[troutman]

How Hatred Came To Dominate American Politics

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ican-politics/

This is hardly a new trend; in fact, it’s increasingly common among American voters. However, this level of hatred — which political scientists call “negative partisanship” — has reached levels that are not just bad for democracy, but are potentially destructive. And extreme partisan animosity is a prelude to democratic collapse.

There are two possible ways this ends. The first is the one we all fear — the unwinding of our democracy, because one or both sides hate each other so much that they are willing to support anti-democratic and authoritarian leadership in order to maintain power. (This is the threat Democrats have explicitly raised in recent months.)

The other scenario is a major realignment and/or a collapse of one (or both) of the two major parties, which could reorient American political coalitions and resurrect some of the overlaps of an earlier era. The growing partisan hatreds and the forces driving them have been a long time in the making. It’s possible they are coming to an end. But more than any other time in the last century and a half, they are testing the very foundations of American democracy.