General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The words "Democrat" and "Republican" are pretty much meaningless [View all]tuhaybey
(76 posts)I get that the two parties may be similar in both being to the right of dedicated liberals, but the differences between the parties remain stark, especially when you look at the results their policies achieve. For example, look at how our GDP grows under the parties. Our GDP has grown, on average, 5.2% per year when Democrats have controlled both the legislature and the executive, 2.9% when control has been split between the parties, and we have actually lost 0.8% of our GDP on average when Republicans have controlled both the legislature and the executive branch (although that sample size is perhaps too small to draw much of a conclusion from that).
IMO, trying to distinguish between the parties just based on whether they share your views exactly on a particular topic is missing the boat. They differ on much more fundamental levels, like adherence to reason. The economic performance would seem to be the result of Democrats listening to economists and maybe more importantly, not doing batshit crazy stuff like threatening to default and so forth. But, you see that on almost all issues. Republicans are basically ready to cast science itself out. They constantly wrap themselves up in conspiracy theory. The fact that there is no statistical support at all for their voter ID crusade doesn't even occur to them as something worth looking into.
I mean, sure, I would like for the Democrats to move a bit to the left myself, but minimizing the massive and very real differences between the parties is not a good way to express that.