Why We’re Polarized A Barack Obama summer reading pick 2022

This book is about tribalism and the conquest of party identity over any other identity. More important than thinking of oneself as a farmer, or as teacher for so many people now. This certainly goes a long way towards explaining why people vote against their own interests–his reporting on studies of how much “policy” really matters to voters is stunning. It isn’t a polemical rant from either side, but an exploration of why we all have become so prone to polemical rants. It is a disconcerting analysis–“Why can’t we just all get along” is answered in multiple ways. His answer is in structural changes to even out the playing field for everyone–he doesn’t think we will lose our tribalism any time soon as far as party politics goes. But it is clear sighted as to what the problems are. And make you think, sometimes with horror, on every page.I only give 5 stars to books that I feel compelled to press upon people–and I am a proselytizer for this book. No more Ms. Ostrich.

I suspect that I’ve highlighted at least 30% of this book. It’s thoroughly researched; indeed, upon finishing the Afterword, my app told me there was still an hour of reading left. Whaaaa??? I started reading and the remainder was all his citations, from sources both liberal and conservative, plus a handy index of topics.Being non-fiction, it’s hardly a page-turner and therefore took longer than I would have liked to read (plus, you know, Life), but I found it incredibly insightful and interesting. There were things I had observed, backed up with data and citations, as well as premises which caused me to sit back in my chair momentarily to contemplate the revelation I’d just read.I’m no political wonk. I cannot say that everything written here will be accepted across the board, although it is well researched and presented. If the author’s premise is correct, few if any conservatives will. I cannot say the few theories the author puts forth of what our future holds will come to pass but the reasoning, built upon this thorough research, behind them is good. It has helped me to understand better the deep division in our country, which concerns me greatly, as well as the powers and influences at play, what can be done about it and, just as (if not more) importantly, what cannot.

In this Review: The key finding. Why 5 stars? Brief synopsis by chapter. What’s missing? And where to find it. The reader can just ignore the fatal error in chapter 10, saving the book from 3 stars.It’s hard to believe how easily humans polarize, but Klein lays out the scientific evidence so clearly, and the experiments he draws on are so well-designed, that there’s no room for doubt. On the slightest pretext, everyone from young children to adults will divide the world into Us and Them. And Us will happily harm Them even when doing so harms Us as well.So how has our nation – or any nation – ever held together? Klein’s answer is cross-cutting identities. He defines identities broadly – ethnicity and gender, of course; economic and social class too, but also religion, politics, age, urban/rural, sports-team fandom, etc. And he shows how powerful some of these can be. We can disagree on politics, but if we share, say, religious and sports identities, it’s hard to hate each other.Klein even has data on how these cross-cutting identities reduce the chances of civil war.The problem comes when these identities start merging into “mega identities.” It’s happening now as conservatives, religious, older-white, and rural identities all align and merge into a single mega identity which then sees itself in opposition to another mega identity: the left, secular, multi-ethnic and urban. That’s the key finding about why we’re in trouble, but there’s much more to it.You may be wondering, “Should I buy this book?” Here’s my answer:It depends. Klein brilliantly explains the deeper forces at work. That’s why I give him 5 stars. But if you want to understand how those forces are playing out in this election year, and what we can do about it, it’s not here. For that, have a look at Ripped Apart: How to Fight Polarization . Both books are essential, they just address different questions.The two books agree on the basics. For example, both blame the culture war more than economics – as Klein puts it, “economic anxiety cannot explain away our political or cultural divisions.”Chapters 1 and 2 argue correctly that today’s polarization has its roots in the 1960s, but it leaves out what the right-wing sees as the most polarizing events, such as the fight over school busing, the massive urban riots, the counter-culture, black power, and anti-war bombings. This may be the weakest part of the book. “Ripped Apart” provides an antidote.Chapters 3 and 4 cover the fascinating material discussed initially.In a brief “INTERLUDE,” Klein announces that from here on that he will “show the feedback loop of polarization: institutions polarize to appeal to a more polarized public, which further polarizes the public, which forces the institutions to polarize further, and so on.” It’s a vicious circle and it’s getting worse.CHAPTER 6 shows how the media plays its part in this “feedback loop.” The result is that those who consider themselves the most politically well-informed — among both Democrats and Republicans — are in fact the most misinformed. I won’t spoil his shocking statistics showing how bad this can get.CHAPTER 7 concerns our political parties. They have been getting weaker since the early 1970s, while partisan fervor has gotten stronger, because primaries, with their low turnout, favor the partisan extremes. This led to Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.CHAPTER 8 takes a careful look at our two-party system, and the picture gets even grimmer.CHAPTER 9 argues that Republicans have been more afflicted by polarization, and explains why the Democrats’ diversity has partially protected them.The Fatal FlawCHAPTER 10. After nine chapters spent explaining the terrible consequence of polarization, Klein suddenly concludes, “I don’t consider polarization, on its own, to be a problem.”Here’s his argument: “Surely the polarization that followed [the 1964 Civil Rights Act] was preferable to the oppression that preceded it.”Well sure, but since the polarization “followed” (came after) the Civil Rights Act, it could not have helped cause it. It might have been an inevitable bad side effect, but it could not have been a cause of the good outcome since it came later. As always, bad side effects are bad, not good. We should try to minimize them.And, if you look at the history, most of which Klein omits, we see that the Civil Rights Act was passed in both houses by landslide margins of both parties — there was little party-identity polarization then. And four months later LBJ was elected with one of the biggest landslides ever. Still little polarization.The polarization came after the polarizing events I mentioned above. But if you ignore his careless polarization-is-good punchline, the rest of the book is well worth five stars.

