US mentality is weird. Most countries we understand that a “party” stands for certain principles, and so if you don’t like the party, you vote for a different one. It makes no sense to demand that the party change to accommodate the voter, that’s not the role of a party. The role of a party is to try and change the minds of the population to support the principles of the party. A party exists to convince the masses to accommodate them, not for the masses to accommodate the party.

But Americans always vote for the same parties and always insist that the parties should violate their principles that they are very explicit about and openly declare all the time in order to accommodate the people. When the party inevitably does not do this but instead tries to explore new strategies to win over the population while adhering to their principles, Americans act surprised that the party isn’t bending to their will, but then vote for the same party again anyways.

I see this all throughout bizarre American commentary, where American leftists like Hasan will constantly call the Democrat party “stupid” for not abandoning their principles and running on an entirely different platform. But this, again, misses the whole point of a party. They are not “stupid.” They have a set of principles and want those principles to win, and it defeats the whole purpose of the party of they entirely abandoned their principles.

I mean, let’s say you live in a very racist country but have an anti-racist party, and then the anti-racist party decides to become racist to win the election. Did you really “win”? At the end of the day, the racist party still won, because you would have abandoned your principles to win, so it defeats the whole point of “winning.”

Democrats have a set of principles and want those principles to win, so naturally, as rational actors, they will not run candidates who oppose those principles while also try to push out people who infiltrate the party with ideas that oppose their principles. In any normal country, this is no problem because people understand that it just means you need to vote for a different party with different principles.

What’s even weirder is the Americans who delude themselves into believing the Democrats hold principles they literally do not. They are very open about being a neoliberal nationalist party, but I have encountered weird Americans who tell me things like Democrats all support universal healthcare / “Medicare for All” and they will argue until the cow’s come home that this is true and all evidence to the contrary is Russian propaganda.

Even here on Lemmy, criticizing Democrats by pointing out how they are right-wing can get you downvotes from weirdo Americans who are convinced they are a truly left-wing party. There is a huge delusion among Americans that Democrats are all secret far-left socialists who are just so incompetent that they constantly fumble the ball and mess up getting their policies across and so that’s why they never achieve the working class utopia. If you point out that there is no evidence that the overwhelming majority of Democrats even want these left-wing policies in the first place and they openly say they want the opposite, they will get very defensive and upset with you.