FoolishOwl
My understanding is that the classic definition of a political party is an organized social force attempting to take state power in order to use the state to suppress opposing forces.
My theory for some time has been that in the US, the Republican and Democratic Parties converged into a single party after the US Civil War. I think this is a general pattern in liberal states; what are now called parties show the vestigial features of their historic origins but have fundamentally changed.
FoolishOwl
The fact that the Republican Party was a wreck after the political debacle of the second invasion of Iraq, and the Democratic Party went out of its way to allow it to rebuild, shows how little the modern electoral parties fit the classic model of parties. This is reinforced by the Democratic Party's forbearance following the Trump coup attempt in 2020, and the feeble efforts to constrain the Republicans since they have moved to fascism.
FoolishOwl
Historically, political parties represented social forces, e.g. the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, and later different factions of the bourgeoisie, that were unable to overcome each other in civil war and were instead trying to overcome each other by means short of war.
A party that was completely locked out of state party would either resort to civil war or be destroyed. This is one way to describe the US Civil War.
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