Partisan hatred, a short history thereof


Yes, both sides are equally at fault for the division.

Role of social media?

Obama calls us all racists. Preaches hate for business and the US. Makes deals with mad men. Priests in the pulpit call us spouse beaters, racists and greedy thieves all the time being corrupt themselves and you don't understand why people are upset? Speak for yourself clown.

I take it you have a different opinion.

There is a river that gives immortality. Somewhere there must be another river whose water takes it away. Ungeziefer comes from High German zebra (related to the Old English Tiber) meaning “sacrifice” or “animal sacrifice.”

You're not?


The country can survive acrimony. There’s been a lot worse. The difference is that one party has decided the other has no right to govern. From the IRS to the FBI/DOJ and now the SC, the laws and norms that prevent acrimony from becoming anarchy are being steadily eaten away, with the feverish support of the media.

Nonsense. The hate is coming from the left - no link required.

That’s not what our data shows. Indeed, your supposed “blue collar” status is being threatened still by the very largerly white businessmen you are beholden to, not liberals. 😆

My blue collar status refers to my origins. I have a university STEM degree and have a broad and diverse set of skills.

One thing I learned at the university is that the vast majority of students were rich kids on an extended field trip, and most of them were pretty average. Few had ever had to work a hard and demeaning job to pay the rent. They would score very low on the bubble test. I made a little money tutoring the weenies in math and physics. I was paid to grade their papers - many of them cheat. They cheat on homework, they cheat on exams, and they write lousy papers in the psychology, sociology, and anthropology classes. Our campus paper had an article trying to describe why minority (and poor, I would add) students felt so isolated and faired so poorly. I was astounded by the number of white (I am white) students whose both parents had a PhD, or one parent with a PhD the other with a master's, or parents that had 2 master's or a law or medical degree. In contrast, nobody in the previous generation in my family ever attended college save one, and none had a degree. All the men had done military service in WWII ( not unusual) or the Korean War or served overseas post war.

The STUDENT parking lots at the university were filled with brand new cars. Graduation presents? I was in awe in those parking lots full of new cars - they looked like car dealerships. The students didn't work, their parents paid for everything. They had plenty of time to study or play in the year round summer camp. They bought overpriced clothing from the campus bookstore and wore their tribal affiliation markers everywhere. I went to the campus bookstore to read my assignments - I could not afford to buy all those books. I bought my STEM books - I still have some of them.

I used to work in a local chain drugstore as a retail clerk
The university kids used to come and buy all manner of stuff and pay with a credit card with daddy's or mommy's name on it. I didn't even have a credit card and didn't till I had my first high tech job. We blue collar employees used to laugh at that. It was especially funny to see the university girls come in with their new college sweatshirts on and buy condoms, lubricant, and desensitizing cream and pay with daddy's credit card. We guessed they were all in the same 'Human Sexuality's class or planned to f*ck a lot, or both. We were their age but our world was so different.

So, no, my blue collar status is not threatened. I am a survivor, and so are my blue collar friends and family. I survived Obama even, and still own my home free and clear, though my 401k was battered by a divorce. I will survive.

We have taken back our country from the 'experts' that gave us the 'great recession'.

The Harvard grad - BHO - left the economy in a shambles and the nation more divided than ever with his racist rhetoric and BLM nonsense.

Our new president is cleaning up the mess, and has animated the economy with his words and actions, the return of the rule of law, and a new Supreme Court that respects the Constitution (unlike RBG and the racist 'wise Latina'.

We have lowest unemployment rate in how many years? Wages are rising, I see 'help-wanted' signs all over my community, and I have a new job that I really enjoy - doing something I am good at that gives me great satisfaction.

So, you know what you can do with your data.

Oh, and keep whistling past the graveyard - nothing bad is going to happen.

One more thing college apparently taught you is that anecdotal evidence is totally better and more objectively trustworthy than mass aggregated data sets.

For me, he tipped his hand even earlier, when he wrote that he was at "the" university and not "at university." Of course, I've lived for many years in the Northeast.

There are anecdotes and then other anecdotes.

Based on this chart, we don't know that the people hating the Republican Party and the people hating the Democratic Party are different people.

There really should be a "hate both" option. This may hide significant dissatisfaction with both parties while also inadvertently pushing a partisan narrative.


+2, or is it #metoo? Hard to keep up.

It's "hate the OTHER party"

Gotta be in one to be counted, and presumably you're not in one you hate.

I hate the Dems but retain my Dem registration - "Extremists on the political left and right use more angry and negative language than moderates, with liberal extremists’ language being even more negative." - "Liberals were found to be more playful in their use of humour and to exhibit a higher degree of superiority with respect to the butts of their jokes" (So much for "punching up").

Yes, it takes two to tango. But... One side has moved ideologically and the other mostly stayed put. One side has begun expressing hatred of the other first. One side is more negative at the extremes. One side shows a more supremacist attitude to the other. One side dominates all the ideology forming institutions of American life.

