Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

This was an eye-opening book for me. I was not familiar with US politics prior to Reagan. A lot to take in and digest. A few things stand out.

Up until the 1960s, being a Democrat or Republican did not imply a clear set of values, the left and the right we hear about now. Voters habitually split their vote for President and Congress between parties. Parties tended to dominate for decades and politicians got used to making deals with the other side to get things done. Now, they just wait for their turn. Reagan and Bush Senior raised taxes - that would be an anathema today in the Republican party. Clinton came into office on a tough-on-crime platform. That would be just as out of place in the Democratic party today.

The South was ruled by the Dixie Democrats or Dixiecrats, who aligned themselves with Democrats nationally while maintaining an iron grip on the Blacks there, who had a 2% voter registration, compared to 90% immediately after Emancipation Proclamation a century earlier. With a policy of lynching and voter intimidation and Jim Crow laws, they had thorough subjugated their Black population. Lyndon Johnson and his Vice President passed the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964 with a greater percentage of support from Republicans (4/5) than Democrats (2/3). The Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, required equal access to public places and employment, and enforced desegregation of schools and the right to vote. This was a seminal moment and resulted in the South going to Republicans for decades afterwards and Democrats becoming the part of equality.

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.

Vying for attention, the most extreme views tend to get more media time and stay on as “breaking news”. Politicians behave in more polarized ways to appeal to their base, which makes the politicians further polarized, creating a feedback loop. Today, “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.” The undecideds have become so small that the way to win elections is to get more of your people to vote, by engaging in a one-up game of demonizing the other side - this is negative partisanship.

Democrats today are inherently quite diverse. Republicans are in danger of becoming the party of non-college educated whites. Trump came to power on the basis of whites reacting fearfully to Obama, a Black president.

It’s important to be mindful of how politicians and the media is manipulating us by appealing to any of our identifies: sports fan, Christian, hiker, animal lover etc.