March 15 will be an important day.

[David Horn]

(05-01-2017, 12:57 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I'm also thinking on a four party way of looking at things.  From left to right, the Warren - Sanders progressives, the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, and finally the Tea Party.  There are not a few who would have favored Sanders over Hillary, but otherwise the Warren - Sanders attitude hasn't near the weight yet to dominate.  The Unraveling memes (borrow and spend - trickle down - the government is the problem - spend more on the military) do have a lot of weight in parts of the country.  I've vague daydreams that the Warren - Sanders anti establishment faction and the Tea Party anti establishment faction could unite against the establishment, but the specifics of what is wrong with Washington are driving the two anti-establishment factions apart more than the agreement that Washington is well and truly messed up might pull them together.

As you move to the edge -- either edge -- you find greater reliance on principles and less on anything empirical.  Both extremes exhibit some of this, but the right has moved so far from reality and been in opposition for so long, they have a hard time even linking their principles to policy.  Assume that the Tea Party is more movement than party, and has no chance of governing even as part of a coalition.  It's not their style.  The Progressives have a better shot, if for no other reason than real historical models to draw on.

Bob Butler 54 Wrote:I'm still thinking Trump hasn't got the people skills to form any sort of effective governing coalition.  He is trying to ride the Unraveling memes after their time with a dysfunctional bunch of inexperienced staffers.  This could discredit the Unraveling memes.  This could duplicate the Buchanan - Hoover situations, where attempts to extend old political patterns past their time discredited the old patterns.  That's as close as I can get to a path to a 4T mood.  I don't see where doubling down on the Unraveling memes will go anywhere but worse.

Here we are fully in agreement.  Stridently advancing the unworkable doesn't add one iota to its viability.

Bob Butler 54 Wrote:But it's not clear we're in an unrecoverable flat spin yet.  The Unraveling memes are still mighty in some parts of the country.

That's why I'm in the failed 4T camp.  Let's agree that any 4T, and we certainly have one, will resolve in some fashion.  I just see this one ending in a muddle with no clear path forward.  If that happens, then the pressures already in place will just continue to build, perhaps under the surface.  They aren't going to just disappear.  If ignored, AGW will advance at its own pace.  So too will the pressures from inequality.  The next 2T should be raucous and the 4T ... well, it will be revolutionary.