Biden is about to find out what's left of the U.S.

It is possible that this set of circumstances offers the incoming Biden administration an opportunity to pick up Republican support for some of its key priorities, which include a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus and Covid relief bill, expansion of LGBT rights and a major immigration reform measure that provides an avenue to citizenship for roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants. If no Republicans sign up, the administration will have to rely on 100 percent support among Democratic Senators.

Regardless of the Biden administration’s short-term success or failure, Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, contends in an email that the United States is approaching, or has already reached, ungovernability. Wronski argues that

“when Americans are divided on simple facts, and live in two different realities, we are not a governable people. To put it another way, when two people playing a game cannot agree on the basic rules and layout of the game, they cannot play. When groups within American society believe in two different sets of rules on how to play the game of democracy, it cannot be played and we become ungovernable.”