And we don’t even have one. Sen. John Danforth has a commentary at RealClearPolitics on the importance of a “healthy two-party system” to the United States. I recognize that Sen. Danforth may be a bit out of touch due to his advanced age and I hate to break it to him but we don’t even have one healthy political party let alone two.
I hardly need to point out the problems with the Republican Party but let me provide a little précis of the Republican Party’s issues. After he announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2015 and throughout 2016 Donald Trump proceeded to trounce the entirety of the Republican Party establishment. After he was elected president the old Republican establishment was gone and what remained was a Trump party. The political party that John Danforth remembers is gone.
President Trump was impeached twice and his re-election bid in 2020 was defeated by Joe Biden, who had been rejected as a presidential candidate twice before by the Democrats. Mr. Trump has never actually acknowledged that defeat. I won’t psychoanalyze that.
Impressive as the number of executive orders issued by President Trump in his second term may be, he cannot govern by EO alone and we don’t really know what the final tally of his diktats that stand up to judicial scrutiny will be. He is engaging in all sorts of highly questionable interminglings of public business and private personal profit. He is unlikely to receive any scrutiny of those activities by the present House of Representatives. President Trump has been issuing pardons to criminals of undisputed guilt for, apparently, no reason other than he can.
The Democrats are in no healthier a state. We aren’t even halfway through the year and already this year two high-ranking Democratic officials from two different states (Illinois and New Jersey) have been convicted of corruption in office. It may be three or higher before the end of the year.
At some time during his first term as president Joe Biden became too frail and mentally impaired to execute the job for which he was elected. This was hushed up by his staff, high-ranking members of his party, and journalists working for major media outlets. We don’t know when he stopped being able to do the job. Some say June 2024. Some say February 2024. Some say January 2020 or earlier. We just don’t know and we’ll probably never know.
Democratic states are losing population rapidly. There have been articles published noting that without illegal immigration the tally of Democratic votes in the electoral college would be considerably less favorable to a Democratic presidential candidate than it already is.
The party is, effectively, leaderless. Its two primary factions, moderates and progressives, are not on particularly friendly terms. The moderates claim that if the party is to regain control of the House, Senate, or White House it will need to moderate some of its views. The progressive wing insists that the party has not been progressive enough.
You get the idea.
So, Sen. Danforth, how do you create “two healthy parties” out of that mess?
Dave Schuler: There have been articles published noting that without illegal immigration the tally of Democratic votes in the electoral college would be considerably less favorable to a Democratic presidential candidate than it already is.
People often conflate the effect of legal and illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants resulted in a gain of two Electoral votes for blue states (New York and California) and a gain of one Electoral vote for a red state (Texas), a net gain of just one Electoral vote for blue states.
Republicans have kept insisting they aren’t against legal immigration, but their actions have shown that is not the truth.
Dave Schuler: So, Sen. Danforth, how do you create “two healthy parties” out of that mess?
That Weimar Republic is so messed up, might as well vote for the other guy who says he can make the country great again. He seems nice.