[jyl]

I don't see very good prospects for unity. Several reasons:

1. The political parties (on both sides) have learned that their best chances are by focusing on their hard-core base. Look at this election: very few voters crossed party lines (10% or less, I think). Rather than risk losing even a sliver of their bases by moving toward the center, the parties will probably try to improve turnout within their bases. So the Democrats might think "just 2% more turnout in a couple of key precincts will do it" while the Republicans might think similarly in their strong areas.

2. This election campaign was fantastically expensive, and the fund-raising laws mean each party and its ideological allies increasingly have to raise that money at the grassroots level. Anger and fear motivates the hard-core grassroots supporters to contribute money. If you don't have a billion dollars (or whatever it ended up being), you can't get to the finish line.

3. The technology of campaigning is decreasingly about calm and reasonable debate, and more about photo ops, sound bites, attacks by proxy, rapid-fire spin emails, and so on. This isn't unlike the TV we watch, frankly. If the inclusive, positive, unifying campaign of our fantasies is "The Cosby Show", today's campaigns are like "Fear Factor" and "CrossFire".

4. So, all of the above talks about campaigns - why can't people mend fences between campaigns? Well, American elections and between-elections politicking, are increasingly being fought on so-called "character" grounds. Is so-and-so a family man, a good Christian, a traitor, a tax evader, etc. These sorts of contests are inherently very divisive, and the divisions last a long time.

Look, for example, at the nastiness that has developed in this forum of ostensible Porsche brotherhood. People showed up, with little or no prior history of participation in the rest of the PP BBS, and started posting aggressively - and plenty of BBS long-timers got aggressive too. The resulting bad blood permeates even this thread about fence-mending - for example words like "foulest", "spectacularly false", "rabid", "snivelling", and "unholy" are not exactly fence-mending language. Not to mention the folks who talk about "filthy liberals" and so on in their forum signatures - again, not exactly a fence-mending sort of tone.

Now, I actually think the fundamental, underlying attitudes and views of the large majority of Americans is not anywhere near as divided and combative as it might seem after this election. Of course there are going to be a range of views, but I recall seeing surveys that show most Americans share most basic beliefs and values, and this is my experience personally.

But my point is that the tactics that raise money and win elections reward, and almost require, the parties to divide the electorate into "us" and "them", pandering to the one while demonizing the other. With Presidential elections coming along every few years, and Washington in a pretty much permanent state of electioneering and fundraising anyway, the people are pretty much being herded into the ideological equivalent of armed camps.

This is just my opinion - but while I'm not the oldest guy here, I've been watching and voting in elections since Reagan beat Carter, and I'll tell you, the anger, negativism, and personal attacks in this election, by both sides, and their proxies, and their grassroots supporters on Internet bulletin boards and elsewhere, is like nothing I've ever seen. I am not saying I was immune to it, by the way. I tried not to step over the line, but I'm sure I did.