今年的中期选举引发了与2018年和2006年的对比。但1894年呢？那次选举开启了一场政治重组，分裂了两大党，并最终将跨党派的民族主义派别团结起来，共同扩大联邦权力。
This year’s midterms invite comparisons to 2018 and 2006. But what about 1894? That election ushered in a political realignment that fractured both parties and eventually united nationalist factions across the aisle in expanding federal power.
从19世纪80年代到1910年代，技术变革、经济分层，以及对移民、贸易和国家认同的焦虑，分裂了党派联盟，并催生了意想不到的联盟。党派报纸放大了这种动荡。1893年，民主党人格罗弗·克利夫兰在高关税在他缺位期间变得更加突出后，再次当选总统，开启了第二个非连续任期。在他第二个任期初期，国家陷入了一场萧条，这在一定程度上是由铁路投机和对美元兑换黄金能力的怀疑所引发的。
From the 1880s into the 1910s, technological disruption, economic stratification, and anxiety over immigration, trade and national identity fractured party coalitions and fostered unexpected alliances. Partisan newspapers amplified the turmoil. In 1893 Democrat Grover Cleveland returned to the presidency for a second, nonconsecutive term after high tariffs grew more salient in his absence. Early in his second term, the country plunged into a depression fueled partially by railroad speculation and doubts about the U.S. dollar’s convertibility into gold.
克利夫兰废除了1890年的《谢尔曼购银法》，遏制了苦苦挣扎的农民寄希望于缓解其债务的货币扩张，导致国会民主党分裂，并迫使总统不得不依赖保守派共和党人。
Cleveland’s repeal of the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act curtailed the monetary expansion that struggling farmers hoped would ease their debts, fracturing congressional Democrats and forcing the president to rely on conservative Republicans.
随后是毁灭性的1894年中期选举。经济崩溃。民主党失去了超过100个众议院席位和参议院多数党地位，暴露了其联盟无法调和体制派和民粹派的矛盾。随后发生的是党派的重组。
Then came the devastating 1894 midterms. The economy cratered. Democrats lost more than 100 House seats and their Senate majority, exposing a coalition unable to reconcile its institutionalists and populists. What followed was a reorganization of the parties.
民主党在1896年和1900年拥抱了威廉·詹宁斯·布赖恩的道德民粹主义，而西部银本位共和党人和第三党人民党则建立了跨党派联盟。布赖恩在两次选举中均败给了威廉·麦金莱，后者设法解开了联盟的“魔方”，成功当选。
Democrats embraced William Jennings Bryan’s moral populism in 1896 and 1900, while Western Silver Republicans and third-party Populists forged cross-party alliances. Bryan lost both elections to William McKinley, who managed to resolve the coalition Rubik’s Cube to get elected.
到了世纪之交，两党均由经济民粹主义者、体制派保守派和民族主义进步派组成。进步派共和党人如罗伯特·拉福莱特挑战其党内建制派，而改革派民主党人则拥抱联邦层面的解决方案，以应对集中的企业权力。在西奥多·罗斯福的强力民族主义中，这些议程推动了联邦监管的发展，这发生在共和党内部就行政权力产生分歧之际。
By the turn of the century, both parties were made up of economic populists, institutional conservatives and nationalist progressives. Progressive Republicans such as Robert La Follette challenged their party’s establishment, while reform Democrats embraced federal solutions to concentrated corporate power. Within Theodore Roosevelt’s muscular nationalism, these agendas advanced federal regulation amid Republican divisions over executive authority.
1912年总统大选中，罗斯福以第三党进步党候选人身份参选，挑战其前盟友、体制派保守派总统威廉·霍华德·塔夫脱，分裂了共和党选票，使进步派民主党人伍德罗·威尔逊当选总统。
Running as a third-party Progressive in the 1912 presidential election, Roosevelt challenged his former ally, the institutionally conservative President William Howard Taft, splitting the Republican vote and handing the presidency to progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
两党的进步派共同推动批准了第16条修正案，扩大了华盛顿的征税权力，以及第17条修正案，剥夺了州议会选举参议员的角色，从而消除了州一级公民参与的一个动力。国会还加强了州际商务委员会对铁路费率的管辖权。此类改革为一种往往被行业俘获、与被统治者脱节的反射式决策文化奠定了基础。
Progressives across both parties helped ratify the 16th Amendment, expanding Washington’s taxing authority, and the 17th Amendment, stripping state legislatures of their role in selecting senators and thereby removing an impetus for state-level civic engagement. Congress also strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission’s authority over railroad rates. Such reforms laid the groundwork for a culture of reflexive policymaking often captured by industry and detached from the governed.
如今，两党同样在体制派、民粹主义者和民族主义技术官僚之间分裂。这些分歧使参议院的党派版图更加复杂。独立候选人的出现让人想起19世纪90年代挑战党派忠诚度的民粹党人和白银共和党人。跨党派的参议院代表团已降至历史平均水平以下，处于与19世纪末相当的水平。
Today both parties are similarly splintered between institutionalists, populists and nationalist technocrats. These divisions complicate the Senate’s partisan landscape. Independent candidacies recall the Populists and Silver Republicans who challenged party allegiances in the 1890s. Split-party Senate delegations have declined below their historical average and are at a level comparable to that of the late 19th century.
