IMHO one of the two major parties, as they currently exist, will be permanently defeated by the time the 2024 election is complete. Why do I make this bold of a claim? It’s because of the opinion of Kavanaugh in the recent case about mail in ballots in Wisconsin along with ACB joining the SCOTUS. I. now believe that the goal of the Republican Party is to eliminate the Democratic Party by whatever means necessary, even if they have to make cheating at elections legal to do so. Here are the possible scenarios I foresee, and how they would turn out.
Trump wins this year. It’s all over. Trump will use his executive powers to disenfranchise Democratic voters by whatever means necessary. Even things that are blatantly unconstitutional will be fair game, and SCOTUS will go along with it. There will still be mid-terms in 2022 and a presidential election in 2024, but they would be in the style of Turkey or Russia, with the outcome already determined. This is the first permanent defeat of the Democrats.
2A. Biden wins this year and the Democrats take the senate. Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi realize what’s at stake, and get there acts together. The filibuster is an immediate casualty. We get Bidencare, a Green New Deal, a Voting Rights Act of 2021, immigration reform, and so on. SCOTUS strikes them all down. Congress then increases the SCOTUS size up to 13 or even 15 and Biden appoints 4 or 6 liberal SCOTUS justices and passes the same laws again. Given that the Democrats have run a successful government with all these new laws, voters reward them. The 2022 mid-terms break the curse of 1994 and 2010. Biden is re-elected. Several currently red states are de-gerymandered, including Texas, which is now seen as reliably blue after 2024. This scenario is the permanent defeat of the Republicans.
2B. Biden wins and the Democrats take the senate. We get a replay of 2009 and 2010. Schumer refuses to get rid of the filibuster and Biden decides not to pack the courts in a misguided attempt at bipartisanship. No laws are passed due to Republican obstruction. Federal judgeships are vacant because McConnell obstructs all appointments. Voters turn on the Democrats and 2022 and 2024 are red tsunamis, leading back to the first scenario, just delayed by 4 years. This is the second permanent defeat of the Democratic Party.
2C. Another Biden victory and Democratic senate. This time Democrats at least get rid of the filibuster, but otherwise fail legislatively. What few laws are passed tend to favor corporate interests. 2022 and 2024 play out the same, red tsunamis with the permanent defeat of Democrats by the end of 2024 when a Trumpist Republican is elected.
This is the only scenario that I can foresee where both parties survive. Biden wins, but the Republicans keep the senate. This might still devolve into one of the above scenarios, but there might be a slight chance both parties survive past 2024 in their current forms.
Have at it. What faulty assumptions have I made? Have I missed any other scenarios?
This is mostly nonsense. Bidencare will probably be an expanded Medicare–and you don’t see all kinds of conservative judges saying Medicare is illegal. Election laws are mostly set at the state level–so Trump can’t disenfranchise voters…
The Democrats don’t have the potential to be “permanently defeated;” they have too many young voters on the way, demographic changes in their favor for that. They couldn’t be permanently vanquished even if they wanted to be.
If Republicans win in November, it’s tantamount to a football defense stopping the Democratic opposing team (who has the league’s best offense, the best offensive line, the best running back) on the 1-yard line on a first-and-goal, thus setting up second-and-goal from the 1. It buys the Republican defense a few seconds of extra breathing time, but merely postpones the inevitable. You ain’t stopping that Democratic offense from punching the ball in. They may take second down to do it, third down, or fourth, but one way or another they are gonna score.
If only it were nonsense. ACA is as good as dead. With Roberts’s help it was on life support. ACB publicly announced that SCOTUS was wrong to uphold it and Roberts’s vote will not be enough. Medicare and even Social Security will soon follow.
If the Dems sweep they are probably going to have a razor-thin edge in the senate, which they could easily lose in spite of being broadly popular.
What do you do if the SCOTUS give the Dems a win on Obamacare, so you pass a bunch of progressive legislation and don’t pack the court. Then the Republicans take a slim majority in the senate and all of a sudden a bunch of challenges come in for the Green New Deal, the voting rights act etc. and the SCOTUS starts neutering those laws?
I don’t think the Republicans have any desire to eliminate the Democrats. The existence of the Democrats is too central to the current platform of the Republican party. The modern Republicans define themselves by what they are against rather than what they are for and the biggest thing they are against is the Democrats.
Sure, the Republicans will go to great lengths to beat the Democrats. But their ideal is to relegate the Democrats to a permanent second place not abolish them.
I don’t see either party disappearing that quickly. But what I have heard is that the Republican Party might split based on the divide between traditional country-club Republicans and the extreme Trump wing of the party. In fact, if the US had a parliamentary system, it might already have split. But the current system seems to allow for only two parties.
The Republican leadership may privately hold that stance. But from what I see of the Republican rank and file, they would very much like to see the Democrats totally eradicated if they could. And vice versa.
I’m assuming that the decision on the Wisconsin mail in ballots is basically an open declaration of war by the SCOTUS. They have signaled their intent to function as a branch of the Republican Party rather than the nation’s high court. They are able to do this now that ACB has joined their ranks. I don’t know which side will win, but after something like that, I don’t see how things can go back to the way they were.
In the authoritarian takeover by Trump scenario the Democrats would probably still exist, they would just be a permanent opposition party that was never allowed to win.
To be clear, I see being in second place permanently as the same thing as being defeated permanently. We probably won’t see a repeat of what happened to the Whigs, but rather one party being permanently in second place until that party is forced to change to such an extent it would no longer be recognized as the same party by their current members.
I don’t think that the Republican leadership gives even the tiniest squirt of a shit about the desires of the Republican rank and file. They talk like they do, but act like they don’t.
I think the point is… there is a scenario where these votes won’t count. The Republicans will legislate changes (some say unconsitutional, but the new supreme court will not) that will PERMENANTLY disenfranchise Democratic Party voters. “Elections” will be held, but the results will be known before a single vote is cast. This will be done “for the good of the country” and “to protect us from Godless Socialists”
In this scenario, everyone who is currently a Democrat becomes a Republican, and thus they now control who wins the primaries, since Democrats are a clear majority in the country. They start nominating leftist candidates as the Republican candidate for the general election, and thus take over the government.