Unfortunately, I see your article as a long exersize in false equivalence. There is NO equivalence between the actual extremism of the right wing of the Republican Party vs the alleged 'extremism' of the left wing of the Democratic Party.

The left wing of the Democrats, while some don the title of socialist or democratic-socialist, they are actually NOT anything close to the socialism as straw-man presented by Republicans. AOC, Bernie, etal., are not Hugo Chavez in US clothing- not even close.

THe left wing has succeed in pulling the Democrats a bit to the left and their policies are NOT radical. Their policies would simply implement a strong social safety net.

Democrats are NOT pitting "urban vs. rural, brown vs. white, Christian vs. non-Christian, labor vs. business, male vs. female."

But the Republican Party clearly IS doing this! Witness the attack on voting in cities with large populations of people of color. No such attack took place on rural villages dominated by white people. Witness the embrace by the Republicans of the largely white evangelical religious population and the use of this demographic in the various manufactured culture war issues.

There is an inherent conflict in labor vs business, especially when it comes to corporations and Republicans favor corporate interests. Most Democrats embrace labor rights and unionization as a counter to large business power.

The Democratic Party is a wider tent encompassing some slightly right-of-center views all the way to the AOC brand of progressive politics.

The Republican Party since 1980 moved ever to the right to the point that they have expelled and censured anyone slightly right of center and of course the party never had anyone even slightly left of center.

I am not opposed to the rise of stronger alternative parties, but NOT until we get rid of the system of the Electoral College electing the president- and here's why:

It takes 270 EC votes to become president. If no candidate gets 270 the election of the president goes to the US House of Representatives. For example of current configuration Democrats have 222 members and Republicans have 212. But this is not how the vote goes. Each STATE goes into a caucus and votes for president - the states each get ONE vote. California is a good example with 42 Democrats and 10 Republicans. Presumably a state caucus vote would go that route and California would vote for the Democratic presidential candidate and California would cast its ONE vote for the Democrat.

So the president must be elected by a 51-49 vote in the House. Assuming each state's delegations match the political control of the state back home, illustrated by the 2018 map I link below [1]. It shows Republicans dominating 26 states and Democrats dominating 22- (it used to be 32 to 17)! Any election thrown to the House will result in a Republican presidency regardless of the popular vote nationwide.

Indeed, this "HOUSE" strategy was the strategy for Evan McMullen, a Republican Never-Trumper, who ran as independent in 2016. His goal was to siphon off enough EC votes to toss the election to the House expecting most Republicans there would prefer him over Trump and Hillary

[1] https://www.270towin.com/news/2018/11/15/2018-midterms-partisan-control-of-the-us-house-by-state_714.html