Prosecutors: Deeply-in-debt Michael Avenatti sought payday

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Green, Lee help Warriors beat Rockets

<p>The deep political divide in this country has been manifest in Congress in recent weeks, peaking with the vote Dec. 18 in the House of Representatives to impeach President Donald Trump. </p><p>The nation&#8217;s partisan division far surpasses differences measured in other categories, including age, race and ethnicity, gender, education and religion, according to a study released Dec. 17 by the Pew Research Center.</p><p>The country is fractured, and, looking deeper, it&#8217;s fractured more. While the partisan differences have been on grand display lately, disagreements within the parties have not.</p><p>&#8220;Yet there are substantial divisions within both parties on fundamental political values, views of current issues and the severity of the problems facing the nation today,&#8221; the Pew report says.</p><p>One area of commonality may be anxiety about the 2020 presidential election. An Associated Press poll showed 53% of those surveyed are anxious about next year&#8217;s race. But the notion of unity there only goes so far. Democrats are considerably more uptight than Republicans. On the electoral anxiety scale, Democrats weighed in at 67%, compared with 45% for Republicans.</p><p>But then the two partisan camps at the moment face vastly different campaign dynamics: Republicans are overwhelmingly unified behind a single candidate &#8212; President Donald Trump &#8212; while Democrats are spread out over an unsettled field of contenders. UC Riverside psychology researcher Kate Sweeney has studied anxiety in politics and projected that both sides would be experiencing a similar level of worry as the election grows near.</p><p>It&#8217;s not exactly a surprise that there is a widening partisan gulf in this country. But over the decades, it has grown far more dramatically than the divisions by race, income, etc.</p><p>&#8220;The size of the partisan divide on political values has not changed much in recent years,&#8221; according to Pew. &#8220;But since 1994, the differences between parties on these measures has more than doubled, while the size of other gaps has been largely unchanged.&#8221;</p><p>The division is stark. On 30 political values &#8212; involving attitudes about guns, race, immigration, foreign policy and other issues &#8212; Pew said the average partisan gap is 39 percentage points.</p><p>It&#8217;s especially large regarding guns and race.</p><p>Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents &#8212; 86% of them &#8212; say gun laws should be more strict. Only 31% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents feel that way.</p><p>Meanwhile, &#8220;Democrats are seven times as likely as Republicans to say white people benefit &#8216;a great deal&#8217; from societal advantages that black people do not have (49% vs. 7%),&#8221; according to Pew.</p><p>The study also dives deep into ideological differences within both parties and among like-minded independents. Conservative Republicans are nearly 30 percentage points less likely than GOP moderates and liberals to say that legalizing same-sex marriage has been good for society. Among Democrats, there are notable differences between liberals and the party&#8217;s conservatives and moderates on religion, same-sex marriage, racial discrimination and foreign policy.</p><p>Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents also have notable differences by race. White Democrats are much more likely than black Democrats to say that belief in God is not necessary to have good values, 89% to 44%. Black Democrats are less likely than whites to say same-sex marriage has been a good thing for society, 52% to 88%.</p><p>Racial differences in attitudes are narrower among Republicans and Republican leaners, who are predominantly non-Hispanic whites.</p><p>The survey finds the issues that divide the partisan coalitions are different for Republicans and Democrats. Age differences are generally wider among Republicans than Democrats. For example, a majority of younger Republicans and Republican leaners say peace is best achieved and maintained with good diplomacy. A majority of older Republicans and Republican leaners say military strength is more important.</p><p>Younger Republicans also more strongly believe human activity contributes to climate change and that marijuana use should be legal.</p><p>Income divides within both parties, but on different issues: The most striking income difference among Republicans is over corporate profits. A 59% majority of Republicans and Republican leaners with family incomes of less than $50,000 say business corporations make too much profit. Fewer than half of Republicans with incomes of $50,000 or more (41%) say the same. Democrats, regardless of income, have similar attitudes about business profits.</p><p>Meanwhile, higher-income Democrats are more likely to believe government should get more credit for doing good than do lower-income Democrats, 60% to 43%.</p><p>Members of the two parties may not agree much on issues, but they do share some attitudes about the coming election. Both Republicans and Democrats say they are highly interested in the presidential race, 74% and 82%, respectively, according to the AP poll. But a year out, neither expressed much enthusiasm. A little more than 30% of Democrats and Republicans said they were excited about the upcoming election.</p><p>In her research, UCR researcher Sweeney assessed voters from both the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 U.S. midterm elections to project voter attitudes for the 2020 election.</p><p>The conclusions she and her team arrived at seem universal: Both sides worry about major election outcomes; the more people pay attention the more they worry; and anxiety grows the closer the election gets.</p><p>Sweeney said worry could motivate people to become involved in campaigns &#8212; knocking on doors, working the phones and otherwise helping a candidate or a cause.</p><p>&#8220;Our findings make clear that anyone who cares about the political future of our country, regardless of party, is going to worry about election results &#8212; so you might as well allow that worry to motivate political action rather than letting it paralyze you,&#8221; she said.</p><p>The upside of worrying: It&#8217;s good for politics.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Michael Smolens</p><p>Guest Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Michael Smolens is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Politics in America: United in anxiety, divided otherwise