> The combination of the structural duopoly of the electoral system and the unusually long political realignment if the 1930s-1990s where the salient political

> The combination of the structural duopoly of the electoral system and the unusually long political realignment if the 1930s-1990s where the salient political divides didn’t map to the divides between the two major parties–which produced a lot of bipartisan legislation and gets people to falsely describe it as a time of low political polarization, when it was in fact a time of very high polarization but where the polarization didn’t map well to the major parties Call it whatever you like but this is what I am referring to. We are at a point unusual in history where the polarization of the electorate maps well to the polarization of the major parties, leading to coalitions of equal strength in government that can neither compromise nor overcome opposition.