Half America hands it’s brain to one party, the other half to the other party. Many problems stem from this.
Dems span all the way from Sinema to AOC. GOP goes from Collins to Taylor Greene.
People can express their individuality in the primary process fairly well, especially for national elections with lots of candidates.
But at the end of the day, every election is between the #1 and #2 candidates, and those candidates are going to be a hard compromise for lots of people.
That’s the mistake people keep making about Collins: she says things that sound reasonable and sensible, but at the end of the day, she votes with the rest of the party almost all the time.
Lisa Murkowski has been more independent and she may well lose her seat because of it.
Luckily, Alaska passed a ranked choice voting / open primary proposition in the last election cycle so it won't be possible to primary her out of the election (as was done in the past, forcing her to run and win a write-in campaign.) Still, We will have to see how much the administration drags it's heels on implementation...
Ironically, Lisa has been one of the better state representatives from Alaska (many others have been very corrupt). This is despite her father literally giving her his senate seat when he was elected governor.
The only single time within my memory that she was part of a 1-vote margin against the GOP was when John McCain faked out McConnell and at the last minute rejected the ACA repeal in 2017. Collins had been told she was allowed to vote against because her vote would not matter, she did so, and McCain’s No vote came afterward.