I don't think that the 80s were a time of bipartisan consensus in America. It was on foreign policy (since the WW2). The Reagan revolution massively upended things and brought in the neoliberal era. On economics, the Democrats were divided into those who wanted to fight Reaganism and those who wanted to go along with it, with the latter winning out by the Clinton era.
The 90s were the time of least polarisation due to what I just mentioned and the end of the USSR as an existing alternative model. The time of greatest polarisation is now.
However, the polarisation is asymmetrical. The Democrats haven't moved that much in recent years. They have a radical social democratic wing but it's marginalised and they tied to the same consensus (economic and foreign policy) that both parties used to follow. They have become more liberal on social issues and Biden was a tepid step to the left but it certainly wasn't a radical change.
It's the Republicans who have radicalised and are upending the existing order.
For various reasons (some of which you mention) the far-right takeover is more advanced in America than in any other major country but you will know as well as I do that the nationalist right is rising across Europe and elsewhere.
Why?
There are lots of factors. The relative geopolitical decline of the West, internet conspiracy theories and the decline in organised labour. The slow collapse of trust in mainstream institutions and a revival in nationalist identities.
There is also the point that the neoliberal era once brought about rapid growth and increases in living standards but is no longer able to do so. Though there is still spirally wealth inequality which produces resentment. As someone who I suspect is a classical liberal, you might disagree on that point.
@Burnley123 No, if you‘re spending $1.9 trillion on a stimulus, $280 billion on industrial policy for semiconductors, and another $1.2 billion on public infrastructure and another estimated $740 billion (though potentially more) on climate and healthcare subsidies then that’s a pivot to a level of economic populism that exceeds even the economic populism of the European center-left. The same can be said about Biden‘s protectionist and economically nationalist policies. Keeping Trumpian tariffs, levying new tariffs on a broad range of goods, introducing local content rules, blocking friendly foreign investments, eschewed all FTO negotiations, further undermining the WTO, expanding Buy America requirements - all of it goes beyond social democratic positions in Europe.
Then you‘ve got the attempt to cancel $400 billion in student debt. Some of which actually did materalize though the plan eventually failed due to its unconstitutionality. Combining the various relief efforts, by early 2024, the Biden administration had canceled over $75 billion in student debt for nearly 1.5 million borrowers. The initially planned BBB had a price tag of over $3.5 trillion and aimed to restructure the entire US economy and welfare system. It also included a provision that would’ve raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Moreover, Biden imposed record-level regulations, an eviction moratorium and contemplated rental price regulations (à la Europe) and actually implemented de facto price regulations for certain drugs. He actively cheered on and promoted union influence, attached discriminatory union-requirements (or even childcare requirements) to industrial policy and public projects while supporting right to organize laws. Biden‘s EPA tried to regulate conventional energies and the internal combustion engine out of existence. On top of that, the FTC under Lina Khan moved away from the consumer welfare standard, thus undermining and politicizing antitrust rules and enforcement.
A neoliberal, like myself, would disagree with all of it. Except perhaps the spending on public infrastructure if it hadn’t been riddled with inefficient obligations. So that‘s a massive break. And it goes beyond the type of left-leaning populism one would find among European social democrats.
But the country, as a whole, is still more economically free and thus more dynamic than most of Europe. And believe me, I‘m painfully aware of the extent of Europe‘s and Germany‘s excessive and inefficient welfare states, the preventative antitrust rules, the intrusive level of social and sectoral regulations, the masochistic energy and climate policy, the sclerotic labor laws, the presence of distortive and cartel-like unions, the underdeveloped financial markets (with the exception of London), the punitively high tax rates and the statist public spending to GDP ratios. If you‘re looking for reasons that can explain Europe‘s stagnation in economic and productivity growth or technological innovation, look no further.
As for tax the rich, the Biden administration and the Democrats on the Hill actually tried to do exactly that but their thin majorities complicated the effort to raise income taxes or corporate taxes, however, they did introduce a harmful 15% minimum corporate tax on book income which effectively reduces deductions and or credits for depreciating capital investments. In addition to that, they introduced a gimmicky and completely populist stock-buy-back tax and spent more on IRS enforcement to extract more taxes (from the “rich” and the middle class).
You‘re dead wrong on both real wages and living standards. Especially as far as the US is concerned. In fact, real median household income has gradually increased in the US and real wages recovered from their steep fall in the 1970s a decline that was precipitated by the lack of structural reforms and inflationary spending - as in many European countries.
As for the West‘s declining share of global GDP, that may be a statistical fact but thanks to the strategic, military, technological and geographical superiority of the liberal world order, that relative decline is not really of any grave concern. The wealth advantage the West has over emerging and developing economies is astronomical and the so called Global South is anything but united or organized. Whether or not the world order will remain unipolar and blessed with Pax Americana depends on Washington, and no one else.
