(Sound of a light bulb rolling across the
floor; music plays)
We see this both in the electorate and in
Washington, D.C., this increasing polarization. 
The solution to the problem of
polarization is voters holding
politicians accountable. There's a kind of,
sort of insatiable demand now for quick,
new, salacious, dramatic kinds of
news events.
And that kind of feeds into a very
negative atmosphere in Washington, D.C.
So the media is part of that story of
what's causing the polarization.
Changed political processes are also
another part of it. The more money
matters in politics, the more that you
have to raise money, and it's hard to
raise money as a moderate, right? It's
hard to raise money by saying, you know,
"I'm going to take this policy and make
it just a little bit better." That doesn't
make people passionate enough to give
money.
So, instead, you've gotta talk about
how the other side is trying to
either make the lives of working people
worse or
how the other side is
fundamentally un-American even.
Finally there are things happening 
internally in Washington, in terms
of the way that congress operates.
That over time, over several decades, we
have given more and more power to party
leaders rather than committee leaders
within the congress, and one of the
results of that is that as you empower
the party leadership rather than the
committee leadership,
you're basically moving the locus
of power more towards the
majority party. And so we tend to see
these more radical viewpoints
being empowered, because they do have
power within their own party caucus.
You know, I was talking to a friend
recently who was the chief of
staff for Joe Manchin.
He expressed just
absolute exasperation about
the policy process in Washington.
That it is unworkable because the two
sides just can't
talk with one another.
They can't stand one another.
I mean it's a kind of visceral 
dislike among the two sides. But
you've got to reach across the aisle and
get things done, and when they don't, 
you have to hold them accountable.
There's only one way to fix a polarized
electorate, and that is for the
electorate to change and for the
electorate to say,  
"We don't want this any more."
(music)
