Allow me to put the lie to one of the greatest TeeVee debates of the past 20 years:  America is not divided "right down the middle".  That's idiotic.  AHH!! elections are closer than ever, the electorate is divided between tobacco-chewing hillbillies and the fancy-pants college educated intelligentsia!  Never the twain shall meet!  Hoarders, Preppers, Tweakers, Perverts, (whatever your thing is): the end is nigh for our democracy!

Bull.  You wanna know what the real problem is?  Lousy political parties.  I know, you're saying "wait, what?  I thought it was the natural devolution of a post-industrial society"?  Well, you're wrong.  Round up a couple of working brain cells, a couple fingers of scotch and follow along:

Here is the job of a political party: cultivate, nurture and support viable, qualified leadership for their community, state or nation.  

That's it.

Now, it is a big job and, regardless of whether the parties understand it, when they're winning elections, this is what they're doing.  And when they're doing that their communities are successful because they are united.  Please note that this does not pre-judge the ideology of said candidate.  It's whomever best fits the electorate.  Green candidate, Tea party, centrist, whatever.

When the parties aren't performing this essential function is when things go wrong.  Our recent electoral contest in Virginia is an example of both parties doing a crappy job on pretty much the entire ticket.  A far left vs. far right candidate, neither of whom had the credentials to operate in the middle of their party let alone the larger electorate.  Broken parties produce lousy candidates and lack the resources to support them.  Properly run parties produce candidates that unify the party.  The importance of that cannot be overstated because any political party or faction thereof requires 2 things to be viable:

1.  Electoral victories

2.  Legislative victories

You can have #1 and not #2 but it isn't worth a warm bowl of spit.  You can't have either of those if you aren't doing job one.  Yeah, you might find some exceptions – "wave" elections but many of those folks are wiped out in the next general.  You have to have qualified candidates.

I know, I know: it's starting to dawn on you that I'm talking about "The Establishment".  Yessss…the Establishment.  Drink deep of that kool-aid.  Everyone hates the establishment – it's full of money-men, n'er do wells and deviants but it turns out that unless you have someone to vet and support your candidates you get your ass kicked in the general election.

At this point, you might be asking: well what about the "Base" that the establishment loves to hate?  Can't the "base" just turn out and carry the election?  To which I reply: what's the name of our next governor?  If you're going to run and win, you need the middle…even if just by a little!

The only corollary I would offer is that all of this is less true in the gerrymandered districts that most of our representatives enjoy.  However, for those that run "at large" it is absolutely true.