Scott Alexander describes this view as "blue tribe" and "red tribe" where blue has a subgroup "grey" that broadly follows blue but disagrees with a good portion of blue's more extreme actions.
There's also a "grey" subgroup in the red tribe. For instance, a lot of Trump supporters will privately admit that he's a bad guy and an ineffective leader, but preferable to a liberal president.
The problem is that the more extreme factions in both tribes wield the power and tend to punish what they see as heresy within their own camps before going after the other tribe. Most groups treat apostates worse than those who never believed in the first place.
My point was not to draw a moral equivalence between two tribes, but rather point out that neither is a monolith, and both are currently controlled by their more extreme elements.
The Democratic party is being driven by those on the left flank of the party. Yes, the moderates are nominally in charge, but only so long as they drive the agenda of their more extreme members. It's similar to how John Boehner was an arguably more moderate Republican, nominally in charge of house. However, he got led around by the nose by the more extreme Freedom caucus who didn't have a lot of official control, but wielded a tremendous amount of soft power.
Right now, sure. But the political machinery is never in bed with the more radical people. Things are extreme now because it’s being driven that way by various parties.
As that calms down, compromises will be made and order will return. Recovery from economic catastrophe will be the priority.
'The right' holds this temporary power. But the arc of the last half-century remains unchanged: the platform of the democrats today will be the platform of GOP in 50 years. The right lost the universities and the culture long ago.
