Cheating America: The Failure of A Two Party System

BlackbirdTrump preached hate and brought to himself the haters. Through them and with them he eliminated his competition of fellow mediocrities in the Republican primaries. He would carry them with him throughout the election. In their hearts they believed they knew where he stood which was shoulder to shoulder with them in their inchoate grievances against those unlike them. He and they moved the country further to the right with the endorsement of such newspapers as the Crusader, a publication of the Ku Klux Klan. On Wednesday the bigot eyes were smiling.

A highly compromised Hillary brought with her the advocates of change: the biggest was the presidency was to be occupied by a female, any female. We were to overlook the much tarnished First Gentleman who would probably ensured the White House was occupied by other females aside from the female president. Unpopular Hillary forced on the people by insiders sought to move more closely to the path of debunked socialism laid out by her challenger Bernie Sanders who offered to spread free goodies like Johnny Appleseed did seeds. She moved the country further to the left securing the endorsement of every left fringe group and the ultimately that of the bewildered Bernie himself. Among those she invited to her election party were representatives of Black Lives Matter.

It boiled down to those two choices: a hater from the right; a hater from the left (“basket of deplorables”). The great middle had no candidate. The choice was to go to the far left or the far right neither being an area of comfort.

What was left was to vote for a candidate based on who was least distasteful. In effect Trump was elected because he was the one least revolting to those holding middle of the road attitudes. Although even that is in question, neither candidate was supported by a majority of the voters and the loser received more votes than the winner. Many Democrats stayed home.

As the number of eligible voters increased drastically, the number of voters in the presidential election decreased. In 2008 there were 131 million; in 2012 there were 126 million; and there were 124 million now. Now hold your noses. In 2008 there were 146.3 million registered voters; now there are 200 million. Hillary and Trump received a third of their vote; a third stayed home.

Perhaps those in the middle deserve that fate. They have gone along like the Pied Piper’s lemmings with the idea you had to vote for one of the major party candidates. Does it make sense that if your vote is to have any meaning you must vote for someone or something you dislike?

Many who have talked about Trump being victorious have talked about having hope that he will be other than he is. One astute supporter of him hopes his thin gets thicker, his ego deflated, his bitterness and vindictiveness vanish, his ears be opened, his temper calmed, and his tongue controlled among other things. That’s a large basket of hopes; that’s a president-elect of many failings.

Many who did not vote for him have seen their hope for being other than they are smashed. Blacks see that it was a victory for a white voters — 72% of non college educated white men voted for Trump. Latinos and Muslims see a man who has shown through his words a great animus toward them. They can only believe their future is bleak.

The person elected received only one third of the votes from registered voters and probably only one quarter from those eligible to vote. The tragedy is there was no middle ground where people could go to vote. What is in store for our nation? A few more inches in either direction then we can kiss our democracy goodbye.  We do need a third party.

 

25 Comments

  1. Matt,
    I think you are right about the two-party system.
    Time to go.
    Geo. Washington abhorred partisanship, and it only evolved out of ideological differences between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
    It was an unintended phenomenon that once started, was unstoppable.
    How many times party labels and party loyalties flip flop back and forth, with other short-lived additions, in the 1800’s alone?
    1824 was a particularly interesting and treacherous election. Andrew Jackson vs. J.Q. Adams.

    Thanks,
    R.N.

    PS……Isn’t President-elect Trump softening around the edges and humbling down and making an effort…..even just a little?

  2. view from the rear view mirror

    http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2016/11/10/maine-became-the-first-state-in-the-country-to-pass-ranked-choice-voting

    Maine became the first state in the country Tuesday to pass ranked choice voting
    Here’s what that means.

    Amid a national vote that rocked the political world Tuesday, voters in Maine narrowly approved a measure that supporters say will be respectively disruptive to the state’s political status quo.

  3. Glorious Leader will be easier to organize against than Clinton. The Trump presidency will be a good thing for the radical Left. It’s obvious bourgeois Dems can’t represent the interests of the proletariat. If Trump doesn’t deliver on his promises, all that anger will have to be politically expressed, hopefully, by militant socialism. Bernie was socialism lite, a year, or, two, from now, folks might be ready for the real thing.

    • Khalid: Socialism, the ‘Real Thing.’ North Korea today or the former GDR?

      • Saint Ronald-father of the big deficits-suckered Tip O’neill and others and retains his beatific mantle.

