Quote Originally Posted by cstone View Post
She is definitely an interesting fiction author. I'm not normally a fan of "alternate history" literature but she has quite the imagination.
You know, on boards like this one there's a lot of talk about the schism between the "establishment" Republicans and the more conservative ones who feel their voices aren't being heard and that they are being sold out by the mainstream party.

What we don't often discuss here is that the same thing is happening on the Democrat side, too. The hard core "Bernie bros" hate the Dem "establishment" (as embodied by Hillary) and while they can't win, they can probably take enough votes away from any mainstream Dem candidate to ensure that the Dem loses - which gives them power, of a sort, and means that they can't simply be brushed off or ignored.

I think the Democrats, much more than the Republicans, are a kind of "patchwork" party that is composed of various constituent groups that don't necessarily like each other but that (sometimes) stick together for the "common good." But as we saw with Bernie, (and before with Nader) it doesn't take much to cause that coalition to start fracturing.

I think that's particularly true since the Dems decided to go all-in on the whole "identity politics" thing. When you say (or imply) that "we represent blacks AGAINST whites" "we represent gays AGAINST straights" "we represent illegals AGAINST citizens" "We represent non-Christians AGAINST Christians" you don't give white, straight "mainstream" Americans much to come out for, even if they are people who might otherwise support the Democrat agenda.

As we saw in the 2016 election, particularly white, working class people in the Midwest who have fairly traditional viewpoints, either voted Trump or stayed home (which was effectively the same thing) not so much because they liked or supported the Republican party (many of them were union members who had been die-hard Democrats for life and who hated the Republicans as the "party of the rich") but because they were basically ignored and taken for granted by the Democratic party, who figured they "owned" those votes and didn't have to work for them.

Then Trump came along and started saying the same things they were thinking and whether they liked Republicans or not, they naturally responded to the only candidate who was really talking to THEM.

The inherent flaw with "identity politics" is that it is based on carving out a bigger piece of pie for a favored group - and the problem the Democrats have with that is that giving a bigger piece of pie to one of their constituent groups means a smaller piece of pie for another one.