Donald Trump was an incompetent, by almost any measure you want to use. However, he shifted the Overton Window dramatically. When the Republican version of Barack Obama bursts onto the scene - someone eloquent, competent, and thoroughly able to move effectively in the political sphere, there could be a very real problem for Democrats.
GOP has to somehow consolidate Trumpists with Never Trumpers, may be tricky to do. How will independents respond to GOP after Trump is finished? Will they forgive and forget?
So, in my view, both parties need to adapt or they will not achieve that much. Imagine if Dems had 49 senators, how little would get done in Biden's term, indeed that may be the case after midterms.
0: https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for supper. Several Federalist papers are dedicated exclusively to this idea and the problems of previous democracies. Defending minorities (specifically religious minorities) was the primary reason for going with a Constitutional Republic instead.
The Senate was a similar concession that smaller or less populous states deserved equal voice to larger states. I'd note that if slavery were the reason for the formation, then the Senate would have been a bad idea as it stripped power away from the Southern states (as that article points out, Virginia alone had more than 10% of the total House votes).
Its true that with the apportionment of House votes in the Constitution, the Senate (by comparison) had weaker representation of the South (30.8% in the Senate, 35.4% in the House), but, as with terms explicitly protecting slavery, the concern wasn’t for the immediate effect, but as insurance against trends that were already apparent with the expected internal and external expansion of the US and its political development.
With the first Congress seated after the apportionment due to the 1790 Census (which included Kentucky, admitted in 1792), the Senate already was slightly more favorable to the South than the House (the South had 38.4% of the Senate and 37.1% of the House). With the Congress seated after the 1800 apportionment, the South had 46.1% of the Senate, and 39.0% of the House.
The idea that the Senate would have been a “bad idea” in terms of political power in the South assumes that no one at the time of the Constitution had even considered the possibility of thinking a few years down the road.
They fail to recall that this was actually a political route for Democrats. Democrats lost seats in the House when they were expected to gain. They eked out parity in the Senate that probably disappears in 2 years. More importantly, they lost almost all state government races.
Remember, Trump's biggest policy positions (bring our troops home, bring our jobs back, hard on china, the wall, etc) were all Democrat positions a mere 5-7 years ago. Now that the Republicans have taken over those more centrist ideas, they have gained a huge number of supporters.
The Democrats are fractured between centrists and progressives. That fracture is much worse than the Republicans because it is ideological while the Republican fracture is a cult of personality.
Trump will fade. Another person will replace him. They will have all of his populism and charm (yes, he's a natural entertainer). They won't have his rude abrasiveness. He'll then have the majority needed to censor the other side now that the Republicans have decided they agree with the progressives on that point.
>>Democrats seem to assume that those 75M people will suddenly change their beliefs
as long as 78M people continue to hold their beliefs, I really don't think the democrats care. A minority vote is a minority vote - whether its 4.9 percent or 49 percent. Personally, I think the dems will work more towards eliminating the EC and gerrymandering thats gone against them.
edit: change second '4.9' to '49'. I really need more coffee..
If you're anything but a very centrist Democrat, this should scare the crap out of you.
Though “you should be scared because what has been happening to the Left longer, and much more severely, than to the Right might happen to you” is a pretty common propaganda theme directed at the Left by the Right recently.
Unlike the Right, which has had an existence of extreme privilege where even the KKK got a pass on government scrutiny because it was valued loyal organization around the same time that the second big round of government institutionalized anti-Communist hysteria, the Left has been built around organizations to route around establishment suppression for over a century.
And most people to the left of center-right neoliberal Democrats are quite aware of that.
But yes, you're right that the left is the source of private censorship for a long time, which is why lemmy is developped by a lot of leftists, for example. If they're ready to ban a right wing president though, I can imagine how severe the crackdown on the left would be.
They have fewer voters.
Fewer people identify with them.
Fewer people support their policies.
If Democrats can continue to get voters out, like in GA, they will lose seats.
It might be interesting to re-evaluate whether representation by geography still makes sense. I'm more partial to the parliamentary approach, where parties get representation proportional to votes cast for them, so this way there could be a "rural interests party" which rural voters could vote for and receive representation proportional to their population. This might also do an end-run around the mind-bogglingly corrupt practice of gerrymandering?
Apparently this was a big 'issue' in the 80's, when the US government usage was "Utahan" or "Utahian," while the local usage was "Utahn." Webster's currently lists "Utahan" as the correct usage, as far as I can tell (their website is trash - searching for "Utahan" and "Utahn" just redirects to the "Utah" entry.
[0] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2016/pdf...
How will they be able to deplatform that? Are you endorsing deplatforming anyone to the right of Joe Biden?
Just remember back to how the media and establishment pulled together to stop Bernie during the primaries. Think this new tool won't be used the next time they're in danger of losing power to an outsider?
Y'all think "it's both sides" but, in America, this call to violence (straight up armed insurrection) is unique in right wing politics. And if it showed up in the Left I wouldn't tolerate it.
Show me someone on the right who was deplatformed who didn't preach hate.
What's that feminist lady who literally got banned for saying, "Men are not women."? I forget her name. I'm waiting for Joanne Rowling to get deplatformed for having the audacity to think that there's a portion of transgender men who are using certain aspects of the left's current moral panicking to infiltrate women's spaces.
How dare she have an opinion that's critical of ... shuffles cards... whatever group we feel the need to swoop in and save to assuage our guilt for being the world's most successful society!
As soon as you take the position that words can no longer be exchanged, the only other option you've left open is violence.
This isn't - or at least shouldn't - be hard to understand.
I experience linear time, how about you?
Donald Trump directed a mob to storm the Capitol while they were certifying election results, the ensuing riot led to at least five deaths.
He is being deplatformed because of the impending threat of violence he presents. This isn't a hypothetical situation - he held a rally, incited a riot, and people died.
This is about a TOOL. You don't have to use a tool the same way every time.
Is that really the case with Facebook, Twitter, et al.? Didn't Facebook and Twitter have favorable standing with Trump's administration (vis a vis keeping Trump on the platform despite his violating their ToS repeatedly)?
https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+twitter+violations+%22...
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" came to mind (you have to go to archive.org to view it, which is kinda sad in a way... are videos of the 3rd Reich next to go?):
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701003329/https://www.latim...
Can anyone come up with one?