if you tried to get away from the binary divisions of Republicans and Democrats, your politics would become much more mature and stable.
I aassume you mean the USA, and on that I agree, having two dominate parties and framing everything against those two is a big issue with american politics.
Scandinavia is quite clearly a capitalist economy, but quite clearly operates a more socialist welfare program. They are neither socialist not capitalist. Time for some nuance
Socialism and social-welfare are very very different things. You can have high social welfare with absolutely no elements of socialism.
The best technical definitions I’ve found is something like this:
social-welfare: We help provide support for those who are most vulnerable and need it, perhaps conditionally
socialism: The means of production is publicly owned
Communism: The means of production and distribution is public owned.