General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What the hell, DU? [View all]MisterP
(23,730 posts)rightward: in the US right and left can be seen as two parallel bundles made of strands and "cords" like "big business," "African-Americans," "women's movements," "the Religious Right," "the religious left," or "right-libertarians," with moderates drinking from both bundles (or one, then the other, same diff), with the two giant parties picking their membership from the rightmost 40% of the spectrum: as of 2012 the party spectrum has been limited to the rightmost 20% of the US's overall spectrum: it's Birchers on one hand and corpo-friendly earned benefits cutters on the other hand
by mainstreaming ever-rightward opinion within the party ("SCOTUS legalized this crazy reading of the 2nd Amendment, and we must abide by it" and by declaring increasing advocates of the 4th Amendment as hair-on-fire Chicken Littles panicking before they get the facts in, but also as hegemonic bullies quashing legitimate and serious discussion about--er--fuel gauges and whether an 8 can be with a 5, they win even if they don't get any Dem to accept any of their points or drive Dems out of the party in disgust: because their notion of "legitimate discussion" matches that of politics and media
but by making themselves a laughingstock worse than those trolls screaming about Benghazi or the New Black Panther Party they're unmasking the Ingsoc-level bankruptcy of the national-level party: the Sixth Party System in place since like 1994 began with NAFTA and with Lowell Weicker's replacement by Lieberman, and over the decades has purged and emptied the Dems of most of their lefty tendencies (though of course they'll stop fighting gay marriage after the 12th year of doing so, and LILLY LEDBETTER LILLY LEDBETTER LILLY LEDBETTER); a new meaningfully-populist party for the 70-99% and to the left of Francisco Franco is not inevitable (even without both parties being integrated into the National Security State, they're way too strong to overwhelm by meeting in a Wisconsin schoolhouse) but continuation of the current system (two parties moving rightward, both over the center line, with primaries as the only permissible avenue for dissent) is not inevitable either