I'm going to defend Jason on this one (without necessarily defending the article or anything reason.com has to say); the point is that on ideology and/or policy, there are sometimes more similarities than differences when you peel away party affiliation as the most important variable in determining where a political figure stands. If you group by support for issues that libertarians care about, they all look like authoritarian statists and war hawks. If you group by the issues socialists care about, they all look like corporate shills and reactionaries. To say that such perspectives must be false because they don't regard whatever differences exist in your mind as important is begging the question; accordingly, to say that such perspectives are equivalent because, for different reasons, they disregard the differences you think are important is also lazy.
EDIT: Attributing the Obama quote to Trump is, in the context of this thread, just... *chef's kiss*
Could you cite these ideology/policy similarities?
For policies, I would say the items on this list have fairly broad consensus in both parties, although the people who disagree are almost always Democratic.
Support of Israel as a legitimate state
Hostility towards Latin American countries who elect socialist leaders
In favor of the continued existence of private health insurance
Against the abolition of for-profit prisons
Opposed to the nationalization of energy production
Against the cancellation of student debt and medical debt
Uninterested in high speed, free public transportation across the country
In favor of NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP, and other such trade agreements
Against nuclear energy
Against national rent control
Against reparations for blacks and indigenous people
Acceptance of corporate money for campaigns
Etc.
Ideologically, the umbrella term for the above collection of policies is something like "neoliberal", which is a position characterized by a prioritization of markets as the primary driver of innovation and economic growth, with a corresponding disdain or reluctance about welfare programs, and an emphasis on individualism and psychological factors as drivers of behavior rather than economic ones. Real class differences are subsumed under the heading of "middle class" (which according to Liz Warren literally means
anyone who is not a billionaire), and false divisions within the working class are created along racial and gender lines. In Marxist terms, this is what a bourgeois republic looks like, with the institutions of power and influence channeled toward reproducing the dominance of that class over the working class.
And can you show your work on how there are more similarities than differences?
The number of differences is not what's important, it's which differences are regarded as relevant or negligible, and that depends on one's ideology.
