The most important divide in American politics isn’t red versus blue. It’s civic pluralists versus political zealots. This is the truth no one in Washington acknowledges but Americans must realize if we’re going to recover. …
The stupidity of tribalism has made politics primarily about partisan identities, not persuasion or policy. The screamers on the right and left fuel one another. In a nation as big as ours, there is always someone somewhere saying something stupid—but tribalism takes this fact as its lifeblood. And it’s the excuse for otherwise civic-minded Americans to ignore the nuts in their own party and obsess only over the nuts in the other party. We’re tempted to think that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It takes a genuine leader to remind us that most of the time, the enemy of our enemy is still a jackass. …
The good news is that the American people are bored by this and there’s a huge majority market for something better. Twitter isn’t real life, and cable television doesn’t represent the public. The vast majority of Twitter traffic is driven by less than 2% of the public. According to Pew, less than 6% of Americans generate 99% of political tweets. CONTINUED
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Wall Street Journal
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