Har! Mark Burnett (producer of The Apprentice) has a lot to answer for. Those of us paying attention for the past THIRTY FIVE YEARS have known that #45 was a lousy businessman, having blown so much of his father’s money that every bank in the world refused to loan him money except for a certain Russian-backed bank (gee, wonder why?), which ended his career as a “real estate mogul.”
His career for much of the past few decades has been to market himself as successful, famous, attractive and rich (hence his relentless lying about himself), license his name for other people’s buildings, and hope his name suckers people into buying in. And he’s so confident in this business approach that his contracts are always written so he gets paid up front – just as his lawyers are doing with him now!
Then he discovered the ultimate grift: politics. You don’t even have to pretend to do anything; you can just vent whatever horrible nonsense you think people want to hear, and people will send you money! Yes, even though the whole myth is that he is a billionaire who doesn’t need money…
His attitude is that you are suckers. Biden’s support is genuine – the Democratic Party has taken labor for granted too long while sucking up to Big Business (thanks, Clintons).
The right doesn’t realize that the idea of limiting immigration is a relatively recent one. Most people just showed up until around the 1920s, as I recall. I had a grandfather who went AWOL from “one of the tsar’s submarines” in WWI and came over here (sadly, I don’t know anything else of that story), and there wasn’t any question about it.
Perhaps. But we don’t publicly proclaim that in The New York Times. Some of us are aware of how that sounds. (Obviously #45 is an exception, since he thinks he has never, ever made a mistake.)
And I do agree that grassroots organization is key; the GOP is where it is now precisely because they had a cadre of billionaires funding such an organization to take over state legislatures and place judges – they played the long game. Democrats did not, in part because they were not “managed” in the same way by the mega-rich.
There are some organizations moving that way now; for example, a couple of Harvard classmates of mine started Crimson Goes Blue (https://www,crimsongoesblue,org), which has been organizing independently of the Democratic Party, which has had a tendency to throw money at elections they KNOW they will lose (e.g., against Mitch McConnell), while CGB is targeting elections they can tip and win. It was started by blue members of the class of ’84, but is now open to anyone. They do things like providing calculators to donate money more efficiently to candidates you like, as well as providing a place for people who want to volunteer.
Ted, I agree that the “two-party system” does not serve the needs of the people, but I disagree with your approach. FIRST you need to break the back of the system, so votes for minor parties get counted. As long as the big two control the system, third parties are only ever going to be spoilers at best, irrelevant at worst.
Right now, whether it is in the Constitution or not, the two big parties have lots in place to ensure that they stay in place: winner-take-all elections, zero-sum systems, gerrymandered districts, the Electoral College, etc.
There have been multiple approaches proposed to break the back of the binary system: ranked-choice voting, which would allow third parties to break in more easily; multi-representative districts, so instead of tiny districts tailored to gerrymandering and biased towards extremists, you could have three representatives elected by ranked-choice (which would eliminate some of the extremists in favor of people who are more representative) for a larger, and more diverse region; independent redistricting commissions to re-draw the lines; increasing the number of representatives in the House to more properly represent the population, which would permit more voices and more diverse ones at that; etc.
It can be done. It’s worth noting that the Republicans are doing their best to reduce voting, because they know their voters are NOT representative; for now, at least, the Democrats are on the losing end, and several have proposed laws to change it, because they think they will benefit – and they will, by comparison, but if they do this right, it will greatly diversify our representatives.
Good article on this, and one proposal, here (switch commas to periods): https://www,washingtonpost,com/business/2021/03/01/break-up-two-party-system/
The Fair Representation Act is described by its sponsor here: https://beyer,house,gov/news/>
With all due respect to Mencken, there is no comparison in this case. The Democrats, whatever their faults (and God knows they have them) are still trying to get things done. The Republicans are covering up crimes, selling their positions, and screaming for attention – sometimes in order to cover up crimes!
Or ethics.