Unbelievable book and what a great young writer of our time of national politics. ( )

Unbelievable book and what a great young writer of our time of national politics. ( )

Fine book, I really like Klein’s perspective on how the US political system works. ( )

An accessible and insightful look at how America's political landscape has changed in the past 70 years. It was written in 2019, so doesn't take January 6, 2020 into account, but some of the suggestions Klein gives (i.e., being invovled in and paying attention to local poltics) is still useful. ( )

Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized is a rather revealing book. It focused on identity in politics and how this has caused Americans to become polarized. An identity covers some notable aspects in people’s lives like religion, race, geography, and psychology. These characteristics have intertwined and shaped, how Democrats and Republicans voted along party lines.
The end game has resulted into what the American political system has become. Klein stated that such polarization wasn’t the case in the nation’s earlier history, He explained that there were both liberal and conservative senators in both parties. Presently, he wrote the Democratic party was predominantly liberal, while the Republican party was conservative.
This divide has only deepened with the arrival of Donald Trump. He promoted the interests of White Supremacists, and propagated falsehoods. Klein viewed his ascendancy as a backlash to the years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Although he argued, Trump’s stance was meant to shore up a predominantly White base, against the diversity that has taken hold in American society. That was why Trump was seen as antagonistic to Black interests, and made controversial remarks against peaceful demonstrations.
Klein had thoughts on many aspects of the American political system. He criticized the way Mitch McConnell maneuvered the senate to select judges that upended the nature of the Supreme Court. As a result, the court became predominantly conservative that was bad for the nation instead of being balanced. Klein would do away with the filibuster in the senate that often causes gridlock. He felt that proportional representation would be a better system to elect a president and members of Congress. ( )