If the GOP is doomed, then America is doomed. America needs both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party to move forward. If you can imagine America being a sailboat with the Democratic Party being the sail, then the GOP is like the keel. The keel counteracts the force of the sail to generate lift. A sailboat without a keel can’t sail into the wind.
16
Yeah, maybe.
If the Democrats win, the Republican Party May indeed be doomed.
If Trump wins, we are all doomed. His voters are going to sink with the ship too.
Organize, donate, volunteer, vote.
26
There's a discernable trend in the Republican Party:
Reagan > Bush > Trump > Putin.
All of the above are more acceptable to Republicans than Barack Obama or HillaryvClinton.
15
Oh, please...
3
How I pray that you are right.
5
Reads like hope
More than reality. If the Democrats run Elizabeth Warren, Trump
May win the popular vote. That would be the end of the Democrats.
6
The glamour shows which were referred to as the Democratic presidential contender “debates” were nothing of the sort. We learned little about each candidate because of time constraints and meddling by moderators (particularly these from CNN and Chuck Todd).
4
I don't think so. I thought Hillary would beat Trump, but with hindsight I realize now that when Hillary brought up the topic of a former Miss Universe during the debate, it was an act of desperation. She knew she was losing and so she threw a cheap shot at Trump. I have this feeling that the Democratic candidates are similarly desperate because all they have left are charges of racism to throw at Trump.
8
Irresponsible title. Irresponsible prediction.
5
Why not share surveys on how voters feel about illegal immigration, and about decriminalizing illegal immigration and free healthcare for all immigrants, legal or illegal? Those are the positions staked out by our likely nominees. It seems the article can't bring itself to use the term 'illegal immigration' because those very words are anathema. They won't be to Trump.
10
Just another pipe dream by a Democratic activist- the pipe dream that the U.S is a progressive nation.
The U.S (and we Canadians love you guys, you've got a lot of good points) have always been the least progressive democracy on the planet. I mean, you had to fight a civil war to get rid of slavery, for Gods sake.
21
When the Blue Wave knocks out Trump and the Dems take control of the Senate on Nov 3rd 2020... Trump will:
1. Claim that the elections were rigged
2. That he and he alone has proof that he actually won and the Dems did not take control of the Senate
3. That this is another national emergency
4. He is considering options but will "listen to his own advice"
5. Declare Martial Law before Jan 20th 2021...
6. State that HE is the one who has to take drastic action to defeat enemies from within and in particular the Dems and the MSM
11
too many poorer, poorly educated and older Americans look at democrats and respond, I would rather vote republican no matter a nut is heading it. ultimately I believe emotion plays much more into voting, than when it comes to answering questions on opinion polls from pollsters. Republican wins in most of the south and states like Utah, Wyoming, Montana tell me that all the Trumpian insanity may not be enough to dislodge the entrenched mindset.
4
Amazing how these big time Dem pollsters always believe eternal progressivism is just around the corner, where every American will just sit back and see their nesteggs raided for the common good and be happy about it, too. Keep going, nominate Bernie or Liz and we'll see how that works out in Nov 2020.
11
Excellent analysis by one of our best pollsters. As someone who has talked to many voters while canvassing and phonebanking in 2016 and 2018, I firmly believe he is right. However, here is the problem—the one candidate who will really bring about the transformative change Greenberg discusses is Bernie Sanders. The corporate interests, mainstream media and the establishment of the Democratic Party know that he will actually challenge the status quo in the way that no one else will, including Elizabeth Warren. And so they are working overtime to stop him, an effort particularly effective when waged by mainstream media, from which most people get their news. I fear they will succeed in stopping him from getting the nomination and the Democratic Party will nominate Warren, who is much less likely to appeal to the broad range of voters Sanders does. But even if she wins, all signs point to her pursuing only safe reforms that won’t fundamentally upset the fossil fuel companies, private insurance industry, and their ilk. The subsequent lack of transformative change will only lead to another harsh reaction from the voters and the rise of yet another right wing demagogue. I would urge the monied interests to wake up, but I fear holding onto power and short term gain has become more important than anything else.