Stayed put? Did you miss the '90s?

More or less they did, per Pew data:

Median Republican not far from 1994, with broaden of distribution. Median Democrat much more "consistently Liberal" with narrowing distribution of ideology. Almost all the divergence between party medians appears driven by Democrats becoming much more extreme in liberal ideas.

Democrats move consistently to the left during whole series; Republicans followed them 1994-2004 (becoming more "consistently liberal") then abandoned this post 2004, possibly because it become apparent that this was part of an ever leftward shift that would ultimately end up to "wokeness", and would do nothing to stem increases in Democrat hate towards Republicans.

I'd be interested to see some non-Pew data on this, if you can find any, for another independent check.


This is exactly the problem.

Checks out. Small Reagan bump, bigger Clinton one, then a huge Obama rise and a yuge Trump one.

Hope the fever breaks soon

Correction, yuge Bush bump not Trump. Trump not shown yet.

Looks like the Republicans took awhile to realize how much the Democrats really, really hated them. Given their recent behavior the Republicans just want to beat them like a rented mule (speaking figuratively, of course).

As a wise man has been pointing out for some time (paraphrasing):

"Hey, rural and middle-class America -- the political party that is desperate to disarm you also despises you, slanders you every chance they get, and wants you dead. Remember that next time they ask you to turn in your guns."

“Wants you dead.” This is what passes for wisdom these days?

" Trump not shown yet."

The last point is 2016 so the Trump campaign period is shown.

And yet shouldn't the press be respite from this? Instead, the NYT has where Charles Blow cannot even understand tense, is an abomination of class privilege; "For us, it was clear: This man was wholly unacceptable, as a matter of character. And true patriotism demanded that we say so, without equivocation, and unrelentingly."

As if in “Some special passivity or docility in Negro people," he grumbles. Jesus has led me away from life and fulness and into this desert, we grumble.
But such grumbling grieves our LORD who has fought to the death to buy our freedom. Our fond reminiscences of Egypt are like some Stockholm Syndrome – a crush on our former captor. Jesus is pained by our nostalgia for the darkness.
Of course He takes offence. As the verse above shows, grumbling portrays the LORD as a murderer. It paints Him as anti-life when the truth is, Egypt was anti-life.

It's not exactly uncommon to read them fantasizing about the future when they're all dead, which makes it rather obvious that they desire their deaths, even if they don't want to actually go out and kill them

Rich, actually your assumption is that one is not reactive to the attack by the other. Newt Gingrich during the period created a reactive response.

Nothing you could say would dull my mood. I’ve had a delicious New York strip and my wife and I are finishing a nice bottle of Chateau Hyot (an inexpensive Bordeaux type blend). Oh, we are also watching Faux News.

I hear you. One of the greatest moments since November 8, 2016.

Even better -- Dem-haters (aka sane people) have NEVER been more energized to go out and vote.

What a gift. Thank you, Di-Fi. Thank you.

Right, the big bumps are W Bush and Obama, hardly a surprise that the losing party got riled up.

The dirty tricks that the Republicans started using under Karl Rove however were unprecedented, something not seen since the 19th century. They even used them against their own, as in the 2000 South Carolina primary and the rumor mill about John McCain having a black daughter.

I think it was Jerry Pournelle who had a theory that bitter partisanship was an inevitable side effect of the increase in the size and scope of government in the twentieth century, because the stakes are simply bigger than they used to be. Maybe that's not correct, because it doesn't correspond super well to the graph above, but I still think a dose of federalism would do the body politic some good.

The increased animosity is consistent with a society of makers and takers practicing a zero sum game.


Jerry Pournelle came up with that? Darn, I thought I was first on that theory. But it is rational, if all goods are secured through politics, to devote all resources to politics...

I think I agree with both Jeff and Viking here; the game is shifting to a redistribution game from a making game (I forget the formal experiment name for this - it was depressing). On a wider point, the "zero-sum game" strongly-echoes the Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson theory of collapse; looter elites in zero-sum competition.

Is interesting that 2000 would be the turning point. I found that year's national election to be not very compelling. I was a Republican at the time. And I agree that the following decade was when bad things started to happen.

As an independent now, I support calls for a better centrism, ideas based, rather than splitting any difference.

And that's part of that I certainly should oppose any "haters" close to power.

I was republican in high school. Ideas-based is always a good start but careful you don't surrender them to some kind of "ology" that, even as a centrist, you will still experience some kind of opposition. But it's like being at the center-point of a constant, bipartisan dialectic. Sounds like a dynamic spot.

I think there are two approaches to centrism. One is to build up a politics from our view of human nature and our goals (be they religious or a secular morality). Hopefully that puts us somewhere close to the center.

The other is to listen to "the two sides," and either join them or as I say, try to split the difference.

