I Know I’m Not, but What Aren’t You? How Negative Partisanship Makes It Impossible to Govern Ourselves

I have no idea what most of my friends are for, but I know in great detail what most of them are against. Many of them, of course, are against the same things that I am against–which is why we are friends. Some, though, are against things that I am not against (but we can be friends anyway). And a few of them–and these are more like acquaintances–are against me. Being against things, it seems, is what it currently means to have a political position.

Political scientists call this “negative partisanship,” and, though it is not new, it is getting worse. Evidence suggests that Americans experience politics more tribally in the first part of the twenty-first century than they have at any time since measuring public opinion became a thing. Consider one startling bit of comparative data: In 1960, 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said they would be “displeased if their child married outside their political party.” In 2010, the number stood at 49 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats.

These results are important because in-group marriages have always been an important marker of tribal identity. People now feel more strongly about their children marrying outside their political party than they do about their children…