Barack Obama held out hope of overcoming partisan divides, lowering the temperature and bringing Americans together. How’s that working out? Not well, it appears. One year after he was elected, Americans look more polarized than ever.
In a special House election in upstate New York, a Conservative Party candidate, backed by Sarah Palin, took on a moderate Republican whom his supporters called a "radical leftist,” forced her to withdraw and then lost to the Democrat. It’s entirely possible that in the Senate, not a single Republican will vote for an administration-supported health insurance overhaul.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., laments that "it makes news when Democrats and Republicans do something of substance together and that truly is a shame.”
Here’s a solution to that problem: Stop watching cable TV news channels and listening to politicians. Using them as a gauge of how divided we are is like using the National Hockey League to estimate the level of violence in America.
Most Americans aren’t rabid liberals or fanatical conservatives. Gallup recently found that more people call themselves conservative than liberal or moderate. But other polls contradict it. According to a 2008 survey by the National Opinion Research Center, when you give them more options — extremely liberal, liberal, slightly liberal, moderate, slightly conservative, conservative or extremely conservative — you find that the largest ideological group is moderates, with 37.3 percent compared with 34.5 percent for the three conservative groups combined.
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