The Pros And Cons Of Political Polarization

“We must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans”, stated President-Elect Joe Biden in his 2020 election victory speech (Sevastopulo para. 5). With a little over two years into President Biden's term, he has managed to score many bipartisan bills ranging from funding for fixing America's roads and bridges to federally protecting gay marriage rights. Even though most bills that are coming out of Congress and being signed by the president garner votes from both sides, this does not mean the United States political parties legislate in a bipartisan manner. Throughout a legislative session, thousands of bills get introduced and less than ten percent of those get passed. These numbers just account for bills

In “Political Polarization: Challenges, Opportunities, and Hope for Consumer Welfare, Marketers, and Public Policy”, Weber and the other authors state that “Political polarization is a marked political division in the population, characterized by multiple manifestations” (Weber para.1). An example of when the parties of American politics were extremely polarized was right before and during the Civil War era. Today, experts are noticing that the two major parties are becoming very polarized. Pew Research Center has conducted many studies and has shown that from 1994 to 2014, more Republicans have moved farther to the right while more Democrats have moved farther left. The article also stated that the two parties have grown more disdain for each other with negative views of each party rising (Geiger). There are many explanations that researchers have come up with to explain why political polarization has grown, but a major one “focuses on electoral change” (Weber para.17). This main theory describes that the citizens within certain parties are shifting and changing more to each side, so that is reflective in the layout of Congress and overall, the government. Both political polarization and bipartisanship can go hand in

First off, many bipartisanship bills have passed through Congress and been signed into law by President Biden. These bills include the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the “first major gun-safety bill in decades”, the CHIPS and Science Act, and many spending bills which allocated billions of dollars to Ukraine (Jones). The similarity with all these bills is that they were negotiated by and gained support from both Democrats and Republicans within the House and Senate. When Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer retired, one of the most important powers a president has was about to be used. After that announcement, President Joe Biden announced that he would be nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court; and with a Democrat majority in the Senate, it looked highly likely she would get confirmed. Not only did she break a major class ceiling by being the first black female on the Supreme Court, but she also garnered the most bipartisanship in her approval vote, 53-47, since 2017. Lastly, with each party respectively voting mainly in the party line, this could be explained by party value. Of course, Democrats are going to vote with Democrats and Republicans with