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drwexSome separate, but related, thoughts on primary season, particularly Republican.
In my previous post I argued that one of Cruz or Rubio should drop out, but neither are likely to do so. Here's the logic: although the states that vote in tomorrow's primaries are all favoring Trump, they are all (?) proportional-award states. So anyone who stays in picks up some delegates, which is important for remaining competitive. The next round of states (which includes Florida and Texas) are winner-take-all states. All Rubio or Cruz have to do is beat Trump by one vote in order to walk away with a huge chunk of delegates. Arguably, Rubio's best shot at that is Florida and Cruz's is Texas.
Both men have come out swinging hard at Trump, trying to land telling blows. As I mentioned last time I don't think it's possible for them to erode significantly Trump's base of support but Rubio in particular has shown he can sway late deciders and if running Trump down is his path to doing that, so be it. Trump spent the weekend flirting with Mussolini and David Duke and seems to have come out none the worse for it so I remain dubious. But you gotta have some strategy.
By attacking this hard, I think both men have kissed goodbye any chance of a VP slot on the ticket, which leaves the question open of who. Why not Kasich? Like Cruz and Rubio I think Kasich is going to stick it out. But his reasons for doing so seem to be to show that he can garner support, particularly from groups that aren't Trump's natural core. If Trump does take the convention then Kasich will be able to point to his group on the hall floor and say, "You want those people? I bring them." It may sound awfully cold-blooded but it has a certain logic. Right now Kasich is running the best campaign for VP I've ever seen.
Meanwhile, pretty much every down-ticket Republican with any opposition in the next election is having fits. I can't see any significant fraction of Republican voters breaking ranks and pulling a lever for Sanders or Clinton, but there's a very real chance they will stay home. If the Democrats smell blood and get energized (and those of us who aren't are still willing to hold our noses and vote for Clinton) then every other Republican candidate in a purple district/state could be in trouble. After the convention their options are going to devolve to "suck it up and ride the populist coattails" or "put as much genteel distance as possible between themselves and Trump." Neither option is likely to be appealing.
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Hypothesis: the fall of the Soviet Union is what doomed the Republican party. That is, without a common great external enemy, the natural fracture lines between religious conservatives, nationalistic populist conservatives, and fiscal conservatives start to widen.
Coalition-building is hard. The Democrats have floundered more times than I can count in the past couple decades trying to paste together women's rights advocates with environmentalists with LGBTQ persons with union members (maybe excluding Teamsters or maybe not) with rich liberal coastal elites (mostly Hollywood and university/think-tank types). Pretty much every Democrat can reel off a list of things that they don't like about what their party does or stands for. In any given election that dislike might or might not be more powerful than their feelings for their candidate. But the fractious Democrats have a lot of experience at coalition building, horse-trading, and finding common ground.
I think the Republicans lack that and what we're seeing is a deep fundamental argument about what it means to be an American Republican conservative. Those who've held the reins of party power are freaking about the weight of change toward jingoistic populism, but maybe the current faction's time of defining conservatism is just reaching its natural end. I've long argued that Trump is a symptom, not the disease, but now I may be changing my mind about the nature of the disease. Perhaps the nature is that conservatives have for too long defined themselves as "not that" where "that" was the external threat (USSR) and the domestic threat (scary black man in the White House).
They have not been strongly challenged to articulate what a conservative vision is. I think one clear sign of this is that despite some ridiculous number (37? 58?) votes to repeal Obamacare there has yet to emerge a plan for what the Republicans would do instead. Likewise the Republicans have refused to take up Obama's request for an authorization of the use of force in Syria. If you're a conservative, are you for or against bombing in Syria (ignore idiot pronouncements about carpet-bombing)?
If you ask any conservative to articulate what conservatives are for you get a list of things that Trump clearly is not. So what does that mean for the party's future? Stay tuned; I think we'll know a lot more in two weeks or so.
In my previous post I argued that one of Cruz or Rubio should drop out, but neither are likely to do so. Here's the logic: although the states that vote in tomorrow's primaries are all favoring Trump, they are all (?) proportional-award states. So anyone who stays in picks up some delegates, which is important for remaining competitive. The next round of states (which includes Florida and Texas) are winner-take-all states. All Rubio or Cruz have to do is beat Trump by one vote in order to walk away with a huge chunk of delegates. Arguably, Rubio's best shot at that is Florida and Cruz's is Texas.
Both men have come out swinging hard at Trump, trying to land telling blows. As I mentioned last time I don't think it's possible for them to erode significantly Trump's base of support but Rubio in particular has shown he can sway late deciders and if running Trump down is his path to doing that, so be it. Trump spent the weekend flirting with Mussolini and David Duke and seems to have come out none the worse for it so I remain dubious. But you gotta have some strategy.
By attacking this hard, I think both men have kissed goodbye any chance of a VP slot on the ticket, which leaves the question open of who. Why not Kasich? Like Cruz and Rubio I think Kasich is going to stick it out. But his reasons for doing so seem to be to show that he can garner support, particularly from groups that aren't Trump's natural core. If Trump does take the convention then Kasich will be able to point to his group on the hall floor and say, "You want those people? I bring them." It may sound awfully cold-blooded but it has a certain logic. Right now Kasich is running the best campaign for VP I've ever seen.
