My feeling on the two parties can be summed up in the following way: The Right thinks that given their druthers every person will work hard, go to college, and start a family: The Left understands the flaw in this logic and is overprotective of the stupid and lazy in our society.
Just as an example of bad Leftist policy: In Massachusetts a family of four with someone working and making say $300/week can get an additional $600/month in food stamps, $800/housing, free health care and other goodies. Now if the second person in the family goes to work and makes $300/week they lose all the benefits but Health Care. Why on earth is the non-working person ever going to find a job under these conditions????
That said, I'm not sure what is worse, the bad leftist policy described above or going back to the days when seniors were FORCED to go to the "Poorhouse" (yes there really was something called the poorhouse), poor kids could be basically conscripted into work by their parents, and so on.