Dem
47
GOP
53
The Republican Party has a clear base: straight white Christian working-class men (and their wives, who typically vote as their husbands do). There are other groups that vote Republican, too, like evangelicals, but they are a bit of an awkward fit because their religion teaches them things the Republicans hate (like that you should help the poor). Republicans intuitively know that if there were honest and free elections everywhere, with no gerrymandering, no voter suppression and no monkey business of any kind, with every vote counted no matter when it arrived, Democrats would probably have most of the power in most places most of the time. Consequently, Republican voters tend to fall in line quickly.
For the Democrats, the situation is very different: There is no dominant base. The party's voters include large groups of Black voters, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other racial minorities, along with LGBTQ voters, Jews, affluent college-educated suburbanites, single women and young voters. There are also some urban union members who are still Democrats. And while the vast majority of Republicans identify as conservative, Democrats are much more mixed, with progressives, liberals, moderates, and even some conservatives counting themselves as Democrats.
These groups are different in many ways. For example, affluent college-educated suburbanite voters are the least-churched group in America and Black voters are one of the most-churched. Democrats also differ on many issues. For example, young voters and Catholic Latinos are not entirely on the same page about same-sex marriage and trans people. Many progressives view socialism favorably but many union members do not (despite it ostensibly being a worker-driven political philosophy). College-educated atheists generally support abortion on demand while not all religious churchgoing Black and Latino voters do. Because no one group really dominates all the others, there is a continuous struggle for power going on. These disparities and struggles are at the core of the recurrent stories about "Democrats in disarray."
Democratic leaders are frequently criticized for being cowardly. That is true, to some extent, but it has a basis in the nature of the party. The leaders can't do anything that alienates a large group within the party, and with so many groups with different concerns and vital interests, one size does not fit all. The leaders have to be careful not to offend anyone, which leads them to be cautious, sometimes overly cautious. Also, the Democrats are increasingly the women's party, and women are more likely than men to prefer to negotiate rather than to fight. This again makes the leadership careful rather than aggressive. In contrast, Republican leaders have no problem offending Black, gay and trans people, and others outside their core demographic, since they don't expect any votes from them and their (increasingly male) base doesn't mind offending people and getting into fights. (V)