4
This one sided partisan analysis is nonsense. If the Republican party is doomed then the Democratic party and the entire confrontational two party system is also doomed. The Trump Republican party is an equal and opposite reaction to the Democrats. Neither position is tenable in even the short term. Whoever wins in 2020 will be faced with fierce, even violent, opposition and, potential chaos (think of the reaction if Trump wins; it will be worse if Democrats win). The country is ungovernable by anyone but a centrist compromise candidate committed to making basic government work without fulfilling
4
Hopefully, the Republican party is doomed.
If not, under Trump, America is doomed.
8
I am an outsider looking in. I suspect that which ever way you choose to slice the electoral pie a majority of white US citizens do not disagree with Donald Trump from a moral perspective.
The most convincing evidence if this being that US citizens continue to butcher school children, almost on a monthly basis.and nobody cares enough to do anything about it.
As long as white America continues to act as if Trump is a "good person" nothing is going to change in the USA.
Krugman's opinion on the decay of US democracy (today's NYT) describes the symptoms and consequences of this process of individual ethical decay accurately and succinctly.
The test will be in 2020 when the world will see if the US is prepared to do the right thing and act to correct the disastrous mistake that was made in 2016
14
Here we go again with the political crystal ball. Want my prediction about what's really doomed?
Punditry.
12
Dream on, Democratic mouthpiece. If you hated he 2016 election, you're gonna be even more excited by 2020. Do you have guts enough to move to Canada?
8
This kind of prognosticating makes the complex seem simple. But it's not simple. The American people are not a group that can be analyzed in this way. No one can accurately predict what is going to happen in the election more than a year away.
As has been noted many times, we learn from history that we don't learn from history. We can't.
4
I fail to see why anybody other than racists would vote for Trump. Also, I fail to see why anybody other than rich people would vote for the Republicans. The Democrats passed the valuable social programs like Social Security and Medicare that are of great value to average Americans. The Republicans passed big tax cuts for the rich folks. It's not really all that complicated.
9
Clark Landrum, I'm not a racist and I will vote for Donald Trump because I like the way he gets things done.
And I like the way he tries to build the wealth of the country as a whole rather than just take from the rich to give to the poor. Countries that focus on the former while those that focus on the latter fail.
4
Deeply insightful--and encouraging, Mr. Greenberg. Thank you.
I cannot but think; the policy of the GOP after their 2010 victory was unprecedented. To resolve to do NOTHING! Nothing at all! To sit on their hands. To frustrate--as Mr. McConnell put it--even legislation they AGREED with--
--out of a malignant desire to deny Mr. Obama a second term.
The abominable CYNICISM of such a policy! It takes the breath away. And (in that connection) a quote comes to mind.
Retailed by Mr. Theodore White (the "Making Of The President" series). Who recalled JFK (in the 1960 campaign) uttering the following:
"The function of the U.S. President is to lay before the American people the great unfinished business of the nation."
"Now who came up with that?" Mr. White mused. As he buttonholed this or that speechwriter--
--till JFK wrote him a peremptory note: "Tell Teddy White I came up with that line myself."
The policy of the GOP in 2010 was the utter negation of JFK's wise words. The more so because--as the needs pile up--the challenges--the problems--
--not least our bizarre and incompetent Chief Executive--
--the GOP does nothing. Ex industria said the Romans. Deliberately.
Oh Mr. Greenberg. This party is RIPE for extinction. And yes! Would to God the Dem's RISE to the challenge. Embrace the needs. Step up to the plate. Hit the ball out of the park.
And the GOP?
Let 'em die. Wither on the vine.
They deserve it.
Richly.
3
.. Mr. Greenberg seems to be living (and writing) in a fantasy.. Republicans hold the majority of political power in this country.. Presidency, Supreme Court, Senate, Governorships...
