To offer a comment on this (good!) thread by Ross, you have to decide what you're trying to explain: The GOP's turn towards Trumpism, or increasingly sorted disagreement between the parties.
https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1327248576309768193
In the case of that piece, my focus is narrow: countermajoritarian institutions explain why Trumpism has been viable.
In their absence, American would still be very polarized. But it'd be polarized between better options, and the conflict would play out with better incentives.
In their absence, American would still be very polarized. But it'd be polarized between better options, and the conflict would play out with better incentives.
Something I try to make clear in my book is that polarized disagreement isn't going away, and *nor should it*. What's important is how that disagreement maps onto other political institutions, from elections to parties to congress to the media. That's where our dysfunction lies.
Politics is the process by which we resolve our disagreements through non-violent means. Too many people look at our current breakdown and try to wish away the disagreements.
But we're not going to get rid of our disagreements. What we can do is improve the process and institutions through which we manage them. In an international perspective, that's where we're most uniquely weird, and where there are the most obvious and practical paths to reform.
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