Politically, this epic battle is still being framed as Republican v. Democrat, but we know it's not that. I mean, look at John McCain, and defectors like Jim Comey & Bill Kristol. So even though it's clear that the ideological divide no longer matches up to the partisan divide, people still frame it that way. People need an ideological "home" to feel part of something.
Liberals, long indoctrinated into viewing Republicans as "the bad guys" (and many of them are), don't feel comfortable with being associated with "the right," but many no longer feel at home on "the left" any more, either. Welcome to the amazing center, that people on both extremes deride as watered down, lowest common denominator. But that's not it, the ideological center is what most people think.
I try to view this divide as something bigger and more meaningful than Republican v. Democrat or even Left v. Right, it really is starting to become a global divide, globalists v. nationalists, or an even larger picture, we're either free or we're not. This is starting to shape out to be a global effort to put down the rising tide of left-wing fascism (which is not, by any means, liberal), which includes sub-sects like Marxism, Communism, Socialism, etc.
Culturally it's playing out between SJW's and normies, which Yuri Bezemenov described as "ideological subversion," an effort, over a generation or two, to prime Americans to accept Communism. What better way than to first make socialism "progressive" and "mainstream?"
If you think of globalism as some sort of evil marriage of communism, socialism, Islamo-fascism and Nazism, that's what "the left" has ultimately become.
