Doherty said Americans first need to decide that our democracy is worth saving, and not everybody thinks so.

“We need to have a divorce,” one man told Dokoupil.

“A big threat that I see growing right now is the people who were saying that they are morally compromised by having a conversation with somebody who differs from them. Morally compromised because they are condoning evil. This is a serious threat to a democracy,” Doherty said.

Addressing it requires getting each side to take responsibility for their role in the quarrel, Doherty said, but as Dokoupil discovered over two days of talking to voters across the political spectrum, talking about the other side is a hard habit to break.