Of similar fashion, there is an apocryphal story that Harold Macmillan was once asked what was likely to throw governments off course: “Events, dear boy, events”.
To me I think this comes down if any major election reforms are passed in the upcoming years if the Dems win. If ranked choice voting actually becomes mandatory across all states in the next 10-20 years I think we will see the next generation the slow undoing of the 2-party system with the different caucuses in each party splitting off over time.
If the Republicans win - I think what we will see is the Dems to start favoring weakening of the federal government in order to allow for even stronger multi-state compacts (like what we’re seeing right now in terms of COVID responses) where a more progressive agenda can be furthered while ignoring the bible belt.
I think this is pretty unlikely unless Democrats abandon their current trajectory of expanding the protections and privileges of the law. The mechanisms for mandating equitable treatment are all federal, and increasing the autonomy of the states necessarily creates an environment of inequitable treatment based on geography. Voting rights are protected by federal law. Discrimination in employment, housing, etc is prohibited by federal law. Standards for equal justice are protected by federal law and federal courts. Weaken any of that and you’re heading back to Jim Crow regimes.
It’s not going to be “co-opting” the democrats.
It’s going to be that the GOP dies, and then the Democrats split into two parties.
That’s what’s happened throughout American history.
Also this:
Would basically be the know-nothing party. A bunch of idiot populists with no idea how to govern, who are incapable of actually implementing any of their crazy ideas, and are just angry at everything.
I don’t think this is going to be most progressives at all though… maybe the super far out fringe of them.
At that point, you’re back to the horseshoe model.
I think that it’s more likely that you’ll have the progressive wing of the democrats, and the moderate wing of the democrats, split into to entirely separate parties, with the the moderate wing absorbing most of the remaining GOP, minus the crazies.
Except that “the crazies” comprise about 30% of voters. And a FPTP system can’t support 3 parties. One party (the “moderates”) will absolutely decide that chasing those 30% of votes is worth it and form a coalition of convenience in order to win elections and you have the GOP again.
Because of FPTP, you can’t imagine a long-term political realignment as anything but a division into two factions. And because the “crazy” faction is so large, you have to either realign their values (as @Enidigm’s Augustinian-Lutheran realignment imagines) or attract enough other factions to discount them (@Enidigm’s Dem Supercontinent realignment) or make them look toxic enough that they can’t form coalitions (@Enidigm’s Fake News realignment.)
We haven’t actually seen progressive populism in power in this country in my lifetime, but it’s ascendant. And progressive populism has rich intellectual underpinnings. Unlike the GOP, progressive populists embrace technocrats and technocratic solutions, mostly because progressive technocrats produce policy proposals that would actually help most people and thus are popular.
I feel like progressive taxation actually accomplishes this fairly well. We’ve just had a major political party for 60 years whose central policy goal is dismantling progressive taxation.
I think the question here is, is that a change in name only? How does this not end up back where we are now, with two parties, one of which is crazy? What’s the alternative ‘new GOP’ agenda, and how do they amass a governing majority for it without embracing racism and white male resentment?
I don’t think there will be a political realignment. The never-Trumpers will go back to being the same horrible Republicans they were just a little while ago. As soon as they have someone to support who is less obviously dumb and racist than Trump.
I don’t think this is true. I think both Bill Clinton and Obama would have won third terms if they could have run.
Instead, Al Gore actually did win, but was thwarted by the Supreme Court, and Hillary Clinton got the votes, but in the wrong places. If Joe Biden would have run in 2016 I think he’d have won.
Yeah. I can kind of daydream about the choices on the political spectrum being moderate Democrats and highly progressive Democrats, but that’s just wishing away a big chunk of the voting population. It would be nice if that 30% disengaged from politics or somehow came their senses, but that’s not going to happen.
The crazies are currently 30%. So were the dixiecrats. If they don’t combine with someone, they’re going to die out over time.
True–when it comes specifically to the presidency, we tend to give them all eight years, and sometimes they leave strong. But half way through those eight years, we always switch the legislature on them as a rebuke!
We did have have many decades of very productive Conservative/Liberal joint-rule in the 20th Century. You would have fiscally and socially conservative Dems and fiscally and socially liberal GOP members for a very long time. They mostly differed on the size of government and whether things should be done at the federal or local level, and along workers’ rights lines. Both parties wanted to woo the workers and both parties wanted to woo the wealthy.
BUT – and this is the big butt – that required a relative mono-culture in the voting public. As soon as minorities entered the voting pool (in the 1970s), the parties started to split into racial parties. The party of white resistance (GOP) and the party of minority rights (Dems). It’s really very similar to the political situation right after the Civil War… it’s just that the parties have reversed sides.
I think that having parties split about racial politics rather than financial or international politics is a bad place for any nation to be, but the solution is pretty straightforward: Achieve equity between US ethnic groups and eliminate systemic racism.
Shouldn’t take too long, right?
I don’t see a lot of evidence for this. The Dixiecrats fled to the GOP after 1968, and they pretty much make up the core of the new GOP. They never disappeared, and Trump’s electoral successes indicate that they might have grown over that time. If the Republican Party o’ Trump is reduced down to just the 30% of Deplorables, they will end up somewhere – 30% is just too big of a voting block to just ignore.
The problem isn’t Trump, it’s the ~30-40% of people that love him and those like him. Getting rid of him doesn’t get rid of them, and the next autocrat will be less of an idiot.
As someone said back in 2016 (before Trump won, mind): Suppose 5 friends are trying to decide what to get for dinner. 3 people vote for pizza and 2 people vote to eat the other three. Pizza won, but you still have a problem.
Even if democrats run the table this year, we still have a problem.
This is outstanding.
It’s going to take the remaining 60% to stay united against the 30-35%.
Got a feeling corona might cause this to happen. A lot depends on how well the never-Trumpers are willing to accept Dem economic packages, and how much leftists can accept compromise (AOC and Warren can help here)
I can see the middle, more conservative part of the Dems perhaps looking away from the far left if the far left tries to implement economic plans that are deemed too far left. What those are would depend on the individual but you see it now with democrats saying things like “those views/actions don’t represent the bulk of the party”. I don’t see “far right” dems being Trump voters, or even republicans, but let’s face it, the Dems haven’t run anyone far to the left for president and I don’t see them doing it in the near future.
The key is making sure the reasonable candidate gets more votes than that 30-40%.
Which will work until it doesn’t. It’ll work until that one election where we get lazy, or where something unexpected happens, or whatever, and then they’ll be back in power and they’ll do that much more damage to democracy, voting rights, and everything else.
I’d bet real money that in 12 years at the longest (more likely in 8), we’ll be right back here again.
I think it’s really fucking disgusting for you to compare upstanding, obviously democratic citizens with monstrously inhuman murderers. Cannibals deserve better than to be lumped in with Republican voters.
So after Nixon it only took 4 years to elect Reagan.
I’m trying to be optimistic, if you can call it that.