.... And the only reason Democrats won the House in 2018 was because of the success of centrist Democrats in upsetting Republicans..
.... Yes..centrist Democrats saved the day...
....--- Mr. Greenberg's fantasy about an era of 'bold, progressive transformation..'. is really just wishful thinking...
11
The GOP will be a strong, often dominant party for generations to come. There are tens of millions of mean-spirited people in this country who don't even know how to vote in their own self-interest. End of story.
8
Such astute analysis. Thank you, Mr Greenberg. Regarding who among the Democratic candidates for president ("...which leader best understands this tumultuous period. Which candidate has a theory of the case that pushes aside other interpretations and critiques?"), the answer to that question is Pete Buttigieg.
Mayor Pete gets it. All of his speeches, addresses, town halls, policy plans, get to the heart of the approach Mr Greenberg urges here. He is our best hope to win the era.
2
The last presidential election the Democrats presented us (after much finagling) the ticket of Clinton/Kaine. Two essentially de facto Republicans. Just like in all the prior elections, only more so. The (de jure) Republicans will do just fine.
3
Your opening paragraph suggesting that the Democratic Party will be free of the polarization that will enable expanded use of government to solve problems is overly optimistic. As is the demise of the Republican Party.
What Democrats need to ask is this: Why is nearly half the country is willing to vote for, or seriously consider voting for, a known miscreant in Trump?
Dems have to really dig into this because a failure to begin addressing this issue will continue to put the country at risk of another miscreant getting elected. Dems Don’t have to capitulate on core values like diversity, real religious freedom, safety net spending and gender equity but they gotta start meaningful engagement with people to understand and eventually persuade the electorate.
This is not going to be done in one cycle or done over social media. Don’t underestimate the resentment and disdain people have for the Democratic Party.
8
Interesting analysis, but highly fantastic. It also ignores the reality of the electoral map. The Dems need to pick up 38 electoral votes from the last presidential cycle. In 2016, vote totals were close enough to suggest a different 2020 result in only nine states-NV, CO, MN, NH, ME, PA, WI, MI and FL. Clinton won the first five, representing 33 electoral votes. The other four carry 75 electors. Flipping FL seems unlikely; the Dems lost two statewide elections there in 2018. So the Democratic nominee will have to hold all five swing states that went for HRC and flip WI, MI and PA. Highly unlikely. And the foregoing assumes the Democrats won’t choose someone who scares moderates and the GOP doesn’t continue or intensify its voter suppression tactics, either of which would make the odds of unseating Trump even longer. Anyone who harbors the notion that deep red states like AZ, IA, IN, OH, TX, NC or GA will go blue next year are dreaming.
4
In 2016, the public wanted an alternative to the neoliberalism that the elites of both parties represented.
They got an alternative in Trump.
They did not get one in Hilary.
They took Trump. Even though they may have thought he was a gamble and a clown.
If Dems fail to heed this observation, they will lose again.
Go Warren!
6
I don't why the NYT would publish an article like this. Just for an example it gives a poll about immigrants. So what? The issue has always been about Illegal immigrants and how to stop that. The Republican will survive Trump, of course. This is just an an for the Democrats.
7
Not if it dooms us first. And that is looking more and more likely by the day.
2
Open borders, free health care for illegal aliens, green new deal. If you need binoculars to see the center, it might be you that has a problem with your party.
8
I always found these facts staggering. Take the time to read if you would... https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/10/10/want-a-better-economy-history-says-vote-democrat/#55abdf29cb44
1
This is one of the most incoherent Op-Eds I've ever read. Maybe with some heavy editing.
6
The electors have already been bought and paid for. Party politics is just window dressing.
1
Make a habit of asking workers in stores you frequent about their health insurance. Many business owners (but not the blessed few who truly love their employees) have denied decent health care insurance to their employees to pad their profits . They sob and moan that they will go out of business or hire less staff if they have to give these American workers a fair shake and adequate insurance. So then we end up paying whether through medicaid or subsidized Obama care. This was the case with Walmart for years an still is for many businesses. This is also unfair competition to those good employers who offer good insurance.