正如镀金时代一样，赢得总统职位需要调和相互竞争的派系，正如麦金莱、罗斯福和威尔逊所发现的那样。这些总统面临的国会联盟，其意识形态忠诚并不总是沿着党派界限。无论2028年谁赢得总统职位，党派领袖都将面临类似挑战。民主党人未能调和其以种族和阶级为意识的派系以重振奥巴马联盟，正在将重新分配的议程重新包装为“可负担性”。
As in the Gilded Age, winning the presidency requires reconciling competing factions, as McKinley, Roosevelt and Wilson discovered. These presidents faced congressional coalitions whose ideological loyalties didn’t always follow party lines. Regardless of who wins the presidency in 2028, party leaders are poised to face similar challenges. Democrats, having failed to reconcile their race- and class-conscious factions to revive the Obama coalition, are rebranding an agenda of redistribution as “affordability.”
一些民主党总统有望支持扩大最高法院、废除参议院阻挠议事以及接纳新州加入，以此恢复平衡。与此同时，共和党人已从仅仅容忍特朗普总统的民粹主义起义，转向全面拥抱为经济和文化目的而扩大联邦和行政权力。
Some Democratic presidential hopefuls endorse expansion of the Supreme Court, the abolition of the Senate filibuster and the admission of new states in the name of restoring balance. Republicans, meanwhile, have moved from merely tolerating President Trump’s populist insurgency to embracing fully the expansion of federal and executive power for economic and cultural ends.
从这些派系中，可能出现一个由技术官僚民主党人和民族主义共和党人组成的一党制，或者由民粹主义民主党人和民粹主义共和党人组成的一党制。虽然他们会有分歧，但会在扩大行政（如果不是联邦）权力方面达成一致。这种两党合作并非摆脱功能失调的途径。由此导致的联邦政府权力集中，将对美国民主构成比过去十年的激烈言论或选举否认主义更大的风险。
From these factions could emerge a uniparty of technocratic Democrats and nationalist Republicans, or of populist Democrats and populist Republicans. While they would have disagreements, they would converge on expanding executive, if not federal, power. Such bipartisanship wouldn’t be an escape from dysfunction. The resulting concentration of power in the federal government would pose greater risks to American democracy than the heated rhetoric or election denialism of the past decade.
这种“一党制”的迹象正在显现。犹他州共和党参议员迈克·李和罗德岛州民主党参议员谢尔顿·怀特豪斯在许可改革问题上达成一致，该改革将输电选址权从州和地方监管机构转移给联邦能源监管委员会。佛蒙特州社会党参议员伯尼·桑德斯和密苏里州共和党参议员乔什·霍利支持联邦信用卡利率上限。南卡罗来纳州共和党参议员蒂姆·斯科特和马萨诸塞州民主党参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦联手推动一项已成为法律的法案，该法案利用联邦资金干预地方土地使用政策。立法者也可能同样介入公共教育、城市规划或警务等地方问题。
Inklings of this uniparty are emerging. Sens. Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) have converged on permitting reform that shifts transmission-siting authority from state and local regulators to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri have backed a federal cap on credit-card interest rates. Sens. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) joined forces to advance a bill that has become law that uses federal money to meddle in local land-use policies. Lawmakers could similarly intervene in local issues like public education, urban planning or policing.
鉴于联邦权力自进步时代以来不断扩张，进一步集权风险更大。涉及动摇既定联邦机构的提案——例如，像共和党人在1888年重新掌权后对西部各州所做的那样，单方面将哥伦比亚特区和波多黎各纳入以谋取党派利益——可能引发反弹，在经济和地缘政治不确定性中，将本已紧张的联邦推向崩溃边缘。然而，与镀金时代不同，华盛顿面临约40万亿美元的债务，这甚至让自由派感到担忧，加上巨大的福利义务和海外昂贵的承诺。这些约束可能迫使人们重新审视导致这些问题的权力集中。
Further centralization carries greater risks given federal authority’s expansion since the Progressive Era. Proposals to tamper with settled federal institutions—like unilaterally admitting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico for partisan gain as Republicans had with Western states after they retook control in 1888—could provoke a backlash, pushing an already strained union toward a breaking point amid economic and geopolitical uncertainty. Yet unlike the Gilded Age, Washington faces some $40 trillion in debt, which is spooking even liberals, along with enormous entitlement obligations and costly commitments abroad. These constraints may force a reckoning with the concentration of power that helped create them.
近期关于数据中心、学校选择以及分散式新冠疫情应对的辩论表明，各州和地方可以解决重大政策问题，尤其是在华盛顿展现出其无能和政策无知的情况下。解决国家政治失灵的办法，不是两党就集中联邦权力达成一致，而是分权和地方控制——赋予美国人可以直接追究责任、并且已经信任得多的机构更大的裁量权和资源。美国比以往任何时候都更需要地方主义。历史或许不会重演1894年，但未来几年可能与之相似。
Recent debates over data centers, school choice and the decentralized Covid-19 pandemic response demonstrate how states and localities can settle consequential policy questions, particularly as Washington demonstrates its incompetence and policy ignorance. The remedy for national political dysfunction isn’t bipartisan agreement on concentrating federal power. It is decentralization and local control—greater discretion and resources for institutions Americans can directly hold accountable and already trust far more. The U.S. needs localism more than ever. History may not repeat 1894, but the coming years could rhyme with it.
肖哈（Mr. Showah）撰写《那片拼布》（That Patchwork）Substack通讯。[视频] WSJ Opinion：那么，谁将赢得中期选举？
Mr. Showah writes That Patchwork, a Substack newsletter. [video] WSJ Opinion: So, Who’s Going to Win the Midterms?