        DeTocquville (sp.?)comes in handy–“Americans might not get the leaders they want, but they certainly get the leaders they deserve”. Face it, this is what America laps-up–bullies and bozos.

        I have already been assured of two cozy air mattresses in Verona.

        Will someone please stop the whining cry-babies?

    • Henry:
      I’m an old Wobbly made in the USA. I support American-style Socialism.

  4. What is this nonsense about any candidate turning away any voters? Democrats are never asked to disavow the communists that back them.

    In Virginia Democrats openly courted a demographic that no decent person running for office would target – convicted felons. Anyone with scintilla of decency would find this more disgusting than the refusal of a candidate to disavow unsolicited support from fringe individuals.

    Consider the two. Trump did nothing. The Clinton team actively tried to illegally pad the voter roles with criminals. All we hear about is some sort of vague moral failing by Trump in not going out of his way to insult potential voters – people whose vote is the equal that of a Hahvahd sinecure holder. But he did not go after them. Clinton went out her way to solicit votes from armed robbers, rapists, killers and worse. These were pursued as a class with no other distinction.

    There is a difference between sins of commission [Clinton] and sins of omission {Trump]. The latter always involves a degenerate soul, the former does not.

    • “The latter always involves a degenerate soul, the former does not.”

      Do you mean the opposite?

    • Communists didn’t back Clinton. They have their own party. The Clintons are bourgeois, not, proletarian. Glorious Leader and Billary are both the social enemies of militant socialists. Tad, go down to the Aroostook library and get a book about Communism, you’ll sound a lot smarter, if you do.

      • You limit communist to the individuals of a specific fringe organization, like Robert Arkavadin. I used the term in a broader sense – those who back the communist agenda.

        Fyi I have read a great number of communist works, propaganda tracts, histories and favorable biographies of communist leaders. What is your record of reading the texts of fascist thought or even mainstream historical or theoretical works? You come across as a marxist parrot living in a cage.

        • Try “The Ruling Class” by Gaetano Mosca.

          • Tad:
            Try “The Ruling Class” by Gaetano Mosca.

            Have you ever heard of the Murabitun? They are a Sufi group founded by an old fascist from Scotland. He’s written voluminously on fascism and religion. Check out “Coup de Banc” by Shaykh Abd-Qadar al-Sufi AKA Ian Dallas. He’s a gold bug, too. In fact he bought the idea for e-gold from its’ founder Dr. Jackson of Melbourne Florida. At present, the Shaykh runs a gold transfer based INTERNET hawala, e-Dinar. By utilizing his service, you can ship all the black money you want all over the planet 24/7. He spent his young adulthood as a committed fascist on the extreme right fringe of British politics. In ’69 he traveled to Morocco, where he had a spiritual epiphany. After converting to Islam, he started his own Sufi movement. Dr.Jackson’s e-gold used to ship money around for the Shadow Crew. Shaykh AQS inherited the same customer base. The Shaykh foresaw that Jackson would go down for running an unlicensed bank. After buying Jackson out with Saudi money, he moved operations to the Gulf, well out of reach of US and European tax police. The Shaykh has been raking it in for the last decade, charging 1% to go in, and, 1% to get out. His service is very popular in Eastern European Fascist circles. He has his own e-page separate from e-Dinar. Abd al-Qadar as-Sufi reveres Ersnt Junger, Heidegger, and Houston Stewart Chamberlin, as well, as Imam Malik. Google him up. He’s the foremost living fascist I know of.

  5. George Will had a line today:

    “We had a candidate who deserved to lose and a candidate who did not deserve to win”

    Miley Cyrus, the one who grabs her crotch on stage and wraps her middle finger in a rubber glove and then sticks it between her crotch, all on stage, posted a very tearful video. She told us first what a wonderful person she is, and that she wished everyone would be as wonderful as she is. The she told us all that she would accept Trump as prez. Nothing about her promise to move to Canada. The entire video was through her tears, all in extreme close-up.

    Whew – I was certainly not going to accept Trump as prez until I got the high sign from Miley Cyrus.

    I’m not sure what to do about all the people burning dumpsters on the left coast, and all the protesters who are chanting f u slogans, and burning and hanging Trump in effigy, all while carrying “love trumps hate” signs.

