Detroit Today: The rise and potential harm of political polarization

Polarization has been a part of American politics from the very beginning. But the bitter, bond-breaking differences frequently on display in today’s political arena has become – to many people – an existential threat to our democracy.

Growing shares of both Republicans and Democrats say members of the other party are more immoral, dishonest and closed-minded than other Americans, according to the Pew Research Center. Just 4% of U.S. adults say the political system is working extremely or very well, Pew reports, and 65% of Americans say they always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics.

So how did we get here? What are the causes, and more importantly, what is the solution? Georgia State University Political Science Professor Jennifer McCoy joins Detroit Today to discuss.

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GUEST: Jennifer McCoy is a professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She says the reasons for society’s extreme political divide is complex and goes back decades; warning that a deepening polarization can have “pernicious consequences for democracy.”

“Society has divided into mutually distrustful political camps where we don’t trust each other, we don’t understand each other, and we actually arise to a point of perceiving the other side as an existential threat to our way of life and to the nation,” she said.

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