What is commonly called "coming together" is a momentary flicker, a media event that viewers peer at briefly before returning to normal. In that regard, the coming together in Tucson looked to be more of the same. But it's possible to feel a hint of something different. The intensity of emotion surrounding the shootings, the unusual openness of President Obama's speech, and a vague sense of turning the corner, all these things may indicate that decades of rancor may be shifting. Even the Sarah Palin "blood libel" scuffle seemed not so much to rile tempers as to occasion a shrug of "go away, already" from the country.
Sociologists used to claim that the stark divide between red and blue voters wasn't as extreme as popular perception says it is. America is more purple than the media gives it credit for being. As evidence, pollsters pointed out that the average respondent isn't rigidly pro-abortion or anti-abortion, pro-immigration or anti-immigration, and so on. There is wiggle room on the hot button issues of the day. Obama has been playing the long game with this in mind, calling for compromise and across-the-aisle cooperation, no matter how often he gets beaten back. Riding a wave of success at the end of the last Congress, his call for reconciliation in Tucson gathered attention. If he had made the same speech during the hot-headed debate over health care, he probably would have been ignored, with a good deal of backbiting about being weak and letting the Republicans trod all over him.
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