Should-Read: Steve Randy Waldman: Party Polarization Is Endogenous

Should-Read: This. Judges who think their mission is to get out of the way and so ensure safe seats for their party–or for incumbents of both parties–are the root cause of a huge problem:

Steve Randy Waldman: Party Polarization Is Endogenous: “Centrist wonks lament party polarization…

…but rarely point out that it’s not something that just happened. In the context of heterogeneous political geography and malleable district boundaries, a two-party system doesn’t yield the centrism it is often credited with, but a superficial and artificial polarization that demands an eventual populist response. Party polarization is the endogenous and predictable result of incentives created by a first-past-the-post voting system susceptible to gerrymandering…