Holding Center: The United States is heading left

Where goes the Overton window?

Also called the window of discourse, the term refers to a range of policies featured in the political mainstream. “Medicare for All” and the building of a border wall recently made their way into widely held discussions, and thus, both policies are now within the window’s frame. 

All Americans share one collective window which defines what is politically acceptable. The window reflects our culture, and it moves wherever the mainstream conversation is going.  

The presumptive nomination of Democratic candidate Joe Biden has sparked claims that the conversation is being tugged to the right: An op-ed from The New York Times even called this out in July, naming the former vice president a “Closet Republican” and attributing much of his success to his appeal to Republican voters. 

The self-described democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders represented a proportionate response to President Donald Trump –– a hard swing left to counter Trump’s swing to the far-right. In comparison, Biden seems to represent a concession to the conservative agenda: A signal that the window has moved to the right. 

This view is consistent with the parties’ positions relative to the Western “center” of politics. If we place every political party on a scale from liberal to conservative, Democrats are far closer to the median line than Republicans, who rank near the overtly xenophobic Alternative for Germany party. In other words, the United States’ political center is skewed to the right. 

But when we look at the overall trend, a different picture appears. For decades now, the United States has been becoming more liberal. Credit this to a waning white-majority, a secularizing public or rising levels of affluence, but conservatism has been losing its cultural dominance with each passing year. 

Consider the major cultural shifts of the past two decades: How many of them were conservative victories? From gay marriage to abortion, even the expanding welfare state –– liberalism is slowly winning out. 

This is not to say that the conservative party is powerless. The United States still remains a center-right nation, but its culture is shifting in the other direction. This explains a Republican stratagem that quite explicitly includes problematic practices like voter suppression. 

In response to proposals that would make it easier to vote, Trump was quoted saying, “They had … levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” The winds are shifting course: The more people vote, the fewer Republicans win. 

However, because of the Republican party’s political maneuvering and a significant conservative base, it still wields substantial power. Vox co-founder Ezra Klein explained the dynamic well in his book, “Why We’re Polarized.” 

“The Left feels a cultural and demographic power that it can occasionally translate into political power, and the Right wields political power but feels increasingly dismissed and offended culturally,” Klein wrote. 

This explanation illuminates several aspects of the current moment in our culture. The conservative backlash against “politically correct culture” may seem like an overreaction, but it can be better understood as the fear of one’s worldview being edged out of the window of acceptable discourse. 

Furthermore, the growing notion that white Americans are oppressed –– though ripe for ridicule –– reflects a real transition. The population of the United States has been diversifying for decades, and white conservatism is settling in for a ride in the back seat. 

This all may seem counter-intuitive; when we watch the news and see crowds chanting “build that wall,” it seems that the United States is more conservative and anti-immigration than ever. But consider former President Bill Clinton’s 1996 Democratic platform, which included the same argument that Trump ran on: “We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it.” Today, anti-immigration policies belong on the far-right of the political spectrum because the window has moved. 

Our culture is shifting left and bringing the window of discourse with it, but that doesn’t signal the death of conservatism in the United States. At most, we may see an eventual restructuring of the Republican party to reflect a liberalizing nation. But the culture war will never be won or lost, so long as Americans tend to disagree.

Dillon Cranston is a sophomore writing about politics. His column, “Holding Center,” runs every other Wednesday.