Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
It's going to be interesting to see what happens to the Republican Party after Trump's defeat. It's _not_ in any way guaranteed that it'll reform itself and divorce the crazy, because the crazy are now arguably a significant constituency.
I must confess, the whole brexit / May / BoJo outcome, & reading about how the 2015 European Refugee Crisis was (un)managed, has made me worried that USA might actually be angry and afraid enough to actually put Trump in charge.
My hope is that the difference in demographics between the UK and the USA has put paid to that (otherwise worrying) possibility. Despite significant influxes of new Britons from ex-Empire countries under PMs Wilson, Heath, and Callaghan[1], the UK has remained racially, ethnically, linguistically, religiously homogeneous just about everywhere outside Greater London -- with the result that Brexit-leaning yobs truly do feel threatened by imaginary mobs of Polish plumbers, and yearn for the days of John Bull's Island going it alone. By contrast, the USA hasn't been particularly homogeneous since, oh, maybe 1880 or so. Opposing multiculturalism is kind of... well, sinister but mostly harmless on account of lack of realism, rather like most of the outre criminal gangs Steed and Mrs. Peel investigated (if you'll pardon my crossing the Atlantic again in pursuit of a simile). If you look at the Trump-core demographic, it's Fox News viewers, which is to say aging, white, male, rural or suburban, mostly uneducated, and angry at their loss of privilege over the decades. They are certainly noisy, but they are nowhere near a majority, practically anywhere.[2] I cannot promise that Trump won't reach 270 electors (or selected by the House of Representatives in a Twelfth Amendment 'contingent election' such as we haven't seen since 1824[3], if no candidate tops 270). It really all depends on voter turnout. Fortunately, the Democratic Party is usually pretty decent at General Election turnout. (It just sucks at turnout for midterm elections.) Speaking of that, the Trump organisation's tactics going into these last couple of weeks have been impressively logical: They've been putting out targeted campaigns, often 'dark pages' (non-public ones) on Facebook attempting to heighten points of conflict particular classes of Democratic Party voters have with Secretary Clinton -- a somewhat novel kind of voter suppression tactic, i.e., an attempt to motivate the opponent's natural supporters into staying home on Election Day.
And EVEN IF that trainwreck only lasts one term, the supreme court appointment will last a whole lot longer. & IIRC USA is also about due for its decennial gerrymandering?
Indeed Project REDMAP Phase II beckons, irrespective of who wins the Presidency. One thing that could help scotch that in a hurry would be one or two Clinton USSC appointments followed by a timely lawsuit challenging obviously racist and partisan redistricting -- a case like McCrory v. Harris (http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/mccrory-v-harris/), except bolder. It really shouldn't be too hard to construct a good test case that a five-member USSC majority could use to throw out gerrymandering forever. [1] Brits in quiet moments will sometimes admit that Thatcher's biggest point of appeal to voters when she challenged Callaghan was less 'She'll stand up to striking coal miners' than 'She'll cut off the flood of dusky foreigners.' [2] This isn't to deny the existence of white-bread reserves, In the 1980s on a railroad trip across most of the USA, I happened to stop for an hour in Denver. Walking around town, I was puzzled about why it seemed a little creepy, and then realised everyone looked Northern European and, um, like members of my family. As a San Franciscan, I couldn't help finding this very strange indeed as something to encounter in the USA. I mean, Oslo, sure, but Denver was a surprise. [3] I.e., the House could choose Evan McMullin if as seems possible he takes Utah's six electoral votes. Of course, that would be electoral suicide for GOP House members, but they could.