President Obama came into office vowing to end the old divisions of Washington. That may be his signature failure to date. The divide between the parties has turned into a gulf. There is essentially no middle anymore. If you see a prone body in the Capitol, it belongs to someone who toyed with being a centrist…

Congress-watchers see this not as an aberration but as a long-term trend — “hyperpartisanship.” The parties used to be more eclectic and less ideologically regimented. In the past two decades or so, they’ve become more philosophically homogeneous — there are no liberal Republicans to speak of, for example. Party leaders are more prone to crack down on anyone showing signs of apostasy. Buck the party caucus and you’ll lose a plum committee assignment or party help with fundraising…

There might be moderates out there, but they don’t march. They don’t go to town-hall meetings to berate a member of Congress. The people who do go seem to have a tendency to worry about such nonexistent things as “death panels.” At least, that’s how it looks on TV.