Not really, you just need to think of parties as agglomerations of the most germane cleavages in society rather than as ideologically aligned interests. This is kind of where most Leftists (and...
Not really, you just need to think of parties as agglomerations of the most germane cleavages in society rather than as ideologically aligned interests.
This is kind of where most Leftists (and non-Americans) fundamentally misunderstand how the party system works in America. Our political system was designed without parties in mind and focused on centering individual candidates as civic leaders. The parties are just institutional apparatus that exist to help with high level campaign infrastructure and fundraising. It's not like in Europe where the parties themselves are organizing bases. In the US, the parties coordinate organizing bases rather than organizing them themselves.
So the parties in the US converse along the 2 most germane social cleavages in American society, and it just so happens that they're very closely linked. Currently, the most germane cleavages are how people answer the questions of "What constitutes the national 'community'?" and old school class-antagonism.
The national community question is mostly about the role of non-Christian religions, Black people, immigrant populations, and non-traditional families (racist/anti-racist). The class antagonism question is mostly around how much you want to favor labor vs. capital (pro-plutocrat/anti-plutocrat). If you lay these out into quadrants, the parties each converge on one corner of each and try to capture as much of the other quadrants as they can without alienating the core. So for Democrats, they're not mostly anti-racist and mildly anti-plutocrat. The Republicans are mostly pro-plutocrat and increasingly pro-racist.
If we're being brutally honest, the American electorate is probably largely pro-racist and anti-plutocrat and the two parties are trying to split the difference.
This video, along with much of recent politics has made me realize that there aren't 2, but 4 large parties within the US.
Not really, you just need to think of parties as agglomerations of the most germane cleavages in society rather than as ideologically aligned interests.
This is kind of where most Leftists (and non-Americans) fundamentally misunderstand how the party system works in America. Our political system was designed without parties in mind and focused on centering individual candidates as civic leaders. The parties are just institutional apparatus that exist to help with high level campaign infrastructure and fundraising. It's not like in Europe where the parties themselves are organizing bases. In the US, the parties coordinate organizing bases rather than organizing them themselves.
So the parties in the US converse along the 2 most germane social cleavages in American society, and it just so happens that they're very closely linked. Currently, the most germane cleavages are how people answer the questions of "What constitutes the national 'community'?" and old school class-antagonism.
The national community question is mostly about the role of non-Christian religions, Black people, immigrant populations, and non-traditional families (racist/anti-racist). The class antagonism question is mostly around how much you want to favor labor vs. capital (pro-plutocrat/anti-plutocrat). If you lay these out into quadrants, the parties each converge on one corner of each and try to capture as much of the other quadrants as they can without alienating the core. So for Democrats, they're not mostly anti-racist and mildly anti-plutocrat. The Republicans are mostly pro-plutocrat and increasingly pro-racist.
If we're being brutally honest, the American electorate is probably largely pro-racist and anti-plutocrat and the two parties are trying to split the difference.