Success Quote by Tom Allen

Allen is doing the politician’s high-wire act: praising polarization and condemning it in the same breath. The line is engineered to sound like common sense, but it’s really a defense of a particular kind of Washington equilibrium. “Too close together” is framed as a threat to “identity,” which flatters partisans by treating their differences as principles rather than branding. Yet “too far apart” becomes a practical obstacle, shifting the argument from ideology to throughput: legislation as the metric of seriousness.

The subtext is a quiet pitch for moderation that doesn’t call itself moderation. By insisting parties must stay distinct, Allen signals loyalty to his team and acknowledges the real electoral economy of “contrast.” Voters don’t reward blur; donors don’t bankroll nuance. But by stressing the need for “some folks on the other side of the aisle,” he also reassures swing voters and institutionalists that he’s not interested in performative gridlock. It’s bipartisanship as pragmatism, not romance.

Context matters: this is a post-1970s, especially post-1990s, American problem where parties have sorted ideologically and “accomplish anything” increasingly requires coalitions that are politically dangerous to form. The sentence also smuggles in a critique of ideological purity without naming it. “Identity” can mean policy vision, but it also hints at the modern party’s incentive to be a lifestyle tribe. Allen’s point: democracy can’t run on tribal distinction alone, but it also can’t survive when distinctions collapse into a single, unaccountable establishment.