Transcripts for CNN Democracy in Peril 20220118 06:50:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
John, the first thing you point to here is hyper partisan polarization. walk us through what you ve been seeing as a trend here in recent years. this is really the structural dynamic that leads to the insanity we re seeing. bottom line, the incentive structure in the politics is all screwed up. it moves power to the extremes. take a look at this. the number of competitive congressional districts, you know, where the general election actually mattered where the candidates had to compete for votes in the middle, those have been cut in more than half since 1997 by design through the rigged system of redistricting and it s likely to get much worse so that forces the politicians further to the extremes and guess what? that translates to how they vote in congress. you see a polarization both parties playing to the respective bases. there is almost no over lap now between what used to be a hand full of progressive republicans and conservative democrats and you can find a constructive
Most families gather on Thanksgiving hoping that politics is not on the menu. And this year is no different. James Davison Hunter, an author and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, joins Amna Nawaz to discuss polarization in the U.S. and how to lower the temperature.