the process of massively parallel partisanship that gives us something really to fear about the other side — which then further drives massively parallel partisanship. Systems theorists call this a positive-feedback system. And "positive," in this sense does not mean "good." More often, it means explosively bad!
But, massively parallel partisanship doesn't affect everybody and isn't all encompassing. It is a process that largely afflicts the party faithful on both the left and the right. The large block of independent, alienated, and disengaged voters (different categories, not three descriptions of the same category) in the center are less affected by all of this. They are likely going to be the decisive wildcard in the upcoming election. It is their opinions, rather than the opinions of political junkies and hobbyists, that will be decisive.
At this point, prospects for avoiding a bitter election and another ratchet on the hyper-polarization index are dim. Still, now is the time to start thinking about how to start healing democracy in the election's aftermath when, in the absence of an immediate binary choice, there will be a renewed opportunity to reflect on just how much trouble we are in and how to get out of it. (There will, of course, be a lot of effort on the part of the losers to resist the changes that the winners will try to implement, and perhaps to resist the apparent outcome of the election itself — as Trump has vowed to do if he doesn't win.
After the election is when many projects now being undertaken by the massively parallel peace and democracy building communities are going to have an opportunity to reverse this dismal trend. They can help the society as a whole better understand how massively parallel partisanship is tearing us apart. They can help us understand that that the people on both sides of the divide are nowhere near as evil or in as much disagreement as the partisan campaigning leads us to believe.
So, don't give up hope. What is happening is a thoroughly predictable and obviously destructive manifestation of the structure of U.S. society. If we can understand what's going wrong, then we can figure out how to start fixing the system. As we said at the beginning, all problems create opportunities. This is where, even in our currently highly destructive climate, massively parallel peace and democracy builders have been making real progress. In the aftermath of the election, there are likely to be a lot more people who are even more alarmed about current trends and willing to help take steps to reverse them. We need to ramp up our efforts now, and do all that we can to make them as visible as possible, so people regain hope and a sense of agency for the future, instead of despair and a business-as-usual destructive approach to partisanship for another 2, 4, or 8 years.
The big thing to remember from all of this is that it is a shared and urgent common goal that drives and unifies massively parallel social movements by convincing people to creatively apply their energies and resources to the shared task. This is true for massively parallel partisanship as well as massively parallel peace and democracy building. With effort, we can harness the engine that is tearing us apart and use it to bring us together.
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