Why We're Polarized Quotes

“This is because conservatism isn’t, for most people, an ideology. It’s a group identity.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“In poll after poll, and under both Democratic and Republican presidents, Democrats say they prefer politicians who compromise to get things done, while Republicans say they prefer politicians who stick to their positions.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Republicans have been able to appeal to their party through ideology. Democrats haven’t. They’ve had to appease a coalition of whites and nonwhites, liberals and moderates, the”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“fixed and the fluid. They’ve done that by promising different policies to different groups—offering a transactionalist, more than ideological, approach to party building.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on white voters. Democrats are a coalition of liberal whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on Christians. Democrats are a coalition of liberal and nonwhite Christians, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, atheists, Buddhists, and so on.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Back in chapter 2, we discussed the ways the two coalitions have sorted by ideology, race, religion, geography, and psychology. But not all sorting is the same. Sorting has made Democrats more diverse and Republicans more homogenous. This is often seen as a weakness for Democrats. They’re a collection of interest groups, a party of list makers, an endless roll call. But it’s played a crucial role in moderating the party’s response to polarization.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“but the simple fact is that Republicans nominated Donald Trump in 2016 and Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton. That is to say, one party nominated a candidate contemptuous of established norms, obsessed with locking up political opponents, and possessed by conspiracy theories. The other party … didn’t.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Trump wasn’t a break with this Republican Party. He was the most authentic expression of its modern psychology”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“The age of cooperation is over. The disagreements run too deep, the debates are too nationalized, the coalitions are too different, the political identities are too powerful.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Bipartisan cooperation is often necessary for governance but irrational for the minority party to offer. It’s a helluva way to run a railroad.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“the country change and make us the majority?”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Governing and campaigning conflict.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“When winning the majority becomes possible, the logic of cooperation dissolves.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“This is key to Lee’s point. When one party is perpetually dominant, the subordinate party has reason to cooperate, as that’s its only realistic shot at wielding influence. Either you work well with the majority party or you have no say over policy, nothing to bring home to your constituents.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“To ideologues, transactional politics always looks dirty. To the transactional, ideologues look self-destructive.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Future divergence isn’t a feature of independent thinking but a flaw in vetting.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“But the world also produces clever, disciplined demagogues. They are the ones who truly threaten republics, and they are watching.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Trump proved himself, once in office, distractible, lazy, and uninterested in following through on his most authoritarian rhetoric. He’s done plenty of damage, but he’s not emerged as a dictator in control of American political institutions,”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“perfectly rational to care more about the party label than a candidate’s character. Politics is about parties, not individuals.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Once an issue becomes a red-blue collision, corporate cash often loses out to the zero-sum logic of partisanship or the fury of the base.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Individual donors are polarizing. Institutional donors are corrupting. American politics, thus, is responsive to two types of people: the polarized and the rich.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“We’ve flipped from a system that selected candidates who were broadly appealing to party officials to a system that selects candidates who are adored by base voters.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Trump would appoint Republican judges, pass Republican tax cuts, fight Republican enemies. The decision to endorse Trump was “binary,” Ryan told CNN.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“don’t think this country’s ever seen.” Rick Perry said Trump’s candidacy was “a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded.” Rand Paul said Trump is “a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag. A speck of dirt is way more qualified to be president.” Marco Rubio called him “dangerous” and warned that we should not hand “the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.” And then every single one of those Republicans endorsed Trump.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“The defining characteristic of our moment is that parties are weak while partisanship is strong,” wrote Marquette University political scientist Julia Azari.4 She’s right, and it’s one of the most important insights for understanding the rise of Trump, the success of more ideologically extreme candidates,”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“How did a candidate as abnormal as Trump win the Republican primary and end up with such a normal share of the general election vote? Weak parties and strong partisanship is the answer. Trump’s win would have been impossible in the strong party system we had fifty years ago.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“the chairman of CBS said of Donald Trump’s candidacy, and the ratings it drew, “it may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“It makes journalists actors rather than observers. It annihilates our fundamental conception of ourselves.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Here’s the dilemma: to decide what to cover is to become the shaper of the news rather than a mirror held up to the news.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“history. You don’t need a big audience when you have the right audience.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized