realignment myth?

Another from Yglesias, who relays:

Via Henry Farrell, a provocative argument from Larry Bartels that the FDR realignment was basically just a coincidence.

From the original article:

The 1936 election has become the most celebrated textbook case of ideological realignment of the American electorate. However, a careful look at state-by-state voting patterns suggests that this resounding ratification of Roosevelt’s policies was strongly concentrated in the states that happened to enjoy robust income growth in the months leading up to the vote. (As usual, voters seem to have been quite myopic—huge variations in income growth in 1934 and 1935 had no discernible effect on 1936 voting patterns.) Indeed, the apparent impact of short-term economic conditions was so powerful that, if the recession of 1938 had occurred in 1936, Roosevelt would probably have been a one-term president.

Basically every party in power when the Depression lifted then dominated for a decade, and it was just luck, and any patterns are our human need for pattern recognition acting up. So goes the theory.

one world government

Orcinus post (Sara, not Dave) on One World Government -- how it's not a Jewish plot, but rather an expression of the Problem of the Commons. Summary quotes:

The Roaring 20s happened in no small part because the newly-emerging corporate order could profit handsomely by taking undue advantage of a virtually unregulated interstate commons. It had gotten to the point where the largest corporations were rich enough to bully state governments into giving them whatever they wanted, or threaten to go elsewhere -- a clear sign that business was now operating at a scale where state government wasn't big enough, strong enough, or organized to put a meaningful boundary around corporate behavior. Structurally, this was an underlying cause of the "tragedy of the commons" we now recall as the Great Depression.

And now:

Over the past four decades, we've begun to struggle with another quantum shift in scale. We've come to realize that oceans, arable land, aquifers and watersheds, and the entire atmosphere represent a global commons that every one of us depends on. At the same time, business roams the planet taking what it wants -- just as it roamed America in the 20s -- making unimaginable profits and creating irreversible damage (global warming, anyone?) because there's no one entity big and powerful enough to put a boundary around its activities and regulate its behavior.

Basically, its the idea that business has sought unregulated territory in order to take whatever it wants, bully local governments from a faraway position of immunity, and escape
consequences. While in turn creating bad consequences for the people in areas the abuse (global warming, etc.) Makes you actually think that it should happen, even if it won't.