Seems to me the top states in poverty are all republican....  and they are all poor as crap.  Just makes me wonder how successful these "small governments" are.  I'm far from an expert, but one of the reasons I lean towards democrats is because I wouldn't consider living in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky etc.  Meanwhile I would happily live in Mass, Oregon, Hawaii, etc.  There does seem to be a correlation.  

edit 

I suppose my point is that Blue states often tend to have successful economies which increase cost of living which unfortunately leaves some people behind. This could be considered a criticism of neoliberalism and the fairly conservative economic policies of the left in the late 20th century. Bill Clinton for example, ran on ending welfare as we have come to know it (and in many ways he succeeded). There is a lot of room on the left to address these concerns and improve conditions for those on the bottom, but to some degree, that requires sacrifice from those at the top which is always a tough ask. 

On the other hand, Red states often tend to be pretty dang poor (and rely heavily on federal funding often provided by rich blue states). They also tend to avoid providing social assistance to those at the bottom. The combination of the two tends to drive costs down, but leaves a lot of people suffering at the bottom (or pretty dang close to it). Homelessness stays lower because housing is often so cheap, but that doesn't mean people in these states are thriving. And I really don't see much of a solution to these issues on the right. Cutting social programs more just tends to entrench poverty and no one really wants to even live in a lot of these places, so there isn't much to actually build an economy around without massive increases in funding (which would be a solution from the left).  

I agree that collaboration & compromise are important, some of the biggest bills Biden has signed into law had at least some bipartisan support, bills like the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, the CHIPS & Science Act, the PACT Act, the Safer Communities Act.

However some things can’t really be compromised, refer back to my previous post:

How does a trans person who is being denied gender affirming care unite with the people passing anti-trans legislation across the country?

How does a woman who’s forced to carry the child of their rapist or suffering from an ectopic pregnancy unite with the people who support strict abortion bans?

How do people who care about the environment and take climate change seriously unite with the people that want to roll back environmental regulations and repeal clean energy investments?

How does a parent who lost their child in a school shooting unite with the people who refuse to pass gun safety legislation?

How does someone who immigrated from another country unite with the people who treat them like they don’t belong and label them as “rapists, thieves & drug traffickers”?

How does a black person unite with the people who refuse to acknowledge that they are disproportionately targeted by the police?

How does a person who only has access to healthcare due to the Affordable Care Act unite with the people who tried and still want to repeal it?

How do people who had loved ones die from Covid unite with the people who didn’t take the pandemic seriously?

And how do people who are willing to accept when they lose an election unite with people who refuse? Is that honestly even possible without just acquiescing to whatever the other side wants?

Abortion: Not allowed apart from cases such as rape and on a case by case basis working with social workers and getting a judge ruling if circumstances are indeed so dour that it's needed. With social workers at least attempting to set up some kind of adoption. This getting abortions as contraception trend is sickening. 

Immigration: Great if it's legal. As a European we are getting fucked by illegal immigration badly. That said I think the road blocks towards legal immigration should be made less strict in America and Europe and political refugees should be welcomed of course. 

Healthcare: Follow the model of European countries, we might not be great and have long waiting times but at least we can get it free if all else fails and you can still go private if you want or can. It's not a perfect system and it gets stressed majorly at times but it's the best there is on Earth. 

Gun Safety: I think you Americans should be allowed guns because of your geography and wildlife, the problem is with your country, mental health and lack of social support at the ground level. We have guns over here if you have a license, no one gets shot if only on very rare occasions. 

Climate change: Something needs to be done obviously. Doesn't matter what's causing it we need to prevent the permafrost from melting ASAP but I hold no hope we will get there. Punishing the masses is not the answer especially I these economic times so I think measures being taken are too drastic with too little benefit. Electric cars are still being powered by fossil fueled power plants. I think Nuclear power as bad a rap as it has gotten has advanced in safety enough to be something that should be on the cards. 

Criminal Justice: Prisons need to follow exactly that of the Swiss. Reform should be key in a proper environment, I'm a big believer in brain plasticity and I think even the worst people can change in the right circumstances. Right now Americans have made prisons for profit, ruining the lives of criminals and decaying society by causing an endless loop of crime. It's also very unjust, someone smoking weed should not get more time than someone who raped someone. It needs reform from the ground up and private prison need to be dissolved and never even considered a possibility again. 

Minimum wage: Is such a complex topic in this economy and now with Ai on the horizon, I'd be here for a day writing about it. More pressing matter on my mind is coming up with some form of UBI for the oncoming Ai revolution. 

I have no thoughts on the rest. 

I'm not an American, so I don't know how it is to live in a two party system. But the best advise I can give is to not look at society as two sides.

Generalization as in 'if person A did this, then everyone else attributed to the same side committed the same crime', is not helpful. It only promotes tribalism even further.

I do not know the details of the Jan 6th event, but I'm making the assumption that the large majority of Republican voters did not contribute and/or agreed to it. Either in the moment or in hindsight.

This assumption is based on if it were, with the tens of million voters, things would have been a lot worse and not just in Washington DC. I believe therefore it's logical that most republican voters did accept the outcome of the 2020 election.

Another good one! I also don’t think some people realize that the democratic position on certain things is already the middle ground view.

For example, abortion. The two polar opposite views would be that abortion should be illegal in all cases or legal in all cases, that means Roe which states abortions were legal up to a certain point and only legal in the most extreme cases after that point was already the middle ground.

They didn't literally all go out and do something about it but about 70% can't accept the loss:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-think-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html

And Trump is only getting more and more entrenched into the republican party. It's his party and whatever he says goes. You can see it in all the sad sycophantic representatives who had all kinds of stuff to say on Jan 7th but now are all behind him. 

I appreciate you giving some details on your personal views but there was another aspect I asked about, “look at each party’s views and explain to me how both are shitheads and there is nothing to fight over”. This seems to imply that both sides are the same but the two parties have very different views on many of these issues.

The majority of republican voters did not take part in the attempted insurrection for the simple reason that the USA is a huge country and it's completely unreasonable to expect tens of millions to travel to Washington on the same day. Washington also happened to be the only city and the Capitol the only place where doing something would have mattered on that day.

Polls do show that the majority of republican voters nowadays believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Before January 6th an insurrection was unthinkable, but three years later a lot of the republican base has been radicalized. Since there was no evidence for election fraud from the Biden side whatsoever, the duty is on the republican voters and politicians who deny the facts to reconsider their stance, because otherwise there's no unity possible. This isn't a conflict where two sides come to different conclusions based on the same facts, it's a conflict between people who live in the real world and people who live in a make-believe parallel world.

America is a two party system of let's "talk" and nothing happens. I still have to work a job to have health insurance and still have to deal with ridiculous studnet loans. So just going to continue to not vote because where I live it's always blue so just going to relax and speak my mind in this wonder oligarchy!