The insight comes from Dave R. Jacobson, a Dem strategist. I have no idea how Huffington Post let this guy write there, but anyway...
The true difference between the Democrat and Republican parties is very simple: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Bernie has been roundly defeated, Trump has overrun and taken over the GOP. As Jamelle Bouie says, they can try to #StopTrump all they want but at the end of the day he has democratic legitimacy.
Jacobson:
"Clinton, Trump Matchup Could Equate to Vindication of Dems and Repudiation of GOP."
The true difference between the Democrat and Republican parties is very simple: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Bernie has been roundly defeated, Trump has overrun and taken over the GOP. As Jamelle Bouie says, they can try to #StopTrump all they want but at the end of the day he has democratic legitimacy.
Jacobson:
"Clinton, Trump Matchup Could Equate to Vindication of Dems and Repudiation of GOP."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-r-jacobson/clinton-trump-matchup-cou_b_9772914.html
So it is. There has been a lot of talk about the Party Decides theory of elections. At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver and Harry Enten have been pretty cagey about what Trump has done to this theory.
Yet the theory can be saved: just revise it to 'Healthy parties decide.' The Dems are essentially a healthy party, the GOP is a very unhealthy, dysfunctional party.
The GOP's dysfunction is a shown by the inability of it to find agreement with itself. For the Obama years, the GOP was able to unite around hatred for Obama. But this is not an organizing principle for the long term.
This primary has shown a total inability of the GOP to find consensus in its own party. The Dems may have been pushed by Bernie but they were able to withstand his challenge. The key is that the Democratic Establishment can act in concert. They function like a party-which is based on agreement among its members.
The repudiation of the GOP and vindication of the Dems carries with it some big opportunities going forward. There are also sure to be some headwinds and risks. The Emoprogs who wanted to primary Obama in 2011 have failed to take down Hillary Clinton.
But what about the future? I've listened some conversations on Reddit and it's clear that many of the Berners admire the Tea Party model. They'd like to do to the Democratic party what the Tea Party has done to the GOP.
Great model. The Tea Party has destroyed the Republican party as in any way a functioning party. Again, the Dems showed themselves a healthy party as they beat Bernie soundly. But there may be that subset of Bernie fans who will talk about either taking the Dems over like the Tea Party did the GOP or starting a third party.
Another wildcard going forward: Black Lives Matter. BLM while many of its activists have been critical of Hillary Clinton, has far from embraced Bernie Sanders. Many of the activists seem to have real pessimism about electoral politics in general. The current generation of black voters is very strongly for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party.
At the end of the day, voting has never been something that younger folks are that patient about. They tend to have a certain impatience about it. They tend to become disappointed if everything doesn't happen overnight. The paradox is kids seem to think that all problems in the system must be fixed before they engage with it otherwise they feel it will sully them.
There is some reason to worry about the future of the party if far fewer black voters engage in the process. However, this is about the millennials. The current generation of black voters sees the vote as sacred. In 20 years many of these young millennials may see things quite differently.
Here is Black Agenda Report-which is totally anti Democratic party; they seem to be patiently waiting for when black folks wake up and realize that justice for black folks will come when they realize that only Marxism can save them.
"It seems inevitable that Hillary Clinton’s corporate Democrats will profit most, in the short run, from the acute crisis in the GOP. Clinton will run a kind of “Americans united” campaign against Trump’s “politics of hate,” encouraging Black voters in the illusion that their perennial “politics of fear” (of the White Man’s Party) is actually a sophisticated example of “strategic voting” (the Black Misleadership Class’s euphemism for unquestioning loyalty to the Democratic Party). The end result will be a landslide for Clinton’s Democratic “big tent,” which will have been reconfigured to accommodate millions of “moderate” Republican refugees, leaving Blacks even less relevant and influential in the party than under Barack Obama, Hillary and Bill’s Black protégé."
"However, even this limited scenario, which leaves out any significant and dramatic exodus of insurgent Sandernistas, does not alter the inevitability of a destabilized duopoly structure. As I have written before in these pages, duopolies are like binary star systems, circling a central gravitational point in the electoral universe. A change in the path or properties of one party has immediate effects on both, destabilizing their orbits. At the very least, they wobble – and often, much worse."
http://blackagendareport.com/sandernistas_epic_fight_or_slow_fade
I do agree that while in the short term the Dems will obviously profit, in the long term, they need to watch potential head winds.
I don't necessarily accept that the Dems must destabilize if the GOP destabilizes-though I agree they could. I think it's quite possible but not inevitable. BAR presumes that there is something virtuous in having more than two parties, a belief I don't see as warranted. Look at the European countries. They have three or four parties. Does this make them utopias? Hardly. To be sure, they are socialists unlike me, but even so, it hasn't benefited 'socialism' however you want to define it, either.