I think too many people are caught up in the second way right now, and it is driving the polarization.

sometimes when the brain is deluged with sensitive or conflicting information at the rate and intensity of this "information age", it initially stores it binarily because it's overwhelmed and can't quickly place it in a "continuum", if you will. I think these cognitive underpinnings are one cause of polarization and reaction, political or not. So your notion of "listening to the two sides" is a good exercise.

I think the two sides tend to be very superficial in their explanations (for say a trade war or a $15 minimum wage).

Better to go from bottom up understanding than listening to that kind of thing.

Of course that takes time and commitment.

in bipartisan politics, two sides tend towards the superficial because transparency can be dangerous - even if it's masked in sincerity or even diplomacy. Unfortunately, seems like time and commitment are hard to come by these days. Agrarian times were slow and pastoral where one could plant seeds and ponder society.

Bush II vs. Gore wouldn't seem like the kind of matchup to stoke much hatred -- but the resulting Florida recount controversy is where I see the current polarization taking shape

I date in slightly earlier: the Clinton impeachment.

Year 2000 was when millennials first reached voting age, coinciding with the surge in hatred of Republicans. Coincidence?

Interestingly, Republican hatred of Democrats didn't increase in response right away. Hatred of Democrats didn't begin until about 2008-2010, when Dems passed Obamacare. One will recall that Obamacare also gave rise to the Tea Party.

It would be weird if in the Clinton impeachment Republicans were just mad at Bill in particular, and then Democrats got mad at Republicans in general.

And, yet, that's what the data shows: no (surge in) Republican hatred of Dems until after 2008.

It seems like a possible mechanism then, that Democrats got mad at Republicans in response to what seemed like a partisan attack on a Democratic president.

I think the Dem anger came from three places. First, the partisan assault on Clinton that turned almost his entire second term into a lame duck Presidency (strange, because Clinton and Dole were for the most part indistinguishable except on abortion and the environment). Second, the resolution of Bush v. Gore by the Supreme Court on a 5-4 vote, feeling cheated because of Nader voters, and the whole "if it weren't for the electoral college!" argument, which is when Democrat base started to write off large chunks of the so-called flyover states. Third, the general atmosphere of hysteria in the aftermath of 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq War, when large amounts of power was accruing to the (Republican) President and the media went along with the "Saddam has WMDs" line, in a manner that seemed to validate Hillary's claimed vast right-wing conspiracy. I remember serious articles and books by liberals and leftists warning that we were on the brink of Bush installing a right-wing Christian theocratic police state, nevermind that by the end of 2004 almost every media outlet except Fox and all the cultural tastemakers (remember Vote or Die?) had become uniformly anti-Bush, sometimes rabidly so.

I see it similarly.

Note that Kevin Phillips, ex-Republican, published American Theocracy in 2006

Bush and the GOP under him was also alienating to millennials: his campaigns, policies, and entire image was designed to appeal to older people born before 1945, conservative and moderate baby boomers who had a positive, or at least neutral, view of the Reagan years, devoted Christians, and families and communities that had military ties, especially in the center of the country. If you grew up in an average middle-class or upper-middle-class suburb during the late 90s and 2000s, literally none of this spoke to you, and the Republicans made no efforts at outreach. Meanwhile, much of the culture and media which appealed to teens and young adults (Comedy Central, Green Day, MTV, and more) was vocally against Bush, and the GOP of the mid-2000s made little effort to reply except by reciting already-tired Reaganisms and stressing the importance of "family values", the latter of which had been held up for mockery for over 10 years and seemed particularly farcical after Clinton-Lewinsky and Republicans who kept getting caught up sex scandals.

Um, as I recall the tea party arose in response to TARP and the stimulus bill. Rick santelli called out the pitchforks on CNBC.

The 2000 election is when the parties got labelled blue and red by the media, due to the recount. Perhaps labeling states as red or blue induced a tribal mindset.

There was a time when some networks showed the Dems as red and Repubs as blue on their election maps. Perhaps people should try mixing that up again.

>Perhaps labeling states as red or blue induced a tribal mindset.


The people have not changed at all, hatred-wise. The only difference with ordinary people is that (a) mid-westerners and other suburbanites are suffering enough to show up and vote, and (b) blacks and other minorities are increasingly realizing that the Dems are full of shit. Hence, more Republican victories. Which seems like hate to folks like Tyler.

Populist hate will increase over time, due to the modern hate which is coming from the elite -- the party leaders, the media, and the enablers in academia. The hate will continue from them, until the next Dem claims the White House. This is very much their goal. At that point, all we're going to hear about is the Need To Be Civil.

Screw civility. The gloves are off. Just win baby, just win.

Recently, I've seen a lot of comments from liberal friends calling for, effectively, "total political war"; all sorts of "yeah, NOW we'll show those Republicans when we're unconstrained by protocol...".

