09-02-2016, 06:15 PM
Re-alignment? That takes much more than one election. One incredibly bad nominee does not make a re-alignment. Just remember that four years after George McGovern lost 49 states, Jimmy Carter won a close election. Remember that eight years after Ronald Reagan won a 49-state blowout, Bill Clinton won a smashing victory, putting the lie to the idea that the Democratic Party was dead in presidential politics.
Donald Trump is a singularly-awful nominee, someone who could have never won the nomination of a major Party except under freakish circumstances. Being the strongest in an eight-way race because he was the most reckless and won some states on a winner-take all basis?
I assume that Hillary Clinton will win even with her obvious faults as a Presidential nominee because Donald Trump is reckless and confrontational. But do not expect Hillary Clinton to be re-elected in 2020. The Republicans could get a solid nominee in 2020 as the economy melts down or America faces some disasters of foreign policy.
It is easy to see how the "cosmopolitans", liberal on social issues but conservative on economics, could reject Donald Trump. Unless the Democrats are headed in that direction, creating a void for the more populist and socialist among them, then Hillary Clinton might be getting a one-time pick-up not available next time. But who picks up the more socialistic populists on the Left?
Democrats now have some voters who should be fairly conservative on taxes and spending, let alone culture. Middle-class blacks, Latinos, and Asians aren't exactly ion the avant-garde on cultural issues.
Donald Trump is a singularly-awful nominee, someone who could have never won the nomination of a major Party except under freakish circumstances. Being the strongest in an eight-way race because he was the most reckless and won some states on a winner-take all basis?
I assume that Hillary Clinton will win even with her obvious faults as a Presidential nominee because Donald Trump is reckless and confrontational. But do not expect Hillary Clinton to be re-elected in 2020. The Republicans could get a solid nominee in 2020 as the economy melts down or America faces some disasters of foreign policy.
It is easy to see how the "cosmopolitans", liberal on social issues but conservative on economics, could reject Donald Trump. Unless the Democrats are headed in that direction, creating a void for the more populist and socialist among them, then Hillary Clinton might be getting a one-time pick-up not available next time. But who picks up the more socialistic populists on the Left?
Democrats now have some voters who should be fairly conservative on taxes and spending, let alone culture. Middle-class blacks, Latinos, and Asians aren't exactly ion the avant-garde on cultural issues.
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.