“This is an era of titanic challenges and tiny politics. On issue after issue, the Republican and Democratic parties preen and pose but ultimately duck their responsibilities to solve the transcendent problems of our times,” Ron Fournier writes.

First Read: “Compared with all the big problems at home and abroad, our politics right now seems so small… And the biggest takeaway here is that Washington can no longer handle the large issues — unless it has a gun held to head (the expiring Bush tax cuts, the need to raise the debt limit). So much of this is a function of divided government; elections have consequences, right?”

“But as we’ve noted before, what separates our current era of politics from past ones is the unwillingness to give the opposition any kind of ‘win.’ Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill didn’t agree on much and fought over plenty, but they compromised enough on the low-hanging fruit for Americans to have faith in the political system. Ditto George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy when it came to education reform. Yet what’s different today is that there’s no compromise on the low-hanging fruit. And everything now turns into a huge political battle, even on subjects that weren’t controversial decades ago — like when Reagan and Bush 41 used executive action to protect certain undocumented immigrants from deportation.”

Lynn Vavreck: “In presidential elections, if the economy grows during the election year, the incumbent president (or the incumbent’s party) is more likely to be re-elected. The correlation is so impressive that political scientists often refer to national economic conditions as part of the structural or fundamental conditions that drive election outcomes.”

“But while the nation’s economy is a strong shaper of presidential election outcomes, the president himself is the shaper of congressional outcomes.”

The Hill looked “at voting trends and history in all 50 states to find the most secure Republican and Democratic strongholds, and which states appear up for grabs. Factoring into the analysis are votes for president in recent elections, the breakdown of congressional delegations, the parties of the past three governors and control of the state legislatures.”

Bottom line: Alabama is the most Republican, Washington is the most Democratic.

John Avlon: “What’s changed? Well, the two parties in Congress are more ideologically and geographically polarized than at any time in our recent history. But we’ve had deep divisions in our politics before. And yes, the Wingnuts seem to have an outsize influence on our politics debates. But we’ve had extremists in our politics before.”

“What’s different is the proliferation of partisan media via cable news and the Internet. Amid unprecedented access to information, our fellow citizens are self-segregating themselves into separate political realities. That’s the conclusion of a compelling, if depressing, new study by the Pew Research Center on political polarization and media habits.”

NBC News: “The dominant political story heading into the Nov. 4 midterm elections isn’t control of the U.S. Senate, or President Obama’s approval ratings, or the party that captures the most governor’s mansions across the nation. Instead, it’s that this country – long known for its combative politics, especially before an election – is more divided today than it has been in decades. And it’s likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.”

Stuart Stevens: “In the 2012 election, those 65 years or older were 17 percent of the total vote. But by 2030 those numbers will nearly double, and over 30 percent of the electorate will be over 65. To put this in perspective, the Hispanic vote will probably be only about 15 percent of the electorate by 2030. Yet the potential impact of older voters seems lost in the current political discussion.”

From the political dictionary: “wave election”

A Gallup poll finds that 42% of Coloradans in the first half of 2014 identified as or leaned Republican and 42% identified as or leaned Democratic.

A new Reuters poll found that almost a quarter — 23.9% — of those surveyed said they were strongly or provisionally inclined to have their states secede from the United States.

“Secession got more support from Republicans than Democrats, more from right- than left-leaning independents, more from younger than older people, more from lower- than higher-income brackets, more from high school than college grads. But there was a surprising amount of support in every group and region, especially the Rocky Mountain states, the Southwest and the old Confederacy, but also in places like Illinois and Kansas. And of the people who said they identified with the Tea Party, supporters of secession were actually in the majority, with 53 percent.”

Pew Research: “Our data show that those who say they have sought office tend to be white, male and well-educated. In fact, while women account for half of the adult population, they are just a quarter of those who say they have run for office. This is in keeping with other research that has documented the imbalance… There is a similar imbalance when it comes to race and ethnicity, with whites disproportionately more likely to have sought office and blacks and Hispanics less likely to have done so.”

The Upshot: “Over the last few decades, residents of many traditionally liberal states have moved to states that were once more conservative. And this pattern has played an important role in helping the Democratic Party win the last two presidential elections and four of the last six. The growth of the Latino population and the social liberalism of the millennial generation may receive more attention, but the growing diaspora of blue-state America matters as well.”

“The blue diaspora has helped offset the fact that many of the nation’s fastest-growing states are traditionally Republican. You can think of it as a kind of race: Population growth in these Republican states is reducing the share of the Electoral College held by traditionally Democratic states. But Democratic migration has been fast enough, so far, to allow the party to overcome the fact that the Northeast and industrial Midwest contain a smaller portion of the country’s population than they once did.”

Politico: “In just one week, polls found politicians of all stripes are hitting approval numbers with record lows. The president finds himself roughly as popular as a trip to the dentist. The entire Democratic Party gets the thumbs down. Oh, and so does the Republican Party.”

“Pollsters say it all adds up to a country that feels ‘everything is terrible,’ as one put it, a mood that campaigns should consider as they head into the midterm homestretch, when turnout should be all about enthusiasm — not pessimism.”

A new CNN poll finds that just 13% of Americans say the government can be trusted to do what is right always or most of the time, with just over three-quarters saying only some of the time and one in 10 saying they never trust the government.

Said pollster Keating Holland: “The number who trust the government all or most of the time has sunk so low that it is hard to remember that there was ever a time when Americans routinely trusted the government.”

Sean Trende uses Nate Silver’s demographic calculator to estimate how long it will take for Texas, Arizona and Georgia to become blue states given current population trends.

“I waited a long time. Arizona finally flips in 2036, and Georgia flips in 2048. Texas never does. Even if we double the rate of Hispanic and African-American population growth, Arizona doesn’t flip until 2024, Georgia until 2028, and Texas until 2032. On the other hand, if we assume a marginal reversion to mean for Republicans among minorities — 11 percent of the African-American vote and 32 percent of the Hispanic vote — only Arizona flips, and then only in 2044.”

Dan Balz: “Tens of millions of dollars will be spent this year in an effort to boost turnout in the November midterm elections. But the longer-term trends suggest that any marginal increase in what is expected to be a low-turnout election won’t have much effect on one of the chronic problems of America’s politics.”

The Atlantic: “Republicans consistently win voters making $50,000 or more, approximately the U.S. median income. The margin doesn’t vary too much: In 2012, Mitt Romney got 53 percent of this group’s vote; in 2010, Republican House candidates got 55 percent. And Democrats consistently win voters making less than the median–but the margin varies widely. In fact, whether Democrats win these voters by a 10-point or a 20-point margin tells you who won every national election for the past decade.”

A new Rasmussen survey finds that 48% of likely American voters say U.S. elections are not fair to voters, while just 39% think elections are fair and 14% are not sure.