On referenda to cut off social services and keep illegal aliens from getting driver’s licenses, blacks vote solidly conservative. And, understandably for black Americans, as they have been displaced as the nation’s largest minority and now have rivals for diminishing social welfare benefits and the fruits of affirmative action.

On racial and ethnic preferences in hiring, promotions and school admissions, Asians are classified with whites and are increasingly the victims of reverse discrimination. Asian-Americans’ interest in equal justice under law and no discrimination against their children must eventually drive them, especially Japanese-, Chinese- and Korean-Americans, out of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.

Where disparate Democrats still find common ground is on growing the government and redistributing the wealth from the private to the public sector, from those who have to those who have not.

When the pie is expanding, everyone can have a larger slice. The crisis of the Party of Government, however, is that we have entered an era where most Americans distrust government and many detest government. Second, with the national debt surging to 100 percent of gross domestic product and a third consecutive deficit running at 10 percent of GDP, we are entering a time of austerity, a time of shared sacrifice.

Now, it is not who gets what, but who gets cut.

When black District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty picked Korean-American Michelle Rhee to shape up D.C. schools, and she fired scores of black teachers as incompetent, Fenty was soon history. The black wards east of the Anacostia River voted against Fenty six to one.

Successful politics, it is said, is about addition, not subtraction.

But, in the coming age in America, it will also be about division.