The Thriller
Well-Known Member
While I largely agree with this, I'm not sure if this is 100 percent accurate. Perhaps a more accurate statement could be made that we have "no quick mechanism to quickly kill off a political party." We've seen the GOP essentially "die" before and reinvent itself. Between FDR (1932) and Nixon (1968), the GOP was largely shut out of national politics and "dead" as a party. In 1968, the party that FDR built was "killed" and it was nasty. As the Democratic party died, Nixon and Ailes resurrected the Republican party with the Southern Strategy. They first concentrated on picking up the racists. Then, with Reagan, they picked up the Christian (moral majority) and free market nutjobs. Today, we're seeing a similar "dying" of the party as its power base is primarily in the south and intermountain west. Yet, because it has taken such extremist views and because such is such a moron, this pandemic crisis is only speeding up the death of the party. A similar transformation has happened to the Democratic party through the decades. The party of FDR has changed into a broad party where its strength is in urbanized coastal centers, the college educated, and minorities. Clinton called an "end to the era of big government." While it's pretty obvious now that a new era of big government to keep the economy afloat and rectify inequalities in health care and education might be ready to begin.
We might be in the middle of a new reshuffling of the parties as the GOP suffers a major defeat this fall. The party could essentially "die" this fall if Trump is defeated, Senate control is lost, state governments continue to go blue, and the Biden presidency is at least successful in combating the pandemic and depression. What really complicates the reshuffling is the communication/media bubbles that exist. As we see on this board, there are people who live in completely different realities due to the ease of communicating on the Internet.
Either way, we're going to see drastic changes to either/both parties after this fall, right? If Democrats fail to retake the White House and/or the Senate, we're going to see a wholesale change in Democratic leadership, right? Even if they're largely successful, I'm interested in seeing how the party maintains balance with its left flank and newly picked up conservative suburban voters. If/when the Republicans lose big this fall, they'll have to make major changes, right? I'd hope that they take a look at Reince's 2012 election autopsy.
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