The Big Sort and Rural Migration

 Can't find sources for my guesses.  This is the closest, showing the ratio of women to men in rural areas went from 99.8 in 1990 to 99.0 in 2000. My guesses are:

• in the old days, women were more conservative in rural areas, men could migrate to urban areas for jobs, both manufacturing and others.
• smart rural women could find jobs as teachers.
• smart rural men went to college and ended up in jobs in urban and suburban areas.
• the sex ratio was heavier female (despite the "norwegian bachelor farmers")
• in the modern world more women go to college and end up in jobs in urban and suburban areas.
• women are now more into social issues and tending to be liberal.

The forgoing focuses on out-migration, but there's also in-migration, from suburban/rural areas to rural. I think when it happens it's generally older people, who also tend to be more conservative.

The combination of all these trends means rural areas have become less Democratic and more conservative; urban areas the opposite.

Civil War? Stuff and Nonsense

 Stephens and Collins have a weekly conversation at the NYTimes.

When he noted a fairly widespread fear of civil war, she had a response with which I agree--a sentence:

It’s very possible things look worse than they are because we’re experiencing a revolution in communication more dramatic than anything since the invention of a national postal service.

Big changes in technology usually require a period of adjustment by society.  You can see that in the novels of Dickens, in the writings of Thoreau and his fellow Romantices, in the literature of the 1920's, etc.

The advent of the internet, particularly the cellphone/internet connection, is such a change.   Father Time will dissolve some of the partisanship we're experiencing now.  As we grow more used to the technology and develop norms to deal with the problems it brings we'll settle down into patterns which will become familiar and comfortable to us.

Whither Bipartisanship?

 Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Congressional Democrats to the climate change conference in the UK. 

I'm old enough to remember when we used to have bipartisan representation during many major international efforts.  I don't know when that stopped.

The Advantage of Two-Party Rule

This Govexec piece (originally in Propublica) describes an instance of how people can learn to game government rules, in this case the HUD rules for federally-subsidized housing. If it's worthwhile, people are ingenious enough and motivated enough to figure out games, whether it's the "Potemkin Villages" of the Czars or installing walls in a building to hide major defects.

With two-party rule you establish some incentives to find dirt on the other guys.  Even there is no dirt, there's the human incentive to make change, to throw out the bathwater because it was the pet project of the other party.