[81alum]

Fat chance.  Do you actually believe that Republicans have moved any further right than their opposition has moved left?  The chasm of division between the two parties has been widened by this President and I do not expect him to start acting in a reasonable manner at this point.

Many ideology surveys show only minimal change among Americans over the last 50 years on political ideology.  BUT there have been major shifts right and left by elected officials.  This has been driven primarily by increasingly sophisticated gerrymandering of districts, made possible by modern computing and increasingly sophisticated data sets.  Ideologically safe districts allow candidates to cater to the middle of their party's ideology rather than to the middle of the district's ideology.  It will be interesting to see if California's "top two" primary system gradually chances that.  All that said, the Senate is the only legislative body in the nation that cannot be gerrymandered, since state lines cannot be redrawn.  It should theoretically be more resistant to the extremes of American politics.  On the other hand, unlike the House, it has granted itself the filibuster rule which allows for a form of minority rule.  Nothing undermines the spirit of compromise more than the filibuster--which has grown in use over the last fifty years.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/454162/ris...ning-chart

As for Obama--or Sanders for that matter--neither is really more left wing than FDR or LBJ on domestic policy.  Just listen to FDR's 1944 State of the Union for comparison.  If you do, it is hard to conclude that Obama has gone any further than FDR--who first proposed national health care.

[81alum]

Fat chance.  Do you actually believe that Republicans have moved any further right than their opposition has moved left?  The chasm of division between the two parties has been widened by this President and I do not expect him to start acting in a reasonable manner at this point.

Many ideology surveys show only minimal change among Americans over the last 50 years on political ideology.  BUT there have been major shifts right and left by elected officials.  This has been driven primarily by increasingly sophisticated gerrymandering of districts, made possible by modern computing and increasingly sophisticated data sets.  Ideologically safe districts allow candidates to cater to the middle of their party's ideology rather than to the middle of the district's ideology.  It will be interesting to see if California's "top two" primary system gradually chances that.  All that said, the Senate is the only legislative body in the nation that cannot be gerrymandered, since state lines cannot be redrawn.  It should theoretically be more resistant to the extremes of American politics.  On the other hand, unlike the House, it has granted itself the filibuster rule which allows for a form of minority rule.  Nothing undermines the spirit of compromise more than the filibuster--which has grown in use over the last fifty years.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/454162/ris...ning-chart

As for Obama--or Sanders for that matter--neither is really more left wing than FDR or LBJ on domestic policy.  Just listen to FDR's 1944 State of the Union for comparison.  If you do, it is hard to conclude that Obama has gone any further than FDR--who first proposed national health care.