I recall that theory says wars start when one side miscalculates their strength and thought at the time: "Are you sure you will win it?". With K the Dems escalated and were defeated. But I don't think they know when to stop; they genuinely think they can win forrever if they hit hard enough....

Yeah, the Hanging Chad days. Even that didn't animate me in those days. But I do remember some Democrats getting very excited.

Losers are exciteable.

See also, 2016 US Presidential Election.

The balance that reached its peak at $300,000, yes, fell in Yuri’s lap, but for him, it kept warm, wet, even violent, serving as a constructive instrument in their relationship, a reminder that money is not commodity.

I said "exciteable," but "driven to insanity" is also very good, and frankly hilarious. Thank you for helping me clarifty, ACO.

Apparently Tim Russert is to blame for all of this:

Why can't Americans learn to get along? Why do they give in to hatred and petty enmity? We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural!

It is sad to see that America has learned nothing from its Civil Wars, Trails of Tears, concentration camps, Palmer Raids, Jim Crow Laws, Croocked Clintons, Dishonest Donalds, Freedom Fries, institutional racism, gangsterism, etc.

I hope one day America will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Those living in glass bottle favelas should not cast the first stone.

I do not live in a favela. I live in a middle class neighborhood in a college town. Brazilians do not cast stones, that is the whole point. We can live with divergenges and disagreements. Why can't Americans? Why have greed and hatred poisoned America's soul in such an Irredeemable way?

Brazilians don't merely cast stones; they also like to stab (e.g., Bolsonaro) and to shoot each other ( Brazil is so thoroughly corrupt and violent that Brazilians are willing to support a little fascist like Bolsonaro to try to restore order and make the trains run on time.

It is not true. Representative Captain Bolsonaro was the victim if a Chinese-backed terrorist attack.

Representative Captain is not fascist. He is a free market Centrist who vouched to fight crime, cut spending and sell public companies.

Still, how many water balloons have you flung in Fortaleza de Sao Sebastio?


A) To alter or corrupt such as a text
b : to insert (words) into a text or into a conversation
2: to insert between other things or parts : INTERCALATE
3 : to estimate values of (data or a function) between two known values

Speaking of those years:

U.S. President Donald Trump criticized former President George W. Bush during a speech on Saturday over his decision to invade Iraq in 2003, calling it "the single worst decision ever made," The Hill reported.

According to the report, Trump was speaking at a closed-door event with Republican donors in Florida when he likened the decision to invade Iraq to "throwing a big fat brick into a hornet's nest."

Sure, you can say that you shouldn't say "hate" but people had a lot to process in the 2000s. A very divisive war was at the center of it.

Yet a much more divisive war did not have a similar partisan-entrenching effect.

Therefore I doubt the Iraq War had much to do with increasing team red and team blue hatred.

You'd think that Trump would be absolutely drowning in Dem Love for his fierce condemnation of the Iraq War. Just as you'd think that the Dems would be crucifying Hillary for voting for it.

But, no.

It makes you wonder if every Dem who brings up the Iraq War is utterly, completely full of shit.

'Just as you'd think that the Dems would be crucifying Hillary for voting for it.'

Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, though he plays one in the primaries - 'If there is one thing Bernie Sanders never fails to reference in the Democratic primary, it’s Hillary Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq war. He brought it up after answering a question about gun control, he continually references the vote during Democratic debates and he’s made his opposition to the war a cornerstone of his foreign policy. Last week he said, “I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq,” and on Sunday, he again questioned Clinton’s judgment based on her vote.'

Just so you know, Mises is speaking of classical liberalism, not how the word has been debased in America to obfuscate Marxist Progressives.

"The parties of special interests, which see nothing more in politics than the securing of privileges and prerogatives for their own groups, not only make the parliamentary system impossible; they rupture the unity of the state and of society. They lead not merely to the crisis of parliamentarism, but to a general political and social crisis. Society cannot, in the long run, exist if it is divided into sharply defined groups, each intent on wresting special privileges for its own members, continually on the alert to see that it does not suffer any setback, and prepared, at any moment, to sacrifice the most important political institutions for the sake of winning some petty advantage.


"All antiliberal parties want nothing but to secure special favors for their own members, in complete disregard of the resulting disintegration of the whole structure of society. They cannot withstand for a moment the criticism that liberalism makes of their aims."

Mises, Ludwig von (1927). Liberalism (pp. 175-176).

The special interests of tribal divisions have been promoted by the professors for more than 50 years. Did anyone really believe that there would not be an adaptation to the incessant march for special favors at the expense of others?

It is notable that the increase in hatred was asymmetrical, especially post 2000. Democrats dramatically increased their hated of Republicans during the Bush years, but Republicans did not return the sentiment until the Obama years, and then Democratic hatred of Republicans leveled off. So hatred of the opposing party increases when your party is in the minority.

