This is the answer. If Hillary wins and the Republican Party implodes, The Money will just shift left. The Money doesn’t actually care about the social issues, it just wants business-friendly politicians. It won’t be hard to find enough business-first Democrats to tip things in their favor.
The actual leftists will coalesce around leftist social issues and the social issues Right wing will do the same, keeping the Republican name but represent an increasingly smaller fraction of the populace.
Remember - the only reason The Money and the Rightwing Social Issues voters were together in the first place was just a matter of historical convenience. The two groups together were enough to win elections. If the social issues conservatives start costing the money conservatives elections, then The Money Party will shop elsewhere.
This won’t happen overnight, of course. It probably won’t happen until the next census. But Trump and his fans are here to stay.
Adaher’s post #10 is spot-on, I think. His well-balanced examples convince me that there is a place for centrism, though it’s more likely to come from one of the two major parties than from a third one. It seems more likely to arise from the Dems, just as soon as Republican voters put down their knee-jerk pitchforks – but it could happen the other way around. I wouldn’t mind a Kasich administration, for example.
I see your point and those raised by others between our posts. But …
Just because those folks don’t vote doesn’t mean they don’t have interests. We all vote for president only once every 1461 days. The other 1460 we still have all our interests.
As we are seeing this year with the yuge Trumpist rejectionist groundswell and the smaller but almost as passionate Sanders groundswell, these are significant social & economic forces which, as you say, don’t find much traction in the political realm.
Ultimately democracy, real democracy, rests on the requirement to be responsive to the needs / wants of all or almost all of the citizenry. Of, by, and *for *the People and all that jazz.
We certainly have run this county for many years ignoring the needs of the non-white non-male groups. e.g. the post WWII 10-20 years worked totally awesome for most white men & pretty good for their hangers-on wives. The fact the other 15ish percent were ignored was undesirable but survivable as a nation. The 75 years before WWII worked pretty well for that group too other than the occasional Depression.
Fast forward to the last 30 years where the system is working well for about 10% of the populace, maybe only 5%. And it’s only working awesome for 1% or less.
We need to fix that. Whether that’s by having those poorly-served folks vote or by including their interests in legislative & executive priorities the other 1460 days is up to us.
The old political saying “you’re either at the table or you’re on the menu.” is simply a statement that all politics is short-sighted abject selfishness and nothing more.
If that’s the baseline unalterable truth, then yes, we need to get everybody voting. Even if they’re voting only for clientelist politicians, not statesmen. Because at least that way lies some element of long-term government legitimacy and hence social stability.
Better to get away from government as simply a spoils system for the power elite. Admit that that’s a risk inherent in any government, and take affirmative steps to prevent it. Not window dressing, not spin and BS; actual change.
The alternative is within 50 years the US looks like Brazil or Greece. A tiny handful of intermarried families own everything including the government, the economy has tanked, the populace at large is poor and half of them work in the black economy, while education and social capital are both in free-fall.
The solution to this is not necessarily Left or Right. It’s definitely not Republican or Democrat. There are other ways to organize politics as a quick look around the rest of the civilized world will show anyone who cares to look.
We are talking about the Republicans supporting Trump if he is the nominee, no?
If that is the case I have to say that the usual “bullshit support” reflex of the Republicans will come out in the general election. The only fun thing will be that many on the Democratic side will know that it is bullshit; but this time many will also know that the moderate and smart republicans doing that do know better.
I do think though that a very significant number of Republicans will sit this election out or they will vote for the Democratic candidate.
No, they won’t. They will lie to themselves, either about how they will be able to control him or about how he is just putting on a false-front and will be a decent Republican after being elected, and they will vote for him because they have been indoctrinated over the last few years to beat the Democrats at any cost. In the end that is the only goal.
This is true because we have seen them do it in the past. They vote for a liar, then are surprised when he doesn’t do what he says he will. But if a guy comes along and tells them the truth, they won’t vote for him, because they don’t like what he is saying. The liar running against him sounds much more like what they want to hear. So they vote for the liar again.
The problem isn’t a lack of room, it’s the stupid rules we operate under.
