Yet the machinations of the 2000 election probably changed day-to-day life more, in ways that are less visible and trickier to elucidate. It was the beginning of absolutist binary thinking on every issue even vaguely related to politics, based on the assumption that any attempt at real compromise was either hopeless or fake. It was the end of small differences. Moving forward, all differences would be ideological. And this was partially because the two men at the center of the 2000 dispute had seemed similar in a lot of uninteresting ways.
