8bitagent » Today, 09:30 wrote:JackRiddler » Fri Oct 21, 2016 10:58 pm wrote:The Republican Party has to collapse first for a left movement (social democratic, anyway) party to arise or take over the Democrats. Very hard long as there is a 1. powerful Christian-conservative right with so many statehouses and gerrymandered districts and moolah and media and 2. a winner-take-all system. Need IRV at the least.
Well I think it's happening. Seems to be happening. Least in the mainstream narrative. Karl Rove tonight said on Fox the GOP no longer has a viable map in the US, regarding both Trump and the house and seemingly future races.
Bernie seems to, least on paper, brought Hillary more to the left.
I just worry that once again, good meaning people will be celebrating liberal and socially liberal objectives coming into focus...but then lose sight on foreign policy.
"Seems to be happening" is the operative phrase. " [At] least in the mainstream narrative" the kicker. I am reticent to comment from an establishment presented perspective, but let's take a look at this:
Narrative: "The GOP is imploding."
Is it? Or is it distilling into a base of what many have long believed to be its deepest ideologies? And since the Democratic Party is wont to veer ever further into GOP ceded territory wherever it exists, is it not the Democratic Party implosion that we are witnessing?
Whether the standard narrative is true or not, JackRiddler is correct that something has to overtake the Democrats. The idea that good will come from therein should be long past toast to anyone serious. As things stand, however, I would say that not much has changed in the sense that the Democrats continue to own the lesser-evil trope. No matter how absurd it gets, they have plenty of folks in apparently all walks of life, from the street to the virtual world, to carry their water by admonishing anyone who criticizes them. In spite of all the remarkable shit we've seen over the last few years, it is gobsmacking to me that anyone could still allude that lesser-evilism as on par with "being adult". That not even the explicit support for the continued current policy of outsourcing due process to targeted assassination and turning prisons into plantations is a disqualifying factor for the office of President should be surprising. Some how it is not.
Now, having said all that, the narrative is bullshit. The evolution of the Democratic Party represents a standard within its own ranks that goes all the way back to its origins. Of course it used to be the party that proudly carried the more racist brand of the two, but having decided to cede that to the Republicans when it was clear no one was trying to capitalize on the plight of Black Americans, it was mission accomplished, LBJ's laments notwithstanding. They became the lesser evil on not only class grounds, but race grounds, as well. Somehow, they remain lesser evil on foreign policy also, in spite of their being a pretty well-established war party.
So, no, neither party is being destroyed here. Instead what we are witnessing is the continuation of hegemony at the ostensible ballot box. Even if Stein and Johnson together were to gather ten percent, there's the whole process by which votes are tabulated that has done less than garner more interest over the last decade, so it is entirely plausible to Joe Sixpack that it's a two-way race and will remain so as long as there remains an apparent plurality for the viewpoint that nothing is off limits for those who can't quit and therefore enable the puppet for Lesser of Off Limits Behavior.
