As an outside, non-American observer, I admit that I feel this is absolutely true of the entire US political system in general, not just the left or the right.

In my ideal world, the widening gulf between the political/ideological poles in the United States would drive more and more voters not to either side, but to the moderate centre, as more and more voters would feel estranged from the rhetoric and the bickering and the posturing. That's what happened to me, in a way. As a younger voter (ten years ago) I leaned quite definitely to the left. As I grew older and moved to a conservative area of my country, I learned advantages to those ideas as well. When the two sides argue it only serves to make me more moderate, because I can see good ideas in both ideals.

I'm not sure if hoping for that in the US is a waste of dreaming or not. On the one hand, there are a lot of people yelling at each other. On the other hand, the idealogues always shout louder than any of the moderates, no matter how many moderates there are, especially when the cameras are rolling and their fan bases are listening.