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Taking the Long View [1]

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Date: 2025-01-25

I was devastated by Trump’s election as President again. How could the American people have elected such a vile, corrupt, and incompetent man as President? And the Republicans also won both Houses of Congress and many state governments as well. What is happening here?

I have felt for some time now that this election of 20xx (insert year) will be the election where the Republicans are decisively defeated and the Democrats will return to power for an extended period of time. I feel that the Republicans are corrupt, and have embraced policies that actually hurt the middle class; not to mention preaching hatred of immigrants, minorities, women, gays, and Liberals. They also love tax cuts for Billionaires. And they are flirting with Fascism. There is no positive agenda in any of this. As a result, I always feel that the American People will finally see through their charade and give the Republicans the defeat they so richly deserve. And I am always disappointed.

I think it helps to take the long view here. Governing American political parties tend to have rather long runs in power; somewhere between 50 and 70 years. The best example of this is the Republican political party during and after the Civil War era. They stayed in power almost continuously from 1860 to 1932. Yes, the Democrats made breakthroughs with Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson, but for the most part the Republicans dominated. And this was usually a good thing. The Republican party governed reasonably well during most of this time, and even showed some ability to support necessary reforms, as the Sherman Antitrust Act and Theodore Roosevelt’s Trust Busting showed.

But eventually the Republican Party took a hard right turn, jumped into bed with reactionary businessmen, and became incapable of change. When the Great Depression arrived they showed themselves incompetent to deal with the crisis. Herbert Hoover realized government needed to help average people, but his attempts at reform were half-hearted and were bitterly opposed by the Republican Party as a whole. As a result, the Democratic Party was swept into power in 1932 and stayed as the governing party for almost 50 years, from 1932 until 1980. And much good came from that, including Roosevelt’s New Deal, Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights reforms, and Social Security and Medicare.

Unfortunately we got involved in the Vietnam War, a war that shattered the public’s confidence in the Democratic Party and left deep divisions within the party itself. And Civil Rights legislation probably cost the Democrats the states of the Deep South (even if it was the right thing to do). Add to that persistent inflation and the collapse of the steel and automobile industries and the Democrats were in real trouble. And Ronald Reagan was elected to power in 1980, along with a Republican Congress. And the Republicans have basically been in power since then – from 1980 to 2024, 44 years and counting.

I don’t think this period of Republican Party dominance has the consensus of the Democrat’s New Deal era or of the GOP’s dominance following the Civil War. The current Republican philosophy of governing involves tax cuts for the wealthy and Culture War issues that are inherently divisive, pitting one group of citizens against another. That is why during the past 44 years the Democrats have elected three Presidents spanning 20 years of power between Clinton, Obama, and Biden. Despite the thin gruel that represents the Republican approach to governing they do have some real advantages. The Electoral College helps then elect minority presidents. The Senate is unrepresentative of the country as a whole, favoring small states in the Senate. (Wyoming has as many Senators as California.) Al the nation’s billionaires favor the Republicans. The mainstream media services are owned by the rich, and the Press overwhelmingly favors the Republicans. And no, not just Fox News. The mainstream news just disguise their bias better. Don’t look at what the mainstream news reports – look at what they don’t report. Clinton’s email “scandal” was major headlines in 2016, but Donald Trump had a history of shady business dealings – something the mainstream media did not report to the American people, making them incapable of rendering an informed decision on the candidates. And the American people are poorly informed on a host of issues because the mainstream media does not tell them what they need to know.

In a way, I can understand why the American people turned to a Fascist like Donald Trump. Our country has been poorly governed for the past 44 years, and the public at large know something is bad wrong with this country, but doesn’t understand what it is. (Thank you, incompetent news media.) After all, Democratic president have been in power for 20 of those 44 years. Never mind that the Republicans controlled Congress for 14 of those 20 years, or that they tried to tear down everything the Democrats did (they came within one vote of abolishing Obamacare in Trump’s first term).

The Republicans have dominated governing in the country for 44 years now, and are approaching the fifty year period of dominance I postulated. And I don’t think they will make it to seventy years. During the past 44 years the Republicans have ignored a lot of our country’s problems. And the bill for that bad governance is coming due. As a result, I expect to see a realignment election within the next eight to twelve years – there are just too many festering issues the Republicans can’t and won’t address.

A short list of the issues involved include wealth inequality (caused by massive Republican tax cuts), medical insurance, bolstering Social Security, infrastructure repair and investment, transportation, energy, education, etc. And there is the elephant in the room – climate change. Climate change is an issue that the Republicans have put themselves in the position of being unable to address at any level. Not only are they hostage to the fossil fuel industry, but they have invested a lot of time and effort in denial. Ron DeSantis forbids Florida governmental agencies from even mentioning climate change. And I don’t think his position is extreme within the Republican party.

We are just now starting to see the effects of climate change, and I think it is going to get a lot worse. As I write this, the Los Angeles area is in flames. But it is not just a Democratic state problem. Florida experienced serious floods last year, as did many other states in the region, And I think the entire Gulf Coast is going to have chronic flooding problems in the coming years. I also expect Texas to have a double whammy – floods in east Texas and drought in west Texas. And look for a return of the Midwest dust bowls of the 1930’s. Buckle up – it’s going to be a wild ride. As voters see just how bad climate change is, it will help the Democrats (although it will be bad for the country).

Taking the long view, Trump’s victory is a temporary setback (albeit a painful one). I think the political fundamentals favor the Democrats, but our moment has not arrived yet. In politics, sometimes things can appear carved in stone – until they aren’t. I remember how astonished at how quickly and how thoroughly Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in the 1990’s. I never expected such a result in my lifetime. Russian style Communism looked so formidable, right up to the moment it collapsed. Something like that is possible in American politics.

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