Well, however bad things are I doubt things are nearly as bad as the civil war times. I mean, there was an actual civil war going on back then.
The problems we faced then and now are different, but it could lead to similar outcomes. Our rural areas and inner cities have been stagnant for decades, and blight is slowly encroaching upon suburbs now too. A key element that is increasingly radicalizing the public is growing job insecurity. Labor force participation is the lowest its been in decades. Society cannot tolerate increased chronic unemployment for long periods of time. A desperate public quickly radicalizes.
This radicalization isn't symmetric, however. In the US, probably the most visible shift is race. Nonwhites tend to move leftward while whites tend to move rightward. Only the
white working-class is slowly, but increasingly, abandoning the Democratic Party in notable waves. Why? Because they help nonwhites, they stand for welfare, they like to spend money on the undeserving, so on and so forth. Electing Republicans though only intensifies the situation as their economic policies are idiotic. As the US increasingly becomes minority-majority though, these attitudes will only sharpen, not lessen.
The Republican Party today is basically a coalition of grievances united by one thing: contempt. Contempt for immigrants, contempt for minorities, contempt for intellectuals, contempt for gays, feminists and many other groups too numerous to mention. What binds them together is contempt for Democrats because they welcome every group Republicans reject. A key turning point for this development is the Republican takeover of the once “Solid South” of the Democratic Party. When the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts broke the Democratic Party’s hold on that region, the G.O.P. moved in to replace it. But in the process, Republicans absorbed the traditions of racism, bigotry, populism, and rule by plutocrats called “Bourbons” that defined the politics of the South after the Civil War. They also inherited an obsession with self-defense, allegiance to evangelical Christianity, exaggerated patriotism, xenophobia, and other cultural characteristics long cultivated in the South.
The Bourbons maintained their power by dividing the poor and working classes along racial lines so that they would not unify for their mutual betterment by raising taxes on the wealthy, improving schools and making government responsive to the needs of the masses rather than protecting the wealth and position of the Bourbons. You can see this with the policies that Southern states have enacted. They have long followed what are now doctrinaire Republican policies: minuscule taxes, no unions, aggressive pro-business policies, privatized public services, and strong police forces that kept nonwhites and poor whites in their place. Yet the South is and always has been our poorest region and shows no sign of converging with the Northeast, which has long followed progressive policies opposite those in the South and been the wealthiest region as well. These policies will now be enacted on a nationwide scale by Republicans along with acts that are increasingly blatant to keep Democrats out of power.
The addition of reactionary Democrats to the traditional Republican coalition increased the party’s strength in the short run and allowed it to take over Congress. But as Southern attitudes have now completely taken over the GOP, its strength outside the South has begun to wane. It simply cannot win nationally as a whites-only party in a nation where the white share of the vote is inexorably shrinking. (Trump only won the electoral college by ~70,000 votes, a sharp rebuke to Clinton's ~2.7 million votes.) Yet the party cannot, will not, change. Instead, what you see is increasing contempt for democracy, which isn't helped by the fact Republicans tend to view Democrats as illegitimate by default. And their increasing hostility to Democrats only feeds increasing hostility toward Republicans. Once we reach the tipping point, Republicans will be convinced the only way to "save the country" is to purge it of the Democratic Party. So bye-bye American democracy and hello Russian-style dictatorship.
That said, it is a very bad scenario that the US is governed by a party which does less than represent the majority of the people. IMHO the next few years will be relatively chaotic by US standards considering how things are developing.
- As I mentioned earlier, Russia has the US by the balls. So far it was only emails concerning the election that were leaked. But if you think about it DNC and RNC hacked emails are bound to have A LOT more information than merely that. I mean, I doubt they hacked only the election concerned emails at least. So Russia, or whoever hacked the emails, is merely waiting until it is politically convenient to release the emails. Can you imagine what the republican emails must have said about trump early in the campaign? Can you imagine what it would do to trump to have every single negative email about him from the RNC? I can already imagine the 3am twitter rant from that.
- As it is, trump might likely have relatively little support from congress. Even now he is at odds with his party regarding the russia thing and he is not even president yet. At least some republicans have the sense to take the leaked emails seriously. Unlikely trump who is actively trying to destroy the credibility of US intelligence agencies because it is politically convenient.
- Demographics wise republicans are in basically the same position as they were before trump won. That means the vast majority of the of US citizens have serious disagreements with them regarding some policy or another. Be it climate change, obamacare or something else.
- Democrats, a month after being defeated, still do not pull their heads from the depths of their asses. Even now they hardly give an indication that they are going to start running on issues which people actually care about. Instead they are trying to get deeper into their own asses....
http://election.princeton.edu/2016/12/10/the-comey-effect/
Surprisingly, Clinton did as well as she could despite all her baggage. Clinton lost 4 points when the letter was released. She eventually gained back some of that, but it looks like 2 points were permanently loss. This matches well with Nate Silver's estimate that Comey cost Clinton 2 points.
This kind of stuff happens to all campaigns at some point. Trump certainly made lots of mistakes, though no one talks about them anymore. The difference here is that things like the Comey letter
don't happen to all campaigns. This was an egregious intervention in the campaign by the director of the FBI, who was motivated at least partly by his fear of a rogue group of agents who were obsessed with ousting Clinton.
This is
not normal. Comey knew exactly what he was doing. He was warned that his actions would be an unprecedented interference in an election. But he did it anyway, and went ahead in a manner perfectly calculated to do the maximum damage thanks to our guillable press.
Without Comey's letter, Clinton probably would have won the popular vote by 4 points and the Electoral College by 300+ votes. Not sure about the Senate, however. Either way, eliminate the Russian interference and Clinton would have won. Instead, a toddler is our president-elect, and everyone is convinced that Democratics are on their last legs (at the national level, way different story at the state level, however).
I'd be willing to learn if you're willing to explain it though.