I've written in the past that we've basically had divided government for 48 years-going back to Nixon's win in 1968. Between 1968 and 1992, the GOP dominated the Presidency, winning 20 out of 24 years. But the catch was the Dems continued to control Congress.
Kevin Phillips' Emerging Republican Majority never quite emerged. Then in 1992, Bill Clinton started the Dems in a period where we have dominated at the Presidential level. But since 1994, the GOP has dominated Congress.
For almost 50 years, then, the two parties have been in a virtual thumb war. The rise of Trump denotes a period where the Dems-if they handle it right-could again become the dominant majority party they were in the FDR-LBJ years for a generation.
Headwinds:
1. Wages. The Dems have to figure out a way to raise median wages which have been stagnant for 40 years. So much of the dysfunction of both Left and Right is predicated on this. If this problem is fixed, much of this will dissipate over time.
If not, then expect things to get worse. In this case the Dems may squander their opportunity. Hillary is on the right track with her plans to do something about the gig economy. Nick Hanauer is the man Democrats must study.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/hillary-on-uber-economy.html
The key is not to destroy the gig economy-as the GOP falsely claims she wants to do-but to regulate it. Workplace protections and regulations-unions, etc-need to be brought into the 21st century. The American worker of the future may well be someone who has many online jobs that they do at home.
Yes, it's understandable to be nostalgic to the time when you got out of college or even high school, got a decent job and stayed there till retirement. However, if workers of the future are able to make good wages once such piece work, it's actually enriching-it will give them much more leisure-a significant economic good.
2. Cultural issues. The country remains extremely racially polarized. We see this with the rise of Trump on the one hand, Bernie Sanders on another, and then Black Lives Matter on a third.
What was also very interesting is that black and white millennial see things so differently. Black millennials never felt The Bern in anything like the levels of their white counterparts.
Issues like criminal justice and diversity are going to be ongoing visceral issues. You have the Trumpians on the Right who hate the very big cultural and societal shifts were are seeing-race relations but also the rise of the LGBT movement.
Then you have the young BLM activists who are totally cynical about the entire electoral system. Combustible stuff.
I agree with what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says. Never do we need a Hillary Clinton more than in this environment.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/04/kareem-abdul-jabbar-choice-between-hell.html
A choice between 'hell and reason' as he says. The Hillary haters have mocked her talk of 'love and kindness' and her promise to offer the nation hugs, but it seems that this is the time for it.
It's ironic that Hillary Clinton as the first female President-the oddsmakers now have her chances at almost 3 out of 4-will play this mediating role. As historically mediators have been a very female role.
So it is. There has been a lot of talk about the Party Decides theory of elections. At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver and Harry Enten have been pretty cagey about what Trump has done to this theory.
Yet the theory can be saved: just revise it to 'Healthy parties decide.' The Dems are essentially a healthy party, the GOP is a very unhealthy, dysfunctional party.
The GOP's dysfunction is a shown by the inability of it to find agreement with itself. For the Obama years, the GOP was able to unite around hatred for Obama. But this is not an organizing principle for the long term.
This primary has shown a total inability of the GOP to find consensus in its own party. The Dems may have been pushed by Bernie but they were able to withstand his challenge. The key is that the Democratic Establishment can act in concert. They function like a party-which is based on agreement among its members.
The repudiation of the GOP and vindication of the Dems carries with it some big opportunities going forward. There are also sure to be some headwinds and risks. The Emoprogs who wanted to primary Obama in 2011 have failed to take down Hillary Clinton.
But what about the future? I've listened some conversations on Reddit and it's clear that many of the Berners admire the Tea Party model. They'd like to do to the Democratic party what the Tea Party has done to the GOP.
Great model. The Tea Party has destroyed the Republican party as in any way a functioning party. Again, the Dems showed themselves a healthy party as they beat Bernie soundly. But there may be that subset of Bernie fans who will talk about either taking the Dems over like the Tea Party did the GOP or starting a third party.
Another wildcard going forward: Black Lives Matter. BLM while many of its activists have been critical of Hillary Clinton, has far from embraced Bernie Sanders. Many of the activists seem to have real pessimism about electoral politics in general. The current generation of black voters is very strongly for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party.
At the end of the day, voting has never been something that younger folks are that patient about. They tend to have a certain impatience about it. They tend to become disappointed if everything doesn't happen overnight. The paradox is kids seem to think that all problems in the system must be fixed before they engage with it otherwise they feel it will sully them.
