The National Mid Terms, 2018

I've put up posts on the Presidential election before, but I've never put one up on the national mid terms.  I just tend to focus on the local races on the off terms.

This year I'm not at the point where I can't ignore the mid terms however, as they have the real chance of being a politically seismic event. The announcement of Paul Ryan that he's calling it quits is just too big to ignore.

There is, quite frankly, a tidal wave of GOP Congressional retirements going on right now that threatens to become a resignation tsunami.  It's amazing.  Something is very clearly going on, and that something is Donald Trump.

Depending upon where a person is in the GOP, a member of the GOP could be crying or rejoicing, but for one thing.  Democrats clearly are moving into position and whether or not a person is a Tea Party rebel or an "Establishment" Republican, the Democrats who appear to be positioning are mostly, but not exclusively, at least moderate "Progressives".

But for the Democrats, those on the hardhat end of the GOP would feel that at last they had an America First President that was going to remold the country in a political fashion that recalls the GOP rhetoric of a much earlier era, and in fact it might actually occur.  In contrast to that, an Establishment GOP, which was only moderately conservative in reality in spit of its rhetoric, would feel itself grasping to hold on.  But, faced with a big Democratic reaction, and frankly a traditional moderate GOP reaction, to a President who comes across as vulgar and perhaps even aimless and slightly unhinged, what both branches risk is a massive revival of Democratic fortunes this Fall.  Establishment Republicans are jumping ship in anticipation or discouragement.

We should make no mistake in our analysis.  If the Democrats take the House, they'll impeach Donald Trump.  Probably not successfully, but it'll be Constitutional Crisis.  Republicans who will lament it should, at the same time, lament having made this same foolish choice with Bill Clinton, and thereby having set the stage for the use of the Impeachment clause for attempted coups.

It's unlikely that attempt will be successful, but it will mean that the government will effectively quit doing anything until at least 2020.

Having said that, some careful analysis says that even with all the Republican resignations over the past few weeks the Democrats actually taking the House is unlikely.  It's possible, but not likely.  Yet.

What would operate in part to hold that off would be the Presidency appearing to be competent.  Perhaps all the recent firings are an attempt to do that, as people speculate that Trump is now surrounding himself with individuals whom he actually can trust, but the method by which he's accomplishing it is crude at best.  It does appear that he is going back to his base, which at this point may be as good of strategy as any.

At any rate, after a really wild 2016 Presidential Election we now appear set for a really wild 2018 mid term.

May 2, 2018

One of the weekend news shows had a panel interviewed by a pollster this past weekend which served to demonstrate how extremely polarized the nation has become.  That it is unusually polarized right now isn't really news, and it isn't getting any better.

One of the things everyone agreed with was a comment that the nation "needed to consider replacing the two party system".

We don't have a "two party system" in that fashion.  It's amazing that people think we do.

The system isn't systemic, it's habitual, although in fairness, it's gone on so long that there are elements of it that have in fact become institutionalized.

All that really needs to occur to shake this system up is for people to join parties that actually reflect their beliefs, to the extent they can find them.  If that was the case, chances are very high that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party would split into about four or five parties very shortly, and be joined by at least three more that already actually exist.

And that would be a good thing.

There's no earthly way that the two parties we have represent the views of most people in the United States, or even who are members of the parties themselves.  No wonder there are so many independents.  And yet people won't go for third parties.

Well, consider this. In many instances there's nothing that prevents a person from registering as a Republican or Democrat and still actually being a member of another party.

And if people are serious about that complaint. . . well they ought to do something about it.

And so should those parties.