121 lines
8.1 KiB
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121 lines
8.1 KiB
Plaintext
What happens if the Democrats collapse?
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<p>I’ve written several blog essays recently<br />
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<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200409#154'>[1]</a><br />
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<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200411#163'>[2]</a><br />
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<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200411#164'>[3]</a><br />
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<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200411#167'>[4]</a><br />
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pondering the deep trouble the Democratic party is in. I believe,<br />
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on current demographic and political trends, that their problems<br />
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are going to get worse and might actually prove terminal —<br />
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especially if the Republicans have the strategic sense to run Condi<br />
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Rice for President or Vice-President in 2008.</p>
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<p>I’m not going to rehearse all their problems here. Instead I’m going<br />
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to try to think through some scenarios for what U.S. politics might look like<br />
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after a Democratic-party collapse, and discuss why I think they are<br />
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plausible or implausible.</p>
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<p>The common premise for all of these scenarios is that the Democrats<br />
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collapse or split into warring factions once they discover that they<br />
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just cannot win elections any more. The party breaks apart along the<br />
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Democratic Leadership Council vs. hard-lefty split that’s been the<br />
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main axis of tension within it since the 1980s. The variables are<br />
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about what happens to the left-wing and centrist/DLC factions<br />
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afterwards. I’m taking for granted that the handful of<br />
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Zell-Miller-like conservative Democrats left in congress would jump<br />
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the aisle to the GOP.</p>
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<h3>Case Gray: Republican Triumph</h3>
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<p>In this scenario, the left faction runs off to the Greens and<br />
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minor Red parties such as the Socialists. The centrist/DLC types go<br />
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Republican or exit politics. This one is a recipe for really<br />
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long-term Republican-party dominance, with the Greens retaining some<br />
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degree of clout in a handful of coastal cities and university towns;<br />
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it’s the Karl Rove wet dream.</p>
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<p>I rate this one moderately likely, and I’m not happy about that.<br />
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It has benign possibilities, but it has fairly ugly ones too. Which<br />
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we get depends on whether small-government conservatives or the<br />
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Religious Right get the upper hand in the GOP’s factional struggles. The<br />
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former seems more likely (especially since all those ex-Democrats will be<br />
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pulling against the Religious Right). But the latter possibility is<br />
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actually fairly scary.</p>
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<p>At the worst-case end, we’d end up in the theocratic U.S. of Robert<br />
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Heinlein’s <cite>Revolt in 2100</cite>. Mind you I think this is<br />
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highly unlikely, and the widespread lefty panic about it seems to me<br />
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to be mainly hyperventilation and hysteria — they’d have<br />
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you believe it’s happening <em>right now</em>, whereas I see a decade<br />
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or more before the threat could become acute. But it remains an outside<br />
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possibility.</p>
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<p>The more likely long-term outcome would be that the Republicans themselves<br />
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split along small-government vs. cultural-conservative lines.</p>
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<h3>Case Green: Green Party Triumph</h3>
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<p>The Democratic-left refugees run more to the Reds. Greens get some<br />
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of them, but absorb a larger cohort of the centrist/DLC refugees and<br />
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evolve into a stronger and less left-wing party as a result, one with<br />
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prospects to increase its mass appeal. In effect, they become the<br />
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successor party of the Democrats and the familiar Democrat/Republican<br />
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seesaw resumes, with the Greens out of power most of the time.</p>
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<p>I rate this one very unlikely. The problem is that if it were<br />
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possible for the DLC to come up with a new, centrist platform and stem<br />
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the long-term decline in their base, this scenario (dump the lefty<br />
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moonbats and reposition) is exactly the scenario they’d be engineering<br />
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<em>themselves</em> as a means of institutional survival. Since they<br />
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don’t seem to be able to manage it, I doubt the Greens (who are even more<br />
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Red-infiltrated than the Democrats) could either.</p>
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<h3>Case Gold: Libertarian Party Triumph</h3>
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<p>The left runs to the Greens and Reds. The centrist/DLC types join<br />
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the Libertarians. Small-government-Republican types drift to them, a<br />
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process which accelerates as it gradually weakens the holdouts inside the GOP.<br />
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At equilibrium, the Libertarians effectively replace the Democrats while<br />
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the Republicans become more and more a hard-right party of evangelicals<br />
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and nativists.</p>
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<p>The key to Libertarian success in this scenario is gun owners.<br />
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This is the largest single captive bloc in the Republican voter base<br />
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at 50% of American households, one no less a politician than Bill<br />
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Clinton has identified as the swing group in the 1994 election and<br />
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subsequent Democrat disasters. The Libertarians succeed by prying<br />
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them loose from the Republican base.</p>
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<p>As a libertarian and a gun owner, this is the one I’d most like to<br />
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see. However, I rate it unlikely. While I believe libertarian ideas<br />
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could be much more effectively marketed than they are, the LP has<br />
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proven almost comically inept at actually doing so. Post-9/11, its<br />
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isolationist foreign policy is a non-starter as well; I do not think<br />
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Americans will buy this until they perceive that the threat of Islamic<br />
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terror has been broken.</p>
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<p>I’m, frankly, skeptical that the LP can overcome its own history<br />
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effectively enough to grasp this opportunity. But I’d love to be<br />
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wrong about this.</p>
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<h3>Case Red: Reds Triumph</h3>
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<p>This is Michael Moore’s wet dream — a major comeback for American<br />
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Marxism. It only happens if the Angry Left turns out to have been correct<br />
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about the DLC/centrists sabotaging their efforts to tap a huge pool of<br />
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naturally leftist voters. After the centrist/DLC types have faded from the<br />
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scene or gone to the GOP, one of the Red parties successfully markets<br />
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itself not just as a replacement for the democrats but in a way that<br />
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peels off a significant part of the Republican voter base.</p>
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<p>I’ve listed this one for completeness. I think it’s wildly<br />
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unlikely, because I think the Angry Left’s belief that it can become<br />
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the vanguard of a mass movement is a drug dream. I don’t believe<br />
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there is any group in the majority-Republican voter base that is<br />
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vulnerable to a Marxist pitch, so even if they cornered all of the<br />
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Democrat base they’d still be in a minority position.</p>
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<h3>Case Blue: New Centrists</h3>
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<p>The lefty refugees dissipate themselves among the Reds and Greens.<br />
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The centrist/DLC types either keep the Democratic rump or boot up a<br />
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new party that abandons the socialist-economics and identity-politics<br />
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side of the Democrat platform, fights the War on Terror hard, and<br />
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remains strongly liberal shading towards libertarian on other social<br />
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issues. The result is, in effect, a new party of classical liberalism<br />
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— the Barry Goldwater Democrats.</p>
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<p>As in Case Gold, their key tactical move is to peel gun owners out<br />
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of the Republican base. Over time, small-government Republicans drift<br />
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over from the GOP, which goes harder-right in consequence.</p>
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<p>Nowadays I think this one is more likely than Case Gold. The key<br />
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to it may be the blogs, in which I see a kind of pro-War-on-Terror<br />
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libertarian centrism emerging as a new political force. The blogs<br />
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have been far more successful than the Libertarian Party at creating a<br />
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movement with mass appeal, quasi-libertarian attitudes, and enough<br />
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influence to have already arguably scuttled one presidential campaign<br />
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(Kerry’s, over Rathergate).
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<p>Case Blue is different than Case Gold in that the new centrist<br />
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party is not tied to libertarian ideology and pursues a<br />
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neoconservative foreign policy. This is the future in which “Glenn<br />
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Reynolds for President!” doesn’t sound crazy.</p></p>
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