Why We're Polarized

by Ezra Klein

We are so locked into our political identities that there is virtually no candidate, no information, no condition, that can force us to change our minds. We will justify almost anything or anyone so long as it helps our side, and the result is a politics devoid of guardrails, standards, persuasion, or accountability.

Among those with weak math skills, subjects were 25 percentage points likelier to get the answer right when it bolstered their ideology. But partisans with strong math skills were 45 percentage points likelier to get the answer right when it fit their ideology. The smarter the person is, the dumber politics can make them.II18

There’s a difference between searching for the best evidence and searching for the best evidence that proves us right.

Individual donors are polarizing. Institutional donors are corrupting. American politics, thus, is responsive to two types of people: the polarized and the rich.

Today’s Republican Party … is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government’s role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for “balance,” constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.1

Quote from Mann and Ornstein -- feels so important and like a losing battle

Democrats need to go broad to win over their party and, as we’ll see, they need to reach into right-leaning territory to win power. Republicans can afford to go deep.

Incredibly frustrating because Democrats are more representative of America as a whole yet Republicans have power and they're so extreme

The leading media on the right and left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices. On the conservative side, more attention was paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets. On the liberal side, by contrast, the center of gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the traditions and practices of objective journalism.

America is not a democracy. Our political system is built around geographic units, all of which privilege sparse, rural areas over dense, urban ones.

They have learned to win power by winning land, rather than by winning hearts and minds.

the path forward is clear: we need to reform the political system so it can function amid polarization.