When will this hideous polarization end?

[DS0816]

The number of swing states dwindles each cycle, as polarization increases. I'm sick of the blue firewall, and I'm sick of red America. 2012 was a dull map, and 2016 looks like it's going to be worse. Can anyone expand the map? You people can't possibly be enjoying this from a political junkie standpoint.

It has to do with the campaigning.

As George W. Bush proved—twice—winning the Electoral College with 271 and 286 electoral votes is just as legit as winning with 321 and 336 or 371 and 386 or 421 and 436 or 471 and 486 electoral votes.

The two major political parties are choosing to not allocate their campaign funds to compete in states apparently because their strategies are to pursue the states which tend to carry closely to the national outcomes (from recent elections). Other states considered are ones which emerge as "competitive." (The next bellwether: North Carolina.)

Today's Democratic Party is making a mistake not pursuing a 40-state landslide. Between the two major parties, and given this latest realigning presidential period (which began in 2008), the Democrats are the ones who should be able to pull it off. (Put it this way: Historically, it is California and not Texas which has been carried in more presidential elections. That is, if you wanted to compare just those two states to each other.)

Since after the 1980s, it appears both major parties have not been particularly disturbed by the fact that roughly 20 states from each of the five cycles were not carried. (The average amount of states carried in Elections 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012 were 29. That is 58 percent of available states.) That's quite the disappointment given the past 100 years' worth of presidential elections—since New Mexico and Arizona joined the union and first participated in 1912—in which there were eleven presidential elections with a winner having carried on average four of every five states: 1912 (Woodrow Wilson); 1928 (Herbert Hoover); 1932 and 1936 (Franklin Roosevelt); 1952 and 1956 Dwight Eisenhower); 1964 (Lyndon Johnson); 1972 (Richard Nixon); 1980 and 1984 (Ronald Reagan); and 1988 (George Bush).

The two major parties continue to perpetuate this red-and-blue electoral paradigm.

[DS0816]

When both parties moderate.  If being a pro-life or anti-gay marriage Democrat isn't at least tolerated by the DNC, then the Dems will never gain back lost ground in the South.  If being a pro-choice and pro-immigration reform Republican is grounds for being attacked as a RINO, the GOP will never gain back territory in the Northeast.

The Democratic National Committee doesn't nominate the presidential/vice-presidential ticket. The primaries and caucuses voters do that.

What you wrote about "moderation" doesn't mean much of anything.

The two parties should not be alike in their platforms. They should have stark differences in their positions.

Your advice particularly for Democrats makes me wonder what in hell you were drinking when you wrote, " If being a pro-life or anti-gay marriage Democrat isn't at least tolerated…."

The last thing, specifically with Democrats, that should happen with the party is a willingness to nominate for president and/or vice president any "pro-life" and/or "anti-gay marriage" Democrats in Name Only.

And the "south" isn't anywhere near as pivotal as you have suggested. In the 33 elections that began with the Republican realigning election of 1860, with the winner Abraham Lincoln, approximately 20 of the 33 elections were won by candidates who base states were not in the "south." The states which are historically most reliable in carrying for winners are not the likes of Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. To name two pairs of states as examples: California, frequently pitted against Texas (cultural differences, yes, but that they are currently they two most-populous states), kicks Texas's ass historically. Michigan, with the same-number electoral votes as Georgia, kicks Georgia's ass historically.