Name: Ezra Klein - “Why We’re Polarized” and the Brutal Power of Negative Partisanship | The Daily Show
Uploaded: 2020-03-11T16:31:43.000Z
Duration: 6 min 33 s
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-Welcome back to the show. -Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Adverbs of degree

So, uh, this is a very simple title on the book--

So Donald Trump comes as part of a long period

where you lose the ability to actually have parties act

in a way that hold themselves accountable.

So back in the day, if you nominated somebody

like Donald Trump, what would happen is one of two things.

-One, they don't get to a party convention. -Right.

or even both before and after that for some period,

if you nominate somebody who's out of the norms,

what will happen is, people will switch over to the other party.

But as the parties become much more different

ideologically, demographically, you get locked in place

by what's called "negative partisanship."

So the fear of the other side winning becomes big enough

that you will accept anything your side does.

they were actually voting against Hillary Clinton.

And so Donald Trump can only win in American politics

in a time of super-high polarization, which is why

I think it's actually important to go before him

to try to understand what's gonna come after him.

because the conversation in America for a while has been,

you know, if we can just get rid of Donald Trump, you know,

then we can go back to the way things were.

You know, a time when Republicans and Democrats

A time when people could handle opposing views.

There was actually a lot packed into that anecdote.

Because we did have a depolarized political system

Southern Dixiecrats, which were a conservative,

Liberal Republicans; and Conservative Republicans.

where you had conservatives in the Democratic Party, liberals,

liberals in the Republican Party, conservatives,

people working together, but all that was built

and that actually was built on a compromise around segregation.

But the fact that it's hard to get compromise in that system,

it's rational, because the parties are much further apart.

But-but is that something that's unique to America

Was it always going to be this way, because, as you said,

there was a time when it was essentially four parties.

if there are two, then you always have to choose the one.

Which seems like a dumb thing to say, but unfortunately,

it locks you into a, like, a fixed polarization.

You can't... you can't move between ideas.

Is this something that can be fixed in America,

or is this just where the two-party system

-takes the country? -You could fix it in part.

is necessarily a bad thing, and we see it in other countries,

both in two-party systems and in multi-party systems.

There's an argument that multi-party democracy is better.

which is a system where, when you actually win power,

it does not mean you win the power to govern.

The American system is internationally quite unique.

-Because the way we elect people... -It hasn't?

Eh, fair enough. You can elect a president,

and then a majority leader in the Senate,

and there's no way to actually resolve that difference.

So in other systems, when you get elected,

even if you're polarized, you have the power to govern.

So the problem really isn't that we have parties that disagree.

The problem is that when parties win elections in this system,

they need bipartisanship that the other party

I think we should have a system where public majorities,

popular majorities, actually take power and then can govern.

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Ezra Klein - “Why We’re Polarized” and the Brutal Power of Negative Partisanship | The Daily Show

essentially

pretend

majority

compromise