I recently have become more optimistic that national divorce can be avoided.

Specifically, I think we are seeing a political re-alignment of neocons to the Dems and liberals to the Reps.

The consequence of this (if true and it continues) will be a Republican "new right" which is a coalition of patriots, (constitutional) conservatives and libertarians. This would be extremely liberal (as in liberty).

The Democrats would become an openly big-government if not totalitarian party. I very much doubt that such a party can maintain political power at the federal level, despite the institutional support it now enjoys.

Perhaps a few of the more... adventurous states would prefer to split off from the Union to pursue a communist or fascist (although they wouldn't call it fascist) mode of government. In that sense perhaps even a reunification of liberals and constitutionalists would fail to forestall a national divorce. However, I suspect that even these states rely on the goodwill and ignorance of large numbers of liberals. Without that goodwill, it's not clear to me that the commies can maintain control of California, New York, etc.