[eggestad]

Pretty much nonsense and just an attempted excuse for not doing any reforms in the US.

Europe was much more popularized than the US during the cold war between the hard left and the hard right, a polarization that followed cold war ideological lines, and that polarization just vaporized during the early 1990's when the cold war ended.

All the "structural" difference cited existed in Europe all the way back to WWII and in most cases longer.

Another thing is that as with most US journalists, there is an aversion to read anything other than English, thus they go to the British isles and present the UK as "Europe". The reality is that as far as democracy and polarization is concerned, the UK in particular is doing quite poorly. Their problems stems from the same root cause as in the US: Namely single seat constituencies and First Past The Post election.

On the continent you find little single seats and FPTP, and in the countries with least polarization and the best performing democracies you never find it. It's all multi seat constituencies and Party List elections. An reform that is quite possible to adopt here in the US.