For instance, you’d think it would be an easy thing to do, to allow multiple parties to list the same candidate as their nominee for a given office, with all votes for the shared nominee counting towards his/her election.
But in all but a couple of states (NY is one of them, or at least used to be), a third party would either have to have a different candidate for President, Senator, etc. than any other party does, or be absent from that ballot line altogether. So the Green Party couldn’t join the Democrats in choosing Hillary Clinton as its nominee.
The advantage to a third party of doing this would be to allow its supporters to vote for the major-party nominee, so as to not ruin her/his chances, while still demonstrating support/loyalty for the third party, which would give it a chance to build up some (arguable but still useful) evidence of support over time, as an intermediate step on the way to being strong enough to field candidates that could actually win local and Congressional elections.
The other big thing, already mentioned, is the absence of any runoff (instant or otherwise) when a candidate wins with a plurality rather than a majority. (AKA ‘first past the post’ for no apparent reason.) That’s the underlying condition that turns a third party of the left or right into effectively an ally of the major party on the other side of the spectrum, and pretty much kills third parties in their cradle.
The thing is, there’s nothing in the Constitution that has written these things into the rules. These rules are a matter of state laws, not Federal laws. It could be done differently, we just don’t.
i am going to go against the grain here and state that I believe a Trump implosion is imminent and that he will not be the Republican nominee.
I think the KKK/David Duke stuff has hurt Trump more than many believe and may have had a direct impact on his Oklahoma loss. I believe Republicans, generally, are fine with implicit racism, e.g., dog whistles, innuendo, support for institutional discrimination, etc… but when it is unambiguously put in front of their faces with the message “this is who you are” they, for the most part, are uncomfortable with it. Such association, and potential outing and embarrassment if it becomes public, is too much to bear so they run from it.
I think many of the upcoming races will be squeakers for Trump, if not out right losses. I also do not believe he will win Florida.
What does this portend you ask? I think we should be preparing for a Cruz nomination rather than a Trump one. I think somehow, some way, Cruz will pull it out. We are already seeing belief expressed by certain Republicans that Backing the odious Cruz may be the only way to defeat Trump and save the party.
The fact the issue is enshrined in 50 different sets of state laws is a further brake on any hope of change.
If there was one uniform Federal standard one could imagine a circumstance where enough forces aligned to change it.
With 50 different states, there are huge incentives to not being the first or second state to upset the status quo. And if nobody goes first we never get a ball rolling that could build the all important momentum.
As with the efforts to make the Electoral College vote proportional, it is possible to put in clauses like: “the change to the new system will take effect once 50% of the other states have done likewise.”
The problem with clauses like that is they amount to the politicians bearing all the pain of enacting the change now with no hope of benefit until later. A later that’s indefinitely far into the future & may never happen at all.
I think you whooshed yourself, when I speak of significant I speak in the statistical way, as in a few voters in this case (5% or lower p-value is considered to be statistically significant); but taking into account how close the race will be -thanks to the media and other factors- I do think that even those few voters will be important.
But, yeah, most Republican will lie to themselves, hence why I do think the political bullshit coming from the Republicans* will be the norm in the general election.
I picture a lot of them looking like victims of the hipnotoad.
[Trump was great all along, forget what I said before, all hail Trump, all hail Trump…]
That’s the theory. The practice is for the most part (not entirely) the third-parties become infiltrated on the local level with representatives of the major parties and are extensions of them. Least that’s how it works around Albany.
What I meant was, I think Cruz might be an even worse POTUS than Trump. Trump would likely be simply ineffectual and groping in the dark, but Cruz is an actual pol and knows how things work and how to get things done and what he wants to get done.
I think legislation giving third parties room to develop doesn’t happen for very different reasons. Unlike the proposed National Popular Vote compact, it doesn’t disadvantage a state that decided to go it alone.
However, the interests of the two political parties themselves are opposed to giving any opening to competition from third parties, and as long as nobody’s pressing them on it (or if they can expect any pressure to be transitory and soon go away), there’s no reason for them to change the rules.
when I speak of significant I speak in the statistical way, as in a few voters in this case (5% or lower p-value is considered to be statistically significant); but taking into account how close the race will be -thanks to the media and other factors- I do think that even those few voters will be important.