I live in a very blue college town, and there was a definite uptick in anti republican sentiment after the 2000 election.

It's like the two echo chambers ramped up after that with 24/7 partisan.

What are you talking about ? The chart shows a virtually identical rise in hate for Democrats after the financial crisis, the election of Obama, and the ACA. Take your pick as to which of those things was most infuriating.

That's what I said. Do you have a problem with reading comprehension?

I think I responded to the wrong comment. Sorry.

In my defense I had two children climbing on me and attempting to take the phone away while I was replying. This is why I never comment on weekend.

Ok, that's a legit excuse. I withdraw my snarky reply.

It would be better phrased as: The increase in hatred of the opposing party did not increase in tandem.

Yes. I completely agree with your statement. The rise is identical, but delays in time until the next party was in power. So you can't interpret it is "They did it first". It's a function of being in opposition.

You write "The rise is identical, but delays in time until the next party was in power." But looking at the chart, The hatred of R's leads and continues to rise throughout the Obama era.

Is another plausible explanation that the left has tended to be more vitriolic since 2000, and the R's are finally responding to the hatred directed at them from the left?

So you think that if John McCain had won the 2008 election that the rise would still have happened ? Why did it just happen to start rising after 2008? Why not 2006 or 2012?

"So hatred of the opposing party increases when your party is in the minority."

But given the low levels starting in 1980, probably not until Reagan.

A couple of pages after this in the book this was taken from, they mention that in 1960 4-5% of R and D wouldn't have a problem with their kids marrying someone from the other party. That was up to 33% D and "nearly 50%" R in 2010

Before Reagan (but lasting somewhat thru Clinton), the 2 parties were coalitions of various groups that did not share a unifying ideology on all issues like segregation, war, government spending, abortion, religion, etc.

They were more like sports teams than ideological figureheads.
With ideological purity came voting purity, and since internal compromise cannot exist in such a group, cross-party (bipartisan) compromise cannot exist.

No longer parties of many, competing ideas, but respect for all who wish to be a member. But parties of identity, and of singular ideologies that guide that identity.

"You are with us or against us." starts internally, but eventually encompasses everyone else as an enemy.

The correlation between Reagan in 1980 and the rise of divisiveness in politics is accidental. Leftist political activists of the 1960s were becoming the tenured social science professors of the late 70s and early 80s. They were handed a captive and naive audience upon which they could dump their anti-American anti-capitalist ideology. This failed Marxist ideology morphed into the derrida-foucault-lacan deconstructionist and intersectionality nonsense of today's duped social justice warriors. The Democratic party abandoned it's populist working class roots and went all in. The rest is history.

So no, both political sides do not hate each other equally. The left left the rest behind when they went all in. The left is attacking (deconstructing?) all previous norms regarding gender, sexual mores, marriage, immigration, property rights, education, citizenship, law, etc. The left gravitated toward careers in education, media, law, government, and journalism where they were able to have their ideology become the dominant voice in the public sphere. The right is in a desperate fight to prevent the collapse of Western culture. If not for the rise of cable news and the internet in the 90s the Battle would be over. But now we have an all you can eat buffet of partisan information sources - so no one has to listen to the other side as we did in the 60s with the alphabet tv networks and the faux 'non-partisan' news outlets.

It is the left that hates not only the right but the center too, and the right is in the defensive position.

Remember, it was the gladiator champion of the left, Hillary Clinton, that called half (she really meant all) of the opposition a 'basket of deplorables', not the other way around.

I’m not tired of all the winning. I am so full of love for the Democrats that I just declined our son’s offer to buy me a Trump 45 jersey.

At this point, you might as well hold out for Ivanka 46.

Hillary told me that 2016 was the most historic election of all time.... she had NO idea.

Are you and Rich lovers? I notice your comments always follows his on this blog for some time now. I'm guessing Rich wears the pants in the relationship and enjoy playing catcher.

Inside every lefty is a homophobe desperate to come out. Thanks, boy!

What about gay lefties, are they self-hating homophobes? Maybe all the gay people are righties.

I have seen others argue that 9/11 fundamentally changed everything.

seen this tweet today, by a Republican: "I haven't seen the Democrats this mad since we freed the slaves".

Gee, they got pretty mad when Earl Warren and Eisenhower desegregated their schools.

The big middle meat of the Democrats is the class of caucasian white collar professionals marrying each other and living in apartheid neighborhoods with outstanding schools financed by local taxes. The public schools are defacto private, with the tuition the price of a home in their apartheid neighborhoods protected by restrictive zoning ordinances. They have built themselves a castle surrounded by a most and have pulled up the drawbridge. Woe be to the politician that tries to scale those walls.

There aren't too many black folk living in those apartheid neighborhoods in SF, Seattle, Portland, Boston, or Austin. It's hard to find soul good but every sandwich comes with arugula.

The obnoxious virtue signalling makes me want to, I was gonna say puke, but instead I want to say punch.

