That's the one correction you have to say about the Party Decides theory. I don't agree it's been debunked. Just that it should be A Healthy Party Decides.
The 2016 GOP is not a healthy party.
The reason the Beltway pundits have done such a poor job in this election is they're addiction to the false equivalence of the parties meme.
"It is always tempting to see symmetries in politics, particularly in a two-party system. And so, this election cycle, many have witnessed the parallel rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders—two men with very different political orientations, but similar antiestablishment sensibilities—and concluded that both major parties are being disrupted by populist revolution from within. The Republican Party has been taken over and remade in the image of Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party is likewise being reshaped by Bernie Sanders."
"There’s just one problem with this analysis: In one party, the populist insurgency won. In the other, it is about to lose."
"While the Republican Party continues to grapple with its Trump-fueled identity crisis, Democrats are poised to nominate Hillary Clinton, thus putting down the party’s left-wing insurgency of 2016, albeit with unanticipated difficulty. In doing so, Democrats will be choosing as their avatar a candidate who, though she’s made rhetorical gestures to the left, remains essentially centrist in orientation—a candidate friendly to the party’s donor class and elites, well-connected with its institutions, and incrementalist in her approach to policy. Despite some assertions to the contrary, liberal populism has not taken over the Democratic Party the way right-wing populism has taken over the GOP."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/the-democratic-establishment-won/485378/
Indeed. And I think it's important to recognize that this is a major source of the Democratic party's strength.
There is talk about Bernie wanting reforms to the nominating process. I'm with Jamelle Bouie: I think the process worked pretty well this time. The party system has a nice mix of Majoritarian and nonMajoritarian elements.
I don't want to make it 100 percent Majoritarian.
I also, quite frankly, don't want to become the party of Bernie Sanders. The voters said no, and they were right to do so. The trouble for the GOP is that they have been so Far Right. The Dems have been pragmatic Center Left not ultra ideological Left.
Matt Yglesias talks about how the Berners want the party to become a much more ideological leftist party. They do, and they are wrong.
A Center Left can appeal to 55 percent of the party, an ultra Left appeals to 25 percent of the country. Why else have the Dems been so successful at the Presidential level since 1992? Those who say Bill Clinton 'corrupted' the Democratic party conveniently ignore that this more successful era correlates with the rise of Bill Clinton.
Basically we have made our choice. We are and will be the party of Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama.
"Hillary Clinton stepped into the 2016 presidential race hoping voters would effortlessly pass the torch from President Barack Obama to her, yet found herself surrounded by a raging anti-establishment inferno. “Burn it down” was the unofficial slogan of the Republican primary. And Bernie Sanders gave her a run for her money by metaphorically lighting all her Wall Street speaking fee money on fire."
"Today, as she is unofficially crowned the “presumptive nominee,” Clinton has officially done what Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham could not: survive the populist wave while being perceived as an insider. Now, as Donald Trump tries to assemble a potent pitchfork brigade to seize Washington, the establishment’s lonely eyes are turning to Hillary Clinton."
"As Clinton shifts her focus to the general election, last week’s one-two teleprompter punch from Clinton and Obama suggests a fall strategy that runs somewhat counter to the populist tenor of the primaries. It looks like we’re going to see a superstar tag team duo aiming to consolidate all of strains of the unsettled establishment—and the disaffected Republicans and moderate swing voters who identify with their views—without alienating the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren populist wing of the Democratic Party."
"While Clinton still has work to do to woo Bernie voters, she has a huge opportunity created by the disruptive Trump, who has left many national security hawks, free marketers and pro-immigrant, pro-diversity conservatives feeling politically homeless. In turn, she and Obama have begun crafting arguments more associated with establishment politics than populism."
"Make no mistake: this is nothing less than a political high-wire act being attempted by a meticulous but not always agile candidate. Many Sanders voters say they don’t trust her when she claims to be a “progressive,” and any new rightward lean will only confirm their suspicions. But she'll have one heck of a wingman to carry the establishment banner through the populist headwinds: President Barack Obama, who, according to Gallup, boasts a near unanimous 84 percent job approval rating among liberals and a healthy 56 percent with moderates. He’s now testing the boundaries of those numbers, trying to leverage his reservoir of goodwill on the left to deliver a sharp rebuttal to Trump’s broadsides against his trade policies. Clearly, he is seeking to expand the political playing field, give Clinton more ideological room to maneuver and give the “Establishment” a good name."
"It's early yet, but if Clinton successfully walks the tightrope we could experience a dramatic ideological reorganization. A Clinton coalition that mixes populist with establishmentarian, capturing both disgusted center-right Republicans and wary independent Sandernistas, could be the biggest tent American politics has seen since Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency while he was bombing Cambodia."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/hillary-clinton-nomination-barack-obama-establishment-213947#ixzz4B0MP5WLX
The Hillary-Obama alliance I suspect will go down in history. What they accomplished only looks easy. If you doubt it, just check the wreckage that LBJ and RFK's rivalry brought to the Democratic party in the 1960s.
The 2016 GOP is not a healthy party.
The reason the Beltway pundits have done such a poor job in this election is they're addiction to the false equivalence of the parties meme.
