Partisan polarization remains the dominant, seemingly unalterable condition of American politics. Republicans and Democrats agree on very little – and when they do, it often is in the shared belief that they have little in common.
Yet the gulf that separates Republicans and Democrats sometimes obscures the divisions and diversity of views that exist within both partisan coalitions – and the fact that many Americans do not fit easily into either one.
It is far easier for me to say which sub-groups I’m definitely not a part of than it is for me to pigeonhole myself as definitively belonging to a group. I think I’ve grown reflexively suspicious of political tribes and tribalism as well. I can say for certain that, like most Americans, I sit somewhere in the political center and that the fringe right and fringe left both make me crazy. But I have a few policy positions that would be put me if not squarely in their respective camps, at least somewhere close by.