The surprising story of how American politics polarized

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2018

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We talk a lot on this podcast about the epic levels of political polarization and how much of our ongoing breakdown they explain. But what was American politics like before it was polarized? And what got us from there to here? Sam Rosenfeld is a political scientist at Colgate University and author of the book The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era. I’ve read a lot of books on polarization, and Rosenfeld’s is the best I’ve seen at painting a picture of what American politics looked like before Republican meant conservative and Democrat meant liberal, and why polarization seemed like a good, necessary thing to many of the people who drove it. While you listen to this history, try to think about it not from the perspective of someone sitting in 2018, looking at a political system in crisis, but someone in 1955, observing a system that offered nothing but false and confusing choices. Would you have been on the side of the polarizers? Recommended books: On Capitol Hill by Julian Zelizer Making Minnesota Liberal by Jennifer Delton Social Policy in the United States by Theda Skocpol Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's late. You're almost home after catching that concert you and your friend's
0:04.8	snag tickets to with MX months ago. You're all speechless from the last hour
0:08.9	spent singing your hearts out and the only thing playing in the car is the last
0:12.8	song of the night on a full blast in your head. Admit it. You want it stuck there.
0:18.7	The live version you can't get anywhere else. Looks like you're getting goosebumps
0:23.3	all over again. When the night's a hit that's when you're with MX. American
0:28.1	Express. Don't live life without it. Obama is this complicated figure because he
0:32.4	had like legal academic background. I think he was more of an intellectual than
0:37.1	you usually see among politicians. Well, we fixed that. Absolutely right.
0:45.2	Hello and welcome to the Clientsha on the Box Media Podcast Network. I have been
0:59.0	thinking a lot lately about polarization. You all know that if you listen to
1:03.0	the podcast. I am obsessed with polarization. But the reason I find it so
1:07.3	interesting is it's changed. It's different. We are a polarized country in a way
1:12.8	that we were in 40, 50, 60 years ago. And I think this is something that
1:17.0	distorts our understanding of politics. We've been Republicans and Democrats and
1:21.3	liberals and conservatives for so long. The labels have remained unchanged for
1:24.7	so long that it's very easy to extrapolate backwards to think that it's always been
1:31.0	this way that the what we are seeing is just how politics is. People have always
1:35.4	argued. But it isn't. They have not been. We have not been. Something has changed.
1:41.4	And so I want to do a show about what has changed. And more than that, now what has changed?
1:46.6	What did felt like before it changed? If it's true, this thing I keep telling you,
1:52.5	that American politics was not ideologically and politically polarized
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