Republican party vs Democratic Party

The real difference for me manifests on the axis of judicial politics.  Being in the line of work that I am, where about 95% of everything is predictable, it's in that universe of 5% unpredictability that truly evil things can be accomplished by and through judicial activism.  The Republicans came up with the term "judicial activist" to refer to people who read the constitution for what it is, in light of the present day; despite the fact that the same Republicans read the constitution for what they want it to be, to hurt people they don't like and help people they like.  It really is that simple.

That is not to say that "all" right wing judicial activism I disapprove of.  I don't disapprove of nearly everything Anton Scalia has written about the Fourth Amendment, and in general I think that that Neil Gorsuch's property rights theory of Fourth Amendment protection is not only the most constitutionally viable, but the most pragmatic and workable in the society.  I think left-wing types, post Earl Warren, tend to defer to the Government far too much.  The right wing, on the other hand, has almost always been the strongest defender of Fourth Amendment protections in the courts.  Neil Gorsuch, case and point.  Both Scalia and his ideological progeny have redefined the limits on governmental power, by and through their activist interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. 

Nonetheless, there's a lot more in play beyond the Fourth Amendment that has to be considered.  In particular, substantive and procedural due process rights have been constrained acutely by the right wing, and will likely continue to be in the future if present and historical trends continue as they have.  As well, the right wing has consistently made a practice of creatively interpreting the constitution to maintain the social and legal status quo, rather than to rectify historical systemic and structural injustices, as well as to achieve political ends through legal means.  The big hot button issues include their systemic erosion of the right to medical privacy over their perfectly idiotic obsession with abortion (coupled with a complete indifference to everything that leads up to abortion), and equality before the law as it relates to race, gender, and sexuality.  

Strange as it may seem for someone like me to be talking about those "big three" (race, gender, and sexuality) because of my repeated tirades against identity politics, don't be lured into the misapprehension that I'm changing my tune now, because I'm not.  The goal of legal reform within the domains of race, gender, and sexuality is to restore to members of disfavored groups the same status as is held by non-members of those disfavored groups.  So, rather than see a gay man as a gay man; to see him only as a man.  Rather than see a black woman as a black woman; see her only as a woman.  Rather than see a trans person as a sexually anomalous problem without a solution (which is basically how the right treats them), see them only as a person.  In each case, the law's objective should be to remove identity-based classifications from individuals which delineate them from majority groups.  Or, alternatively, to draw so many distinctions across every individual that one can't help but see all people as only individuals rather than as members of one group or another.  The individual is, after all, the ultimate minority.  The intersectionalists are going to inevitably come to this same conclusion; even if they took the most idiotic and circuitous path to an idea that humanity already sorted out in the enlightenment -- even if at that point the idea had not yet fully materialized.

The Republicans can't abide by that, though.  For all their talk of individual merit and merit or competence based hierarchy, at every level of analysis they still write rules in a way that it turns out that a black man is going to get a harsher sentence for the same crime committed in the same way, against the same kind of victim, in the same courtroom and often by the same judge.   As well, these are the same people who would have castrated Alan Turing for being gay, who would and still long to uphold the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws, and who at every level think women have no place in any working context.  But, for all the Republicans' horrors on social policy; all of that pales in comparison to their pro-corporate and anti-environmental bias in the courts and in regulations.  They will strike down environmental regulations that hurt Republican donor companies (see generally, the State of West Virginia) but shield stock brokers who recklessly mismanage retirement funds from facing civil liability.  A post four times as long as the one I'm writing now could be solely devoted to merely *describing* the pro-corporate and anti-person biases that manifest on every level of right wing judicial activism, and it wouldn't even scratch the surface.

Why does this matter?  Politicians appoint judges, and I want the judges appointed to be ones that aren't evil, no matter how banal that evil may seem.  A lawyer can accomplish more with his briefcase and papers than a thief can with a gun, after all.