I was a Democrat for most of my life and am now an independent. But I haven’t even voted in the last few elections for the very reasons you give.
I think your analysis is SPOT-ON. Of course there are “some” differences between the two parties — no reasonable person will argue otherwise. The GOP caters to the fringe right and the Democrats caters to the fringe left. The Right values guns and God and the Left values vaginas and immigrants.
These are all important issues, yes, but these are not issues valued by ALL Americans. That’s the big picture that the vote-no-matter-what contingent misses.
But it goes deeper than that, because upon closer inspection, it’s clear that both parties only give lip service to their fringe constituents.
The Left, for example, proclaims love for the poor, even as the disenfranchised and minorities descend further into squalor in cities they govern. They profess love for women, even as the celebrities who donate to their causes and the scion of their own party (that would be Bill Clinton) notoriously harass and rape women. They proclaim to want affordable health care for all, even as tens of millions of working and middle class Americans are stripped of access in the wake of ACA. They claim to hate war, but joined forces with the Right to wage a bogus invasion of Iraq and expand our foreign misadventures into Syria under the dovish Obama. They claim to value civilian lives in other countries, even as Obama doubles the number of drone deaths. They claim to defend immigrants, even high Obama exercised the same deportation-and-cage policies they abhor in Trump.
These are the issues that are supposed to do distinguish Democrats from the greater evil, and I’m surprised so few people can see the blatant hypocrisy. It borders on mass brainwashing.
Vote-blue-no-matter-who Democrats can’t see that they are enabling a failed system led by hacks who take us in the same general direction as the “other” party, with some minor tweaks that they mostly talk about but rarely or feebly implement.
And yet the things that matter to ALL Americans never change when we vote:
Inequality deepens; the elite continue to consolidate control over our elections through unlimited campaign funding; the war machine keeps getting bigger; our debt keeps getting bigger; the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly diminishing (how often do either of these foolish parties talk about how damn expensive everything is getting now??); housing keeps getting more unaffordable; education keeps getting more unaffordable; healthcare was unaffordable, and thanks to Obama, many like me are now paying the equivalent of half my mortgage to get catastrophic coverage.
I could go on, but my point is this: we are gaslighted into voting for these parties because we’re convinced that their “differences” on the edges, or the fringes, should convince us to support them.
But the differences are really illusory, and more importantly, both parties are in lock step on the issues that affect ALL of us. This is the big picture. If you think that candidates that get 90% of their funding from billionaires and Wall Street care about you, you’re deluding yourself. Candidates cater to those who butter their bread.
I’m so glad Bloomberg is running. Why? Because it means the left wing of the oligarchy has finally been forced to unmask itself. They’re not even pretending they give a shit about fringe differences anymore. The Democrat elites are willing to elect a guy with MUCH more money than Trump, who’s settled MORE sexual harassment cases, who OPENLY degrades minorities and enacts public policies that discriminate against them. Why? Because he’s “their” guy.
People, this should tell you everything you need to know about what’s really going on. Your party isn’t interested in getting you to vote for the lesser-of-evils. It wants you to vote for their brand of evil. Are we really going to keep playing along with this insanity?
