What is America Next? A View from the UK

It easy to focus on the shenanigans in Congress, the machinations of attack and defense in our nation’s capital, the tweeting and social media battles, the investigations of political players and their families, the crass political manipulations, a Supreme Court that act more like an autocratic legislature and the red vs blue national conflicts. If the United States has in devolved into a White Christian nationalist (oddly cast as “red”) faction struggling against a “blue” progressive “we’re all in this together” egalitarian constituency, the bigger question is whether Washington, D.C. is the relevant battleground at all.

As the GOP’s slim majority in the House and the Dem’s tiny majority in the Senate, we’re not likely to see any significant legislation until 2025, when the 2024 Congress is seated and the next President elected. In the meantime, we may see a few less-than-controversial bills slide through, somehow we will probably revisit the debt ceiling debacle more than once, and a few confirmations are likely to slide by, but the mega-issues that will define our nation’s future are indeed raging across the land, bitter, extreme and mutually exclusive. Just not in Washington.

First, there fewer bi-partisan state legislatures than you might think. 32 states are currently deemed “trifecta” governments: where the governor and both houses of state legislatures are controlled by a single party. The reality has to focus on the four most populous states with the biggest economic clout: blue California (which lost one House seat in the recent Census), blue New York (which suffered the same fate), red Texas (which picked up one seat) and red Florida (which did the same).

Sure these states are anything but “pure” red or blue; after all GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy is from California, and virtually all of Texas’ mega cities are run by blue municipal administrations. At the state governance level, however, the blue is deep and red often deeper. That these four states account for a third of both our population and GDP underscores their importance. Politicians from these seminal states seem to be purposely embracing direct confrontation with each other as the new normal. Game on?

California and New York are high tax/high regulation states, while Texas and Florida are quite the opposite. As the change in House representation reflects, migration away from higher taxes and costs of living have favored Texas and Florida, with a small trickle of tech companies following those trends. With more superstar universities and tech communities, New York and California have the edge. Many believe that where people are moving to is a very important future indicator.

On November 18th, obviously after our recent election, the prestigious UK The Economist published one of a series of articles attempting to explain the United State political scene to its global readers. Republished on January 19th, “To understand America’s future, watch the four mega-states California and New York on the left, Florida and Texas on the right” (by senior columnist Alexandra Suich Bass) focuses on the seemingly irreconcilable differences that have fractured and hardened our nation into red and blue vectors.

“Dividing along ideological lines, the mega-states offer opposing visions for the country’s direction and therefore embody the idea that America is becoming increasingly split… By design, the federalist system enables states to run their own experiments, serving, in the words of Louis Brandeis, a former Supreme Court justice, as ‘laboratories of democracy.’

“[Single party political dominance] helps explain why the states create partisan policy experiments that do not reflect voters’ will. For example, Texas now has a law banning abortion from conception, with no exception for rape or incest, although most Texans oppose such severe restrictions.

“Like the country, the mega-states are heading towards different poles, and the policies they are spinning out are in direct confrontation with one another. For example, California and New York have advanced green-energy policies, with California going so far as to ban the sale of petrol-powered automobiles from 2035. Meanwhile, Texas recently banned financial firms that are not supportive enough of oil and gas extraction from doing business in the state, and Florida has barred investment decisions based on environmental, social and governance principles…

“California and, to a lesser extent, New York see themselves as blue beacons of the Democratic agenda. Having already pioneered policies on access to abortion, climate change and benefits for undocumented immigrants, in 2023 they are likely to push to new extremes on the environment, social welfare and labour law. Florida and Texas see themselves as pioneers of cutting-edge Republican policy and will serve up divisive new laws on social issues and elections.” But it is in these direct governor-to-governor confrontations, policies meant to underscore the divisions between us, that the battle for control of America rages.

“California and, to a lesser extent, New York see themselves as blue beacons of the Democratic agenda. Having already pioneered policies on access to abortion, climate change and benefits for undocumented immigrants, in 2023 they are likely to push to new extremes on the environment, social welfare and labour law. Florida and Texas see themselves as pioneers of cutting-edge Republican policy and will serve up divisive new laws on social issues and elections…

“Florida’s and Texas’s busing of recently arrived immigrants to Democratic cities is one example. The battlefronts will be numerous, from immigration enforcement to abortion. Expect to see plenty of jousting between the governors and attorneys-general of the mega-states in 2023… “Nowhere will this be more visible than in the rivalry between Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. [Pictured above] Both are likely to be presidential contenders and will look to use their states as ‘symbolic representations of what they would offer the American people,’ says Ken Miller of Claremont McKenna College in California. Voters may have to choose between the Golden State and the Sunshine State as a vision for the whole country in 2024.” The Economist. If Congress cannot pass significant legislation, states most certainly can. With a right-wing Supreme Court, those conservative state legislatures seem to have the edge.

We politely refer to this battle as a “culture” war, “woke” liberalism vs conservative old-world values. But the undertones of White supremacy, intolerance of “diversity” and insertion of clear Christian evangelical values are now pitted against a movement towards a more open society, which is concerned about climate change and equality among all Americans. All this portends instability, perhaps greater violence and increasingly irreconcilable differences. With all the guns available here, the rest of the world wonders if this “greatest nation on earth” can hold together. So do I.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we find a way for Americans to get along, which may have to wait until the younger generations take over (if we last that long), we inch closer to the “great unraveling” of our almost two-and-a-half century experiment in democracy.