And I think readers would need to be careful not to associate "blue/red" with "democrat/republican", and only think about the terms in the context the article defines. There are plenty of individuals who could be democrats and of the "Red" state of mind (my grandmother is one of them and it causes a great deal of conflict between her and I). If readers start replacing "blue/red" with parties, I could see party-affiliation biases quickly ruining their understanding.

I also agree with you that so much of the extreme bi-partisanship in the US is due to the media. The media takes reasonable discussion out of the mix (indeed, quite literally. Those "interviews" they do drive me to murder) and instead start to paint other fellow Americans as "the enemy". It's no wonder we're a bunch of squabbling sea birds.