You can come and see all of our rabbis wasted. [laughter]. And speaking of things that drive us to drink, a few weeks into the new year year and decade, the reality has set in for us all. For now undeniably in 2020, approaching one of the anticipated and polarized american president ial elections of all time. The 2016 elections results were shocking to many of us. It seemed that we didnt know our country, our communities, or even her friends as well as we thought we did. The aftermath had people questioning peoples deep rooted values. Tonight we are thrilled to welcome ezra klein back in dc to make sense of it all and to share his perspective of how the polarization has been growing roots for decades. And why we are polarized. He asserts that american political system isnt broken but rather is working exactly as it was designed. Aezra klein shows us how disastrous results are Building Bonds to pull us together. The editor at large, vox cofounder ezra klein and executive producer on the netflix shows explained. Previously he was an editor of the washington post, a policy an analyst at nbc and a contributor to bloomberg news. And as we are joined in conversation tonight by janelle and a columnist for the new york times, a political analyst for cbs news, and the former chief political correspondence. Is also very talented photographer you can check out his visual take on people and places on his instagram account. Now please help me give a form welcome to ezra klein. [applause]. What are you all doing here. You know we have a podcast right. I just want to say thank you. This is the first event of the book tour in a city means a lot to me in a menu that means a lot to me. Enemies lets me that youre all here working on the book is a solitary strange experience. And to see their real human beings out there who care is a wonderful thing. So think you all for being here. [applause]. So ezra klein. I saw your book. [laughter]. Got a copy in the mail and reading this why we are polarized. When i see books with these kind of titles my immediate thought is pokemon, were not that polarized is not that big of a deal. Things have been worse in american history. The 1850s, even the 1960s. So if we are uniquely polarized in the present moment, what makes us unique and you acknowledge in the book itself that things have been worse. But now its different in the way the maybe the trend is worse than it looks pretty ezra i want to note that i managed to not have a subtitle everybody is welcome to try to push against trends and things. But when you use the word polarized youre completely right. You get an immediate intuition on the audience inside of what you are doing is moment saying how bitter everything is today. As you say things have been much worse. The 1930s, the thing that is different today, in the mid 20th century politics i think its important to say that the baseline and we being the class, we baseline american politics to the 20 century. A lot of people who run political publications, their political comingofage in the 20th century. I remember when i got to dc, all people who got into nbc 1987 causally, why cant we have a reagan, a tip oneill, and get a drink and fix social security. That was the iconic way the american system is supposed to work. When i came to have to explore and think about is that seems wrong but why. In what way was that wrong. But we was a intuition correct in the way the strong is that the mid 20th century politics was very unusual in that it was not polarized. In that politics is usually polarized in most countries in most places apple times. The second thing i think is unintuitive here is polarization is not necessarily a bad thing and its not necessarily a synonym for disagreements or bitterness or extremism. It was a much more time and foundational political fracture than what we are in right now. You had the Civil Rights Movement and the Antiwar Movement the addition it Rights Movement and National Guardsmen telling protesters it can state, urban riots, and watergate and political assassination after each one after political assassination and you had all of this trouble in the country itself. On a much larger range of ideological opinion. Not democratic socialism like norway, to republicanism as we see it today. The communism. Like actual, excellent is right. All of the way to the recent memories. Ezra when they came of age in politics, as a meaningful thing to do with. Host what is different now is not perfection or fracture, it is the way the different factors aligned on top of each other. The way we have become polarized my party and that party that political identity has linked to a lot of other identities and a lot of other fractures in american politics. I always think that a good example is that an intense piece of legislation and comes up for hardfought political value and completely bipartisan. And then medicare which comes run on the same time kids i think certain 13 or 17 public votes in the senate to imagine major pieces of legislation representing fundamental political context of the era. Passing with very little coalition and its almost unthinkable today. So that i think is the thing i am trying to animate here. In american politics in the way the parties function in the relationship to our fractures, is actually actively different than it was at other times. And we have to build their understanding of how politics works on that. Not on an over link nostalgic view of the past. So in the book you begin talking about how american politics got polarized in the way it is now. And the summary stories is very much part of that story and that the Civil Rights Act essentially realigns the conservative factions in both parties. Basically to the respect of the parties liberal and republicans democrats and vice versa. In the political system in a way that is never been before. They have a Straight Line of ideological polarization. You