Why We're Polarized

by Ezra Klein

It is worth pausing on this point a moment, because it illuminates one of the fundamental debates in politics and a thread of this book. Under materialist theories of political engagement, where people participate because they’re trying to maximize their share of the resources politicians control, this engagement pattern doesn’t make sense. State and local political decisions matter more for most people’s daily lives than the debates that drive national politics. People have far more power to influence their mayor, state senator, or governor than they have to influence the president. People should be most engaged in the tangible stakes of the politics nearest to their experience, not the more abstract collisions of the national scene. But under an identity model of political engagement, where people participate to express who they are, who they support, and who they loathe, it makes perfect sense.