As someone who has been in both northern and southern parts of the state for 12 of the past 20 days, I can tell you that the carefully crafted rhetoric of the spin doctors who parade before the cameras does not do justice to the vitriol on the ground.
People here are bitterly angry at a host of injustices, and the volatility level is rising.
Florida has a long-standing tradition of deep polarization that's engendered hatred between rich and poor, black, white and Hispanic, Southerners and Northerners, and Republicans and Democrats. Florida also leads the nation in gated communities, where impoverished or poorly paid service workers seethe in anger at the Midas-like wealth of their employers. Outside, an underclass of poor or middle-income people vie for the table scraps of the new economy and for the privilege of perhaps rising to the top alongside their betters. That network and other major media outlets are too busy tracking the latest spin from hired guns to show you the aspirations and the conflicts among real people. Yet, those aspirations and the opposition they've inspired are the reason the state could precipitate a constitutional crisis in the next two weeks.