Bad as Things May Sometimes Look for the Dems, it Could be Worse – They Could be the GOP

[ErikJ]

New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd writes this morning about “Dems in Distress” that Democrats are afraid of Scott Brown and have good reason to be. More, that Democrats should fear the Republicans in general. This seems to be about less what the Republicans have done lately than about what the Democrats have not done – or not been able to do.
She has a point about a stagnant Obama administration. The Republican House has put a stranglehold on progress, making simple governance next to impossible let alone implementing new policies. As she points out, and as we all know, Obama is reduced to running the country through executive order. Dowd explains that this is not a sign of strength, but a sign of weakness.

I suppose it could be interpreted this way, though it is, after all, more the fault of the Constitution than of the Democrats in general or Obama in particular. Nobody expected, when they framed our governing document, that one political party would go to such extreme lengths to invalidate a presidential election. Nobody foresaw a black president, or the lengths conservatives would go to in order to destroy that president, even to the extent of suing him for having won.

I would say this is less about democratic weakness than a conservative lack of scruple and an inherent tendency toward totalitarian forms of government. This is not about the weakness of the executive branch so much as about the tyranny of the legislative. And it exposes the weaknesses inherent in a 200 year-old document. The Founding Fathers dealt with Aaron Burr but he was a piker compared to the Cuban anarchist, Ted Cruz. And yes, there were some vocal conservative Christians back in the day but nobody in Philadelphia in 1787 could have foreseen the collection of lunatics we call the Religious Right.

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http://www.politicususa.com/2014/03/16/bad-dems-worse-gop.html

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I'm not sure parties, or at least the traditional parties

are going to have a future. More and more voters are simply dissociating themselves with both major parties. Millenials certainly seem a lot more open to the notion of socialism as well, even if they don't want the grief they get from talking about it around older voters. Obviously the GOP 'solution' to this trend is simply to disenfranchise as many younger voters as possible, and to make it much harder for third party candidates to actually run for office, but I wonder if third parties are going to start making inroads all over. The 'tea party' candidates get in because they at least pretend to be something other than regular Republicans. Will we start to see more challenges from the left as well, in strongly blue districts? It seems like the gerrymandering already done favors ever more extremist candidates, and Republicans may have left themselves open to being completely controlled by their far right before they get a chance in 2020 to try and rework districts into *less* gerrymandered seats that favour moderates.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. I don't know how I could ever be a Republican or vote for them

the lack of critical thinking skills and leaps of (il)logic, as well as the belief system that somebody must apparently hold in order to seriously be/vote Republican would be too difficult for me to handle on an intellectual and emotional level. I don't know how other people do it. I'm proud of being a critical thinker and intellectual egghead who cares about people and wants what is best for the common good. That seems to be fundamentally incompatible with the modern day G(n)OP