Gridlock in Washington – A Local View

There is a significant number of Americans who are unhappy with our politics, and the trends indicate that the Washington gridlock cannot be solved anytime soon.
The election of Donald Trump last November shocked the nation. Many of those voting Democratic were stunned, speechless, and my guess is that those who voted for him would have preferred any of a dozen other Republican hopefuls.
However, given the precipitous decline in the number of the Democratic representatives in the US House of Representatives, in the US Senate, in state houses and in governorships during the Barack Obama presidency, for any Democrat to be elected to replace him would have constituted a reversal of the anti-Democratic Party mood that has been sweeping the nation.
As The New York Times reported July 6, “…Democrats are locked out of power from the White House, both chambers of Congress, the majority of governor’s offices and three-fifths of the country’s state houses.” This trend was so strong that even someone with all of Trump’s baggage carried the election.
The root cause is that a significant portion of Americans want to hang on to the America which they have always known. (In reviewing the column, our daughter, Meredith, added, “That is what young people also expect.”) There had been general agreement between both parties on this vision in the past. The Democratic Party was underpinned in great measure by a strong unionized labor movement; however, over the course of the last several decades, unions declined significantly.
The Party was forced to develop a new support base and strengthen old ones. Those included environmental, educational and health care issues, social, race and gender issues, and more of late, a stronger leftward economic turn toward socialism. This shift has come with internal conflicts. The party of unionized labor was forced to turn against the coal miners’ unions as demanded by their environmentalist support base. The Party has been coerced into becoming ever-less supportive of its religious members because of the incompatibility of Biblical stances with other of the Party’s core support.
To wit, the Bible teaches, “If anyone isn’t willing to work, he should not eat.” The Democratic Party tends toward finding that too harsh, and when the Party has an opportunity, it works in the other direction. As a result, according to Peter Cove, writing in the Wall Street Journal July 5, “…The unemployment rate is at a 15 year low, but only 55 percent of American adults 18 to 64 have full-time jobs. Nearly 95 million people have removed themselves entirely from the job market….The labor-force participation rate for men 25 to 54 is lower now than it was at the end of the Great Depression…. Under President Obama, federal poverty programs ballooned.”
According to the Heritage Foundation, “The number of food stamp recipients increased from around 17 million in 2000 to more than 45 million in 2015, all while costs have risen from $20.7 billion to more than $83 billion.” Most Americans realize that there will be a day of reckoning for people or nations that continue to run up their indebtedness. This is a factor in explaining why “90 percent of Americans agree that able-bodied adults receiving means-tested welfare assistance should be required to work or prepare for work.”
Under Obama’s tenure, the doors of the U.S. Treasury flew open, “…Doubling the national debt over eight years.” (WSJ 4/11/17) 
So where does this leave us as far as solving the gridlock? A significant number of voters are unhappy with the way Washington is being run, and their personal inability to thrive. The politicians know that, and are as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof, as they try to figure out what the people want and how to deliver it.
When will gridlock break? Not anytime soon because American national politics is going through a wholesale reordering. The probability is low that the Democratic Party will be able to reverse its slide, given the incompatibility of its constituent base. Simultaneously, the Republican Party has increasingly less cohesion, pulling left and right on core issues. Will it, or even should it, hang together as a party?
The fact is political parties are not a component of our political system. If they fall apart altogether, the people would be better off. In fact, the father of our nation, George Washington, in his Farewell Address Sept. 17, 1796, strongly advised against creating them in the first place, given their power to undermine the will of the people and usurp for themselves the reins of government.
Art Hall