Meanwhile, pretty much every down-ticket Republican with any opposition in the next election is having fits. I can't see any significant fraction of Republican voters breaking ranks and pulling a lever for Sanders or Clinton, but there's a very real chance they will stay home. If the Democrats smell blood and get energized (and those of us who aren't are still willing to hold our noses and vote for Clinton) then every other Republican candidate in a purple district/state could be in trouble. After the convention their options are going to devolve to "suck it up and ride the populist coattails" or "put as much genteel distance as possible between themselves and Trump." Neither option is likely to be appealing.
----------
Hypothesis: the fall of the Soviet Union is what doomed the Republican party. That is, without a common great external enemy, the natural fracture lines between religious conservatives, nationalistic populist conservatives, and fiscal conservatives start to widen.
Coalition-building is hard. The Democrats have floundered more times than I can count in the past couple decades trying to paste together women's rights advocates with environmentalists with LGBTQ persons with union members (maybe excluding Teamsters or maybe not) with rich liberal coastal elites (mostly Hollywood and university/think-tank types). Pretty much every Democrat can reel off a list of things that they don't like about what their party does or stands for. In any given election that dislike might or might not be more powerful than their feelings for their candidate. But the fractious Democrats have a lot of experience at coalition building, horse-trading, and finding common ground.
I think the Republicans lack that and what we're seeing is a deep fundamental argument about what it means to be an American Republican conservative. Those who've held the reins of party power are freaking about the weight of change toward jingoistic populism, but maybe the current faction's time of defining conservatism is just reaching its natural end. I've long argued that Trump is a symptom, not the disease, but now I may be changing my mind about the nature of the disease. Perhaps the nature is that conservatives have for too long defined themselves as "not that" where "that" was the external threat (USSR) and the domestic threat (scary black man in the White House).
They have not been strongly challenged to articulate what a conservative vision is. I think one clear sign of this is that despite some ridiculous number (37? 58?) votes to repeal Obamacare there has yet to emerge a plan for what the Republicans would do instead. Likewise the Republicans have refused to take up Obama's request for an authorization of the use of force in Syria. If you're a conservative, are you for or against bombing in Syria (ignore idiot pronouncements about carpet-bombing)?
If you ask any conservative to articulate what conservatives are for you get a list of things that Trump clearly is not. So what does that mean for the party's future? Stay tuned; I think we'll know a lot more in two weeks or so.
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no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 12:55 am (UTC)If the Democratic nominee wins the 2016 general election the Republicans will have history on their side in 2020. The last two consecutive Democratic presidents elected to two full terms were Madison and Monroe (who were preceded by their mentor Jefferson who was also a two term president), and Monroe's first election was 200 years ago! The establishment Republicans probably hope that Trump is a one time fluke, and that the party can heal itself after a loss in November.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 03:42 am (UTC)Yes, at this point all of my hopes are on 2020, which is incredibly depressing given both the high hopes I had for 2016 and my expectation that in 2020, there is unlikely to be any candidate on the horizon who makes my heart leap like Bush, Walker or Perry.
But the true nightmare scenario is that Trump actually wins this thing. I can't imagine he'll be re-electable, but four years is long enough to do immense damage --- especially if, in that four years, there is no effective conservative opposition left in place. Trump, I think, would be Obama on steroids, without John Boehner to rein him in. That's the optimistic scenario. The pessimistic scenario is that he's Hugo Chavez.
I do believe that if either Trump or Clinton wins this thing, there will be a conservative president elected in 2020. I also believe that if Trump wins this thing, that conservative president will spend his/her entire term undoing some of Trump's damage, but that it will take a generation to fully recover. So I expect that 2020 belongs to my team, but I do not feel celebratory.
(On an unrelated note, I do not know you, but spent a few minutes with your LJ and ended up placing a substantial Amazon order on your recommendations. Thanks.)
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 04:40 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy the books. A brief perusal of your LJ posts reveals a keen interest in computers, so you might find Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers engaging if you also enjoy dense stream of consciousness prose.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 01:59 am (UTC)Agreed as far as it goes, though I think the fact that al-Qaeda ultimately failed to provide a common enemy is noteworthy. Perhaps the secret is to have a great external enemy and to not actually waste time or resources actually fighting that enemy... what they need is an ongoing cold-war enemy.
Though I would have thought that the DNC would serve that role well enough.
They have not been strongly challenged to articulate what a conservative vision is.
(nods) Yes. Nor a reactionary vision, either, and part of the problem is that Republicans have been trying to straddle the conservative/reactionary space for quite a long time, and it's difficult.
Democrats have a similar problem with liberals and progressives.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 04:16 pm (UTC)They've certainly been trying, but it turns out that if you demonize the other major political party then you can't compromise with them and you can't get stuff done. That's been biting them republicans in the butt the last several years.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 03:44 pm (UTC)“It’s scary,” South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has endorsed Rubio, said on ABC’s “This Week.” She added: “I think what he’ll do to the Republican Party is really make us question who we are and what we’re about. And that’s something we don’t want to see happen.”
From here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/divisions-within-gop-over-trumps-candidacy-are-growing/2016/02/28/97b16010-de3a-11e5-8d98-4b3d9215ade1_story.html?tid=sm_tw
(hmm, this is apparently the only political LJ icon I have)
no subject
Date: 2016-03-01 05:23 pm (UTC)P.S. Do you want a new political icon?