There is a quite a bit of identity politics, inferiority complex, and hate to digest in your comment(s). Something tells me this goes back more than 10 years for you.

+1 Blue Collar.

Have relatives in Palo Alto who are a living stereotype that way; talking about diversity and their Rich Hispanic Friends, whilst their million pound neighbourhood is needed for a school with no black people.

It’s hard to argue that the Republican Party of today is the party of Warren and Eisenhower. Warren is the historical face of “judicial activism” for today’s Right. And federally-enforced desegregation would be seen as anti-federalist enforcement of coastal elite wokeness today.

>I haven't seen the Democrats this mad since we freed the slaves

Pure gold.

Thats why 93% of blacks voted for Trump!!!

Some of the people all of the time...

Hey, look at that -- Kavanaugh was confirmed.

Calling him a gang rapist didn't really pan out, did it, Dems?
So much for hate.

It was the blubbering that did it for him. Folks feel sorry for a white man blubbering like that.

Not so. I read Susan Collins’ Senate floor speech and she emphasized the most telling and salient factor: totally uncorroborated accusations do not a guilty party make.

Kavanaugh was not my choice because of his role in Clinton’s impeachment but I’d say the Dems were a disgrace to decency, moderation, and the law. (I never thought the Bork business could be surpassed as a low.)

He was attacked pretty viciously for crying.

Well, if you look at the book, you'll find that the polarization has been due to acceptance of conspiracy statements and demonstrably false statements. Right wing false statements (Obama born outside of US and Obama death panels) compared to left wing false statements (government advance knowledge of 9/11 and Army Corp deliberate flooding of poor neighborhoods) showed that 44 % of Republicans believed right wing statements, whereas Democrats believed only 10% of left wing false statements.

Polarization through disinformation.

The other part of the graph worth noting is that polarization might be reactive. For example, Newt Gingrich ascendancy and his style of demonizing during the period 2000-08 creates reactive response in Democrats to the Gingrich attack. Would Democrats hate Gerald Ford? Republicans Tip O'Neill?

Given that it started in Reagan's first term, now you've invented a time traveling conspiracy conspiracy theory

Go read the cited materials below which have the facts and lay it all out.

I don't need to do that to see that your claim is literally impossible. 50% increase between 1980 and 84. The end.

Gingrich opened what may be the very first nightly hyperpartisan television show in the 80's lecturing the C-SPAN camera angrily every evening to an empty Chamber. He was not aiming at seeking cooperation, he made the case that the right would never attain a majority if it kept compromising and giving up portions of its share if the pie. Gingrich crafted an aggressive, never-admit-fault stance that has become the default today on the right. This innovation weaponised media, and would inspire a generation of Republicans and Republican strategists who vaulted him to power a decade later. This is tracked in 'The Red and the Blue' by Steve Kornacki. This work was continued by new Republican institutions like Fox News and nearly all of talk radio.

It was genius, the left to this day has not found a satisfactory response or tactic which works for them, and we are still seeing the fallout.


The left has an almost indefensible ideology that attacks all the western norms of the last 3 centuries. They can never pull this off via legislation so they have to block any and all conservative, textualist, or originalist legal scholars.

The left is bankrupt.

Have you considered taking this aggressive fearmongering to a larger audience, maybe via something like C-SPAN?

An n of 2 facts for each side, all at wildly different ranges of plausibility. What convincing evidence for a stable structured difference.

"Look, we hate conservatives. But we *really* fucking hate liberals." - Matt Stone

that about sums it up for me, too

On the effect of Gingrich from Wiki:
"A number of scholars have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States, and hastening political polarization and partisan prejudice.[46][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] According to Harvard University political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, Gingrich's speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and health of American democracy. They argue that Gingrich instilled a "combative" approach in the Republican Party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned. Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called them corrupt, compared them to fascists, and accused them of wanting to destroy the United States. Gingrich furthermore oversaw several major government shutdowns, as well as impeached President Clinton in a partisan fashion.[56][57][58][51] University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason uses Gingrich's instructions to Republicans to use words such as “betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors” about Democrats as an example of a breech in social norms and exacerbation of partisan prejudice.[46] Gingrich is a key figure in the 2017 book The Polarizers by Colgate University political scientist Sam Rosenfeld about the American political system's shift to polarization and gridlock.[48] Rosenfeld describes Gingrich as follows, "For Gingrich, responsible party principles were paramount... From the outset, he viewed the congressional minority party’s role in terms akin to those found in parliamentary systems, prioritizing drawing stark programmatic contrasts over engaging the majority party as junior participants in governance."[48]

According to University of Texas political scientist Sean M. Theriault, Gingrich had a profound influence on other Republican lawmakers, in particular those who served with him in the House, as they adopted his obstructionist tactics.[49] A 2011 study by Theriault and Duke University political scientist David W. Rohde in the Journal of Politics found that "almost the entire growth in Senate party polarization since the early 1970s can be accounted for by Republican senators who previously served in the House after 1978" when Gingrich was first elected to the House.[59]

