[mabub24]

Scandinavian countries also have diverse and differing cultures depending on where you live. Just because everyone calls themselves "Swedish" doesn't mean they all agree.

I suspect the answer is somewhat different. Just look at their parliaments: they almost always have majority coalitions made up of multiple parties, and a diverse group of opposition parties.

What is exceptional about America is its calcification into a two party system, which I think is far more of an issue than the actual differences of opinion and culture in the American populace. In fact, polls regularly show that a majority of Americans generally agree on a number of issues, and broadly support a number of possible policies and programs. For instance, on abortion, a majority of Americans have long supported legalizing it some fashion up until recently. Through the 70's into the 90's, support even reached 60%. Only in the mid 90s did the discussion become wildly more combative and enter a stalemate.

Really, most of the extremely popular social safety net programs were created and institutionalized during the 40 years of continuous Democratic majority. What ended it, and brought about the modern Republican party and the current state of American politics, was the "Republican Revolution" in '94[0]. The 2 party system then ran into a brick wall as both parties froze into defensive turtling.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution