The Real Reason Democrats Seem Divided, and Why “Unity” Won’t Save “Us”

Here is where my head and heart live: a world in which every human being is unconditionally fed, housed, clothed, and has access to healthcare. Anyone who feels differently is lacking some critical neurological hardware in empathy and, quite frankly, decency.

People continually ask:

“Why can’t Democrats just unify?”

“Why are we so hard on our own candidates?”

“Why is everyone so mad at people like Pete Buttigieg?”

On the surface, this appears to be chaos, but the truth is, this isn't about personalities or perfectionism. It's about a fundamental structural fracture and incoherence. The common explanation is a narrative known as the “perfectionist fallacy.” This idea suggests that progressives are their own worst enemy, always demanding too much idealism and refusing to compromise. According to this view, the left sabotages itself by failing to fall in line. This is a clean and convenient story, but it is ultimately wrong.

The deeper truth is that the Democratic Party is not a single, unified entity. It's a coalition of necessity, an umbrella stitched together by nothing more than its opposition to the Republican party. Inside that umbrella are two fundamentally irreconcilable worldviews pretending to be one.

The first faction is the Neoliberal Corporatists, or what we can call the "Old Map."

This is the party’s donor-class core, whose loyalty is to capitalism, institutional stability based on the current world order, and global finance. Their politics are about preserving the current system, just with better optics. They use identity markers — race, gender, and sexuality — as branding strategies, cloaking exploitative economics in the language of progress. To them, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a performance. They'll say the right things and hire the right faces, as long as the money keeps flowing upward. Their core function is to preserve the stability of the old map while making minor, superficial adjustments. This is a form of advertising at best and weaponized propaganda at worst. The Default Mode Network of this faction cannot let go of the old map.

The second faction is the Progressive Wing, or the "New Map."

This is the growing, insurgent wing of activists, organizers, and movement builders. Their loyalty lies with justice, not branding. They don’t want a “better manager” for a broken system; they want a new system entirely. They see wealth inequality, climate collapse, and racial injustice not as glitches, but as the logical features and outputs of a rigged machine. Their goal isn't reform; it’s transformation.

This is why someone like Pete Buttigieg becomes a lightning rod. To the corporatist wing, he is ideal: polished, credentialed, obedient to power, and fluent in progressive-speak without threatening capital. To the progressive wing, he is the problem incarnate: an efficient, well-spoken steward of a collapsing system, a technocrat who speaks of hope but governs in delay. He is the mask, and the mask is slipping.

When people ask, “Why can’t Democrats unify?” what they are really asking is, “Why won’t the people demanding actual justice just sit down and be quiet?” You cannot unify two parties with opposing worldviews. You can only pretend. The more that pretense fails, the more the people in power blame the ones trying to fix it. They call it “infighting,” but it is a collapse loop: pretending at unity leads to incoherent policy, which leads to public betrayal, which leads to blaming progressives, and the loop repeats.

I do not see myself as belonging to any party. I do not label myself one way. Here is where my head and heart live: a world in which every human being is unconditionally fed, housed, clothed, and has access to healthcare. I cannot be in my own joy unless I know others are not suffering to acquire the basics. Anyone who feels differently is lacking some critical neurological hardware in empathy and, quite frankly, decency.

The final thought is this:

Stop asking, “Why are progressives so hard to please?”

Start asking:

• Who benefits from this current system staying the same?

• Why is representation treated as substance?

• Why is moral clarity framed as division?

• Exactly which moral values and human rights are you asking people to compromise on?

  
  

The old map is dying. The neoliberal mask is cracking. The center cannot hold, not because people are too idealistic, but because the contradictions are finally too visible to ignore. The problem isn’t that Democrats lack unity. The problem is that the “Democratic Party” is not a singular “they.” Until we stop pretending otherwise, we’ll keep losing time we don’t have by asking people to compromise on things that should be uncompromisable.