Gingrich elevated junior and more ideologically extreme House members to powerful committees, such as the Appropriations Committee, which over time led to the obliteration of internal norms in the committees.[53][60] Term limits were also imposed on committee chairs, which prevented Republican chairs from developing a power base separate from the Republican Party.[60] As a result, the power of Gingrich was strengthened and there were was an increase in conformity among Republican congresspeople.[61]"

If Gingrich-led demonization of Democrats was the problem, then why wouldn't the graph show Republicans hating Democrats first, starting in the 90s. Instead, Democrats' hatred of Republicans leads Republican hatred of Democrats, and hatred of Republicans starts in 2000.

Reactive function. Also, I have not found the source for the graph, so I am relying on my memory and other research which is quite clear. If you find the source for the graph data, please post below.

Here is some further research. Unlike the graph above (which is apparently person based), this focuses on polarization in the legislatures over time. Their graphs show polarization in the House and Senate with with Republican legislators being more polarized. Here is a link to the research:

One comment is that the moderate Republican declined during this period, and also there were Republicans who were as liberal as some democrats, and in some cases, Democrats were more conservative than some Republicans. Interesting research. Also, the graph on polarization by legislative bodies is different than the graph in this post. Look for yourself.

Remember the individual mandate? That was Gingrich's direct contribution to a Republican healthcare plan that eventually became Obamacare. The Heritage Foundation, Gingrich, and Romney crafted most of the ACA; His *enduring political stance* in opposition to letting any Democrat have a policy achievement, even if it was a Republican policy goal, crafted most of the opposition.

A bunch of stuff happened around 2000.
A very close election that was decided by the supreme court. And shortly thereafter a major terrorist attack, and then a war. The fact that the rise was Democrats first might have something to do with the fact that it was Republicans in control for those events.

Bush was barely in office when 911 happened. The 911 plot had begun long ago during the Clinton presidency, and in fact was the continuation of the Twin Tower bombing of the 1990s.

The divide and hatred began when the leftist students of the 60s became the leftist tenured social science professors of the late 70s early 80s. It's been all downhill ever since then.

That is immaterial. The chart shows that the hatred started rising in 2000. And whatever the history, the left certainly *perceived* and portrayed 9/11 as a failure of the Bush administration. I think to a certain extent, the left experienced some severe cognitive dissonance with respect to 9/11, because they had been portraying the US as a hideous evil empire and suddenly found themselves either having to see the US as a victim or defend the terrorist attack and say the US had it coming. The solution to this dilemma was to engage in conspiracy theories - it was a CIA plot, an idea invented by PNAC. So yeah, the left went crazy as a result of 9/11. And the right went crazy as a result of the election of Barack Obama.

I don't think much of this hatred is real. I think what has changed is that it has simply become more fashionable to say that you hate this or that party.

People act angry online and on TV, but in real life: where are all these people? Almost nobody wants to even talk about politics in real life. I don't see any decrease in the civility of Americans in off-line, off-camera life.

While I tend to agree, there's also more segregation of the 'tribes'. Most people very rarely socialize with people on the other side. Used to be a neighborhood would have Dems and Reps side by side. Feels like it's becoming more like 2 monocultures.

But it is true, because politics are so angry now, no one brings it up in real life, just in case.

It's kind of wierd how online, everything is signalling and pressure to conform, but in real life, nobody wants to talk politics at all.
Nobody acts like they do on Facebook and Twitter in real life. Nobody broadcasts outrage like they do on Facebook.
Why is that?

On-line and social media vituperation is techno graffiti for those that can't navigate on skateboards.

It is nonetheless true most of us should be more emotional in real life and more rational online.

How about three factors?:

Public personas and hypocrisy. Inevitably the political rhetoric conflicts with lifestyle choices. On the internet, you can manage the appearance of your lifestyle choices to mitigate the appearance of hypocrisy, reducing risk of taking extreme political stances for signalling purposes.

Skin in the game and personal relationships. In normal conversation, you're normally talking with people where maintaining the relationship is more important than abstract political bulshytt. Online chat is basically a goof off by comparison.

Role of environments. Online environments are built around shared interests, rather than function, and a way to gain status in those environments is to politicize the interest, because again, they're goof off shared interests and no one cares that political fractionization compromises the environment (unlike in, say, your place of work).

I would say online spaces are built on status signalling. I.e. Likes and friends and followers. In real life, other people can't tell how popular you are just by looking at you. It's much easier to build up the appearance of having high social status by collecting "friends" and saying popular things.

I have a simple suggestion for making social media better though.
Make it so only the original poster can see the number of likes, friends, followers, shares, etc. You take away the status signal and people will stop using it to signal.