described this as not necessarily be a bad thing. On who you talk about why it wasnt a bad thing even if the consequences have not necessarily been in the political system. I think implicitly, they think the alternative to it is the agreement, compromise. When the alternative to polarization is often suppressed, often times the reason youre not polarized, is that the disagreements you are polarized over are somehow or another being stressed. In the american political system the way they were suppressed was by a twoparty system collapsing into a four party system in a way that made it incoherent in its ability to service certain kinds of disturbance especially race and what you have as you mentioned the Democratic Party had what you think of is a party that is left on economics and structural barriers, opportunities and then none of party that was quite conservative. There was a wide range of Economic Opinion among them. It is fundamentally conducting itself rated it was imposing oneparty rule at home and it was ensuring basically the National Political system of course White Supremacy in the south. It this was considered at the time a problem. It was a great book. For my friends who used to be called the polarizers. What he really showed was that there were people looking at this and thinking theres something wrong with the system. In the American Political Science Association reported 1950, they become famous and infamous and what they say is the problem in american politics is the parties art politically it was possible. With amoebae responsible is that they are not putting forward separate clear defined agendas so the people can make a choice in between them. Instead you have a democrat in South Carolina voting for a very conservative it senator. And so you have this. Where american politics in many ways functions well on the things that it functions upon. But the cost of that is this compromise to allow racial White Supremacy. The civil rights does not and all at once. And i think this is part of it the people underestimate. Some part of the old confederacy but it takes a long time for the south to become well into roughly the 19 hundreds. Im sorry, well into the 90s. And that is because it takes a long time for those old identities to fall away. This all begins more often the republics can sit nationally. But in terms of party it affiliation, they occupy the south and that was again in the memory of some of the people there. Its a generational replacement that leads to that heading over. I dont think you can look at those compromises in the mid 20th century politics and say they were more or just. It is a really nice line from her mitchell found friend adam. Im going to get this a little bit wrong but he talked about it being a false peace. The false peace of suppressing issues like this. One of the arguments throughout the book is that its not polarization for state. It is often another word we have for disagreements we have to have coming to the surface. The problem in our system is that it is built so that in conditions of polarization, theres no way to result the disagreement. And good locks and new forms of paralysis or unending conflict that is the political System Design problem. Not polarization problem per se. So, you can go into different options here. So in the book you talk about as you mentioned here, the ways in which many different identities are becoming polarized along political wires. You walk through, basically polarization theories. Can you sketch out in little more detail, what that process of polarization looks like. What exactly is happening such that in the presence you can basically get to someone is going to vote for off their proximity to a whole foods, or cracker barrel. Those are wonderful establishments area together myself. [laughter]. Ezra we could build this from the ground up. I will start in the story start the book which a guy named henry. He is bullish and he moves to france in the 30s. Because he cant go to university in poland because he is jewish. More by the way our National Holocaust remembrance day. He moves to france, analyst during world war ii, he is captured by germans. He becomes a prisoner of war and his. Because he is understood as a french person and not as a polish jew. And when he comes back his whole family said. They been killed in the holocaust. He begins thinking of assessing about the idea that in this context, the only thing that mattered was an identity. Not him, not who he was, nothing is different about him. He had a Group Identity which identity was understood as. And he decided whether or not he lived or died. And so many people eat lit love had died. So he becomes dictated on this question of Group Identity. What is it and how does it work. He starts running and would become a very famous series of experience rated minimum group paradigm experiences. Is going to call subjects into a lab. Subject them to conditions that begin to create coherence and feel at one point Group Identity and very importantly outward discrimination begins to take hold. So has all of these kids from the same school. Sixtyfour of them. He has them look at these pieces of paper, screens that have dots on them. Do you think, how many dots you think there are here. They separate them into two groups. The over estimators and the underestimated. This is totally random. I did not care how many dots they had. Over estimators and under estimators. And then they were thinking while we have all of you kids here, we want to do one other experience. But if you dont mind is hanging out for a minute we are going to start you into these groups based on how many dots you estimated and just give us a set care. They then put this into the new experiment thats about allocating money to each other. Theyre all from the same school. Theyve just been sorted into these completely random groups. And immediately begin savoring their over. Estimators