Tag: Minnesota Lawyer

By Steven Schier Special to Minnesota Lawyer How important is Minnesota in America’s 2018 national politics? A broader reason lies in our state’s possession of several political traits common to the vital “swing states” of the Midwest. Political scientist David Hopkins, in his recent book “Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics,” explains why the Midwest is now the key region determining the course of U.S. politics. Just as some regions of the country as solidly Democratic and Republican, so have regions of our state now become reliable partisan enclaves. A third trait resulting from the increasing ideological uniformity of the national and state parties is that they are, in Hopkins words, “unable to adjust as they once did to the varying political contexts of every corner” of the state and nation. A fourth trait evident in both national and state politics is a close competitive balance between the parties in the nation and state as a whole. National and Minnesota elections over the last decade have witnessed shifting partisan control of the national and Minnesota legislatures, indicating that neither party has a secure lock on control of lawmaking. In both the Minnesota and national legislatures, bipartisan policymaking is now almost unheard of. In aggregate, the close partisan balance between ideologically polarized parties is the “new normal” in both state and national politics. It makes Minnesota an important swing state in national politics but does not insure sound governance.