America’s Two Party System In Peril
No matter how the 2020 presidential election is decided, America’s two-party system is in peril.
Already at a tipping point, the Democratic Party will lose its current pretentions of cohesion as the chasm between the party’s growing, aggressive socialist wing and more-conventional moderate Democrats continues to widen.
In a post-2020 election postmortem analyzing Democrats’ nearly-comprehensive down-ticket failures, Politico reported, “Democrats were already engaging in rapid-fire finger-pointing about who is to blame for Tuesday’s embarrassing showing, with the private angst likely to spill out into the public in the coming days as the full House landscape becomes known. Several centrist Democrats blamed their more progressive colleagues, saying moderates in Trump-leaning districts couldn’t escape their socialist shadow.”
Democrats’ top vs. down-ticket voting disparities raise relevant questions: If Joe Biden actually won the presidency, how/why did so many down-ticket Democrats do so poorly? For that matter, why do all the in-progress statistical/mathematical/logical/digital/physical analyses of Biden votes in critical swing states indicate manipulation and/or outright fraud? Why haven’t Democrats and/or their media allies offered any explanations more substantial than blanket fact-free denials even before legal appeals, audits, recounts and certifications are completed? And, why are they resisting efforts that could prove Biden won legitimately?
More Politico: “Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers – overjoyed after they…padded their ranks – were beginning to shore up their leadership teams…”
But, Republicans face their own dilemma. Saving the Republican Party may depend on the GOP establishment’s willingness to learn from and adapt to the practical lessons of President Donald Trump’s first term, especially if a second doesn’t follow.
Other than the presidents serving during the pre-Civil War and Great Depression years, the four chief executives (from both parties) who succeeded President Ronald Reagan were among America’s least-competent stewards.
In the twenty-four years following Mr. Reagan, blurred party distinctions, foreign wars, diminished American stature abroad, millions of jobs lost offshore, insecure borders, and stagnant/declining family incomes combined to create the general dissatisfaction that enabled Donald Trump’s 2016 nomination/election and launched Mr. Trump’s astonishing progress at exposing and correcting ruinous decades-long policy failures that elites in both parties own but refuse to admit.
President Barack Obama and his administration spent eight years “managing America’s decline” into a “new normal” that voters rejected by electing Mr. Trump.
Mr. Obama declared that manufacturing jobs lost overseas were never coming back, a sentiment parroted by sycophants in liberal media. In fact, National Public Radio added, “…no matter who’s president.”
But, President Trump’s America First policies – including corporate tax rate reductions, regulatory reform, renegotiation of unfair trade agreements, and placing tariffs on government-subsidized foreign products being dumped on American markets – repatriated and reinvested $billions of profits earned/sequestered by American companies abroad, brought home hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and created many thousands of new ones.
Thousands of other well-paying blue collar, including union jobs were created in the conventional energy sector Mr. Trump encouraged after Barack Obama spent eight years obstructing it to favor less-effective publicly-subsidized renewables.
Establishment Republicans must understand that a nearly-monolithic majority of the party’s registered base, plus moderate/conservative independents and Democrats did not vote for the Republican Party. They cast votes for Donald Trump.
Trump voters aren’t interested in coddling $multi-billion international corporations while ignoring the problems of Middle America and blue collar workers. They’re also disinterested in ignoring immigration laws simply because big business flacks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and vote-hungry Democrats insist that uncontrolled illegal immigration helps the economy.
Even industrious illegals burden the nation by driving down wages for American workers at the lower end of the earnings scale, while limiting opportunities to gain experience and move up. Their dependents and less-industrious illegals overburden public schools, welfare rolls, health care systems, law enforcement and other public services.
In a post-Election 2020 message, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton wrote, “If Republican politicians think we can just go back five years in time…to the agenda…that did not address the concerns of the broad working class of America, then that is a recipe for [losing] elections.”
Mr. Cotton is right. The political landscape has changed substantially in five years. If the Republican Party abandons the policies that served and benefitted Trump’s constituent interests, it will risk the same breakup Democrats face.
But, a smarter, Trump-tutored GOP could form a dominant coalition by holding its base and providing a refuge for disaffected Democrats and independent-thinkers of all races and ethnicities.
