#WalkAway

[Belsnickel]

I thought this might be a good place for this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-centrist-heavenly-chorus-is-way-off-key/2018/07/04/a656f13a-7ed7-11e8-b660-4d0f9f0351f1_story.html?utm_term=.5c463de8f188

This is an opinion piece, talking about a couple of books and the findings the books present. Here is the part that I found interesting and really wanted to share:

Quote:In another important new book, “Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable,” the veteran political analyst Bill Schneider notes that while polarization did not begin with President Trump (it “has been going on for at least fifty years”), Trump “uses every issue, every policy, every tweet, to set one group of Americans against another.” Divisions around issues related to immigration, race and culture serve the president’s interests.

Ah, but because increasing numbers of Americans identify as independents, isn’t there an eager nonpartisan middle waiting to rescue us from all this?

Sorry, but no. As Abramowitz shows, most people who identify as independents lean toward one party or the other. When it comes to casting ballots, “leaning independents as well as strong and weak party identifiers are voting more along party lines than at any time in the past half century.”

Factoring out independents who tilt toward a party, “only about 12 percent of Americans have fallen into the ‘pure independent’ category, and these people are much less interested in politics and much less likely to vote than independent leaners.” Independents are plainly not some magical force that will call into being that centrist third party that looms so large in the imaginations of many pundits and fundraisers.

And the centrist heavenly chorus is off-key in another respect: While it sings mournful songs about the major parties becoming “extreme,” Abramowitz’s data make clear that the two sides are not equivalent. Republicans have moved significantly further to the right than Democrats have moved to the left.

Just some fun food for thought to throw out there.