    I wonder if Ben Carson and other black Republicans and blacks who voted for Trump see this as a victory for white voters?

    I think I’ll just go with the Miley Cyrus high sign.

  6. I don’t recall any white ‘racists’ rioting in protest over Obama in 2008 or 2012. There was no infantile ‘black-lash’ from the leisure classes then.

    Disgruntled Clintonites, SjWs, extremist Liberals and Sanderistas seem to have a rather tenuous understanding of how Democracy works.

  7. Confession: The unbearable smugness of the press

    “It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.

    We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.

    You’d think that Trump’s victory – the one we all discounted too far in advance – would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political press. But of course that’s not how it works. To us, speaking broadly, our diagnosis was still basically correct. The demons were just stronger than we realized.

    This is all a “whitelash,” you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist, so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday night’s outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!

    That’s the fantasy, the idea that if we mock them enough, call them racist enough, they’ll eventually shut up and get in line. It’s similar to how media Twitter works, a system where people who dissent from the proper framing of a story are attacked by mobs of smugly incredulous pundits. Journalists exist primarily in a world where people can get shouted down and disappear, which informs our attitudes toward all disagreement.”

    [MORE]

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016/

  8. Fellow mediocrities in the Republican primary? Two surgeons, Carson and Paul are mediocre? How many voters could get into medical school let alone become surgeons? If you want mediocre look at the two 70 year old Libertarian substance abusers. 2. Trump should take out the Reagan playbook. Repeal all laws and regulations passed since 1988. Restore America’s strength militarily, economically and morally as Reagan did. The claim that someone who has a different position than you is a hater is nonsense. If one percent of those who voted for Obama were Black Panthers or Communists would that make all his voters haters? Don’t think so. The hate charge is an invention of the Globe. When citizens voted for King for Governor over the gross incompetent Dukakis they were labeled as haters They just wanted smaller government, lower taxes and a stop to the slaughter of innocent children. Pro life is the position of LOVE. Late term abortion is the hate position.

    • Well said NC. It really is ignorant to call Trump supporters haters and bigots and point to his support from the KKK as proof. It is disingenuousness by the media at best, intentional media bias and manipulation is more likely the reason.

      Some just can’t accept the fact that Trump was NOT elected by a bunch of uneducated white racists.

  9. Matt: I cited Pew Research, above. Here’s the citation’s site: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/
    It seems Trump did about the same as Bush, McCain, and Romney on a number of indices.

  10. Matt: It was not about “hate”.

    It was about a multiplicity of factors, including the direction of the country: the more liberal path vs. the more conservative one; or the establishment vs. the anti-establishment.

    The haters are few and far between. As for the KKK — total national memberships is estimated at 5,000 people. Of the 60 million who voted for Trump, you’ll have to look elsewhere for the “haters.”

    As far as the popular vote, it was a virtual tie: Hillary got 50% (0.5008); Trump’s losing percentage (0.4992).

    Bias: Pundits rant that Hillary won the College Graduate vote: The Media endlessly spun that implying “only the uneducated vote for Trump.” But according to Pew Research, Hillary won 52% (just half) of college graduates and Trump won 43% (a bit less than half) of college graduates. Millions of college graduates voted for both. In fact, Pew Research shows Trump won white college graduates by 2%.

    Trump said some stupid things “A ban on Muslims” but he modified that to “strict vetting” from terrorist nations like Syria. The media forgot the modification. (Last week’s Time magazine described the U.S.’s existing strict vetting of Syrian refugees.)Trump said Mexico sent murderers and rapists and “some no doubt were good people” and the media went ballistic, forgetting the latter phrase. When he went to Mexico and praised Mexican-Americans as “great people”, it was virtually ignored. Endlessly the Media stereotyped the inarticulate Trump as a “hater” “bigot” “racist” and all his supporters as such.

    The liberal Media (who doubts that?) and all candidates whip up their base, stoke the fires, inflame, appeal to latent and overt biases to varying degrees. All appeal to loftier goals, too. (Fairer taxes, more jobs, stronger military, peace).

    In the end, what moves a voter is a multiplicity of factors: self-interest, interest in the well being of one’s neighbors and communities, the national interest, the direction of the country, and different legal-economic-political-philosophical-ethical-religious viewpoints.

  11. Looking ahead to 2020 for a candidate in favor of simplifying the tax code

    https://kotlikoff2016.com/