Voters' choices are what have produced nation's political divide

Oklahoma is illustrative because it went redder than ever in this month's election. Republicans hold every statewide office. They have supermajorities in the Legislature and hold all seven seats in the congressional delegation. Even if Oklahoma had a Democrat in the governor's office, it's not clear what he or she could get done.

Missouri's Gov. Jay Nixon is in that situation now. The Democrat's vetoes of the past may no longer be sustained by the Republican supermajority now in place. Republicans in the California legislature can feel Nixon's pain. They can do little to slow the agenda of Gov. Jerry Brown and his fellow Democrats.

Calls for bipartisanship and negotiation will go forth from the White House, the halls of Congress and state capitols, but voters themselves are a prime reason for the divide. This is no cause for lamentations. It's how the system was designed.

At the national level, about half of us didn't like how the 2012 presidential race ended. In Oklahoma, two-thirds of us didn't like it. This was the same percentage of Vermont voters who were quite happy with Obama's re-election.