"The Marriage Problem That Comes Every Four Years"

This passage is something that would seem ham-handed in a novel about modern liberals...

As Isaac Pollak, an ardent Republican, kissed his wife goodbye before heading out on a business trip to Asia several years ago, he handed her his absentee ballot for the coming presidential election and asked her to mail it.

Bonnie Pollak, a Democrat, weighed her options. Should she be loyal to her spouse, respect his legal right and mail the ballot? Or remain faithful to her deeply held beliefs and suppress his vote?

"It was a real dilemma," says Ms. Pollak, 58 years old, a student in a doctoral program in social welfare who lives in Manhattan. "I decided to do the right thing."

Ms. Pollak threw the ballot away.

The one trope missing is that they do actually share the same last name. Otherwise...
 

I'm actually not certain whether I'm more amused or irritated.  But, in addition to illustrating the little liberal tropes (Ms. vs. Mrs., the advanced degree in a questionable soft subject), it illustrates one of the big ones - the conflation of public policy with private virtue.  She is so self-righteous in her public policy beliefs, that she believes the virtuous course of action is to betray her spouse in order to prevent one vote for Republicans,  a vote which would have had no impact on any race.

And that's just one event, one action by one person, so you can't blame everyone who shares her party and policy positions.  But it's symbolic of an attitude that I see expressed repeatedly.