PHILADELPHIA — Former President Bill Clinton warned Saturday that the country is becoming increasingly polarized despite the historic nature of the Democratic primary.
Speaking at the National Governors Association’s semiannual meeting, Clinton noted that on the one hand, following the early stages of the Democratic primary, “the surviving candidates were an African-American man and a woman.”
Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, battled for the Democratic nomination into June with fellow Democrat Barack Obama, son of a white mother and black father.
But this achievement was overshadowed by a growing distance between Americans, Clinton said.
“Underneath this apparent accommodation to our diversity, we are in fact hunkering down in communities of like-mindedness, and it affects our ability to manage difference,” Clinton said.
Clinton developed his 44-minute speech from themes he said he drew from a new book, “The Big Sort,” by Bill Bishop.
He cited statistics compiled by Bishop that found that in the 1976 presidential election, only 20 percent of the nation’s counties voted for Jimmy Carter or President Ford by more than a 20 percent margin.
By contrast, 48 percent of the nation’s counties in 2004 voted for John Kerry or President Bush by more than 20 points, Clinton said.