3
SMS, health care costs do force many business owners out of business, or to hire fewer people. A relative of mine lost his once thriving business for exactly that reason -- a big increase in health care costs when revenues were stagnant. He just couldn't find a way to keep the doors open and 30 people, including him, lost their livelihoods.
4
I'm not sure how any evangelical can support a man who pushes refugees out, locks kids up in cages, or has affairs with porn stars and then blackmails them to keep them quiet.
5
@Mark
Sounds like the evangelicals that I know.
2
Nothing about Putin"s lap dog or Kim's boyfriend?
5
"Mr. Obama’s election and re-election represented the triumph of an America that was ever more racially and culturally diverse, younger, more secular, more often unmarried, with fewer traditional families and male breadwinners, more immigrants and more concentrated in the growing metropolitan areas."
This describes an America that will be getting poorer, as fewer married couples, the backbone of the middle class in the past, is replaced by single mom's, the uneducated immigrants, fragmented families, urban men with increasingly poor public educations. Truly a sad outlook for America and it's children going forward. :(
4
The idea put forward by this article that republicans voted for Trump because they felt economically disenfranchised is a myth and has been repeatedly shown to be a myth. Republicans voted for Trump because he promised to be mean, vicious and cruel to the people they do not like. He has kept his promise and is joyfully abusing the defenseless and weak. His voters love it and will turn out for him in the same numbers. The only way he will lose the election is if the total vote turnout increases.
13
Indeed. The losses in 2010 and 2014 were rocket fueled by the handing over of the Treasury Department to Wall Street insiders who supplied the senior staff and leadership and formulated US economic policy under Obama. Not to mention a distinct failure to prosecute white collar criminals who literally stole billions. So people turned to Trump and got conned.
4
Desperate Measures...
What a Desperado Individual1 is lying to his gullible crowd in North Carolina.
Can we just add Desperado to 3D's. Considering that he also tries to bring Ukraine to help him in 2020 by befriending Mr. Zelensky, who is the President of Ukraine, so they can interfere with our election on his behalf. He's actually blackmailing Ukraine by withholding military support unless they go along with his conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden.
Pit without any bottom in sight.
GOP as usually turns the blind eye.
And the lunacy only intensifies, check this out... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/us/politics/trump-family-dynasty.html?searchResultPosition=1"A Legend that Lasted a Lunch time" as smart person put it.
Desperado-in Chief surrounded by his desperado gangs, lying on his behalf.
The real tragedy is how many complicit people dwelling in this alternative universe.
5
Here's how you don't take advantage of it. Open borders, free illegal alien healthcare, Medicare forced on everybody.
2
Republicans who vote for Trump do not trust and do not participate in polls. Therefore, the entire premise of this article is flawed.
I am a fairly conservative Republican, who finds Trump's behavior reprehensible. But, he is accomplishing a lot of things prior Republican presidents were unable to do.
Am I going to argue with success, because I think Trump has no class? Nope, not on your life.
The Democrats gave (and still give) Bill Clinton a pass on all of his terrible, misogynistic behavior, because they liked his policies. The really shouldn't be surprised now that the worm has turned.
The press and many of the pundits on the left like to characterize Trump as a Nazi or a wannabe dictator in the mold of Mao, Stalin, and Hitler. All I can say is...
I wish Mao, Stalin, and Hitler were more like Trump; 100 million people would still be alive today!
7
Look at what got him elected: In the beginning NBC gave this malevolent worm a platform. Vote denial/ suppression/ gerrymandering. The millions who didn’t vote. The crackpot, ripoff, white evangelical church; gun worshippers; the “sovereign citizen” libertarians; white supremacists; ill educated/illiterate/ignorant whites, male and female; nativists one generation away from immigration; ‘conservatives’ who are radically destructive; ‘family values’ proponents whose politics are an expression of their cruelty, especially toward children. Add grift, sleaze, hypocrisy and corruption and you have the GOP, representing all that is weak and regressive about America, offering useful fools by the million to whom government is nothing more than reality TV hosted by a buffoon floundering from crisis to crisis, propelled by the vacuum of an empty mind, low rodent cunning and a foul mouth. He represents money without national affiliation or loyalty. The Russians found him offshore in their money laundry.
