The Democratic party became the soft neo-liberal (free-market) party of the suburbs when Dukakis got fucking wrecked in '88. It was the only way they saw a way to compete. And in the short term, they were right. Clinton won in '92.
Ever since Dukasis's loss and Clinton's win. The Dems are the party of soft neo-liberalism compared to the GQP's theocratic fascism (fascism is a very capitalistic system). The Dems are afraid to enact the policies that they feel are best because they are afraid of freaking out the center-right suburbs (and many of them are the center-right suburbanites).
What scares me most is that I believe libertarianism's natural progression is into authoritarianism. A "free-market" in theory is great, but in reality it is terrifying. Life is not supposed to be a constant battle against other humans. We are not supposed to constantly worry about where our next meal is coming from or if we will have shelter tomorrow. The intense economic insecurity causes people to look for a "strong" leader to keep everything in line.
The GQP is the natural progression from Friedman's free-market to authoritarianism. They pretend to promote the free market, but will interfere for the benefit of a select few and they attempt to project themselves through stereotypical masculine images of power, even if those images are just that, images.
Since I returned from living in Moscow for a bit, I've seen Russia as the GQP's dream future. Reliance on oil, hatred of academics, use of bureaucracy when they need to harm anyone outside of the in group but ignoring the laws when it benefits someone in group, repression inside of the country, but the power is based on superficial metrics rather than real metrics that matter (quality of life, life expectancy, housing, etc.).
Even Russia's army is the Carlson/Trump "masculine" wet dream. Carlson can boner up thinking the Russian army is full of Zangief from Street Fighter and Dolf from Rocky III clones, but it is a bunch of unorganized under supported kids. On Victory Day, Putin parades the army around like Russia is some significant military power. Victory Day in Moscow is fucking wild. Tanks roll through the streets for hours and hours, planes and helicopters fly around, soldiers march, and so on, but as we've seen in Ukraine their "power" is pretty weak (aside from the nukes), they are struggling to defeat a rather weak neighbor... the image was all bluster. Trump loved this shit and wanted to do the exact same thing.
We are fucked.