electoralism

I also learned that the color red wasn't strongly associated with them until 2000.

This is the weirdest and most infuriating of all the empty little symbol stuff. Historically election maps just kind of used random colors in the US because none of the parties had traditional color associations, but because one newscaster talked about "the red states" when pointing at a map where Bush was represented with red and the states in question were literally just colored red on the map, now the GOP has the left's color and the Democrats have the traditional color of elite reactionaries and as stupid and meaningless as this is it's just so annoying especially because the Democrats really do just want to be snooty aristocratic elites and they do insufferable left punching based on associating their even-more-reactionary liberal counterparts in the GOP with the left to smear them.

It'd be like if American political parties somehow adopted the hammer and sickle through some galaxy brain "hammer=judge's gavel=law and order" and "sickle=agricorp subsidies" logic: meaningless and empty, but offensive appropriation all the same.