It has nothing to do with "nobody running against each other". I'm talking about how they run against each other. Instead of running on being a Democrat, run on the explicit policies that they would support. 
Or at the very least, the US government should change how it selects politicians, as the majority system is largely set up for two teams.

Affiliation isn't completely meaningless, it gives us an easy idea of what kinds of policies each person has, but that doesn't necessarily hold up.

In some cases, the affiliation is completely misleading, because people are relatively free thinking individuals and not binary political creatures. Especially difficult on the Democratic side, which tends to have a lot of people that are both very left wing all the way to moderately conservative.

I'm making a distinction between directly helping people like welfare and other government operations that indirectly help people. 

Republicans tend to support those other government operations like police, prisons, military, etc. And on the contrary it's not that those things aren't supported by Democrats, but they tend to feel that the current system is excessive. Focusing prisons on rehabilitation instead of solely punishment. A lot of other countries have had a lot of success with that. Stop imprisoning people for marijuana use, treat those people as people that need help and not punishment. Instead of giving police officers tanks, and propaganda that scares them into using them, make them focus on de-esculation training.

It is not the case that democrats want to shut down police departments, despite the claims that they already did, leading to a crime rise.

Some of the frequently used examples, actually increased police funding:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/01/28/fact-check-police-funding-not-linked-homicide-spikes-experts-say/9054639002/

And no, Republicans aren't cancelling things that lead to bigger government. They're boycotting stores, banning books, and school lessons that dare talk about black people being disadvantaged in this country, or gay people existing.

>Affiliation means nothing, but isn't completely meaningless?

Ok I got a pretty good idea where this is going.

>Republicans are for big government, yet are using the free market and smaller government to their advantage?

And we've arrived.

Sony should've stayed silent or been up front about it. Flip flopping is a bad look.

Affiliation isn't meaningful by itself. Again, we're not electing a sports team. We should be electing for policies. 

As I said before, Democrats cover everyone from actual leftists to people that are moderately conservative. So affiliation is meaningless for Manchin and Sinema.  

@bold, tell that to ICE and border walls that Republicans are pushing, despite local government wishes.

These two reports about Sony were private instances. These were two emails that were sent to employees, that got leaked to the press. They weren't public announcements.

And they didn't really flip flop. They said to respect differences of opinions, and then they matched a donation, which they match pretty much any donation.

Well if you're electing a group of individuals to work together for the American people, they have to act as a team or they're not going to be very effective. If those individuals require a team to win the nomination in the first place, then they need to act as a team as well. So yes, you're basically electing a team, and some basically consider it a sport, though it's not supposed to be. Now how to do it so that's not the case? Nobody seems to have figured that out.

Who makes up Republicans then I wonder?

Texas, having the biggest border concern considering the length of it's border, is taking care of it itself, through smaller non federal big government. Republicans tried to do private funding as well earlier, but so many roadblocks oddly kept popping up. Couldn't have included big government being in the way could it?

If an individual was donating and asked Sony to match it, the individual themselves wouldn't need to be public knowledge, but whatever the company itself did would, especially in this case. You don't give a public statement about taking the middle ground, only to fund one side immediately afterwards.

Are you also saying that nobody at Sony is pro life and against (funding) abortion? If Sony apparently thinks you need to respect everyone's difference of opinion, then they would seemingly be disrespecting the pro life employees.

As I said before, Sony should've kept quiet or been up front about their stance.

Mid terms in the USA are going to be interesting. Are people really that upset over the SCOTUS or will record inflation drive people to conservatives? I'm guessing the latter.

You're assuming that there are only two positions. You don't have to team up with a group of people on everything to have policies happen. In a lot of countries you have 4 or more political parties.

You could have a "pro-life" party and a pro-gun party be separate parties. And they may or may not vote together on various other issues.

Mostly everything right of moderately conservative.

This wasn't an individual. This was a studio donation.

Again, Sony has not made a single public statement about abortion, for or against.

I'm saying they do match "pro-life" donations. It's fairly standard practice.

And no, they're telling their employees to respect each other's opinions. Has nothing to do with Sony's position.

Probably the latter, because people don't know how these things work.

Companies only do what's best for their interests. In this case, they would rather pay for abortion then have the mother go on maternity leave for a few months, and maybe risk the mother not coming back to work due to deciding to raise the child (rare, but it happens).

This is the important thing and I think why people are upset. I am perfectly fine with a company being neutral on politics. More: I think that is good, because companies have more power than people but people are more affected by politics. So companies *should* stay out of politics.

But it is good for a company to show support for their employees. And that includes health care.

Stop reading/watching Yellow Press. Well at least stop believing yellow press.

"Yellow journalism and yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate, well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

True, companies do what is in their best interest. Sometimes that may though a bit more complicated. So they may support the mother despite what she decides, because that will satisfy and motivate all other employees, so even if the productivity of the employee in question is reduced, they gain more loyalty and motivation from the other employees.