The real answer is ‘which party do conservative white (men)* from the south identify with’. It’s really not Democrat vs republican, it is which party do whites in the south identify with. When they were democrats, the democratic party was hostile to minority rights. Now that they are Republicans, the Republicans are hostile to minority rights. If you want to know which party is hostile to minorities, it is the party that whites from the south call home. Maybe in 100 years it’ll be another party, but that’s how it works.
*yes not all whites in the South are bad. But it is called the solid south for a reason. In the deep south, whites vote gop nearly 90% of the time. When the south was democratic, it was flipped.
Also the argument that democrats exchange welfare for votes is very tenuous. Elderly people are by far the biggest welfare recipients and they are a major part of the gop coalition.
Yes, and I consider it a form of government redistribution. So is the medicare and medicaid they use. The elderly probably consume well over a trillion dollars a year in government benefits. And they are a very conservative group.
Let’s do a little thought experiment here: what if the GOP went totally down the road of being a white nationalist party, shedding its pro-business ideology and letting the corporate world go mostly Democrat, with a few exceptions(such as fossil fuel companies).
So here are the major changes: pro-union, pro-middle class entitlements(but not poor), anti-trade, pro-progressive taxation(especially hitting blue states hard, by say, getting rid of the muni bond exemption).
Would this kind of populism make the GOP more viable over the next 50 years, or less?
Both parties accurately represent the interests of their constituents: the people who pay for their elections. That was true of Bernie, Hillary, and Donald and the congressional delegations. I recall reading about one representative who said that if wanted to be re-elected he had to raise $30,000 every week. And if he took one week off, he had to raise $60,000 the following week. So his real job was fund raising and his real constituents were the money men who funded him. Some might call it bribery and I see no way to end it since the Supreme Court thinks that money is speech and will allow no controls on it.
The only difference between the parties in the last election is that Hillary refused to lie quite so openly about what she might do for the common man.
There is some truth to this. I have always viewed Trump is part Union Democrat with a Republican American first type of message.
The left has always had their elites and parties where they rip up the common man. Now their every richer, and older and have gone off message. What do the Democrats stand for these days? I’m not sure. But they are in decline, and losing lots of seats. Essentially they are not a costal type of party, or big city part. If the state isn’t touching a lot of water and lacks a big city, its mostly Republican.
Right now, I think the Republican party has lost its way. A good example is the ACA repeal. They’ve spent 7 years screaming and yelling about Obamacare and taking meaningless repeal votes instead of developing a real alternative. So, when Trump was elected, they weren’t ready to actually replace the ACA, which has led to them pushing bills without CBO scores and without any committee hearings or public hearings. Right now, they’re trying to pass a bill that would certainly lower the number of insured overall, but they act as if that’s not the case. THey are either lying about the bill or they’re ignorant of the bill. I don’t think a normal party would do all of this. And this is just one of many examples.
And I’m not a Dem either. I voted for Romney and both Bushes and Dole. The Dems are now talking as if single-payer is a panacea, when it’s absolutely not. And I have huge disagreements with Dems on things like Guns and Abortion. But right now, I don’t think the Republicans are a party that can govern. The problems in the two parties are not equal. Right now, the Republicans are more sick than the Dems.
No question, the ACA fight has exposed the Republican Party as completely unable to implement real policy. And it’s not as if this stuff is particularly hard. Sure, it’s a complicated law, but once they figured out that total repeal wasn’t going to happen they could have passed several small bills to mold it into something more in the conservative image.
I think losing the corporate Republicans would be too big a blow for the Republican Party to survive. Keep in mind that would include losing folks like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. If the Republicans start losing those guys they’ll be in deep trouble.
The worst instincts of the elite are militarism, cronyism, and centralization of political power. Both parties have always and will always represent all three with shifting emphasis. The common man is awash with envy and ignorance. Both parties exploit different aspects of both to gain political power and enact the agenda of their special interests.
I completely agree with HD here. The not-entirely-unjustified perception that the Democratic Party is a safe space for this sort of contemptuous bigotry against religious people is IMO one of the biggest factors preventing the Dems from becoming a majority party.
I think there is definitely a political realignment underway, and it’s hard to tell how it will all shake out.
Currently, the Republican coalition consists of racists, homophobes, and greedy sociopaths who don’t care who gets hurt as long as they don’t have to pay taxes. The Democratic coalition consists of everyone with a shred of moral decency or common sense (as well as those most directly threatened by the racists and homophobes). This bodes very well for the Democrats’ short term electoral prospects, but it’s too big a tent to hold together once they actually have to govern; there are real tensions between the educated middle class folks who are doing fairly well with the current economy, and the working class who are getting screwed.
I can see a space for a new centrist party appealing to the middle class, proposing to keep tax rates and trade policies pretty much where they are while tolerating if not embracing gay marriage and abortion. It’s hard for me to see that becoming a majority party, but it might be a plurality party against a white nationalist GOP and a Democratic party reduced to its core of minorities and white progressives. Historically, three-party systems haven’t been stable in the US, but the Liberal Democrats in the UK have shown that it is possible under a first-past-the-post system.
Honestly, taking the class, racial and cultural divides into account, it’s hard to see how you come up with a platform that will appeal to a majority of Americans right now.
51% of blacks support gay marriage, as against 64% of whites. That’s a gap, but not a huge one. Most blacks who identify as Protestant oppose gay marriage, but only by 56-44 (other black religious groups presumably had too small a sample size to be reported).
Blacks are actually slightly more likely (62-58) to be pro-choice than whites, and even most black Protestants (55%) are pro-choice.
So theoretically there is a fair number of socially conservative blacks whose views are out of step with the Democratic Party, but they have more important things to worry about.
The black middle class may be growing, but as long as middle class black people are in danger of being randomly pulled over and murdered by cops every time they get in their car, they’re not going to vote for a party that equates even bringing up the subject of racial disparity in law enforcement as tantamount to treason.
And as long as the GOP insists that the gun violence devastating black communities is due to single parenthood rather than to grossly inadequate gun control laws, they’re not going to get black votes, either.
Basically, in order to appeal to blacks, the Republican Party would have to get rid of the majority of its current members. Not going to happen.
So, basically adopting traditional Democratic economic policies combined with racism and anti-intellectualism?
I can’t see it, because most of the people who like those economic policies are generally progressive and anti-racist across the board. Obviously the last election showed that there is a group of economically populist deplorables, and in the current political alignment they constitute a crucial swing vote. But there aren’t nearly enough of them to be the main base for a major party, and seriously (as opposed to Trumpishly) pushing for that economic platform would IMO alienate many more traditionally Republican upper-income voters than it would attract new voters.
