From a New York Times story headlined “Ezra Klein Interviews Mark Leibovich”:

EZRA KLEIN: I’m Ezra Klein. This is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

America has a two-party system. And if you go by the language we use, we’ve had the same two-party system since the mid-1800s — Republicans and Democrats. That is the essential, unchanging competition that defines American politics.

But the stability of that language obscures really big upheavals in what those parties are. Democrats were once the party of racist hierarchy. Later, they became the party of civil rights and Barack Obama. Republicans were once the party of Abraham Lincoln. Later, they became the party of reaction and Jesse Helms.