@wdolson - I believe you have been championing the thesis suggesting the forthcoming disintegration of the GOP in many, many posts.
I do NOT disagree. The Strange Bedfellows that are,
inter alia, (many) corporate leaders, fundamentalist religious stalwarts, financially stressed blue collar workers and many more do not make for a stable political force.
BUT - do you not think that the Democratic Party likewise is given to ructions? If we take only that minuscule sampling that are the two dozen-odd Presidential candidates, there really is very little they have in common other than a burning belief that the country need be rescued from the ravages of #45. I believe that in just about any other era, in any other country, those who call themselves Democrats long since would have been split into as many as a half-dozen parties with
very different outlooks and priorities.
Discuss?
The two parties have very different culture. Over the last 25 years the Republicans have become increasingly rigid. They are run as a hierarchical organization where the leaders can't be questioned much. I've heard from people who know many GOP senators that they loathe Trump almost en masse, but are afraid to speak up. The punishment for trying to point out the problems in the party is to be cast out. When the party loses a major election the conclusion is always that they weren't ideologically pure enough rather than a majority of the American public is not interested in what they are selling.
Over the last 25 years the Republicans have expelled some of their best thinkers for asking too many questions. They have made a virtue out of being an idiot.
The Democrats have a very different culture. Many Mediterranean cultures have large noisy families where family get togethers can look like one big fight, but at the end of the day or when things need to get done, they band together. The Democrats are like that. Look at how quickly they have pivoted to attack Trump or other Republicans when they have tried to insert themselves into Democratic arguments. When Trump attacked Kamla Harris, even Joe Biden who had just been called out by her in a debate came to her defense. Nancy Pelosi came to the defense of the Squad when they attacked even though she has had some disputes with them.
The Democrats are having some vigorous debates about policy in the primaries, but even though it gets heated at times, everyone stays away from personal attacks and they all make it clear they will fully back whoever wins the nomination.
The media carried on the false equivalency of the parties for so long many people think whatever is going on in one party is also happening in the other. The Republicans have pretty much unilaterally ended bipartisanship in the US. The media has pitched it as a mutual thing, but it really isn't. During the ACA debates the Democrats tried to be bipartisan, but gave up when it became clear the Republicans just wanted to screw with the process and not get anything done. The Democrats rarely reach across the aisle anymore because the Republicans slap it away, not because of any ideological thing going on in both parties.
As the Republicans have become more rigid and ideologically narrow the Democrats have actually become a broader tent. The extreme left has become more of a voice and the party has taken on refugees from the more progressive end of the Republican party. It's an almost impossibly wide span to keep together and if a new moderately conservative party comes along with legs the more conservative members of the Democratic coalition will probably migrate. But for now they need to sort out how they are going to handle such a broad coalition and the diversity in the presidential race is a sign of this.
For Republicans differences of views means the other guy is "evil", but that isn't the case with Democrats. Democrats, like most people used to be, can disagree with one another on policy ideas and still be friends and still cooperate in other areas. Compromise is dead among Republicans, but it is still a living concept among Democrats. The family might yell at one another across the table at dinner, but when the rubber hits the road, they will be united because even if they disagree with one another on some things, they ultimately respect one another and in many cases actually like one another.
The human mind is an amazingly malliable pile of cells.
Bush approves $17.4 billion auto bailout
Obama basically went along with the plan already started by Bush.
I think she is genuinely not interested in social equality issues. This extends to foreign affairs where it gets very dangerous. She has routinely voted to increase military spending for eg.
BTW, for all her "native American" roots, she said precisely little about Standing Rock.
Anyway, I agree most progressives would vote for Sanders or Warren. Most democrats would vote for anyone who gets the nomination (just like most Republicans voted for Trump).
A lot of independents and even some Republicans would vote for any Democrat they thought reasonable. It's why Biden wins the national matchup polls by the biggest margin. But the fact that Bernie also does well shows that a lot of it is name recognition.
