[USA] What do you think the political landscape will look like in the new saeculum?

[pbrower2a]

(11-27-2022, 10:09 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: As in, what will the parties be likely to represent over the next turning or two? What will become of the Republican party if their ideas and policies prove to be unpopular enough for long enough that Democrats win multiple presidential and mid-term elections in a row (say from now till 2036 - a 16-year span of Democratic rule)? Will they reinvent themselves as a totally new party with the same name? On the other hand, if the Democratic party wins enough subsequent elections by wide enough margins, would we be in danger of that party not doing enough to 'market themselves' to voters? We already have elements of this playing out in places where people vote for the same party for decades on end and the state/city ends up just not innovating politically because the candidates assume they will always win (or lose). If every election were very close, it would motivate more people to go vote and candidates to actively try to win over voters.

Finally: Will third parties ever be viable to vote for? Did those of us who voted Green or other non-D/R in 2016 throw our votes away?

1. If the GOP goes fully crazy, then it will lose relevance as a national party. It could lose relevance in one part of the country after another, losing elections in places now unthinkable. 

1T political life is far too collegial for political craziness to set.* People are looking for things to be done through compromises. Nobody gets perfection in the political process, and everyone must give something to get something in legislation and budgeting. Strident ideology loses all appeal, and identity politics goes into hibernation. The GOP heavily relies upon regional and ethnic identity (heavily white and rural), and if it fails to change its ways it can lose its relevance. 

2. The GOP practically got wiped out after the economic policies of the Second Gilded Age, the 1920's with the Big Business Knows Best agenda of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, twelve years of weak political leadership at the White House. Fully committed to such policies even after the speculative boom of the 1920's imploded in the economic meltdown leading to the Great Depression, the GOP went from riding the illusion of New Era prosperity to the harsh reality of mass poverty. It got a slow revival as an alternative for those that got shut out of machine politics as political aspirants and those that New Deal policies served ill. 

If I am to contrast Barack Obama to FDR it is that the economic meltdown that made the Obama Presidency possible lasted about a year and a half and that that made the FDR Presidency a certainty lasted three years before the economy started to turn around. 



Setting the peaks for the economy in late 1929 and late 2007 we can see that over a year and a half (until roughly the spring of 1931 and 2009, respectively) the overall economy had endured similar damage. Valuation of shares may not be the definitive measure of economic calamity, but it must be close. During the remainder of 1931, destructive bank runs ruined the financial sector and caused people to lose their life savings, with bank failures causing receivables and payrolls to disappear even if deposited. To be sure, relatively few people who had Old Money were still losing asset value, but their income was also disappearing. Concerned with survival, the few remaining super-rich were unable to buy the political process.  Contrast the economic meltdown ending in early 2009. Democrats did well enough in the 2008 elections to elect a President who acted decisively to meet the economic peril and a Congress that went along. So Obama and Democratic majorities were able to get the economy going in the right direction. There would be no bank runs. People could be certain that bank deposits were safe. Certainty was back in American economic life, as shown in the paucity of business failures while Obama was President. 

What is the problem? The Rich got their recovery, and they were able to invest lavishly in the political process. I hate to suggest that the super-rich all too often fit a Marxist stereotype of them as rapacious beasts who seek a pure plutocracy, but such is well reflected in the politicians they supported in the 2010 elections and ever since: the most reactionary figures possible. The three-year meltdown compelled the GOP to re-invent itself as an alternative to a Party that could support some politicians not in check for corruption and incompetence within the Democratic Party and that still neglected some groups. 

3. Death of the #2 Party has happened twice in America, with the Federalists in the 1810's and their successors the Whigs in the 1840's. In both cases the Democratic Party became an unwieldy Big Tent that had contradictory interests within it that had nothing in common. Factions form, and from such comes a new two-Party system. You can probably tell from my posts elsewhere that while I see plenty of opportunity for sane conservatives but little for the bigots, demagogues, extremists, and shysters. Maybe we have a split that leaves us with something approaching a Social Democrat - Christian Democrat split. The third Party to split from the Democratic Party is the Free Soil Party which became Lincoln's (and regrettably Trump's) Republican Party. 

4. Demographics doom the GOP as it is now constituted. Even in rural areas with the concentration of farms into bigger estates, such comes with a rapid growth of a population having economic very different from those of the big landowners: the people who do the work. So far, such people are heavily non-citizens... but their American-born children will be US citizens and voters. Dairies, feed lots, grain mills, and slaughterhouses have working conditions that fit the word "factory" well. Such people will frequently form militant unions and vote for politicians opposite their employers. Outnumbering the owners and executives, they will turn many rural areas much more liberal in voting than those districts are now. When a significant number of rural districts shed their conservative qualities because they have lots of blue-collar workers capable of voting, then the GOP as now constituted will lose too much of rural America to remain anything but a local relevancy.

* Before anyone brings up Joseph R. McCarthy, note well that his mad accusations led to his political ruin in a short time. Others were hesitant to jump onto his bandwagon, and the President of the time, Dwight Eisenhower, let him implode. So things are in a 1T, which is a very different environment from one in which a Donald Trump can more successfully exploit populist resentments.