Quick recap on symmetry, asymmetry and polarization. In the mid-20th Century, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress were both relatively centrist, on average, and there was a significant overlap between the parties. There were liberal-leaning Republicans from the northeast, and conservative-leaning Democrats from the south. That latter group was the segregationist wing, so when anyone bemoans the polarization of Congress, remind them what the so-called centrists really were.
Anywho, as time passed, the southern Democrats either died, retired, or switched parties, leaving us with conservative southern Republicans, and the liberal northeastern Republicans either died, retired or switched parties, leaving us with liberal northeastern Democrats, and that gets you to the level of polarization we had in the 1990s. And it was basically symmetric.
Symmetry makes some sense, in spatial theory. If two parties are equidistant from the median, they each have basically an equal chance. Now, really, it doesn't fully make sense because either party should move more to the center, but it makes more sense than asymmetric polarization, unless you add bells and whistles to your model, like some kind of pretentious jagoff, but who'd do that?
Oh, right.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Asymmetry. So geographic sorting got us to a level of symmetric polarization in the 1990s. And then the GOP just... kept... moving right. And the Democrats didn't.
Why? Well, as my very, very few readers know, I think Grossman & Hopkins are full of it. No, the GOP is not a purity-driven ideological movement. Such a movement would never have elected Donald Trump. What kind would? The kind driven by white identity politics.
For years, though, the GOP has been more extremist than the Democratic Party, on average, but as I have been writing lately, it looks like the Democrats are catching back up. Their policy proposals are getting comparably extreme, they are rallying around kooks, and generally speaking, their behavior is moving in the direction of the GOP in disposition.
Over this, I have puzzled. Like Yoda, I write today. Manichean mentality, however, poses an answer. As I wrote yesterday, one of the problems with the manichean mentality is that adopting it risks losing the ability to detect the cranks, con-artists and assorted deplorables who just happen to side with you on a general range of issues. When you lose that ability, you find yourself defending the indefensible. It is that loss of cognitive capacity which leads, not necessarily to ideological extremism, but to dispositional extremism and an inability to think through the consequences of the ideas being considered.
I am avoiding the language of "tribalism" here, or politics as team sport, or anything like that, because that fundamentally misses the point.
Sports are the dumbest thing ever invented, and I hate you if you ever try to push any of that nonsense on me. Why are they so intellect-crushingly stupid? Because absolutely nothing of any consequence depends on the outcome. Whoever wins... it doesn't matter at all to anyone with a brain. Hence, if you care, your brain is malfunctioning. Sports. Don't. Matter.
Two competing tribes are in a zero-sum competition until they begin engaging in trade, which, contrary to Donald Trump's defective, time-traveling brain, is a net positive. However, competition is, by definition, zero-sum.
Politics are not, or, not intrinsically, anyway. They are about what constitutes moral good. Hey, look! I'm a CIS, straight, white dude, and I hate Donald Trump! Why? I'm not a raging sociopath! (Raging... maybe, but that's because I read the news!) See? Morality, and competing views of what constitutes moral good rather than pure self-interest. In empirical terms, can you predict partisanship and vote choice with similar demographics? Of course! It's funny what people can convince themselves constitutes moral goodness when it's in their own self-interest! Regardless, the deviations show us that it is the debate over morality rather than pure self interest.
So really, parties aren't tribes. Tribes compete or trade finite resources (and try to expand resources). Parties argue over the moral rightness of how to achieve similar goals-- what we often call "valence" outcomes. And those are completely foreign to sports, which don't matter at all.
Abramowitz & Webster coined the term, "negative partisanship" for belonging to one party more out of opposition to the other than attachment to the party in question, and that could get a bad image, but is that actually worse than the manichean mentality? No. Understanding that the party for which you vote is flawed, and simply the necessary choice in a constrained system? That's a little thing called "realism." Do you want to do something to try to change that? Go for it.
When you run into problems, and when the party runs into problems, is when you start excusing your own party's flaws, simply because it is opposed to the party you hate more. That's when the party runs amok. (Duck!) That's how the GOP went nuts, in my current assessment, and that's what's happening now in the Democratic Party, with a delay.
As a reminder, there is nothing mutually exclusive about the following two statements:
1) Donald Trump is an over-the-top racist.
2) Ilhan Omar is an anti-semite.
Once you lose track of the fact that both statements can be true simultaneously, you start to deny even the possibility that Omar is anti-semitic because Donald Trump said racist things about her, and that's a logical problem. Yes, Donald Trump said racist things about her, because he's a horrible, racist demagogue who is tearing apart the fabric of American civil society, to the degree that that particular c-word has any place in America anymore. That has precisely zero to do with whether or not Ilhan Omar is an anti-semite, and once you lose sight of that, and once the Democratic Party loses sight of that... that's how the GOP lost its way.
The world is complicated. The party system is complicated. Go back to the scrap-heap, Mani.