Racial and religious animosity has been on display throughout American history, but it has rarely lined up so neatly along partisan lines. Gradually, the Republican Party has come to be associated with white, Christian, conservative, rural and male identity. Conversely, the Democratic Party is now more clearly the party of nonwhite, non-Christian, liberal, urban and female (or feminist) identity. I call this “social sorting,” or the development of “mega-partisan” identities.

Now, in each election, we are no longer fighting only for party victory. We are also fighting for the victory of the racial, religious, geographical and gender-based groups that win or lose with the party. Every election is a fight for larger portions of our self-concept — leading to an ever more desperate need for victory. Not only are victories more exciting, but losses are much more painful. It’s as if the outcome of the Super Bowl also determined the fate of our favorite basketball, hockey and baseball teams.

In sports, we want our team to win for the excitement of winning, not for what the teams do after the game is over. As mega-partisan identities intensify, we treat political victories like sports victories. We grow angry when we’re challenged, we dislike our opponents to an exaggerated degree, and we take political action on behalf of often-uninformed partisan team spirit. Even those who call themselves liberals and conservatives often hold policy opinions that do not match their ideological labels. Winning can be more important than policy, because it is rooted in our sense of personal status. And also as in sports, the teams that are accustomed to winning are the angriest when they lose.

All humans are equally vulnerable to this type of thinking, but there is more evidence of it now among Republicans than Democrats. Social psychology explains why. Democrats are associated with a wider range of social groups than are Republicans. This means that Democrats, who have a larger number of crosscutting identities within the party, are generally more accustomed to working with racial and religious out-group members under the larger party umbrella. Republicans, on the other hand, don’t often find such out-group members within the party. For Republicans, then, party victory is more tightly bound with racial and religious victory.

For white, Christian America, Trump clarified an “us” and a “them.” And he emphasized the necessity of these particular people winning. An obsession with “winning” can dampen desire for compromise, sabotage successful governing and allow corruption and insurrection in the name of party victory. Winning draws our attention away from what happens after the election, and focuses us only on whether our team gets the trophy.

Of course the word “winning” itself is not the problem, and if the president never again uttered the word, we would still have no solution. What would provide one is a more difficult question.