Propublica, WaPo: How Congress Stopped Working

[unblock]

1. many factors are inter-related.

increase in gerrymandering leads to increase in partisanship, which makes it harder to compromise and puts more of an emphasis on winning the primary rather than the general, all of which makes the other side feel like an enemy irrelevant to the real process, which then makes justifying dirty tricks and even illegal electoral activites easier, which only then feeds the cycle.

and the media is there to egg it all on because they just love a train wreck. but then the extra coverage only feeds the beast.