How Growing Partisanship Is Splitting the U.S. in Two
President Obama vowed to “turn the page on the ugly partisanship in Washington” during the 2008 campaign, but for the most part found it impossible to do – and is now trying to work around Congress and entrenched partisan gridlock by imposing policies through executive orders.
Related: How the 113th Do-Nothing Congress Lived Up to Its Name According to a revealing new study, the political deadlock is not just about Washington: It reflects the sharpest ideological divide within the American public perhaps at any time in recent history. Democrats and Republicans are more deeply divided along ideological lines – and partisan rage and antipathy runs much higher than at any time in the past two decades, the report by the Pew Research Center concludes.
While these trends have been manifest in national politics for years, they’ve also had a profound impact on everyday Americans. People with strong ideological views in both parties tend to socialize and befriend others who share their views – to the exclusion of anyone else. They often make decisions on where to live based on those ideological considerations, while hardliners on both sides routinely impugn the motives of those who disagree with them.
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