I would guess that she’s trying to separate the voters from the representatives, so that when someone calls out a republican politician for being racist, they have a harder time convincing their voters that she was calling them racist as well.

Right now it seems like people see their political party as their identity, there are both democrats and republicans who do it but I’d say it is far, far more common with republicans.

You can, and should, hold your representatives accountable when they do bad shit, regardless of whether you voted for them or not, and if your party starts standing for things that are worse than another party then you should change who you vote for.

It’s a long road to get back from this division in the US, but I hope there’s a future where it’s possible.