 You're kidding yourself if you think our long national electoral nightmare will be over on November 3rd, and not just because it might take days or even weeks before we know who won. If Donald Trump wins, anti-immigration, anti-abortion and protectionist Republicans will continue pushing their mostly unpopular agenda in Washington. If Joe Biden wins, as most observers expect, anti-capitalist, anti-school choice and pro-regulation progressives will pass legislation similarly out of sync with America's more centrist electorate. But whoever wins, there's a good chance that power will flip to the other side in two years or four. That's because we're living in an era of unstable majorities, according to Stanford political scientist Morris P. Fiorina. For the past 20 years, control of Congress and the White House has regularly jumped back and forth between increasingly extreme wings of both parties. This kind of chaotic electoral environment, we hadn't seen since the late 19th century, a period they called the period of no decision. In 2018, the Democrats took the House back. In 2020, it seems very likely they'll take the presidency back, possibly the Senate as well. So this era of electoral chaos, the floppy majorities I call it, continues as far as I can see. Until the 1980s, says Fiorina, both parties resembled each other more than they differed. It wasn't the end of the world for most people if the other party won. But since the Reagan era, Republicans and Democrats have sorted almost completely into ideologically conservative and liberal groups, raising the stakes of each election even as fewer people identify with either major party. Each party wants to impose its particular platform for the rest of the different big side, the very conservative side, and the country isn't ready for that. There's going to be demands from Biden to act strongly on climate change, and there's going to be people unhappy if he doesn't embrace much of the Green New Deal. I mean, just pick your issue. He's not giving enough attention to race, he's not giving attention to this. It's just really not a good time to be a president. Most Americans agree with each other on issues ranging from abortion to immigration to gay marriage to free trade. But they can't express that agreement at the voting booth. I don't think we're on the verge of civil war. I think that the fever swamps of our newsrooms and social media are just not reflective of the mood out there in general. I think a lot of people wish for something better but don't really see it out there on the party leader party. You know, if you go back and look at the 60s, if you look at the destruction and you look at the loss of lives and the violence, we somehow muddle through it. So I think we will probably as a country do it again, although it won't be pretty and it won't be quick.