Wednesday morning, our nation joined together and took a giant sigh of relief. By the very nature of our political system, there’s almost no chance anyone got everything they wanted on Election Day, but every one of us got the one thing we secretly, or maybe openly, couldn’t wait for all along: This midterm election, the most expensive and one of the most divisive in our country’s history, mercifully passed.

Recently, the extreme divisiveness of our current political era and its place in our country’s historical rankings have become a topic of fierce debate. Scholars differ on context: Are  we more or less divided than during the Civil Rights era? Than during the period around the Civil War? Ultimately, there’s no way to answer this question definitively, but it doesn’t really matter.

When we look back at these divisive yet influential times in the continued molding of our country and its particular brand of democracy, we identify these eras and their divisiveness as standing for something bigger than the individual participants and their motivations. Chief among these are the eradication of slavery and a serious step toward recalibrating the very essence of American humanity. What, I wonder, will be the enduring legacy of our current divisiveness?

It’s painfully clear now, like never before in my lifetime at least, that our political process is broken. Bitter partisanship has become the norm and inter-party cordiality is the new taboo. Where politics once, as Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan is famous for saying, stopped at the water’s edge, our current era prioritizes powerful gamesmanship over the very policies these actors are charged with implementing, to say nothing of common sense and decency.

And before you think I’m pointing fingers, I am quick to recognize my own role in this. It used to be that only the particularly scandalous and the extreme gaffe was worthy of inviting a representative from a distant state out of the Capitol and onto the front page of our tabloid. But, now, with the rise of social media platforms, the gossip and conjecture surrounding everyone are rumor-worthy. Our grandparents very likely couldn’t name a senator from two states over, unless they were a member of a party’s leadership. Now, it is more than likely we can name their preferred method of scandal.

My younger brother hosts a national podcast called At Least There’s This (shameless family plug intended) in which he gives his guests a chance to talk about something that helps distract them from the problems I articulated above. During their conversation, they cover myriad topics from why their interest is both little G and big G good (the distinction between, say, fun and community-improving), and whether our fraught political climate and over-hyped, 24-7 "everything is news" environment influences their natural default as an optimist or a pessimist.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this since he began this project and, while it’s not always easy, I remain optimistic. I do believe solutions exist (ranked choice voting and the added opportunity for independent candidates, just to name one). But it matters less what I think and more what WE think. It’s irrational to believe we’ll simply be able to move forward together now that another fraught election has passed. The time between elections is growing shorter by the year and each one seems to be more contentious and divisive than the last.

So, Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, what do you think will help us get back on track? How can we re-imagine community to weather the constant campaign? How can we return to one America? I invite you to reach out to me at Because only together can we move forward. Only together can we reunite our country.

Jay Shifman is a Walnut Hills resident and political director for MainStream Strategy, a bipartisan consulting firm.


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