When I was growing up, there were no “Red States” or “Blue States,” just the United States. Of course, there was the West, the Southwest, the Midwest, the Northeast and the South, each region with its own characteristics and charm, but no red and no blue.
So what’s changed? Perhaps it’s an oversimplification to say, but it would seem as though our political parties have been taken over by ideologues who are driven by zero-sum politics … the goal is to win at all costs and for the other side to lose, at all costs.
Gone are the days when political parties offered up serious policy platforms that listed the programs they were offering up to voters, and if you wound up not winning you worked to get as much as you could through debate and compromise.
In today’s political world, it seems as though everything is subject to a so-called “litmus test.” Remember your high school chemistry class? When testing an assigned substance you used litmus paper to determine if that something was acidic or alkaline. The paper turned red if it was acidic and blue if it was alkaline or basic.
Now the political litmus test relates to things like abortion, in-vitro fertilization (IVF), birth control, books in libraries, right-to-work laws, Medicaid expansion, the Affordable Care Act, immigrants, the 2020 election, gun laws, taxes, tariffs, support for Ukraine and Israel, climate change, vaccinations and renewable energy. It’s easy to add to the list. Whether you test red or blue on these issues is a test of whether you are a loyal, committed, card-carrying member of your party. If you test “purple,” you’re out!
Now, some state legislatures and a few governors are trying to define and market their states as red or blue. It reminds me of the games my kids would play at recess when I was an elementary school principal, with “reds” or “blues” chasing each other around the playground, except this gets politically serious and culturally toxic when it happens in the governing halls of our democratic institutions.
Maps that I have seen reflecting on these political sentiments more or less show blue along the East Coast, West Coast and some states in the Midwest and a red stripe down the middle of the nation. I’ve actually spoken with a few friends and relatives who think the nation is on a path to a serious schism with potentially violent consequences. How serious and sad that would be. The hundreds of thousands of veterans who gave their lives and limbs to preserve the sacred essence of our United States, and it’s come to this?
My experience is that many politicians today revert to “talking points” issued by party leaders to explain why they are for or against one thing or another, even if there is a record of those same politicians contradicting or contorting themselves in order to get in proper alignment with their party … my party, right or wrong, my party.
These uncompromising and dogmatic ideologues are a big part of why little gets done in Washington, D.C. anymore. The historical pragmatism that existed in Washington D.C.’s past are anachronisms by today’s standards.
Democratic President Harry Truman once said about the famous Republican Senator from Illinois, Everett Dirksen, “We can disagree on policy and still always be personal friends.” The implication there is mutual respect.
That same Senator Dirksen once said about one-time Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in a birthday greeting, “Mr. President, people often wonder why it is that two lawyers on opposite sides of a case in court, day in and day out, belabor each other, beset each other, as if there were something venal in their hearts and they were ready to dispatch each other, if they could, and yet at the end of the day they walk out of the courtroom arm in arm, smiling and friendly; and it becomes difficult for the average layman to understand. Some of that same sentiment—in fact, much of it—one finds on the American political scene. It is one of the great characteristics of the American political system. Friends can be ranged on opposite sides of an issue, can be put in positions where they belabor each other, sometimes clobber each other, and yet the friendship is one of those enduring things that go on and on.”
Are these days of the American political scene, of the great characteristics of the American political system over?
Stiffening the uncompromising partisan ramparts is the undemocratic practice of gerrymandering, that is, creating state and federal representative districts that virtually ensure state voting outcomes, blue or red, freezing the political character of a state in virtual perpetuity. Ohio is a troubling example. The Ohio Supreme Court, of whom the majority are Republicans, declared Ohio’s gerrymandered districts to be unconstitutional and in violation of an anti-gerrymandering provision approved in 2018. The legislature failed to produce a new map and the Ohio Redistricting Commission, controlled by Republicans, produced another map which the Ohio Supreme Court again overruled. State law now requires a new map before the 2026 elections.
All to say, if a person is looking for pro-choice sentiments, access to the Affordable Care Act, state laws against gerrymandering, sympathy for asylum seekers and immigrant “dreamers,” and access to federally subsidized Medicaid expansion, they may well decide to move to a blue state. On the other hand, if they want right-to-work laws, anti-abortion laws, less restrictive gun laws, more citizen and government oversight into school curricula and permissive laws on gerrymandering, they may well decide to move to a red state. But as red states and blue states dig in and become more ironclad in their ideologies with leaders who are more interested in dogma and less interested in working together on state and national solutions, then things could absolutely get worse. My sense of things is that today we are spiraling in a historically negative direction.
When my party, my power and my personal aggrandizement become the primary motivation for getting elected, then we are destined to lose our leadership in the world to other nations more focused on the pragmatism necessary to deal with these incredibly challenging times.
Un-united is a dreadful sounding word, especially when it comes to imagining the future of our country without the unifying centrist American ideals that served us so well in our proudest years. It’s also a word that dishonors the immeasurable debt we owe our veterans who fought for over 250 years to preserve and keep us united.
Bill Sims is a Hillsboro resident, retired president of the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, an author and runs a small farm in Berrysville with his wife. He is a former educator, executive and foundation president.