There is some reason to worry about the future of the party if far fewer black voters engage in the process. However, this is about the millennials. The current generation of black voters sees the vote as sacred. In 20 years many of these young millennials may see things quite differently.
Here is Black Agenda Report-which is totally anti Democratic party; they seem to be patiently waiting for when black folks wake up and realize that justice for black folks will come when they realize that only Marxism can save them.
"It seems inevitable that Hillary Clinton’s corporate Democrats will profit most, in the short run, from the acute crisis in the GOP. Clinton will run a kind of “Americans united” campaign against Trump’s “politics of hate,” encouraging Black voters in the illusion that their perennial “politics of fear” (of the White Man’s Party) is actually a sophisticated example of “strategic voting” (the Black Misleadership Class’s euphemism for unquestioning loyalty to the Democratic Party). The end result will be a landslide for Clinton’s Democratic “big tent,” which will have been reconfigured to accommodate millions of “moderate” Republican refugees, leaving Blacks even less relevant and influential in the party than under Barack Obama, Hillary and Bill’s Black protégé."
"However, even this limited scenario, which leaves out any significant and dramatic exodus of insurgent Sandernistas, does not alter the inevitability of a destabilized duopoly structure. As I have written before in these pages, duopolies are like binary star systems, circling a central gravitational point in the electoral universe. A change in the path or properties of one party has immediate effects on both, destabilizing their orbits. At the very least, they wobble – and often, much worse."
http://blackagendareport.com/sandernistas_epic_fight_or_slow_fade
I do agree that while in the short term the Dems will obviously profit, in the long term, they need to watch potential head winds.
I don't necessarily accept that the Dems must destabilize if the GOP destabilizes-though I agree they could. I think it's quite possible but not inevitable. BAR presumes that there is something virtuous in having more than two parties, a belief I don't see as warranted. Look at the European countries. They have three or four parties. Does this make them utopias? Hardly. To be sure, they are socialists unlike me, but even so, it hasn't benefited 'socialism' however you want to define it, either.
I've written in the past that we've basically had divided government for 48 years-going back to Nixon's win in 1968. Between 1968 and 1992, the GOP dominated the Presidency, winning 20 out of 24 years. But the catch was the Dems continued to control Congress.
Kevin Phillips' Emerging Republican Majority never quite emerged. Then in 1992, Bill Clinton started the Dems in a period where we have dominated at the Presidential level. But since 1994, the GOP has dominated Congress.
For almost 50 years, then, the two parties have been in a virtual thumb war. The rise of Trump denotes a period where the Dems-if they handle it right-could again become the dominant majority party they were in the FDR-LBJ years for a generation.
Headwinds:
1. Wages. The Dems have to figure out a way to raise median wages which have been stagnant for 40 years. So much of the dysfunction of both Left and Right is predicated on this. If this problem is fixed, much of this will dissipate over time.
If not, then expect things to get worse. In this case the Dems may squander their opportunity. Hillary is on the right track with her plans to do something about the gig economy. Nick Hanauer is the man Democrats must study.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/hillary-on-uber-economy.html
The key is not to destroy the gig economy-as the GOP falsely claims she wants to do-but to regulate it. Workplace protections and regulations-unions, etc-need to be brought into the 21st century. The American worker of the future may well be someone who has many online jobs that they do at home.
Yes, it's understandable to be nostalgic to the time when you got out of college or even high school, got a decent job and stayed there till retirement. However, if workers of the future are able to make good wages once such piece work, it's actually enriching-it will give them much more leisure-a significant economic good.
2. Cultural issues. The country remains extremely racially polarized. We see this with the rise of Trump on the one hand, Bernie Sanders on another, and then Black Lives Matter on a third.
What was also very interesting is that black and white millennial see things so differently. Black millennials never felt The Bern in anything like the levels of their white counterparts.
Issues like criminal justice and diversity are going to be ongoing visceral issues. You have the Trumpians on the Right who hate the very big cultural and societal shifts were are seeing-race relations but also the rise of the LGBT movement.
Then you have the young BLM activists who are totally cynical about the entire electoral system. Combustible stuff.
I agree with what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says. Never do we need a Hillary Clinton more than in this environment.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/04/kareem-abdul-jabbar-choice-between-hell.html
A choice between 'hell and reason' as he says. The Hillary haters have mocked her talk of 'love and kindness' and her promise to offer the nation hugs, but it seems that this is the time for it.
It's ironic that Hillary Clinton as the first female President-the oddsmakers now have her chances at almost 3 out of 4-will play this mediating role. As historically mediators have been a very female role.
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