THE
PROSPECTOR
801 WEST KENSINGTON ROAD, MOUNT PROSPECT, ILLINOIS 60056
THE VOICE OF PROSPECT HIGH SCHOOL SINCE 1959
VOLUME 60, ISSUE 3
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2020
polarization, Social Media and Divide
mark new era of politics Gen Z students experience unique political awakening RICK LYTLE
Editor-in-Chief
A
lmost 80% of President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden supporters say they have just a few or no friends who support the other candidate. Most Americans recognize that this division is happening; 71% of Americans say that conflict between Republicans and Democrats is “very strong,” and a majority of Americans say that one or both political parties are “too extreme” in their positions. Mary Ann Ahern, a journalist who has been covering politics for NBC Chicago since 2006, described this current political climate as “much more aggressive [and] much more divided.” AP Government and Politics teacher Tim Beisher has similar comments and noted how this climate has affected how current high school students have been introduced to politics. “It’s a hyper-partisan kind of nasty at times, level of rhetoric in politics,” Beisher said. “I’m not saying it’s always been nice conversations back and forth, but [current high school students] have had a political awakening that’s sort of been at a different place.” A large part of the political awakening for current high school students has involved what Beisher described as “the biggest [political] change in my lifetime”: social media. According to Beisher, social media has had a significant impact on politics—one key aspect being the platform it gives to political figures to speak directly to voters. Trump, for example, has tweeted and retweeted as many as 200 times in a day during his presidency. According to Beisher, social media has also allowed more political outsiders to clear the “huge hurdles of name identification for new candidates” and has allowed for more candidate-centered campaigns. Once again, Trump is an example of this new phenomenon. “The Republican Party wanted nothing to do with Donald Trump during the [2016 Republican] primaries, and now that has totally changed. He is the standard bearer of the party, and people have come in line with him,” Beisher said. “That was possible for him because of his social media … so this [phenomenon] leads to more successful first time candidates.” Trump himself agrees with this analysis. “I doubt I would be here if it weren’t for social media, to be honest with you,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. While social media has changed the way candidates campaign, gerrymandering is a serious problem that Beisher believes is at the root of much political division today. Due to gerrymandering, many congressional seats today are considered “safe seats,” meaning that either the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate are almost guaranteed to win that election. Because of this, the real, competitive election is the primaries, so candidates only have to appeal to members of their own party. “I think that the lack of electoral motivation to compromise, or to appear open-minded, is largely gone from congressional politics because of gerrymandered maps,” Beisher said.
Beisher said that oftentimes when candidates are running for these seats, the ability to compromise with the other party is actually seen as a failure or a loss for the party instead of an attractive quality in a candidate. Madeleine Doubek, the Executive Director for Change Illinois and a former longtime political writer for the Daily Herald, believes that gerrymandering in Illinois has gotten much worse in the last decade or so. She also agrees with Beisher that it pushes elected officials to appeal to the fringes of their party instead of encouraging candidates to appeal to a wide range of voters. While both AP U.S. History teacher Qiana Drye and Beisher agree political polarization is a problem, they also both agree that the problem shouldn’t be overstated beyond reality. “People say it’s the most polarized time in American history, [but] I like to draw their attention to the Civil War,” Beisher said. Drye similarly noted one instance from today that displays many parallels to the past: calls for “court-packing.” Due to the nature of some recent Supreme Court appointments by the Republican Party, especially the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, there have been calls from some Democrats to add justices to the Supreme Court if the Democrats win control of both the Senate and the presidency. While many believe that this shows the extreme nature of our political climate, Drye points out that this isn’t the first time that people in power have wanted to add justices to the Supreme Court to benefit their policies. “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the executive branch asked Congress, the legislative branch, which was controlled by his party— the Democrats—to [add Supreme Court justices], and they decided ‘No, we are not going to increase the number of people on the Supreme Court,’” Drye said. “They basically asserted their power as a separate branch, showing checks and balances.” Drye also believes an example from as early as 1800 shows that American politics have not always been amiable, which is able to put our current polarization and division in context. In the election of 1800, former President Thomas Jefferson, who had been the Vice President under former President John Adams, went behind Adams’s back, campaigned against him and ended up winning the presidency. Drye believes that this contentious political moment very early in American history shows that the era we are living in isn’t unprecedented, but she also adds that it may be difficult to gauge the significance of our current historical moment while it is happening. “I always say you don’t realize you’re in a reform movement when you’re in the reform movement,” Drye said. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated some of the trends seen in politics over the last few years. According to Ahern, candidates less frequently seek
out one-on-one interviews with reporters because they often feel like they can push their message out through other platforms like social media. Ahern believes this is a worrying trend, and the pandemic has given candidates more of an “out.” “If all you’re hearing is their campaign message, you’re not getting what the real questions are and what’s going on,” Ahern said, who covered the 1988, 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. “There’s no spontaneity. You get to know a lot about a person when you see how they respond outside of prepared remarks.” According to Ahern, this is applicable on a state and local level as well, with many press conferences using a “pool reporter” because of coronavirus restrictions. With a pool reporter, one reporter goes and asks all the questions and relays that information back to the other reporters, which inevitably means less pressure on the politician giving the press conference. From a historical perspective, Drye says that throughout U.S. history, the American public has reacted differently to different crises. “A crisis creates stress, and sometimes it can bring people together, but sometimes that can lead to people blaming others,” Drye said. “People feel really, really anxious about things, and that affects the way people react to others, and not always in the best way.” There are a variety of solutions to political polarization. Doubek and her organization have been a proponent of the Fair Maps Amendment, which looks to reform how districts are drawn in Illinois to combat gerrymandering. Other ideas, such as rankedchoice voting (see page 3 for our staff editorial on ranked-choice voting), have gained momentum. According to Doubek, ranked-choice voting leads to “more compromising, moderating kinds of candi-
dates.” While Ahern didn’t endorse any specific reforms, it is clear that she would like to see a significant change in the political climate that current high school students experience. “I was so excited about politics because it was about hope, it was about change … That’s why people were attracted to get involved in a campaign; they could make a difference,” Ahern said. “Today I feel it’s much more of ‘my way or the highway.’” This climate described by Ahern can be changed. According to Beisher, voting is “the minimum,” and there are a number of other ways for people to get involved with candidates and policies they support, such as phone banking and canvassing. “Voting is easy,” Beisher said. “If you’re upset, the answer is not to be afraid of what’s going to happen, [the answer is] to become energized [and] to advocate for change.”
JOE Biden Closes in on 270 electoral votes Joe Biden
253 217
Donald Trump
Remaining undecided States (And their electoral votes) Arizona (11) Georgia (16) Nevada (6) North Carolina (15) Pennsylvania (20) Pictured is the scene outside Arlington Heights Village Hall on Oct. 27. Village Hall was an early voting site in Arlington Heights. (photo by Mara Nicolaie)