“The way the American democratic system works is very peculiar,” says [D.G.] Hart, who teaches history at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
“But I don’t know that this [election cycle] is any worse than any other period when religious and racial preferences were expressed as cultural preference,” when a presidential election becomes an even more pointed referendum on what kind of society we want to construct.
He notes a disconnect among Republican voters between what the law currently requires and permits and “what people think Obama is requiring, and their perceptions go a long way to motivating them. You might think we would be better, and it is surprising that these cultural matters keep coming up this way.
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