Quite simply, why "It's both sides' fault" is complete bullshit...
The basic reason why we've settled on a bipartisan system of governance in America is hinged upon a premise that each of the parties, as representatives of both the right and the left, are supposed to come together in order to synthesize solutions in the center.
Elections, debates, protests, polling, the press, constituent contact, and even lobbying are the means by which our politicians are told, whether or not, their positions are right or wrong and what the will of the people determines how they should proceed on a particular issue.
That's how it's supposed to work.
But with that, it's quite clear that one side has completely jumped off the cliff and has abdicated their responsibility to adhere to the wishes of the majority of their ideological ilk. Instead of synthesizing their positions into a form that both left and right can agree upon as the best way to proceed, the Right, "Republicans", are driven by radical Tea Party ideology that has done nothing but engage in a hostage taking of governmental function and responsibility.
The Democrats haven't done this, ONLY the Republicans have.
The reason why the Republicans are so dysfunctional is because they have engaged in a form of political distillation. Removing all semblance of sanity and civility and and respect for the process. As their radicalism has been rejected and rejected again, the GOP's only response is to become even more radical.
They've lost the two general elections and only by high suspicious means, won the previous two. The Republicans have not won a decisive general election since 1988!
They are fading and fading fast as a party power.
What we're seeing right now with all the shenanigans, from congressional hostage taking to state level voter suppression, is a party on the wane. In California, the Republican Party is but but complete history. Texas, a traditionally solid red state, is turning a warm hue of purple. Republican strongholds all over the country are shrinking smaller and smaller. Their supporters are dying off in droves, leaving their ranks in disgust and alienating the country's growing culturally and racially diverse demography.
With the Affordable Care Act in the process of becoming a Social Security/Medicare level of American policy and programs, which could very well serve all Americans by morphing into a single payer national health insurance program, the Republicans have rightly viewed the law their ultimate doom. That's why they're fighting tooth and nail, against all odds to repeal it and why they are utterly unable to acknowledge that it's never going away. They aren't legislating in any traditional sense today. What they are doing is desperately exhibiting their fear, hatred and anger from the prospects of their own political and even cultural demise.
America is not developing in a way that would sustain these dinosaurs in a viable way.
They have left the center, they have left an acknowledgement of their own responsibilities to law and order, to the democratic process and any willingness to represent the larger electorate.
Quite easily, their lunatics are now running their asylum. There is nothing quite like this process on the left, no matter what anyone says. All sides of the left are pretty much behind the left-centrism that represents them. Never mind all of the frank and heated discussion in the left, because it's a healthy part of the process. That's what's supposed to happen, not a complete surrender to a particular side's most radical factions.
The reason why the Republicans have classified a clearly left-centrist President Obama as some kind of radical is not because of anything the President has done. Their depiction of Obama as some far leftist is merely a reflection and projection of their OWN far RIGHT radicalism. Centrist Republicans aren't doing any of that, it's only the furthest of the far right... And it's the far right that has the most influence on the Republican Party, due to that political distillation that I mentioned earlier.
There is NO "Both sides doing it."
In the end, it's my hope that the Republicans would just fade away and in order to bring sanity back to the bipartisan process of governance, the Democratic Blue Dogs would simply schism away from main party and form a new right-centrist party. Democrats would be free to advocate for more traditional progressive policies, rather than drifting into the form of conservative lite that we've been engaging in for the las thirty years.
Both sides could run the country with certainly and sanity again.
Yeah, I'm dreaming here. But if we don't get back to sanity eventually, we're all doomed to go down the drain together.