Episode 35 - Abandoning the Middle Ground - Who Moved?

This episode of the Asynchrony Podcast asks a deceptively simple question: who actually moved more, the left or the right? Kevin Shively and Dean Bagley use their framework to separate perception from evidence, comparing elite political voting data, voter self-identification, and cultural institution shifts.They also dig into why this feels so personal now, how in-group and out-group identity forms before policy disagreement, and why the same words can mean different things across partisan lines.00:00 - Opening the series and framing the polarization question 03:14 - The original meme that sparked the discussion 06:03 - “Who actually moved?” as the episode’s core question 09:23 - Introducing DW-NOMINATE and congressional voting data 11:18 - Two-dimensional political sorting and historical issue splits 14:01 - When the political middle started to break apart 16:14 - Republicans moving farther right than Democrats moved left 18:18 - Why the left appears more homogeneous than the right 23:52 - The difference between elite politics and voter behavior 24:29 - Cross-party marriage aversion as a sign of tribal hardening 27:16 - Feeling thermometers and growing hostility across parties 30:25 - In-group and out-group animosity comes before policy 32:04 - Social sorting and the rise of the political mega-identity 34:27 - Tracking the emotional gap from the 1970s to 2020 35:47 - Emotion, rationalization, and Jonathan Haidt’s rider and elephant 38:40 - Group loyalty hardens first, then policy positions follow 40:06 - The Great Awokening and shifts among white liberals 42:29 - Media, academia, and institutional alignment 44:54 - Structural power executed versus cultural visibility achieved 46:27 - Why definitions matter as much as data 51:18 - Concept creep and the broadening of terms on both sides 54:00 - Different meanings of racism in partisan conversation 57:28 - Individualist versus structuralist worldviews 58:04 - The Overton window and how it may have shifted 61:20 - Why hardcore partisans are the least reliable judges of change 62:15 - Most Americans say things have mostly stayed the same 64:46 - Why politics feels so personal now 66:46 - How humans form tribes around almost anything 68:37 - Why the right fears institutional lock-in 71:28 - The rise of alternative institutions and media on the right 73:00 - Credentialed versus non-credentialed language divides 76:31 - What surprised each host most about the analysis 78:42 - The real danger is the loss of overlap81:08 - The Civil Rights Act as a future topic for deeper studySupport our work by subscribing to our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AsynchronyPodcast and get access to detailed analyses for every episode.