What changed?

Locally you can see Democrats who would be considered Republicans or Republicans who act like Democrats. Bob Dole did many “democratic” things: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/us/politics/bob-dole-dead... and Clinton was a copy of a republican.

> Russell Republicans approached Mr. Dole in 1950 to run for the Kansas State Legislature — they saw the hometown war hero as an easy sell. But he had not yet picked a party, though his parents were New Deal Democrats. He said later that he had signed on with the Republicans after he was told that that’s what most Kansas voters were.

>He opposed many of the Great Society programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson, but he supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

> He was most proud of helping to rescue Social Security in 1983, of pushing the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and of mustering a majority of reluctant Republicans to support Mr. Clinton’s unpopular plan to send American troops to Bosnia in 1995. (Mr. Dole was not wild about the deployment either, but he long believed that a president, of either party, should be supported once he decided something as important as committing troops abroad.)

Politics has become increasingly hyper-partisan since the 90s [0]. It has become been more about your team vs my team + purity testes and less about politician's policies. As a result, conservative democrats and moderate/progressive republicans of the yesteryear are becoming increasingly rare nowadays.

For example, 13 house republicans voted for the infrastructure bill b'c their constituents will benefit from the bill. Shortly after, Trump and the ultra-right wing members of the house republicans publicly called them traitor, RINOs, and even democrats [1]. Additionally, they've received angry messages and death threats from their constituents b'c one of the house ultra-right wing republican shared their phone numbers on her twitter account.

0. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-po...

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-criticize-13-col...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/10/us/politics/republicans-b...

Both-sides-are-the-same is lazy analsysis that avoids the difficult and essential question: Where is the problem?

Moderate Democrats dominate the party, as can be seen in the people in the White House, leading and controlling Congress, and even the next mayor of NY. In the GOP, arguably the most radical candidate ever was elected to the White House and dominates the party, with much of the party at the national and state level taking unprecendeted, radical steps to gain power, such as attempting to overthrow the will of the people: Most Republicans in Congress voted to overturn election results. You won't find both sides doing these things.

If it’s so different what changed? Many Obama voters voted for Trump, and then Biden.

Did blaming Russia for the entire time not count? Everything you blame a “party” for the other “party” did the same thing, it’s just a political class.

Apparently you don't see (don't want to see) the point of the discussion. The context here is not about their ideology or superficial talking points. It's about the mechanism of the power structure. No matter which party gets in control, it will always want to increase national debt, always go for more money and more concentration of power. This is the same mechanism applies to everybody, anybody who doesn't want to play the game would have been excluded from the game long time ago. Anybody who doesn't want to play with the established power structure will be easily destroyed.

Only one party is remotely supportive of trans rights.

Broad brush social issues like "trans rights" or "traditional christian values" have approximately zero effect on how politicians from each party deal with city and state level economic issues like transit.

It kind of does though. The modern Republican Party despises almost all government spending, including infrastructure. Infrastructure, and trains in particular, are communist.

"[T]he real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism."

-- George Will, 2011 https://www.newsweek.com/will-why-liberals-love-trains-68597

Federal infrastructure spending is a "communist takeover of America, via so-called infrastructure".

-- Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, 2021 https://www.newsweek.com/gop-rep-adam-kinzinger-mocks-marjor...

The republicans are happy to spend money on infrastructure where their constituents are. Of course they hate rail transit because it benefits blue cities. Look at what state and local republicans actually do and not what people say for effect.

I'm kind of inclined to agree that federal infrastructure spending is shit. The fed takes a bunch of money then gives it back with strings. The states should just be keeping that money and spending it as they see fit. This isn't exactly an uncommon opinion either.

To be fair... and I really don't want to be fair to a lunatic who believes forest fires are caused by Jewish space lasers... Rep. Greene was stripped of all of her committee roles by unanimous (including Republican) consent due to her supporting political violence against Nancy Pelosi and the FBI. So she (at least) isn't likely to be influencing policy any time soon absent an actual Trump second term. Even the article you just posted mentions her being ridiculed by Republicans, who voted for the bill mentioned there anyway.

that said, I remember similar things being said about the Trans-Texas corridor when it was being proposed years ago, that it was just a secret way for Democrats to allow NWO troops into the US through Mexico to take over. So there definitely is a weird fear of mass transit infrastructure being some kind of socialist/communist plot among the American right. It still seems to be fringe, though. Rural voters want and depend on infrastructure spending, and it's an easy way to be seen "doing something."

Thank you.