When has it ever been identitarian? Try any national election since at least 1868. For that matter, any antebellum election that involved sectional differences had some identity component to it. You want to tell me that the 1928 election didn’t have a strong element of ethnic and religious identity politics? What about 1960? Obviously explicitly race and gender identity politics were recent arrivals on the scene for the most part, but let’s not pretend that elections haven’t turned on identity for a long time before the revolutions of the ’60s and ’70s. Identity politics in democratic elections is more muted in communities that are less diverse, because there are fewer differences that can be politicised. As America has become more diverse, it has become more of an explicit element in our elections, beginning at least as long ago as the rise of the American Party in the 1850s.

Where as this evidenced in American history? Unless you define groups so generally as to be meaningless, or are using race/ethnicity as the equivalent, groupwise, of political affiliation, when has American democracy ever been identitarian (if that’s even a word)? Identity politics as defined today has never been a part of our national politics. It is now and forever will be, and that will accrue to our great disadvantage. But let’s not pretend that it’s just business as usual,

I can only hope that pressure from Media Matters and the like push political reporters to note occasionally the implications of the candidates’ policy proposals. Only George Soros can save the world.

The reason that I’m not all that concerned about this– though your Kenya analysis makes sense– is that the Obama-McCain matchup will be significantly less biography-based than the Obama-Clinton matchup has been. Clinton and Obama are pretty close on most policy issues. Obama and McCain are not.

The essential critique of the media from left-leaning folks like me is that they need to talk about policy every now and again between stories about flag pins. You’re right, though, that the fact-averse media could combine with the GOP politics of personality (lord knows they aren’t going to win on policy) deeply to divide the country.