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Political Polarization in the US and how to diffuse it

By clock on December 23, 2007.

Opposite of what Obama is trying to sell as a recipe, as Paul Rosenberg explains eloquently and logically, with data and graphs.

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Is it opposite to what Obama claims. Or just not something that can be accomplished with the current system?

I actually think we might be seeing some changes, splits in the Republican camp. Splits between the party of wealth, and the party of religious conservatism being the most obvious. Huckabee's rise seems to be an example of the former. We also have an incipient split in the religious wing between creation-care envirnomentalism, and freemarket libertarianism. It is possible that a divided right might become less polarizing as it seeks to remain relevant.

It is a possibility, we are watching, but not yet. The election itself may precipitate it, but they have to lose first.

This is also something I wrote a long time ago along the same lines.

Rosenberg's article was interesting, but it never explained what any of the "polarization" measures shown in the graphs are, methodologically.