I had a similar realization to you. In 2020 it's considered "far-right" to support the 2nd amendment (especially a broad interpretation, like I do) and "right-wing" to want to ban abortion in most case. There's a big issue on the right as well: a lot of Republicans think protectionism is "left-wing" or that public banks are "communist."

The problem is both polarization and consolidation. The two parties have adopted increasingly extreme policies, while working together behind the scenes to undermine the American People. It alienates a lot of Populists and Centrists, like myself, and makes us resort to third parties — which is only a bad thing in our broken, two-party system.

A lot of people say the party switch happened in the 60s, but if you look at the state level (which, to self-promote, I made a map to visualize), you see that it actually happened in the 1990s and 2000s.

I remember when I was kid that Arkansas was a deep blue state, and now that I'm an adult it's deep red. We had a Democratic trifecta from 2008-2012, then almost immediately all the Democrats where voted out and it became a Republican trifecta — this was when the DP began doubling down on their identity politics and support of Wall Street.