I must admit I often feel totally out of sync with current thinking. I don’t know if it is my age or the 25 years I spent not thinking about politics much. I find both parties acceptance of their extreme members counter intuitive. I don’t see an America that supports the religious right or the belligerent left. I see an America that wants a decent paycheck and to be left alone being described as bitter enemies over things they seldom think about in their daily lives. It all seems so ‘invented’ to me.
Both you and I (and most everyone here) feels this way. I could not agree more. You and I remember the John Birch Society Republicans and Dixiecrats but the mainstream always prevailed. Even Carter was a Nuclear Physicist and former naval officer. Nixon founded the EPA and proposed a national minimum wage.
I like your term "invented". It may sound trite but on the republican side we know who invented it. Rush Limbaugh and his successor, Fox News. They are so clearly propaganda paid by the wealthy that the invention is just obvious to any thinking person. At first Limbaugh was a shock jock in California. I used to listen to him when I lived there. Then he became serious. Fox News launched with its "fair and balanced" nonsense and it sold advertising. Now Fox News is so obviously scripted that they have even dropped any pretense of claiming to be objective. On the Democrat side I do not believe that they have quite the same champions. If you look at the democratic platform you will see that, if anything, they have moved slightly to the right. Obama was certainly no liberal by any stretch of the imagination. Neither was either Clinton. Bill cut welfare dramatically. Hillary was right of Obama, Hawkish and would have been a good republican candidate 30 years ago. If you look at current democratic party impetus it is the left that is pushing the demonstrations but they have yet to articulate a cogent position at all. They are content to run against Trump. I fear that this strategy will fail them in November. I mean really. Who is their leader anyway? Nobody.
In a sense, he is. But the idea that those republicans -Agree- with him is nonsense. The $$$ is backing Trump … These "Republicans" are just line dancing to keep their pockets and campaign funding full. "Screw America - Pay Me !" I have to wonder if they will stay bought after the midterms ?
Of course they will. We live in a country where one set of brothers is allowed to spend a billion dollars buying elections. If divided equally, that is 1.5 million dollars for every House and Senate campaign.
My selected view shows all of them lying about how much they support him. They appear to have accepted his popularity and chose to use it to keep themselves in office, just like we should expect from swamp people.
Some at least. It is hard to go back on a shattered belief that one held so strongly but he still has a very loyal base. The key will be women. Though I believe that the democrats will fuck this up by allowing the far left to get to loud, the key is what those republican women do in the face of the nonsense Trump is pulling. If they abandon him they will abandon the down ticket republicans too and it will be a route. If they stick with the party the legislature will be secure and Trump will win a second term. And although my opinion is that he hates the job and wants to quit I believe he will have to run again just to avoid the consequences of a major loss.