Otherwise, +1

Because real time communication between two or more people requires the sympathetic response of the listener to proceed. It is a dance. If the speaker offends the listener the listener stops listening, perhaps interrupts, and the communication ends.

Also, the lack of face to face communication and physical closeness also removes inhibitions to bad bad behavior. That's why youight be disposed to give someone the finger if they cut you off in traffic but not if they cut in front of you in the elevator.

What were the dates of the polls?

I think the problem with the survey is the word: hate.

Other surveys look at the percentage of one party who have "unfavorable" views of the other party. It's pretty even as between the parties over time.

The other problem with the graph above is that it excludes independents, whereas the CBS survey tracks favorability views by all Americans of both parties over time, which shows that favorability of both parties have declined and independents have grown.

It is clear: Democrats escalated each time and republicans were forced into their positions.

Actually, as districts became safer through gerrymandering, the more extreme elements captured the primaries. See some of the research above. You didn't have to come to the center in the election if you won the primary.

As usual, Democrats lead a cultural shift...

I liked it a little more when they led the cultural shift towards tolerating gay people.

totally agreed about the cultural shift towards tolerance of any minority group, really

I also meant to say marginalized group

Tolerance with no moral values. Bolsheviks.

I think you have to define what "hate" means here, and what it is that people say they hate about the other tribe. People are contemptuous of people they believe are beneath them, resentful of people who are above them, have dealt with someone personally and found them to be an obnoxious jerk etc. and use the word "hate" to describe all these things.

A simple example: Nazis hate Jews. Jews hate Nazis. Even if a similar number or percentage of each claims to hate the other, their respective hates are not equivalent qualitatively.

FWIW, if you demonstrated any hate on this page, or even "my side wins," you probably lost the meaning of the message.

is new meme zombie movie mantra
built not bought
not a clear case of canadian
cultural missapropriation?

The word Feminazi is at least 25 years old.

Nobody here is talking about just how terrible the language the Rs have used for 30 years to describe their fellow citizens.

Gingrich was challenging the patriotism of Dems in 1984
In 85 he is comparing elections to the holocaust.
in 90 he sends out his famous 33 words to describe Dems.

This is the leader of the house for Rs. This is the poisoned well created by the Rs. It just took until 2000 for Dems to realize these people were anti-US.

Why wouldn't Ds hate people whos leadership routinely calls them sick, pathetic, liars for no reason? Those are Gingrich words from his 90 memo, which he was already using well before then.

The rhetoric from the leadership of the Rs over the last 30 years has been so divisive and abusive. Please come to terms with this.

I do wonder about double counting. I, for one, hate both Parties as I see them as having conspired inadvertently to grab power for the government and then fail miserably in governing for the greater good. We seem to have entered a period of "hold my beer" partisan maneuvers and retribution (even threatened by the new Justice) for which I blame both. Washington was right.

So count me twice.

How might these data correlate with "regional hatred" (or maybe a regional hostility at least akin to deep-seated regional mistrust)?

The DC-to-Boston Corridor is seen by more than just a few Americans to be at war with most of the rest of the country (which may be only a hyperbolic way of saying that residents of the DC-to-Boston Corridor are far more isolated and insulated from the rest of the US than they dare imagine, even with their internet connections and connectivities).

All the more reason for greater federalism. Let California do what's best for them, and let Mississippi do the same. But with that should come a reduction in transfer payments to other states.

The outcome here would be a net financial loss for Mississippians, and yet, I expect most Mississippians would assume otherwise.

But less interference, regulation, and imposition of Californian norms.

Most people will take "left well enough alone" over a modest transfer payment.

And yet this trade-off is never acknowledged. Rather, most conservative voters seem to believe that they are financing liberal voters when the opposite is true.

I’m skeptical of this claimed preference to be left alone. Why stress state level federalism? Why not everyone at the county level or city/town level self-finance and self-regulate? (Answer: because liberal cities are the cultural and economic drivers of the country and, although non-metro areas resent this, non-metros would be much poorer off if they were culturally and economically divorced from the cities)

Hasn't partisan identity gone down in that time period. The study isn't in the book link, but if there are fewer Rs and Ds, then I'd expect the hardline ones to remain.

Looks like the hate might be tracking the secret discrimination against Republicans that the Dems in Universities do. The Dems discriminate, the Reps get a feeling of being discriminated against, unfairly, and get upset. More secret discrimination by Professors, more getting upset.

Democrat Derangement Syndrome. They hate Bush, hate Trump, hate Palin, hate Kavanaugh, they're starting to hate Kanye West, they did hate Reagan - before they claimed he was great. In 2008, they did hate McCain, tho not as much as Palin.

The Reps have been hating the policies, but not to the point of violent demonstrations, nor censorship of any Dem views.

Any group targeted for hate, like the Dems target Reps, is going to respond with more hate for the group that is pushing the hate.

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