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[pbrower2a]

(06-01-2019, 09:17 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(05-30-2019, 12:21 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: So 1.5% of the electorate that is net 10% R is replaced every year by an electorate that is net-30% D, so the electorate goes 0.6% more D every year, and 2.4% more D from 2016 to 2020.

Yeah... on the condition that the Reps are dumb enough to never, ever change their strategy (say what you want about Trump, but his strategy WAS new), and the Democrats will never, ever piss off their fanbase. (What about the conservative Catholic Hispanics?)

Trump's strategy is new, but I already see it as ruinous. He is simply too reckless to be a conservative, and I can easily see many people whose economic and cultural positions would ordinarily make them conservatives have been going Democratic. Ethnic minorities entering the middle class are obvious enough.

I can imagine the GOP collapsing either to a fraction of what it used to be or becoming irrelevant altogether if certain things happen. The Republican Party did not disappear altogether in the 1930s; after all it was not at fault for ethical  malfeasance. It could serve as a default for people shut out of machine politics or for people seeking to challenge corrupt or incompetent Democrats who cannot be defeated in primary elections.

Of course I am way ahead of myself in predicting this possibility: that as in the 1820s (with the demise of the Federalists) and in the 1840s (with the demise of the Whigs) the Democratic Party becomes an unwieldy big-tent and splits with the formation of two main parties.

Also possible is that we go parliamentary, but this would require a Constitutional Convention. So why is the structure of the US government more similar to that of  Argentina than to that of Australia?  Because the American Founding Fathers thought the British parliament corrupt and unrepresentative, and most Latin-American countries saw the Presidential system a better solution. Somewhat later the British solved the unrepresentative character of Parliament by basing its representation on population size, making Parliament more suited to meaningful elections. The "rotten borough" with a tiny population might have as much representation as a giant city even if the borough was effectively a ghost town, and some flunky of the king could live there often enough and win an election in that borough with his family members alone.

That is how things were when Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa received independence from Britain. Our Founding Fathers used a Census to determine the size of a Congressional District, and that district could range in size from the tiny 13th district of New York



whose best-known attraction is the Apollo Theater. It is mostly Harlem.

Next door is another tiny district, NY-15:





entirely in the Bronx. The landmark that you would most easily recognize there is Yankee Stadium, whether you recall the "House that Ruth built" or its more modern successor.

Both have over 700,000 people, so they are more populous than some cities and even states. The largest district in territory is Alaska at-large.

...I can see one very attractive feature of a parliamentary system: the vote of no confidence. Were there one, Trump would not last long.