Some the dysfunction does have its roots in the South. I wrote a piece about this for the old pub Politically Speaking on how "Southernization" is killing U.S. politics.

The question--which so many pundits have tried to analyze--is why other parts of the country can't resist it. A lot of it has to do, in my view, with the economics (and specifically, the desperate poverty) of parts of the South, which left people feeling they couldn't win.

Now more people elsewhere feel that, too, as they see how rich the billionaires are getting when, for example, Congress hasn't raised the minimum wage in so long.