USA Politics

Yeah, any Republican who challenges Trump in 2020 is going to get creamed. It’s his party now. The evangelicals and Wall Streeters thought the poorly educated rural voters were a controllable resource that they could exploit for electoral gain, but the inmates have officially taken over the asylum. I doubt the party’s going to just snap back to normal after Trump’s presidency is over.

If Jeff Flake or John Kasich really wanted to make a difference they’d start a centrist or moderate right-wing party with some big names and have the party run for a bunch of offices in 2020, including the presidency. It would split the right-wing vote and force the issue with their base, who’d have to fall in with one camp or the other in order to start winning again.

Through American history we’ve always wound up settling back to two major parties, and a new party only rises to power by replacing an old one. Perhaps that time has come for the Republican party.
 
Black Wizard said:
You mean the Democrats?
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Funny. Though the Democrats are also struggling with their political identity, with younger people leaning much further to the left than the old guard.

Bill Clinton is responsible in my mind for moving the Democrats to the center, which probably enabled the Republicans to move even further to the right. His embracing of free trade also officially orphaned the populist tariff crowd that had traditionally voted Democrat, which left the back door open for Donald Trump a quarter century later.
 
Jer said:
His embracing of free trade also officially orphaned the populist tariff crowd that had traditionally voted Democrat, which left the back door open for Donald Trump a quarter century later.
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Nah, those people began their move to the GOP in the Reagan years - Reagan Democrats. Uber left-wing candidates repeatedly lost to the GOP in the post LBJ years. There's a reason the only Democrat president between 1969 and 1992 was Jimmy Carter.
 
The logic seems to be that if Trump loses reelection, the party will pivot back to a more traditional brand of conservatism as opposed to the current nationalist style. It’s flawed logic though. If Trump lost because of someone like Flake playing spoiler, the Trump wing of the party will just dig its heels in and Never Trumpers will be even less relevant in the party. The only way I see this working is if Trump is crushed in the primary and whoever the Republican nominee is wins general election. This would be an incredible outcome for Republicans, especially since that would make an additional four years of White House control more possible. It’s also incredibly difficult.

Anyway, I don’t think the Republican Party is going anywhere. While last Tuesday was a pretty good night for Democrats and planted many seeds for further victories, it also showed how strong the GOP is as an institution. A president this unpopular and incompetent shouldn’t be gaining seats in the senate. Granted these were red states, but they were also red when those senators were elected to begin with. It shows that Trump has a pretty reliable coalition and the party needs that to win in 2020.
 
Probably, but I’d wait to see who the Dems nominate and what the economy looks like in 2020.
 
LooseCannon said:
Nah, those people began their move to the GOP in the Reagan years - Reagan Democrats. Uber left-wing candidates repeatedly lost to the GOP in the post LBJ years. There's a reason the only Democrat president between 1969 and 1992 was Jimmy Carter.
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I went back to look at the electoral maps because I’d thought the rust belt was reliably Democratic in presidential elections minus 1984, but my memory was dead wrong — Democrats didn’t start reliably winning them until Bill Clinton, which is totally counterintuitive to me, because the blue collar labor union types who have more protectionist instincts should have hated Clinton’s free trade stance.

Geez, maybe it really does just boil down to who they’d rather have a beer with...
 
Funny that red is not associated with the Democratic Party. Dems are associatied by (some) Reps/conservatives/right wingers as Socialist/Communist. Red is a Rep colour!
 
Forostar said:
Funny that red is not associated with the Democratic Party. Dems are associatied by (some) Reps/conservatives/right wingers as Socialist/Communist. Red is a Rep colour!
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They often used the opposite color scheme, but I think it started standardizing on the current scheme in the mid-1980s, probably to avoid the connotation that “red = communist”, since the U.S. went through decades of communist scare.

EDIT: Oh hey, here’s a pretty good background on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
 
Sinema is being projected as the winner of the Arizona race, giving Dems their second pick up and narrowing the GOP net gain down to 2. The 2020 Senate map now looks slightly better. Florida continues to be a shit show but I really don’t see the outcome changing there.
 
Poliquin, the Republican in Maine who is likely to lose his seat due to ranked balloting, has sued to stop the additional ballots from being counted, claiming that it violates the US Constitution:

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/11...in-federal-court-to-stop-ranked-choice-count/

I've checked and I see the following text:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

It does not seem to say how the elections will be run.
 
Nope, it does not say how they should be run ... nor should it. Up to the states, otherwise we would not have things like ranked ballots or proportionally distributing electoral college votes
 
bearfan said:
Nope, it does not say how they should be run ... nor should it. Up to the states, otherwise we would not have things like ranked ballots or proportionally distributing electoral college votes
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I agree. A nonsense argument by someone who is very likely to lose. But this is an important test for this type of electoral model going forward.
 
LooseCannon said:
I agree. A nonsense argument by someone who is very likely to lose. But this is an important test for this type of electoral model going forward.
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yeah .. it will need to go through the courts at somepoint ... might as well be now. Even though I would prefer the GOP candidate to win, I think it is a better method of voting and get rid of all the (nonsense IMO) arguments that third party votes "steal" an election/wasting a vote ... it is a good step towards making alternative parties viable.

That is more important than the result of a single election. Honestly, it is the insanely short sighted "all I care about are the results now" thinking that really fuck things up in the long term.
 
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