I’m by no means an expert in US political history but all books and papers I’ve read indicate that this polarisation between the parties did not always exist. Members were allowed to vote according to their own principals instead of just the party line which is basically always opposing the other party.

Senators and other politicians would have bbq on Saturday at each other’s place. It appears that this no longer happens.

Too much transparency. If thousands of eyes of gatekeepers are at you at all times, and immediately start screaming that you are a DINO or a RINO if you do not hold the party line at all times, you have all the incentives to be strictly partisan.

We generally consider transparency in politics a good thing, especially because it may reduce corruption. But it comes with significant downsides. Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter. The rest will submit to Moloch.

(Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" are a good read; I was lucky enough to meet the author two days ago at a meetup in Prague.)

>Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter.

Then don't visit twitter and post on an obscure nntp newsgroup instead.

I am talking about career politicians here, who usually use social networks to keep in touch with their electorate. Though they often have staff to do the lowly comment/response work.

Maybe it is a bad idea and a NNTP newsgroup would be better. Should be tried.

Oh. What meetup, what did I miss?

Prague-Karlín, Sunday Oct the 3rd.

Deregulation of lobbying seems to have been the trigger, but any two party state with silly electoral systems like the U.K. and US is vulnerable to such polarisation.

Also "winner take all" election system combined with gerrymandering. The gerrymandering works short-term by helping you win the election, but it also makes you hostage to the more excitable and active of your party's members.