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U.S. Elections: Trumpsterfire Unchained


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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11 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Can't happen. The numbers aren't there for it. You can't have a right-wing party in america that isn't tied up with white supremacy because there aren't enough conservatives that aren't part of that. That's why the GOP recruited these voters in the first place after all.

A few years back I made a comment that the American left's European style agenda - socialized medicine, free trade zones, Finland style schools - could lead to a European Right Wing style party, where the tribalism would be evident. At the time I thought it would be a third party, a Pat Buchanan anti-trade, anti-intervention, America-first type fringe group. I never thought they would have a cult of personality leader that could push them over the top in an existing party.

Poor white voters had been part of the democratic coalition up to the 90s, the divisions had been more strongly "class" and "belief" over "race". That dropped with Gore and Kerry, and plummeted with Obama.

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3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

If the Republican Party collapses are you postulating the US as a One party state with internal factions in the Democratic party being the only real opposition to the existing actions of Government?

 

I ask that question to all of my friends who want to see the end of the GOP.

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20 minutes ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

It wouldn't shock me to see the more moderate Democrats and Republicans to start a new party while the progressive wing of the Democrats go their way and the nationalists on the extreme right go theirs. 

If the Bush establishment had won the primary, the extreme right would have bailed for a Trumpist movement. It would have taken a similar progressive over-reach on the D side to split away their moderates, or a foreign policy crisis in which a majority of peace-niks forced hawks to align with the moderate party.

Edited to add: Bush establishment includes Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, but would have in this case included Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Kasich. Basically the guys who weren't Trump or Evangelicals or asleep at the podium.

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Just now, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

I ask that question to all of my friends who want to see the end of the GOP.

No, I do not wish to see only one party in this country. That won't happen though, I don't think.

I do want the GOP to change though. And I don't even mind it being a center right party. It just needs to stop being an intellectual trash heap that is the party of white nationalism.

Whether it can change or when it will, I do not know.

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There's no room for a new party at the moment.

The American two party system is not really helpful to start ups. Of course you can argue the founding fathers never foresaw a two party system, in which one party becomes totally dysfunctional. 

And whether the Democrats are centrist, or center-left (or even a center right) party is also an open question. I would place them as a pretty centristic party. So Shryke's question is actually pretty good. 

Where was that new party supposed to find voters. On the right, that Trump-Cruz Republicans are not becoming moderate, just because there's a watered down party in play. And it's pretty hard to imagine they would take enough voters from the Democrats to win a general election. The Democrats have no competition on the left, who threatens to take disgruntled voters away from them tehre. The US Green Party looks way too weak.

So that New GOP would look like project destined to fail to me. 

It's a bit easier to imagine that the non-crazy GOP people (like Graham or Romney, or even Kasich) join the Libertarian party, if they lose the battle for the GOP. But there's only a finite number of votes right to the center. And I don't think the niche between Democrats and Tea Party is big enough for them to succeed.

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3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

No, I do not wish to see only one party in this country. That won't happen though, I don't think.

I do want the GOP to change though. And I don't even mind it being a center right party. It just needs to stop being an intellectual trash heap that is the party of white nationalism.

Whether it can change or when it will, I do not know.

You're a reasonable person though, hoping it changes is a good thing, because it should.

But I know too many people who are very unreasonable who hope it either disappears or becomes exactly like the Democrats and they don't see the problem with that. 

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It seems to me that US politics has, most of the time, not been divided along the economic axis of left and right, but rather along an axis of a technocratic constitutionalist party  vs. a populist democratic party. Think Federalists vs. Jeffersonian Democrats, or the alignment of the parties between Lincoln and FDR (roughly speaking). Yes, there are economic arguments intertwined in these questions, but the current ideological sorting is a very recent phenomenon. So we might well see a future where the far left and the right-wing band together to form a populist party against an increasingly centrist Democratic party (ironically, as the Democrats were historicaly the party of populism...). The focus of the populists would be wildly different in different states though, and economic policy on many questions would become decoupled from party identity again - you'd have both right- and left-wing populists in one party and several flavors of economic policy in the technocratic party. The one economic fault line, in that model, might well be free trade, for example.

