In an important sense, the presidential race is between "Democratic progressivism and GOP progressivism-lite."

But the race is about much more than that.

George Will argues (and laments) that this presidential race is between “Democratic progressivism and GOP progressivism-lite.” In his view, “Republicans and Democrats haven’t been this aligned on policy since the Eisenhower ’50s.”

Will acknowledges (but wrongly trivializes) the sharp cultural clash between the two parties. He contends, however, that “politically — regarding government’s proper scope and actual competence — there is deepening bipartisan agreement.”

Today, beneath the frothy partisanship, Republican progressivism echoes the Democrats’. Both parties favor significant expansions of government’s control of economic activity and the distribution of wealth. Both promise to leave unchanged the transfer-payment programs (Social Security, Medicare) that are plunging toward insolvency, and driving unsustainable national indebtedness.

And both parties favor tax increases: the Democrats on corporations, consumers and the 3 percent of individuals earning more than $400,000 annually; Republicans on consumers [via tariffs].

Furthermore: “About progressivism’s largest achievement, the administrative state, [J.D. Vance] hankers to ‘seize’ its regulatory and coercive powers and use them “for our own purposes.”

Will also sees a convergence on foreign policy:

In foreign policy, progressivism has a (Woodrow) Wilsonian faith in “soft” power as an alternative to the military sort. And the Democratic Party retains a not-negligible residue of its 1972 presidential nominee: Sen. George McGovern’s “Come home, America.” Vance seems unconcerned about the global tremors that result when a great nation loses a war, even a proxy war. His argument for abandoning Ukraine is couched in progressive tropes about spending instead on domestic constituencies.

Today’s GOP offers progressivism-lite: a less muscular America abroad, a more muscular government at home.

I agree with Will’s description of the convergence. And Will does not exhaust the evidence of similarities between the progressive left and the MAGA right.

Progressive Democrats and MAGA Republicans both share a “blame America first” mentality. This has long been the mindset of Democrats, as Jeanne Kirkpatrick noted in her fiery 1984 speech to the Republican National Convention.

It’s now the refrain of MAGA Republicans, including Trump himself. Indeed, some in the MAGA crowd blame America for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Progressive Democrats and MAGA Republicans also share a dystopian view of America. The Dems see a racist, sexist, homophobic nation in which blacks, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and many women suffer from injustice. MAGA-world replaces minority group members with the forgotten white working class as victims of injustice and undue suffering. Trump went so far as to describe an “American carnage” in his 2017 inauguration address.

Relatedly, progressive Democrats and MAGA Republicans downplay the notion of personal agency and responsibility. For Democrats, it’s “systemic racism” that is holding blacks back — not their failure to create and maintain stable families, become serious about education, and eschew criminality.

For MAGA Republicans, members of the forgotten class have been betrayed by conspiratorial coastal elites — the globalists. Folks like the ones J.D. Vance grew up with in Middletown, Ohio are not to blame for dropping out of the workforce (rather than retraining) or for using deadly drugs. All the blame resides with greedy globalists and lack of enforcement at the border.

Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy painted a much more nuanced picture of Middletown. But nuance has no place in MAGA-world or among politicians who seek to thrive in it.

Therefore I agree with Will that there are major and unfortunate similarities between Democrats and MAGA Republicans. However, I believe Will is exaggerating the overall convergence.

The matters as to which the parties clash aren’t just “pronouns, bathrooms, [and] indoctrination masquerading as education.” What about immigration and criminal law policy? What about DEI and the war on standards and merit it entails? What about school choice? These are fundamental matters on which progressive Democrats and MAGA Republicans are sharply at odds.

Nor is the MAGA objection to what goes on in classrooms limited to attempts at indoctrination. The objection extends to the doctrines being preached. Progressive Dems want to teach that America is fundamentally rotten and that whites are incorrigibly racist.

MAGA Republicans may believe that evil globalist are out to inflict misery on ordinary Americans in the heartland. However, I’ve seen no indication that they want to preach this view to our students.

In sum, no one can say, as was sometimes said about the Kennedy-Nixon race (for example), that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the views of the two major candidates in this year’s election.

Finally, I want to add that even absent the clash over non-economic issues I’ve just described, the substantial alignment of the two parties on the proper role of government would not entail a decrease in our political polarization. (Nor does Will say it would.) In pre-World War II Europe, fascists and communists shared certain views about government power over the economy and people’s lives (and, no I’m not equating the contemporary American left with European communists or the MAGA movement with fascism). Yet, these two sides were deadly enemies. Similarly, there was a considerable amount of hatred between American communists and American socialists after World War II.

The difference between the classes and categories of people whom the contemporary left and the MAGA right want to use government power to help is enough, by itself, to ensure polarization. But it’s important, nonetheless, to point out the similarities between the two sides — as George Will does with characteristic clarity and acidity.