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2010s and 2020s Democrats are not 2000s and 1990s Democrats. If they were, we'd all be calling antifa a terrorist organization, and we'd all be putting tremendous pressure on universities to deal with the mouthy brats and unqualified professors picking at the scabs of the past, and we'd all recognize that the collective campaign to demonize certain "intersectionalities" is unacceptable and we'd all (at least superficially) be demanding border security, and we'd all be drawing the line at compelled speech surrounding transgenderism. If we had 2000s and 1990s Democrats, we would still have a coherent identity and a purpose and an agreement about the American experiment. We would bitch and complain about taxes and healthcare, and there would be problems to contend with, but those problems would be debatable and reconcilable.
In the limited scope of history you reference, yes, Republicans were actually quite bad in some ways. Democrats had their issues too, but they were culturally sane. 2010s Democrats shifted on a fundamental and cultural level to win an election, and they hitched their wagon to progressives that hijacked the Overton window and took America's culture hostage and irrevocably (thus far) changed it. Mitt Romney never had a chance. He was a racist to the Democrats. Clearly, Democrat behavior is not the only factor for why things changed, but it is the most salient to the average American who has not been heavily captured by progressivism.
It’s my eternal disappointment that Romney ran in 2012 and not 2016. He would have been fantastic in that moment in my opinion. Not a realistic hypothetical because he also ran in 2008 primaries, but Obama was a monster and I think Romney would have done pretty well in most other times and against most other candidates (maybe even 2008, ironically! I could see people trusting him more to handle the financial meltdown that was just starting to happen in the middle of election season than McCain was, who didn’t really seem to have a clue)
In hindsight, yeah I think that would have delayed cultural division, but this would have played into the left's hands. My doubts about Romney in 2016 is that he wasn't the type to directly or effectively challenge the exploding Wokeism that was sweeping across the country. He was probably a much better choice on bread and butter issues, but he was no match for Woke culture. Trump's election created massive division, but the only two real choices in my opinion were division caused by the right putting their feet down, or the left gaining an even more powerful stronghold over our institutions in the long term.
Romney was preference, whereas Trump was necessary.
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