and there under god estimators and this was actually unexpected outcome. This was the first test below level of identity behavior to cold. He found first that he could not create a test so subtle the Group Identity would not take hold. A meaningless characteristic that was itself untrue, with a bunch of people who are already in the group together, and he still got this. So he did it again with painting. Do you prefer the painting of the sky in the sky. And again false wish painting is totally random. Same thing happened in this when he shows prove discrimination becoming very powerful. People will choose to give everybody less money. Their own group less money if it means there group gets more money compares to the other group. Its the winning that is important. And the reason i bring it up is because we are very sensitive to Group Identities. Its very easy to create them. The studies have been replicated endless numbers of times with all kinds of subjects. If you dont believe what i am saying, just think of two seconds about sports. It is all based on this. These are contests. Im sorry everybody. People get in actually riot and burn cities in the aftermath. Identity is very powerful. And it doesnt require much to activate it. I think that becomes important here is to recognize we all have a lot of different identities. I am jewish, im a journalist, a liberal, im a california. So on and so forth. I like dogmatic cats. Some become very weak in the knees and some become very strong. But becomes very important in politics is the way your identity links to each other. For a lot of american history, the republican parties, are internally in terms of the groups connect to them, because they are so internally mixed, they are similar religious compositions. Not similar racial compositions and not even similar ideological compositions but once the sorting mechanism begins to happen, in the 20th century, and it said, the Democratic Party becomes liberal party and the Republican Party becomes a conservative party. A sense of a period of not just ideological sorting, the demographic sorting. So the Democratic Party becomes much more diverse. Democratic party is about half nonwhites. And the Republican Party is about 90 percent white. The Republican Party becomes an overwhelmingly remains i should take overwhelmingly christian party. It did Democratic Party in beyond that is a coalition of a lot of different religious groups and communities. Even with an ideology the divided party is about half as liberal parties about 75 percent. So begins to happen is the party sort by not just ideology but race, the religiosity geography, psychological qualities like openness to experience in conscientiousness, this fluid type of things. Where you live, and that all these downstream cultural things. Cracker barrel, do you watch duck dynasty or do you watch mad men. As of the become these mega identities where one we know a lot about you in general by who you vote for. But too, there are a lot of things that can trigger and strengthen and reinforce your political identity and three, as the other party becomes much more ideologically different, and more demographically different as you feel that they are not your group. This underlying Group Identity dynamics take very powerful holds. And i want to say one more thing on this is that there is a fascinating study that shows to just get us into how powerful this is, in countries with the most stacked identities, which is like all of the identities aligning versus other countries theyre pulling you you different directions, the countries with the most cross identities are 12 times less likely to have civil or. So these are big numbers and drive a lot of political behavior. It takes work to fill the policy and politics. To think about try to give currency and what should the group dynamics. Once you since the other party does not like you, its not going to be good for people like you. The more since you have of this the more aggressively you will react in favor of your side and against them. Host weve talked about the past polarization is essentially moving. Save and happened in the 60s, and the parties begin to realignment. And there are other events that are bearing on the parties realignment said then kind of things take their own path. Putting us on a certain path. We have to be moved there in addition to these groundlevel material changes. I dont want to say that individual behavior has no effect at all on politics. That would clearly be untrue. What i do want to say that individual behavior has a lot less range of choice in politics than we think it does, that particularly american political journalism now devises the story through individuals in a way that is unhelpful for understanding what has really happened here. So theres definitely a lot that individuals if donald trump would not run a 2016 american Political Energy would be terrific. But a dont think the underlying trends would be all that different over the long run. Is that like a matter of Newt Gingrich become speaker of the house, he ends up being really powerful force in driving the congressional Republican Party to the right but if Newt Gingrich, if it never happened, if you somehow never born, sts a math teacher or history teacher, married his math teacher i think, Something Like that. Hes married a lot of people. [laughing] with some like that have like this is actually a a disagreement i have with polarization literature. It is over Newt Gingrich iced. Theres too much Newt Gingrich in the polarization literature in my view. The reason i think theres too much is not because hes not himself truly polarization innovator. He came up with stuff and like every polarization book includes a long story but have Newt Gingrich begin having him and his latinas give speeches with the cspan cameras were on. If the democrats were not cowards you would come up and answer me. It was