(Finally, countries that are more neoliberal than the US: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Ireland, Switzerland)
@CedricH Now that I have some time lets unpack this. Government investment in strategic businesses and infrastructure has been a thing since the founding of the US. In fact it is a thing in all governments everywhere. So that is meaningless and says nothing at all about neoliberalism. And investment in climate change and healthcare is entirely neoliberal based on the ideological idea that social ills can be solved by private enterprises and it is the job of the government to facilitate that. You would only have a point here if the US had public healthcare like the rest of the developed world. Tariffs and manipulating WTO rules is also nothing new. The Bush Administration did that for something as petty as punishing Canada for not deploying troops to Iraq in 2003 (with lumber tariffs) and the US has been trying to use WTO rules to force Canada to privatize our healthcare system my entire life. None of this is remotely different and do not come anywhere close to European social democracy....which also operates within a neo liberal framework FYI. The Washington Consensus has ruled the "western" world since the late 70s.
MMT is also a red herring. WIthin neo liberalism the west has gone from Keynsianism to Chicago School, and now MMT is a more accurate take on monetary policy but none of these shifts have fundamentally changed anything at least ideologically or in terms of domestic impact.
As for student debt. The vast majority is held by the US government so they can do what they please with it. The court ruling was conservative judicial activism.
BBB is irrelevant because it never happened and regulation has nothing to do with neoliberalism. Levels of regulation have fluctuated all over for the last half century of neoliberal hegemony.
On unions the US has a 10% unionized workforce so that is a red herring. Unions have not been relevant in the US in half a century.
And just because the GOP want to make an engine type their entire personality it does not make the standard regulation of any vehicles in a country suddenly an ideological shift for the Democrats.
You seem to have missed the fact that both Thatcher and Tony Blair were neoliberals.
You are trying to do the American "neo con" thing and try and make it two separate ideologies because you don't understand that neoliberalism as an ideology really doesn't say much at all on social views.
Reagan was elected with Republicans taking over control of the U.S. Senate (and held it for six of his eights years). And there was still a good enough number of conservative Democrats in the House that went along with parts of Reagan's economic policies.
Bush 41, however, had to deal with Democrat majories in both the Senate and the House. And the economic downturn in 1992, and the challenge from Pat Buchanan, evaporated his 91% approval rating at the end of the Gulf War.
Then enter H. Ross Perot.
Others will disagree, but I am convinced that had Perot not entered the presidential race, Bush would have won re-election. Yes, I know of the exit poll questions supposedly being split on the Bush or Clinton choice among Perot voters. ( see, for example: https://split-ticket.org/2023/04/01/examining-ross-perots-impact-on-the-1992-presidential-election/ )
But what those exit polls don't tell you is that with Perot forcused almost all his energy on attacking Bush; all the negative attention was on President Bush. Had Perot not ran, Clinton would have faced far more scruntiny. Many of those Perot voters were influenced by all the attacks on Bush. Would a slim majority of them still have favored Clinton had Perot not ran? I do not believe so.
As to when the radicalization of American politics, when the growing divergence began to occur, I would point to 1994.
That's when the Republicans gained control of the House for the first time since Eisenhower's presidency. The grabbed the Senate, too, and defeated two of the most popular Democrat governors in two of the nation's biggest states: New York's Mario Cuomo and Texas' Anne Richards. Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA) lost his re-election bid for his House seat. And Newt Gingrich would be the new Speaker of the House.
Furthermore, as we've seen since 2016, it was a different type of Republican that was being elected. Radical is certaintly the word. But the Democrats share much of the blame for their own losses. They didn't take the possibility if losing the House seriously. The failed to realized that Clinton's victory in 1992 was not a mandate. And Clinton himself failed to take advantage of passing popular legislation while the Dems controlled Congress (just like Obama, 2009-2011). And failed to nominate someone who could have helped reshape the Supreme Court: Mario Cuomo. Democrats in the state legislatures, either thru elected officials or voter-approved initiatives keep cutting their own throats with term limit laws and handing over redistricting to "citizen commissions" whereas Republicans in Red States continued to play hard ball.
Then Democrats lost about 1,000 Congressional, state legislative seats and governorships from 2008 until Obama left office in 2016. And who did they lose them to? Republicans who were generally more radical than those elected in 1994.
Democrats have a leadership problem in Congress, especially in the Senate. That is evident by the W-L record. But the seeds leadings to many of those losses were planted in the state legislatures. Democrats should have gerrymandered House seats in California and New York like Republicans have done in Florida and Texas. Instead, they chose unilateral disarament.
