A new Common Ground Democracy column with this subtitle: Even smart scholars think nothing can be done to solve the problem of polarization, but they’re unduly pessimistic: there are institutional reforms that would work if we muster the will to adopt them.

The piece starts this way:

Tom Edsall’s column for the N.Y. Times last week was full of despair. The theme was that partisan polarization in the United States has gotten so bad that the nation is at a point of no return and that there is nothing that we can do about.

I share the sense that the divide between Democrats and Republicans has gotten much deeper and wider than at any previous time since World War Two. But I emphatically don’t share the belief that nothing can be done about it. On the contrary, the main reason why I launched Common Ground Democracy is to publicize the point that there are institutional remedies for the problem of polarization.