If we accept the premise that the US needs a viable 3rd party, has can that come about?
Clearly, it shouldn’t be built on one personality like Trump or Perot. But who are the people that could come together to form a viable third party, and what would their platform need to look like?
So we’ll have three bad choices instead of two. Because that is how it will end.
Maybe the problem is having political parties in the first place.
Despite all that has transpired; what the last election told me was that America as a whole didn’t do some wholesale rejection of Trump. Quite the contrary. African American voters did (and in large numbers)…but not America as a whole.
Once the GOP scrapes the Trump-Stink off themselves; they will go back to be their strong, hypocritical selves. Sprinkle in a little more gerrymandering here and there, and they will be as strong as ever.
I agree the Republicans are hypocritical, but not anymore than the Dems.
What percentage of Republican voters in the this election do you think only voted because of Trump? Even if it’s like 10% they are screwed going forward (depending on how big of a clusterfuck Biden turns out to be).
Who is screwed moving forward?
Republicans
I think the GOP eventually comes out of this stronger than ever.
You sound like George Washington
Once you start picking teams, you start picking enemies. George knew this.
Or go with many parties like new Zealand, they regularly have 5 parties involved with coalitions common.
Sounds like it would be a mess but it seems to have worked well with their covid response.
I think they have a serious demographics problem. IIRC, projections are for increasing minority population. If on average they keep voting as they do now, it will be tough for the GoP. Perhaps that changes?
They need to find a way to appeal to minorities and younger people. Their base is percentage wise older and white, and projections show that demographic as a shrinking percentage. Gerrymandering, an advantage in obtaining senate seats, and other tactics will keep them around for awhile, but I think they need a new game plan to be relevant in a few decades.
Americans have a hard time with numbers greater than 2. They like either/or, black or white, gay or straight.
One of the shifts in the 2020 election was significant Republican gains among black and Latinx voters and Democratic gains among suburban whites. It’s impossible to know what happens long term or how things will change, but things are shifting. Will those shifts cancel each other out or will one shift happen faster than the other? That’s impossible to know.
In regards to Trump in specific, it’s true there were Trump voters who might not come out for future Republican candidates. But there were also Biden voters who had been Republicans driven away by Trump’s personal characteristics. Once again, it’s hard to know exactly how big each of those groups are and whether they will revert in future elections.
In short, demographics is destiny has been the claim for a long time, but hasn’t really panned out yet.
Which will be helped when they see the white supremacists who rioted for Trump.
Trump is the candidate who can bring the KKK and black folks together for the same cause? Insurrection!!!
I agree with that. We don’t know what will happen. The GoP made good gains with blacks, but it was going from 2% to 4% (just made up numbers). The Dems made progress with suburban whites, but I am guessing it was only a couple percentage points.
I could very well be wrong, but I have thought the GoP has had a demographics problem for awhile now. I thought it when I was voting straight ticket R, and think it now. I have been surprised that it hasn’t come to fruition (so perhaps I am wrong). Perhaps it is decades off. Perhaps the GoP changes their platform to attract more voters. I can’t tell the future. Just my gut feelings, and I am okay with admitting that.
I can get all the way to 3 before I start getting confused. For example, I was fine with LBG, T was pushing it, and then beyond that I just went Chappelle and started saying alphabet people.
True. But working with what we have, what other solution (towards addressing the anger that the masses no doubt possess, and that their ‘thought leaders’ no doubt exploit) do we have besides removing (dark) money from politics? (ie. overturning Citizens United vs FEC)
Clearly, representing one’s donor/corporate class at the expense of representing one’s actual constituents is becoming (increasingly?) less tenable and this (obv) applies to both sides
If any one thinks a political side is “screwed” moving forward they don’t understand history in the slightest. The GOP will be fine. A blue wave entered in 08 and 8 years later the GOP controlled all three branches. As long as we have two parties the pendulum will always swing back and forth. Modern history especially simply does not show long periods of time where a political party is not viable at the national level.
You’d be better off reforming laws on political donations rather than starting a new party. Both parties have long been corrupted by lobbyists from various powerful and wealthy, concentrated interests, funding both sides, to curry favor with the eventual winner. Both parties represent these interests and don’t intentionally represent the average citizen voter of either party, they just pretend to.
If the powers that be wanted genuine democracy they would reduce the number of representatives, and allow people to vote on any issue they wanted to. This might have been too complicated to do not so long ago. With today’s technology it would be easy to accomplish. They will never let this happen, because they don’t think we are fit to actually make our own decisions.
Our democracies are an illusion, they are in reality oligarchies, pretending to let us plebs have our say.