Democrats need to offer a coherent, honest, positive message. Otherwise we might as well replace the stars on our flag with a Confederate flag.
There are several possible results of the 2020 general election.
1. The worst is that it will largely be a compulsory ratification of a new and dictatorial order. In such a case the election is a sham, and no Democrat will have any chance to win any office that the Republicans are unwilling to concede. That obviously includes the Presidency. In this America are labor camps, torture chambers, and shooting pits... and your educational opportunities and career openings may depend on how loyally you serve the GOP establishment.
2. Military junta. Leaders like Donald Trump get overthrown by the military in other countries.
3. The Republicans will allow some semblance of a free election, and Democrats will come close to winning -- but somehow be left out in the cold. The reality of a small majority having unconstrained power will remain. In such a case it will not matter whom the Democrats nominate.
DEMOCRATS CANNOT WIN A RIGGED ELECTION, something that we cannot now say will not happen.
4. Democrats will win a few and lose a few... and fall short in a fair election. Maybe Donald Trump has some success as President, and he is able to tell people -- you got pay cuts, and you must work more hours, but America is truly Great Again... and enough suckers will believe him and his stooges.
5. Mixed results, normal between 2010 and this horrible year.
6. Decisive Democratic win of the presidency and clear wins of both Houses of Congress, an inverse of 2016. Basically Donald Trump and other Republicans have so offended Americans that Americans have chosen to vote in new politicians, especially Millennial pols, to high offices. We may think that Millennial adults are still wet behind the ears, but by then the oldest among them will be 38. That is much too long to be kept away from office.
Millennial adults will then be the largest generation in political life, and they will be the ones most capable of appealing to concerns of their generation. We Boomers do not yet understand them But we need to get accustomed to them. They will bring a rationality that older generations have largely rejected. That rationality will solve problems. Identity politics is not for them. Expect at the least white middle-class Millennial adults to vote much like black, Hispanic, and Asian members of the middle class, and don;t be surprised if the white working class turns on the Republican leaders that they perceive to have stabbed them in the back.
Such a win will show that Democrats have won in places that Republicans thought safe. Oh, you mean that Millennial parents don;t want their beloved children to go without milk so that the princess' cat can have cream?
This generation will not like liars and fools. It may not be 100% pacifist, but it doesn't want any war unless it has a clear purpose and a plan for exit or victory -- and of course a clear moral justification.
Note well: there are critical elections in 2018. Democrats have no reasonable chance of winning a Senate majority. They have no such chance until 2020 in a free and fair election (again, something that I cannot be sure of). The House? It's too late for a recession beginning even early in 2017 to gut the gerrymandered majority in the House. The big ones are Gubernatorial elections in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Elected Democratic governors will not suppress the vote on behalf of Donald Trump or Mike Pence. North Carolina now has a Democratic Governor, and I expect him to do no favors for Trump or Pence. Two of the states of Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and Florida may seal doom for a re-election bid of Trump or Pence.
There are several possible results of the 2020 general election.
1. The worst is that it will largely be a compulsory ratification of a new and dictatorial order. In such a case the election is a sham, and no Democrat will have any chance to win any office that the Republicans are unwilling to concede. That obviously includes the Presidency. In this America are labor camps, torture chambers, and shooting pits... and your educational opportunities and career openings may depend on how loyally you serve the GOP establishment.
2. Military junta. Leaders like Donald Trump get overthrown by the military in other countries.
3. The Republicans will allow some semblance of a free election, and Democrats will come close to winning -- but somehow be left out in the cold. The reality of a small majority having unconstrained power will remain. In such a case it will not matter whom the Democrats nominate.
DEMOCRATS CANNOT WIN A RIGGED ELECTION, something that we cannot now say will not happen.
4. Democrats will win a few and lose a few... and fall short in a fair election. Maybe Donald Trump has some success as President, and he is able to tell people -- you got pay cuts, and you must work more hours, but America is truly Great Again... and enough suckers will believe him and his stooges.
5. Mixed results, normal between 2010 and this horrible year.
6. Decisive Democratic win of the presidency and clear wins of both Houses of Congress, an inverse of 2016. Basically Donald Trump and other Republicans have so offended Americans that Americans have chosen to vote in new politicians, especially Millennial pols, to high offices. We may think that Millennial adults are still wet behind the ears, but by then the oldest among them will be 38. That is much too long to be kept away from office.
Millennial adults will then be the largest generation in political life, and they will be the ones most capable of appealing to concerns of their generation. We Boomers do not yet understand them But we need to get accustomed to them. They will bring a rationality that older generations have largely rejected. That rationality will solve problems. Identity politics is not for them. Expect at the least white middle-class Millennial adults to vote much like black, Hispanic, and Asian members of the middle class, and don;t be surprised if the white working class turns on the Republican leaders that they perceive to have stabbed them in the back.
Such a win will show that Democrats have won in places that Republicans thought safe. Oh, you mean that Millennial parents don;t want their beloved children to go without milk so that the princess' cat can have cream?
This generation will not like liars and fools. It may not be 100% pacifist, but it doesn't want any war unless it has a clear purpose and a plan for exit or victory -- and of course a clear moral justification.
Note well: there are critical elections in 2018. Democrats have no reasonable chance of winning a Senate majority. They have no such chance until 2020 in a free and fair election (again, something that I cannot be sure of). The House? It's too late for a recession beginning even early in 2017 to gut the gerrymandered majority in the House. The big ones are Gubernatorial elections in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Elected Democratic governors will not suppress the vote on behalf of Donald Trump or Mike Pence. North Carolina now has a Democratic Governor, and I expect him to do no favors for Trump or Pence. Two of the states of Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and Florida may seal doom for a re-election bid of Trump or Pence.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.