In the U.S., political parties are supposed to be coalitions, not movements.
What’s the difference?
In a coalition, you are expected to agree on one big thing. If you support the party’s candidate — for whatever reason — you’re one of us. No further questions. In a movement, you’re expected to agree on everything — not just which candidate you support, but also positions on government spending and foreign policy and race relations and vaccine mandates and filibuster reform. Disagree on anything and you can be banished from the movement. You’re not one of us.
Our parties started becoming more ideologically uniform a long time ago, back in the 1960s. Democrats embraced civil rights and made it clear that racists — who had been tolerated in the Democratic Party since the Civil War — were no longer welcome. The anti-Vietnam war movement said the same thing about war hawks. At the same time, Barry Goldwater defined the Republican Party as an exclusively conservative party and embraced the radical right (“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!”).
Since the 1960s, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats have gone the way of the dodo bird. They have become nearly extinct in their native habitats (liberal Republicans in the Northeast, conservative Democrats in the South).
The trend toward ideological conformity didn’t start with Donald Trump
Democrats are not so extreme. President Biden
One consequence: In a Statista poll taken in December, by 62 to 38 percent, Americans called Biden “a weak president;” 40 percent called Biden “very weak.” Only 12 percent called him “very strong.” That’s the main reason Biden’s job ratings are so low. Americans want a president to be strong and decisive like Ronald Reagan. Not weak and “wishy-washy” like Jimmy Carter
Read More: Why our parties can’t govern