A Kamala Harris win to me means stability around the world.

A Trump win puts us on a trajectory to global conflict and authoritarian dominance.

Simply, a Harris win guarantees that Trump will never see the Oval Office again. It allows America and her allies to come together without the spectre of isolationism and broken ties hanging over them.

@Tacitus_Kilgore Now we just have to worry about the millions of people who support Trump and will support whatever worse creature follows him. Easy-peasy.

@AskTheDevil Honestly? I believe when, not if, Trump becomes a loser yet again the (R)'s realize the damage he has done to their party. Once the mouthpiece mobster wannabe is defeated once and for all they will go about getting the rest of his sycophants out of the party. This is not to say there won't still be some aspect of what the party has become, but the rhetoric will die down.

I'm calling it now, Trump and many (R)'s are going to lose and there will be a huge blue wave.

@Tacitus_Kilgore @AskTheDevil

Keep a close eye on the New Right, JD Vance & Project 25. They are not going anywhere. Always playing the long game.

@LnzyHou @Tacitus_Kilgore @AskTheDevil
Agreed.

Trump was the symptom, not the disease. It is naive to believe GOP reverts after Trump. Biden lost the beginning of his term to the naive hope all the Pubs he remembered from the Senate would suddenly revert after 2020.

"Normal" GOP was over when McConnell flatly refused to even consider voting on Merrick Garland.

Noms are gone forever

@S_r_stone I'm not implying they will revert. But they will have to rebuild. They now know their agenda will fail under this style of politics. @LnzyHou @AskTheDevil

@Tacitus_Kilgore @LnzyHou @AskTheDevil They need to go the way of the Federalists, the Whigs, every failed political party.

Democrats probably need to split into formal recognition of the internal factions. Maybe the leftover Pubs can join with moderate Dems?

We need more than two viable parties, but until our elections themselves change so third parties are more than just spoilers, we are doomed to the duopoly.

@S_r_stone @Tacitus_Kilgore @LnzyHou I think the proper number of political parties is zero.

They do not exist to provide collective action, they exist to absorb power for the party's ends.

@AskTheDevil I wholeheartedly agree. I just can't see how to make it work. I've thought of different scenarios but they all come with their pitfalls. @S_r_stone @LnzyHou

@Tacitus_Kilgore @S_r_stone @LnzyHou
I htink humans better get better in a hurry about making collective decisions for common good.

Giving over power to others isn't the way. Sharing it and being responsible for it will.

@AskTheDevil @Tacitus_Kilgore @LnzyHou Zero political parties is a fantasy unfortunately. People are going to collect with common interests for bargaining power naturally. You can't outlaw them.

Many parties is as close as anyone has ever come, around different issues. Then the parties negotiate to form a governing coalition. Even that would require our electoral process to change.

We COULD outlaw party primaries maybe? Let everyone vote on all options with RCV.

@S_r_stone @Tacitus_Kilgore @LnzyHou The fact that we have done the same stupid thing that works bad for a long time is not a reason to keep doing it.

There is no law of the universe, like gravity, that says we have to have them. There's not even any human trait that requires them in their form, which we know, as they did not used to exist, and there were still people.

"It's hard" is not a reason to leave something broken.

@AskTheDevil That's what I find the most frustrating. Even those who truly want change are usually the first ones to say, "but it will never happen.". @S_r_stone @LnzyHou

@Tacitus_Kilgore @AskTheDevil @S_r_stone @LnzyHou

Luce (and others!), have you read Simone Weil's Human Personality? I think you'd greatly enjoy it. She wrote it in 1942, in France, and in it describes the party system of her country as not so far removed from fascism of the Third Reich. An extraordinary thing to say in WWII, but she was speaking to what you're all discussing: the way party politics flatten the individual to simplistic ideas of personhood that often trample over *the human*.