"It is always tempting to see symmetries in politics, particularly in a two-party system. And so, this election cycle, many have witnessed the parallel rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders—two men with very different political orientations, but similar antiestablishment sensibilities—and concluded that both major parties are being disrupted by populist revolution from within. The Republican Party has been taken over and remade in the image of Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party is likewise being reshaped by Bernie Sanders."
"There’s just one problem with this analysis: In one party, the populist insurgency won. In the other, it is about to lose."
"While the Republican Party continues to grapple with its Trump-fueled identity crisis, Democrats are poised to nominate Hillary Clinton, thus putting down the party’s left-wing insurgency of 2016, albeit with unanticipated difficulty. In doing so, Democrats will be choosing as their avatar a candidate who, though she’s made rhetorical gestures to the left, remains essentially centrist in orientation—a candidate friendly to the party’s donor class and elites, well-connected with its institutions, and incrementalist in her approach to policy. Despite some assertions to the contrary, liberal populism has not taken over the Democratic Party the way right-wing populism has taken over the GOP."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/the-democratic-establishment-won/485378/
Indeed. And I think it's important to recognize that this is a major source of the Democratic party's strength.
There is talk about Bernie wanting reforms to the nominating process. I'm with Jamelle Bouie: I think the process worked pretty well this time. The party system has a nice mix of Majoritarian and nonMajoritarian elements.
I don't want to make it 100 percent Majoritarian.
I also, quite frankly, don't want to become the party of Bernie Sanders. The voters said no, and they were right to do so. The trouble for the GOP is that they have been so Far Right. The Dems have been pragmatic Center Left not ultra ideological Left.
Matt Yglesias talks about how the Berners want the party to become a much more ideological leftist party. They do, and they are wrong.
A Center Left can appeal to 55 percent of the party, an ultra Left appeals to 25 percent of the country. Why else have the Dems been so successful at the Presidential level since 1992? Those who say Bill Clinton 'corrupted' the Democratic party conveniently ignore that this more successful era correlates with the rise of Bill Clinton.
Basically we have made our choice. We are and will be the party of Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama.
"Hillary Clinton stepped into the 2016 presidential race hoping voters would effortlessly pass the torch from President Barack Obama to her, yet found herself surrounded by a raging anti-establishment inferno. “Burn it down” was the unofficial slogan of the Republican primary. And Bernie Sanders gave her a run for her money by metaphorically lighting all her Wall Street speaking fee money on fire."
"Today, as she is unofficially crowned the “presumptive nominee,” Clinton has officially done what Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham could not: survive the populist wave while being perceived as an insider. Now, as Donald Trump tries to assemble a potent pitchfork brigade to seize Washington, the establishment’s lonely eyes are turning to Hillary Clinton."
"As Clinton shifts her focus to the general election, last week’s one-two teleprompter punch from Clinton and Obama suggests a fall strategy that runs somewhat counter to the populist tenor of the primaries. It looks like we’re going to see a superstar tag team duo aiming to consolidate all of strains of the unsettled establishment—and the disaffected Republicans and moderate swing voters who identify with their views—without alienating the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren populist wing of the Democratic Party."
"While Clinton still has work to do to woo Bernie voters, she has a huge opportunity created by the disruptive Trump, who has left many national security hawks, free marketers and pro-immigrant, pro-diversity conservatives feeling politically homeless. In turn, she and Obama have begun crafting arguments more associated with establishment politics than populism."
"Make no mistake: this is nothing less than a political high-wire act being attempted by a meticulous but not always agile candidate. Many Sanders voters say they don’t trust her when she claims to be a “progressive,” and any new rightward lean will only confirm their suspicions. But she'll have one heck of a wingman to carry the establishment banner through the populist headwinds: President Barack Obama, who, according to Gallup, boasts a near unanimous 84 percent job approval rating among liberals and a healthy 56 percent with moderates. He’s now testing the boundaries of those numbers, trying to leverage his reservoir of goodwill on the left to deliver a sharp rebuttal to Trump’s broadsides against his trade policies. Clearly, he is seeking to expand the political playing field, give Clinton more ideological room to maneuver and give the “Establishment” a good name."
"It's early yet, but if Clinton successfully walks the tightrope we could experience a dramatic ideological reorganization. A Clinton coalition that mixes populist with establishmentarian, capturing both disgusted center-right Republicans and wary independent Sandernistas, could be the biggest tent American politics has seen since Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency while he was bombing Cambodia."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/hillary-clinton-nomination-barack-obama-establishment-213947#ixzz4B0MP5WLX
The Hillary-Obama alliance I suspect will go down in history. What they accomplished only looks easy. If you doubt it, just check the wreckage that LBJ and RFK's rivalry brought to the Democratic party in the 1960s.
Also RedState and TheResurgent are both running front page stories about Hugh Hewitt ("company man" they dub him) wanting a new "CEO."
ReplyDeleteI saw him on MSNBC last night and he was saying then that "he really WANTED to be able to support the GOP nominee"
What he didn't mention was that he wanted a new nominee! Lol.
Even Steve Berman is telling Bermie to go home:
ReplyDeletehttp://theresurgent.com/its-hillary-bernie-its-over/
Mike, RedState has a hilarious headline about the Libertarians courting Bernie Sanders voters:
ReplyDeleteBernie bros #FeelTheJohnson