Throughout history, a whole established platform of divergence between Republicans and Democrats has narrowed. Primary differences occurred as early as the 19th century when there was a conflict over the issue of Asian migration to the Americas. Republicans are preoccupied with this phenomenon as a problem and have sought to discover its negative effects. This problem has only worsened with the aggravation of the terrorist threat in the 21st century, and the Republicans devoted a full third of the report on the position of their party to this issue. Also, Republicans are much more conservative in terms of family life and believe that non-traditional relationships harm the political and social system of the state.
At the same time, Democrats support gender equality in marriage and also advocate for the rights of members of the LGBT+ community. This discrepancy is quite acute and unresolved to this day since the problem of abortion has only worsened in recent years. The large number of Republicans in the Senate has led to the potential to abolish abortion in more than half of America’s states. Thus, at the moment, the conflict between the two political platforms is extremely aggravated and concerns support for the most vulnerable members of society, who may lose many advantages with the overwhelming support of the current republican political doctrine by the society.
A complex issue dividing the Democratic and Republican parties is the situation around capital punishment, that is, the death penalty. The majority of Republicans support the death penalty, while Democrats are divided on this issue. There is a separate faction in favor of the death penalty, but the vast majority of people who support Democrats are strongly opposed to it (Diffen, 2022). Government regulations and their necessity are also a bipartisan issue: Democrats believe that regulations are needed to protect the rights of consumers and vulnerable groups. Republicans, on the other hand, adhere to the economic theory of the free market and believe that any restrictions and regulations limit the growth in demand for products and work, which is the principle of the capitalist development of society.
The contemporary reality of American society is becoming increasingly polarized, with citizens supporting different sides of the state machine in an increasingly radical and uncompromising manner. Much of this has to do with the scandalous story of Donald Trump’s presidency, which unbalanced the sustainable development of the political system, sharpening many previously settled issues of divergence between the two parties. The systematic support of both parties and the statistics of this support reveals that polarly different groups of society support Republicans and Democrats. The Republican Party is dominated by cisgender men, while the Democrats are supported by blacks, immigrants and women (The New York Times, 2022). It is obvious that the aggravation of such civil contradictions between such different groups of American society is fraught with many conflicts and discord of social institutions. The main danger of polarization of opinions lies in the grouping of each political party against the enemy and the perception of him not as an equal citizen of one country, but as some kind of alien ideologically opposed subject.
The problem of the current state of the state political systems in the United States is all the more aggravated due to the conflict-forming division in Congress based on the results of votes. The situation, which already existed in dynamic tension, only consolidated its polarity. This is because the Republicans won in the lower house, the House of Delegates, while the Democrats managed to retain control of the higher body, the Senate (Knowles et al., 2022). The Democrats are no longer a unified force in American politics because they do not fully own the Congress. This implies that in the near future, the struggle for political and ideological influence is guaranteed to only grow.
References
Diffen. (2022). Democrat vs. Republican. Web.
Knowles, H., Sotomayor, & Itkowitz, C. (2022). Republicans narrowly win the House, ending full Democratic control of Congress. The Washington Post. Web.
The New York Times. (2022). U.S. House election results. Republicans win. Web.
Pew Research Center. (2021). Stressed sideliners. Web.
Sleat, D. (2022). Why progressive politics matters. Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Web.