The idea that one party is uniquely corrupt or dangerous is comforting because it simplifies a messy reality. But it doesn't hold up to honest examination.

On corruption: both parties have extensive records. Recent Democratic corruption cases include Senator Bob Menendez (convicted of bribery and acting as a foreign agent in 2024), former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (attempted to sell a Senate seat), and multiple city-level scandals in one-party Democratic cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans. Republican corruption cases include their own list. The point isn't that one side is cleaner — it's that power corrupts across party lines. The nonpartisan group Open Secrets tracks campaign finance violations and lobbying by both parties, finding systemic issues throughout the system.

On extremism: the Pew Research Center has documented that both parties have moved away from the center since 1994, but the shift has been asymmetric in different ways. While conservative media has pushed right on cultural issues, the Democratic base has moved dramatically left on immigration, criminal justice, race, and gender issues. A 2022 Pew study found that the share of Democrats holding "consistently liberal" views went from 5% in 1994 to 33% in 2022. The party that once supported border security (Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform Act), tough-on-crime policies (Biden wrote the 1994 Crime Bill), and traditional marriage (Obama opposed same-sex marriage in 2008) now treats those positions as extremist.

On threats to democracy: Democrats have proposed court-packing, eliminating the Electoral College, abolishing the filibuster, federalizing election administration, lowering the voting age, granting statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico for Senate seats, and regulating political speech online. Each of these would fundamentally alter the constitutional order to benefit one party. That's not protecting democracy — it's restructuring it.

The healthiest approach is recognizing that your own side is capable of excess. Studies in political psychology consistently show that partisans overestimate the extremism of the other side. A 2022 study in the journal "Nature Human Behaviour" found that Americans dramatically misperceive the views of opposing partisans, imagining them as far more extreme than they actually are.

Holding your own side accountable is a feature of a functioning democracy. Insisting that only the other side needs accountability is a feature of tribalism.