@wolfwood:
Eh even when the end result is a filipino macho Trump it doesn't quite promote the same westham versus millwall type of emotions when you have like a dozen parties all about the percentages their voters make up. Like not go full smug european but it is super weird how limited the American choices get, like what if you are pro low taxes but against grabbing women by the pussy? You still have to line up behind a platform of pussy grabbing cause if you don't you can't affect any of your issues. Like i imagine both the reps and dems hold like twelve sub-groupings each, most of whom will never get any real input, but are still expected to take one for the team. I mean no wonder voter dissillusionment is higher in the US. At least thats my duh doy hot take on this no doubt much more complicated issue which ya'll can school me on.
The GOP is essentially one group: the Go Fuck Yourself Cadre. All of them are united in the basic tenets of:
- More money for us
- Fuck you
Everything they do, flows from this. Cut taxes on the wealthy? More money for us. Make abortion a capital crime? Fuck you. Destroy the social safety net and further destroy minority communities? More money for us and fuck you. In this, the Republicans are frankly more honest and to the point compared to most of their European and Latin American brethren (Brazil and central Europe are essentially matching the overtness though, with Hungary pulling things that the Republicans could only dream of. Likud in Israel is fast approaching this point.)
This is their orthodoxy, and they will always fall in line for it. No matter how much they furrow their brows, no matter how much concern they show, no matter how much thoughts and prayers they throw out there, when it comes time to vote, they'll fall in line.
This is not to say that they don't have voters at the margins who can be harvested off. The suburban white woman army can be disgusted enough to switch sides for a time, this is how they've become a key pillar of the Obama coalition that elected Obama, won us 2018, and is looking to sweep in for 2020. The rest of the Republican voting base, though? Oh, they're fuckin' fused to the party, really more for the "fuck you" reason than the "more money for us" reason.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are a big tent coalition.
You have, at minimum, the following factions:
- the old hand northeast liberals (Schumer, Biden, anyone with the last name Kennedy, the Bernie that exists in reality)
- the black caucus, which in of itself has subfactions in the form of civil rights heroes (Lewis, Waters, Clyburn) and younger black progressives who might have a different perspective (Booker, Harris)
- the west coast liberals operating out of relatively recently conquered territory (Pelosi, also Harris, Newsom)
- the Democrats elected in otherwise deep, deep red states who are strategically vital but have to make compromises to keep their seats (Jones, Manchin, Tester)
- the Democrats who are basically Democrats only because there is no functional Republican party in their state for them to join (this solely describes Tulsi Gabbard)
- the Young Bucks, the Devil May Care Mavericks who openly call themselves "Leftists" who are all freshmen that will probably either cool in time or get inevitably wiped out (the Squad)
There are more, and the factions I listed overlap with each other quite a bit, but you can see that the overarching ethos of the party is "opposite of the Republicans" in a way that points broadly in a progressive direction. Understandably, this results in some more genuine inter-party fights than what you see from the Republicans (Dems in Disarry, "I am part of no organized political party, I am a Democrat", etc.)
A Democrat proposes a policy, and their party goes into the throws of "this doesn't go far enough!", "this might be a little more than we can ask for", "jesus christ guys I have to win an election in fucking Alabama, tone it down a bit please", and all the stuff that makes twitter go nuts.
A Republican proposes a policy, and their party goes either "hmmmm yes i will immediately vote for this with no hesitation" or "this doesn't make life for black people hard enough, please make it eviler"
There are a few things that European observes never really seem to grok about America (the factor of race is a big one), and one of those things is that we already have coalition politics, we just don't bother making separate parties for each little faction of the coalition.