Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

This book is on the 2022 Obama reading list, but it is not so much an erudite deconstruction of the political realities of identity politics as a conversation about how the truths that we know about humans and our psychological make up have been repeatedly manipulated so that we remain true to the political party that we have chosen. This book makes it clear that group identity can overrule any argument for or against an issue. If you want to bridge the gap, it’s more productive to appeal to someone’s identity than to their logic. This is especially true for political issues. He explains how political identity used to be more rooted in where you lived rather than what party you belonged to. The parties themselves were seen more as shortcuts you could use to inform your choices. Americans tended to vote for candidates who made the most sense for where they lived rather than whether they were a Democrat or Republican, which led to a lot more ticket splitting. Between 1972 and 1980, 46 percent of voters in contested districts voted for a different party House candidate from who they supported for president. By 2018, only 3 percent of voters did. What changed? The political parties themselves. For a lot of different reasons—starting with the fight for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and including the rise of cable news—both parties have to varying degrees adopted more extreme positions over the last several decades. As a result, the party identities themselves have become more polarized and caused people to dig in more firmly. This is where he leaves us, with no solutions but a better understanding.