The battle in miniature
A small town in Pennsylvania depicts a microcosm of the election—and how Americans are handling it
A MODERN-DAY Alexis de Tocqueville might find talk of America’s painful divisions baffling at first blush. Up close, as Bill Bishop wrote in “The Big Sort”, the country has never looked more cohesive. The leafy suburbs of America’s fast-growing, diverse cities are so uniformly Democratic it can be hard to find two people in serious disagreement. Republicans, an older, less mobile group, live equally clustered, farther out. The country is less fractured than ghettoised—as is especially apparent at election time.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The battle in miniature”
From the October 10th 2020 edition
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Donald Trump is victorious at the southern border
Will it stay closed to migrants?
Many Democrats think Chuck Schumer is a problem
How the shutdown is resolved may determine his future
How a MAGA-aligned Republican has put a Democratic state in play
A bellwether race for governor of New Jersey looks closer than many expected
Republicans in the West want more wolves killed
In the battle between farmers and conservationists, canis lupus is losing
The president’s agenda looks safe at the Supreme Court—with a few exceptions
What to expect from the nine justices, including SCOTUSbot’s predictions
The president tries to enlist the top brass for “the war from within”
A gathering of generals turns into a surreal, and worrying, political show