“The first is rising polarization—“the great sorting,” as he called it—which, over a period of decades, has driven white conservatives out of the Democratic Party and moderates out of the Republican Party, creating two ideologically homogeneous political organizations. The second is the disintegration of restrictions on campaign finance, which “gives people even more incentive to play to the far right or to a set of special-interests donors, so that one individual can basically, especially in these House races, do a $1 million expenditure and completely tip the balance.” And, finally, the news media has changed so that people select only sources that will confirm their preexisting beliefs.

All of this combined makes communication with Republicans mostly hopeless. “There’s very little we can do to change the Republicans’ political situation because they are worried about a cohort of voters who disagree with most of what the president says,” Pfeiffer said. “We don’t have the ability to communicate with them—we can’t even break into the tight communication circles to convince them that climate change is real. They are talking to people who agree with them, they are listening to news outlets that reinforce that point of view, and the president is probably the person with the least ability to break into that because of the partisan bias there.”

Pfeiffer’s reading of the red-blue impasse isn’t that it’s a permanent catastrophe. Demographic change will eventually force Republicans to compete with Democrats for some of the same voters, reopening a national political conversation that is accessible to both parties. And Democrats will find the millennial generation in play. “We’re going to have to work harder to get them registered to vote and involved, and that offers an opportunity, because while they are very progressive in some of their general leanings, they’re less tied to institutions and parties.” But that will have to happen after this administration has left the scene.”