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10 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It is a scary prospect in my opinion.

It is, but seeing the current GOP in power is a pretty scary prospect, too. That might eventually change, but I'm not sure how long it's going to take - they don't seem to have learned all that much from the failures of the Bush administration, or been in any way constructive during the Obama years... and now they double down on all that with Trump. As I said above, I rather expect either a populist shift with the Republicans, leading to the left wingers to abandon the Democrats too, or, if the far left and far right don't come to any agreement, for a kind of three-party system similar to the one the UK had for some decades before the rise of the SNP which will ultimately crumble, but which will indeed be dominated by the centrist Democrats (with, in that scenario, the Chamber of Commerce type Republicans added)  on the national scale for a few decade.

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31 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

If the Republican Party collapses are you postulating the US as a One party state with internal factions in the Democratic party being the only real opposition to the existing actions of Government?

::looks skyward as if dreaming::

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19 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

If the Republican Party collapses are you postulating the US as a One party state with internal factions in the Democratic party being the only real opposition to the existing actions of Government?

 

Unlikely. The GOP is less likely to collapse then to simply become a secondary party at the Presidential level, but still able to grab local and state-level offices and Congressional/Senate seats.

The problem I'm talking about is that whenever people talk about the "sensible" Republicans splitting off or something, they always seem to think that numbers will magically appear for them. The economic conservative types employed the Southern Strategy and it's ilk to court the white supremacist vote for a reason.

This is the problem people have been talking about for years now. It's all wrapped up in statements like "Any candidate that can win the Republican primary can't win the general election and vice versa". I mean, after the 2012 election the GOP realised they needed to do hispanic outreach and tried but got slapped down by their own base. This is all the same phenomenon going on. The voter base contains a huge number of deplorables who aren't numerous enough to win elections on their own but are numerous enough that the GOP can't win without them.

Like fundamentally I think Nate Silver summed this up the best back in April:

The base isn't there for an economically right-wing party to have a shot without this kind of alliance.

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2 hours ago, Ariadne23 said:

My worry is that until we either (1) pass a constitutional amendment dealing with Citizens United and big donor money in politics (which people - rightly - feel has disenfranchised the common voter), (2) the Republicans manage to find a responsible, capable candidate with populist appeal, or (3) the Republicans make their primary less democratic like the DNC we're just gonna keep seeing more of Trump himself or candidates like Trump.

Ironically, Citizens United has been far more helpful to Clinton than Trump this election. Trump has been getting tons of small Republican donors (though I suspect he's using one of those direct mail scam services that cost almost as much they raise; which is why he's had to cancel ads), whereas Clinton hasn't had nearly as many small Democratic donors as Obama did in 2012. On the other hand, many of the big Republican donors have refused to support Trump, whereas Clinton has all the big Democratic donors and some of the big Republican donors who switched sides this election (like Meg Whitman).

 

1 hour ago, Shryke said:

Can't happen. The numbers aren't there for it. You can't have a right-wing party in america that isn't tied up with white supremacy because there aren't enough conservatives that aren't part of that. That's why the GOP recruited these voters in the first place after all.

Its happened in the past, up until 1964 many of the white supremacists were with the left-wing party. Its not too implausible that if the Republican party completely implodes, that the Democratic party will absorb too much of it, get pulled too far into the center and start getting opposed at both ends. And since our system is designed for two parties, eventually those ends would figure out a way to work together; creating some sort of economic left-wing, white nationalist party (the Woodrow Wilson coalition) that accepts some level of evangelical influence on its social platforms.

Meanwhile, the Democratic party becomes a business-orientated, minority-friendly, socially liberal party in this scenario.

