(no subject)

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Comments

[spamwarrior.livejournal.com]

Good.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Interesting!

I'd like to see a similar one based on congressional polarization, running beside it and synced, so we can track lags and responsiveness to public opinion in congress.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

Any thoughts about how this trend could be averted?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

What's the data source?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

All issues are either left or right?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Sadly, leave it to Pew to distort the polls. About the only metric they list is self-selected; independents who see through the sham of partisanship for what it is—a well-funded corporate attempt to distract voters away from actually important topics—are far from represented in the polls.

Here's the thing about independents before about 1980 and today: most of them before held some news sources in common with both sides of the political power divide. Today, very, very few true independents get their news at all from corporatist sources. As a result, asking an independent where they fall in the more mainstream political dichotomy is like asking which is tastier, beef or pork, and polling vegetarians and vegans.

Seriously, one might ask people who can't stand football which is the more awesome team. If they all suck, and if the poll doesn't include "NONE, because I have a life" as an answer, the poll is pretty meaningless.

[madam-shapo.livejournal.com]

The life without complications is not possible, even theoretically, because eventually everybody dies, which is humongous complication. Seriously?

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

you think it started 40 years ago.
No, I said I'd lived with it for over 40 years. I'm 56 years old and I've been politically aware since Nixon was elected in 1968. My late father was victimized by the right wing during the McCarthy years, which goes back 60 years, so I'm aware that the polarization has been around for some time.

As long as we are a two-party country, there are only two camps, and as a woman I know which one is on my side. Sorry, but everyone I know who doesn't recognize the difference between them doesn't vote at all, which is hardly productive.

You can say whatever you like--you haven't lived what I've lived through, and you're not going to get me to be all hearts and roses towards the other side in the hope that we can find common ground. As far as they're concerned, unless you love Jesus, don't believe in global warming or evolution, you're not worth listening to. So fuck them.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Need context. Exactly how was this polarization quantified?

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Ah, makes sense then.Thanks for the clarification :D