...at the end of the day, they're all good ole boys and socialize and play together in their elite circles.
But also not. While the idea of America's two parties functionally being one big family is novel and intriguing, there are true separations. In the south they really drink sweet tea and own guns and have less (or different) money and go to church a lot. In the north they live in high rises and go to the opera and drive luxury cars and complain about global warming.
My point is this: I have had dinner with both liberals and republicals so blinded by ideology that had they met a (one-sided) gun fight would have surely insued. The only thing which makes this situation hilarious and tragic is how little significant space actually separates their views, thereby making their ardor hallow and frightening.
Your comment does raise an interesting point for me, however, having lived near Washington D.C. almost my entire life. I wonder if the artificiality of that town, removed from the country and from the areas where which the elected officials supposedly 'represent' is sufficiently homogenous to truly turn the majority of politics into friends behind the guise of opposition. Maybe them, like us, are just happy to have jobs and to get paid for doing relatively little... essentially for looking busy.
We all appreciate the ability to get up in arms over nothing. Ardently defending your favorite linux distro or computing platform is a cathartic experience of fervor without something actually crucial to survival being on the line. Perhaps America, so instantiated in its history of wealth and domination, has no reason for actual party creation, affiliation, or division, because nothing has sufficiently rocked the boat so as to leave us concerned to the point of change.
We're all pretty confident things will recover, one way or another, under the blundering of either blue or red. In this sense, we all believe in one party, the green party, and its simply a matter of whichever other color seems to be most affiliated with that one at the moment that we vote for.