There certainly is a difference. For one thing, you can sometimes see strong polarization in people who aren't even radical in their ideas - when there are only two parties, even centrist Democrats and Republicans may be very enthusiastic about their party and very negative towards the other. And of course radicalism is almost per definition something limited to relatively small groups.

Absolutely.

Fair enough.

There isn't necessarily a direct connection between those things and these protests, no. But gerrymandering for instance threatens the confidence many people have in their local Congressman to defend their interests, the role of money in elections makes it hard for average Joes with their own ideas to start a career in politics if they feel they could do a better job than the local Congressman, and worsens the pork, lobbying, corporate handouts, and so on. Those are not direct reasons why people protest the way they do now, but they all contribute to lowering faith in politics and making people frustrated that their voices aren't heard.

Well, you know, coming to town halls and asking your politicians some pointed questions is one thing (and something that one can only consider a good thing). Coming to town halls and shouting at everyone is something else. Of course that's probably a small minority of the people at the town halls, but in some cases at least they seem to have made things difficult for everyone there. And they made it easy for Pelosi and her colleagues to discredit all the protesters (not that that absolves Pelosi of guilt).

I did hear a lot of "the Republican party is being reduced to a regional southeast party" after the last elections that in hindsight seems to have been rather premature now, yes. I don't know about the Dems "making a move to be a one party nation", though. The Republicans made eager use of their own majority when they had it, too. The Democrats weren't too inclined to make big concessions for the sake of partisanship then, and the Republicans aren't now.

I think a lot of liberals are frustrated that the Democrats seem unable to use their majority to pass things their base wants, the way the Republicans used theirs in the past. I suspect the reason for that has something to do with your assertion that the US is a center-right country - there may be a Democratic majority and even supermajority in the Senate, but there isn't a liberal one.

Considering that Republicans would not derive much political benefit from supporting any bill that isn't almost exactly what their base wants, I don't think that's as easy as you make it sound. I think we can agree that the current bills aren't what America needs, but apart from a few things like tort reform, I suspect a bipartisan bill isn't any more likely to be what America needs, and perhaps even less so.

Compared to the situation right now, yes, it should. But still it'll be worse than comparable calm periods under past presidents, unless some other things change as well.

Got a link to that by any chance? Sounds interesting.

*lol* Fine. As for un-American, correct me if I'm wrong but iirc her exact words were something like "it's un-American to shout down other voices" or some such. Which is of course very different from "it's un-American to dissent". But yes, it's the same strategy of focusing on the radicals to make the entire movement look bad, that's true. And I'm kind of opposed on general principle to calling anything or anyone at all "un-American", but that may be just me.

I won't argue that last bit. But the media is not that monolithic - there are always hundreds of newspapers endorsing each of the major party candidates for president - and media bias or not, a clear election victory is a clear election victory. I think I've already explained my view on media "bias" several times, that I think it's more a matter of bias towards facts and issues that fit into the established story and image of a candidate than it is a matter of intentionally favouring one candidate over another in the reporting (editorials and pundits aside of course).

That's what CNN gets for combining actual news broadcasts with pundits like that Anderson (who I don't know otherwise) and Dobbs, I'd say.

Yes, I can tell. And I think rather than missing the point, it's more a matter of Friedman and me talking more generally about the atmosphere as a whole, and the long-term evolutions that have indirectly contributed to it, whereas you're talking mostly about the specific current situation and its direct causes.

It is admittedly somewhat strange that someone as far from the center as Pelosi should be leading the House Democrats - of course taking up such leading positions automatically makes her more moderate, but still.
And hm, you may be right... perhaps it's harder than I thought. I remember a few years ago when both California and Ohio were considering proposals that would have ended gerrymandering, but in both states the party in power (D in Cali, R in Ohio) prevent it as they'd lose seats. Fairly ironic, that. Then after that, either in 2008 or 2006, I seem to recall Cali voters had to vote on a proposal to end it, and somehow rejected it, which pissed me off. I didn't hear anything at the time about that such a proposal could've been rejected by the courts... but maybe.

And yet the media delivers the news in such a way as to maximize their ratings/sales. I'd be inclined to call it a textbook example of why there are some products for which free capitalism may not yield the best or most desired results at all.

I know what you mean about being full of himself, yeah, though then again most columnists are. And I suppose at least your reaction gave us both a way to pass a few hours with a not entirely unproductive activity... Even if we both may have other things we probably should've done instead.

That article was very interesting, yes. It seems odd, though, that in an era of unparallelled data analysis methods and voting research, the Republican leaders would continue to heed the pundits if their power is really as small as Brooks suggests.

Oh, sure, it made plenty of sense.