It’s not a huge percentage of Americans that holds these
beliefs, and it’s not even the entire Republican Party; it’s just
about half of it. But the party itself is controlled by this intol-
erant, very strongly pro-Trump faction. Because we have a
two-party system, we eff ectively empowered 20 to 30 percent
of the country that is extremely intolerant and doesn’t really
believe in democracy; we’ve given them a whole political party.
And the last time we did that was really around the Civil War.
Homans: Sarah, I’m curious how that squares with your
experience. You’ve spent the past several years working in
various organizations to mobilize opposition to this faction
within the Republican Party, but you’ve also been regularly
conducting focus groups to explore why Trump has elicited
so much support within that party.
Longwell: I still try to really remain optimistic about the
goodness and the decency of a lot of Americans and of parts
of the Republican Party. I have to. I mean, the old Republican
Party did support the Voting Rights Act. But there was this
recessive gene in the party that went through the Pat Buchan-
ans and Sarah Palins. The party would say, ‘‘Palin can have the
vice presidency’’ — like, she’ll be a nationalist-populist type,
and that’s going to sate this recessive gene. And of course,
Trump turned it into the dominant gene.
But I don’t want to let Democrats off the hook entirely here.
You know, when I started doing the focus groups, I would
ask G.O.P. voters who really didn’t like Trump why they voted
for him. And the No. 1 answer you would get was: ‘‘I didn’t
vote for Donald Trump. I voted against Hillary Clinton.’’ A lot
of that is the longstanding hatred Republicans have for the
Clintons and probably a bit of sexism as well. But there is also
a reaction to a Democratic Party that is moving left and has a
more diffi cult time appealing to swing voters. It is increasing
negative polarization: I hate their side more than I like my
side. And the cultural-war stuff is so much of it now. Whether
it’s critical race theory, defund the police or the fi ght over
using pronouns, Democrats often sound like aliens to many
voters — including Black and Latino voters. Republicans have
been increasing their support among minorities, because
often these groups are more culturally conservative in ways
that wedge them off from the current Democratic Party.
Ifill: We’re only talking about political parties. And in my
view, that’s part of the problem, because a democracy has
many, many elements that hold it together. You need a func-
tioning fourth estate. You need transparency, you need good
information, you need education, you need the professions.
I mean, I’ve been on this tear about my profession, the legal
profession, and how much it has been part of this. We have
to be looking at our professions, we have to be looking at the
faith community, we have to be looking at our educational
system. All of those are elements of what is going to decide
the future of American democracy.
Levitsky: I take your point, Sherrilyn, but I think there is a
diff erence. I think that for all the many weaknesses of other
institutions, there is nothing within the judiciary, the media
and the professions comparable to what is going on in the
Republican Party.
Ifill: I agree with you, but I don’t think it’s possible to imag-
ine creating a healthy democracy just by politically over-
coming one party without also addressing the weakening
of the other institutions that are supposed to constitute a
check on the excesses of political parties. How would it have
happened without the excesses in our media, the 24-hour
megaphone of Fox News and One America News Network?
How would it have happened without these other unravel-
ings that actually aided and abetted it, without the judicia-
ry itself? Without the disinformation that social media has
allowed on those platforms?
Levitsky: But it’s entirely possible to polarize and break down
without social media, right? We did it in the 1850s and 1860s.
The Chileans managed to do it in the 1970s; the Spanish did
it in the 1930s. And cable media exists in democracies across
the world today, and only our Republican Party is going over
the railing. I’m not saying the media is performing well, but I
think that the central problem is the Republican Party.
Ginsberg: If it’s the Republican Party’s fault and the Republi-
can Party’s fault alone, what’s the solution? What can you do
about it? You have to recognize that the Democratic brand is
as toxic in rural America as the Trump brand is in the salons
of Manhattan and Northwest D.C. There are lots of solutions
being proposed, but they’re being discussed only by people
who agree with one another. I mean, there’s nobody in this
conversation, with the possible exception of Sarah, who has
the ability to impact the Republican Party at this point. The
country is so divided that the red team and the blue team are
not talking to each other, and the dismissal of one side by the
other is not going to solve the problem.
And this divide goes beyond the political. There’s a much
more fundamental and basic shift that has taken place in the
country over the last 50 years, and that’s the ‘‘Big Sort’’ that
Bill Bishop has described.^9 We now have a country where
people are more and more wanting to live with people like
themselves. Now, that certainly has an impact in our politics,
but it’s not being driven by our politics. It’s being driven by
something deeper.
Homans: Lily, one detail that I found fascinating in your book
‘‘Uncivil Agreement’’ is that according to survey data, since
2008 partisan enmity has increased much more rapidly than
disagreement over the parties’ policy positions, which hasn’t
changed that dramatically since the late 1980s. At this point,
our arguments are not primarily about what the parties stand
for but whom they stand for.
Mason: The word ‘‘identity’’ keeps coming up, and this is a
really crucial part of it. And remember that we have research
about intergroup confl ict, right? Don’t look at this as, like, a
logical disagreement situation. We’re not disagreeing on what
kind of tax structure we should have. We’re not just disagree-
ing about the role of the federal government in American
society. What we’re disagreeing about is increasingly the basic
status diff erences between groups of (Continued on Page 47)Illustration by Pablo Delcan The New York Times MagazineThe New York Times Magazine 3333