We are polarized by our identities, which some politicians have weaponized against other identities. How did we get that way? What can we do about it? Those are Ezra Klein's questions.
Why We're Polarized, by Ezra Klein
Klein begins with Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville TN, where I got some of my Peace Corps training. The most important fact that Bartels points to is that 2016 was not an aberration in our party politics. The shares of various demographics have not changed greatly between Bush, Gore, Kerry, Obama, McCain, Romney, Trump, Clinton, and now Biden. The country does not lurch wildly as it did between Reagan, Bush41 and Clinton. All of the [disputed] Republican Electoral College margins since 2000 have been razor-thin, one state, or 40,000 votes in three states.
Now, shifts do happen. Trump won bigly among uneducated Whites, particularly men with no college, and is still ahead among them, but by much less. He is now losing White women and the young in droves. But a drove today is only a few percent.
Yes, Biden is up by more than Obama ever was, but not enough to avoid the carrying on of the worry-warting, doom-crying, handwringing naysayers, and, of course the concern trolls. But let's say Biden and Harris win. Let's even say that Democrats take the Senate and enact sweeping reforms and systematically undo all the Trumpian evils. But they still, maybe, have the Supreme Court unless we go nuclear there as well.
OK.
So where do we go from here, into the next election cycle?