So you're suggesting that at least some Democratic voters are as tough-minded and Machiavellian as Republican ones. I'm sure you're right, but they'd be the exceptions Plus, it's one thing to want to be tough or to wish you were as cruel as your enemy. It's another to be as monstrous when the moment arrives, or to be as bestial and amoral, deep down in your bones.

So the question is whether Republican and Democratic cultures are broadly the same in the characteristics needed for politics. I doubt very much they are.

Indeed, the difference in those cultures accounts for the regular split in the votes regardless of the quality of the respective politicians. The Democrats are bound to win some elections because of the deep divisions in American society, because of the economic inequality and the divides between urban and rural areas, the highly educated and the lesser educated, and the professional and working classes. Those social roles produce difference ethoi or sets of subcultural personalities and values.

Sure, there are exceptions, gray areas, independents, and so on, but there are also supportable generalizations to make here. For example, Democratic culture is generally much more feminine-minded than the Republican one. In so far as Trumpism represents the GOP's apotheosis, the conservatives who now vote Republican are mostly toxically masculine. They're not just neutral about the prospect of helping Americans in general; they're hostile to that prospect. They're selfish, resentful, belligerent, and they're the loudest people in the room because of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Of course, it's always crucial to remind ourselves in this context that the Democratic and Republican cultures each represent only a quarter of Americans, because half of Americans don't vote. I'm talking about the nature of American culture in so far as that content can be determined by voting patterns and thus by differences in the leadership, not just by useless, loaded, inconsequential polls.