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1 minute ago, Fez said:

Its happened in the past, up until 1964 many of the white supremacists were with the left-wing party. Its not too implausible that if the Republican party completely implodes, that the Democratic party will absorb too much of it, get pulled too far into the center and start getting opposed at both ends. And since our system is designed for two parties, eventually those ends would figure out a way to work together; creating some sort of economic left-wing, white nationalist party (the Woodrow Wilson coalition) that accepts some level of evangelical influence on its social platforms.

Meanwhile, the Democratic party becomes a business-orientated, minority-friendly, socially liberal party in this scenario.

It's incredibly implausible. How is the current Democratic coalition going to absorb white nationalists? Are the blacks and latinos gonna do it? Or the far left? The rest of the GOP simply isn't worth absorbing even if they could. Too small and fundamentally opposed to the general ideas of the Democratic coalition and also the previously most visible part of the party, especially in DC.

The parties looked different before the realignment in the middle of last century but america looked alot different too. Like, a hell of alot whiter being the biggest one.

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28 minutes ago, Fez said:

Ironically, Citizens United has been far more helpful to Clinton than Trump this election. Trump has been getting tons of small Republican donors (though I suspect he's using one of those direct mail scam services that cost almost as much they raise; which is why he's had to cancel ads), whereas Clinton hasn't had nearly as many small Democratic donors as Obama did in 2012. On the other hand, many of the big Republican donors have refused to support Trump, whereas Clinton has all the big Democratic donors and some of the big Republican donors who switched sides this election (like Meg Whitman).

Right, my thinking is that this is happening, and will keep happening, because post-Citizens United voters feel completely cut off from mainstream or "establishment" party politics. In other words, I think the rise of big money in politics was a necessary condition for the current wave of populism we're seeing in both parties - and that reforming it is a potential solution. Kinda like how some people say Roosevelt's New Deal policies incorporated marxist populist elements back into the mainstream. Of course I know plenty of people who think populism is a great thing & would hate to see the far left or right de-radicalized, but I'm not really one of them.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what all this big donor money does to the DNC going forward. I'm guessing we'll see increased radicalism from the far left in response, or maybe whatever HRC plans on doing about it will work. She seems to think about it plenty.

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8 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

A government unfettered by organized political opposition that can ignore structural limitations placed on Government power.  Yeah, that's never worked out poorly.

The problem is the GOP in its current shape and form. They are not interested in providing (or able to provide?) a constructive opposition. That would include compromise. You can have your pick from the highlight reel, Ted Cruz reading Dr. Seuss while forcing a goverment shutdown and the US approaching the fiscal cliff. And the GOP base fuming over those spineless cowards who let them down. The Supreme court vacancy, and Merrick Garland still waiting for his hearing. Or, or, or. 

Can Sanders and Warren arguing with Schumer and Booker really be that much worse.

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4 minutes ago, Notone said:

The problem is the GOP in its current shape and form. They are not interested in providing (or able to provide?) a constructive opposition. That would include compromise. You can have your pick from the highlight reel, Ted Cruz reading Dr. Seuss while forcing a goverment shutdown and the US approaching the fiscal cliff. And the GOP base fuming over those spineless cowards who let them down. The Supreme court vacancy, and Merrick Garland still waiting for his hearing. Or, or, or.

Can Sanders and Warren arguing with Schumer and Booker really be that much worse.

I'm not defending the existing Republican Party.  I'm saying that a rational opposition party would be wonderful to see.  I'd like to see mulitiple rational opposition parties, for that matter.

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7 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I'm not defending the existing Republican Party.  I'm saying that a rational opposition party would be wonderful to see.  I'd like to see mulitiple rational opposition parties, for that matter.

I know we had talked in the past about structural changes to the government. If multiple parties are desirable, then perhaps a change to a proportional system of representation, rather than a winner takes all system would be in order?

A  long as there is a winner takes all system, there will always be two parties I think.

I have no strong opinion on which is better- ie -whether it's better to make compromises at the party level or on the parliamentarian level.

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