As a conservative liberal or a liberal conservative, Martin should be clarifying America's "great and sickly divide", not sensationalizing it.

A good journalist would ensure his readers are clear about what a "populist" and what a "progressive" is.
  With all due respect to hapless Barack Obama, progressivism seems to have been progressively crushed during his eight years in office. Years before the rise of Donald Trump's so-called "populism", the Democratic Party had been pushed further and further to the right by the Republicans and their own lack of passion for progress.

  All that was left of progressivism in the Democratic Party was the dubious, questionable progressivism of Hillary Clinton, which was in fact more liberal centrism or right-of-centre liberalism.

 I well remember  the middle of the election campaign, a female pundit appeared on CNN and said, "If Hillary Clinton is a progressive I'm Che Guevara". Like progressivism itself, she disappeared.