I usually don’t write reviews but after seeing all the intense opinions, positive and negative, about the premise and conclusion of the book I felt like putting in my two cents. Personally, I don’t think the rating of a book should be based on whether you agree or disagree with the author but should be based on whether the book was thought provoking, knowledge expanding, and written in good faith. I believe Ezra Klein’s book was all of those things, as well as a useful look at his model of our current political polarization and the research he did to come up with that model. And the intense opinions, positive and negative, about the book confirm, at the very least, that we are extremely polarized.I’ve read and listened to Ezra Klein’s work at Vox on and off for the last couple years. I thoroughly enjoy his podcast, even when I disagree with something in the conversation. The value of this book, similarly to Ezra’s other work, is that it is not meant to take a hard opinion on a contentious issue. Or to attempt to persuade the unpersuadable. He’s always looking to learn about an issue from multiple vantage points and opinions, that are credible and made in good faith, in an effort to UNDERSTAND why things are the way they are. Nothing more, nothing less.And this book does exactly what he intended to do, laying out years of research on our political climate and putting forward his best explanation of how we got here. I’ve seen claims that he has a positive view of polarization and I don’t see how they came to that conclusion. He believes, broadly speaking, that the polarization we see in politics and the subsequent actions taken by politicians and public figures actually make sense given their incentives in a polarized system. And he expects that this polarization and its consequences will continue in the near future. That is not a positive view of polarization in. It is just what Klein believes are the forces at play that cause extremely polarizing decisions to be made by political actors on both sides.For example, Klein would argue that the decision by Mitch McConnell to refuse a confirmation hearing of President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination following Justice Scalia’s is best explained by Senator McConnell acting on the incentive he had to make a Supreme Court nominee an added outcome of the presidential and congressional elections later that year. This is a much more believable explanation than the believe that the Senator is an evil person. But if you disagree with that explanation and analysis that’s ok. It’s at least another way to look at why actions are taken by those power.So, I think this is definitely worth the read. Knowing his work and how he came up with the ideas in the book(reading an immense amount of literature on the topic and digging deep into with the author’s themselves on his podcast) I know he’s not trying to be persuasive about anything. Rather, he’s simply trying to help anyone else that wants to know how we got here and why by laying out what he’s come up with. And he does a great job of that.

Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized is an enlightening, smart and thought provoking look at how America, and its 2 main political parties, got so polarized.Klein explores several key narratives including the psychology of group think and identity; a nation that has increasingly sorted itself geographically and ideologically; the nationalization of news and politics; the decline of local and regional news; a declining and enraged power elite of white, aging, Christians; a 50 year campaign by reactionaries to create a culture war based on grievances and abstractions, and a 24/7 cable news and talk radio cycle that exists to stoke division and get attention for itself.The book begins with the story about a group of political scientists in the late 1950s who proposed that the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, were too similar and that the public is better served with a less homogenous and more polarized party system.Klein then delves into some studies around evolutionary psychology, social science, group allegiance and self identity. He presents several example studies of how easily humans sort into us vs them group loyalty and how group identity is stronger than ideology or reason. He cites several studies that prove that fear and hate of out-groups is more powerful than loyalty to your in-group.He then argues that Trump is not an anomaly but rather a natural outgrowth of the Republican movement of the past 40 years. A party whose power is increasingly reliant on a declining white, aging, conservative, Christian demographic which is terrified of losing power and privilege. “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”.Trump’s latching onto grievances of race and political correctness fulfill a fearful minority’s fantasies of restoration and renewal.Klein explores how the electorate was more ideologically similar across parties 50 years ago when ticket splitting was more common and compromises easier to forge. There were also more diverse cross sections of cultural difference within each party. That changed with the civil rights act of 1964 when the southern Democrat “Dixiecrats” moved to the Republican party under the nomination of Barry Goldwater who was opposed to the act. Yes, polarization has a lot to do with racism.The geographic sorting of the nation which began in the 1960s and accelerated in the 1990s concentrated older, white Americans into the exurbs and the younger, better educated, more diverse Americans into the suburbs and cities. This phenomenon gave the Republicans an opportunity to better target their constituents and create identity narratives that weren’t about compromise and cooperation, but rather grievance and fear of the other side.Democrats grew their portion of the electorate by maintaining a strong sense of diversity and compromise but were disadvantaged because of disproportionate Senate representation in rural states. So as younger Americans began concentrating in cities, their political power weakened as a result of Senate rules, gerrymandering and the electoral college.Over the past 20 years, political campaign demographers began re-defining the dividing line between Republican vs Democrat – those living in areas with less than 900 people per square mile leaned Republican, and areas with more than 900 people per square mile leaned Democrat. In Jonathan’s Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind – he called it the Whole Foods vs Cracker Barrel divide. Where you ate or shopped for groceries became a bigger indicator of your political party than income, education or many other traditional metrics.Klein then discusses the explosion of cable news and the decline of local reporting. This elevated national politics and politicians which made obsolete the old adage – all politics is local. This also forced politicians to devalue compromise and promote winner-take-all mindsets. This had a greater effect on the Republican party being their constituents were a declining electorate.Dems also rely on a much broader set of news sources, not one source exceeding 15% of their total news consumption, whereas Repubs rely almost exclusively on Fox News and a few similar reinforcers in talk radio. This leads to a Republican party with a more narrow and homogenous view of the world and reinforces the concept of group identity and grievance.Klein argues that the Republican party is well aware of its demographic challenges – the average white American is 58 years old, the average black American 27, the average Asian American – 29, the average Hispanic American – 11! This reality forced the Republican party to re-evaulate their strategies during GW Bush’s first term with compassionate conservatism, outreach to black and latino voters, immigration reform and other shifts. But with Obama’s election, the extreme wing of the right pursued more aggressive and desperate measures to slow the tide (Tea Party). Then along came Trump, who saw an opportunity to exploit that fear and be the fighter that they needed all along. Even evangelical Christians rationalized their support of a clearly immoral nominee by believing that in these desperate times they needed a street fighter to bring the America they grew up in back. Make America Great – Again.Klein also proposes that the gradual weakening of parties and the growth of partisanship is another reason for our current polarization. Back in the day, prior to the caucus and primary process, party officials had more influence in selecting their candidates (smoke filled back rooms) – Klein believes that a candidate like Trump would have never gotten near the Republican nomination. We’ve flipped from a system that selected candidates who were broadly appealing to party officials to a system that selects candidates who are adored by base voters (primary voters).Klein also defends PAC money which he says promotes moderates, while individual donations promote polarization and extremists. Individual donors want to fall in love or express their hate. Institutional donors are more pragmatic – they want moderates who can get things done.Klein proposes a set of possible solutions to our current polarization including:Eliminate the filibuster – which allows the minority to hamstring the majorityGet rid of the Electoral CollegeControl gerrymandering – promote proportional representationConsider Ranked Choice votingHave electoral zones represented by multiple members of congressMake 3rd parties viableGive Wash DC and Puerto Rico congressional representation / statehoodMake voting easier, not harderKlein believes that with these changes the Republican party will be forced to adapt, modernize, be more competitive and less reliant on outrage, culture wars and electorate map manipulations.Overall I found the book well written, eye opening and engaging. It follows other books I’ve read in this genre including Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort, Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America and Jonathan Judis’s The Populist Explosion. I felt the book lost its way a bit towards the end when the author was struggling to figure out how to wrap up his thesis and propose solutions. But in the end, Klein did tie up his loose ends and finished with a sensible set of policy proposals.Highly recommended!