E. J. Dionne Jr. has spent a career searching for common ground among opposing groups, in the hope that it can become the foundation of a politics of consensus. In books like “Why Americans Hate Politics” (1991) and “Our Divided Political Heart” (2012), he tried to chart a course between left and right, suggesting that if we peer across the political divide with clearer eyes and more open minds, we can begin to build a postpolarization politics.
As part of this endeavor, he has often chided the right for its mounting extremism, but he never wrote it off. Which is why Dionne’s latest book should send our alarm bells shrieking. Though written in the same patient, even soothing, voice as his earlier works, the narrowed scope of “Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country” shows how much his view of politics has changed. The right barely factors into this new bridge-building project. Conservatives are, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause.
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