This didn’t just happen; the GOP is a project but whose? For the answer, look at what they do: government as a funnel to channel America's wealth offshore. Putin meanwhile plays his hand with a laser focus on the GOP because its America’s weakness, the comic realization of McCarthy’s vision, a body infested with dupes and agents. Hello Manafort, Page, Nunes, and Conway.
All of the above says it’s time to break the Republican Party with the weight of a crushing majority.
9
I very much hope your optimism is warranted Stanley. Thank you for your writing and research.
4
“American voters will not disappoint us again.”
I wish I shared your optimism...
10
I would be more inclined to believe Mr. Greenberg if he provided evidence for any of these things:
1. A sharp decline in FOX news and other right-wing media viewership
2. A dramatic decline in the number of single issue anti-abortion and/or gun control voters
3. A wave of Trump supporters admitting they've been conned
4. Broad support for impeachment of Trump on corruption charges
Barring any of this evidence, it's safe to say the GOP can double down on its "I'm with stupid" position, win the electoral college and the Senate, stock the courts with conservatives, and continue destroying the United States.
5
Mr. Greenberg, there is only ONE democrat that mirrors FDR in the scale of policies to make our government for and by the people instead of for and by the plutocrats, her name is Elizabeth Warren! As with FDR, she will accomplish this because the GOP tore the economic fabric of this country from democratic capitalism into the plutocracy we have today. Just like FDR she wants to save capitalism from its excesses and make it more open an democratic.
Only Sanders and Warren are articulating our problems and offering solutions, Sanders wants democratic socialism while Warren is proposing democratic capitalism. She says our system is rigged with uncontrollable money given to politicians while offering solutions with a legislative fix of uncontrolled dark money and bypassing the GOP supreme court. She says our markets are NOT free, because monopolies and oligopolies control their markets and the political process. Democratizing our economy means curtail the power of monopolies and their concubines the GOP.
4
God, I hope so. Please, please, please. Any big time, influential, rockstar-type god(dess) .... We need your intervention. In our Republic's name, we pray. Amen.
6
Is there a Trump supporter anywhere who doesn't watch FOX
news? These people believe anything they are told. My Aunt
says its the only truthful news. She is a religious fanatic and a
diehard racist, her husband grocery shops with a gun.
A sad segment of our population is in love with a racist buffoon.
They don't believe Trump declared bankruptcy 6 times....
My point is 35% of Americans are just like Trump. FOX has
brainwashed them and they are lost in a cult of white supremacy.
Vote like your life depends on it!
13
@Susan C
35% is too low.
2
I don't think so. Your country may be majority democrat but racism survives in its blood like the herpes virus. Surging again and again and again, with a robust malignancy. I think only multi generational change and environmental catastrophe will bring forth a boldly progressive US that can actually join the more forward social democracies of the west.
4
if all the jack donkeys voting for an independent votes democrat, then we will have a new president in 2020. Hint: stop voting independent like it will mean a darn thing!!
3
"The time for hesitation's through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now, we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre"
Let's light a fire, Dems!!!
5
I'd love to believe that "The Republican Party is Doomed" - but this amazingly lightweight piece doesn't convince me. I was going to call it 'analysis' but I don't think it reaches that level. Moderate people are repulsed by vile stuff that Trump feeds to his base. Ok we know that. Does that mean Democrats will flip back Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and maybe Florida? If they don't, the Republican Party is far from doomed. But there's no electoral analysis here.
Stanley Greenberg's optimism recalls his earlier vision of a Blue future driven by Hispanic voter demographic growth. He doesn't acknowledge or measure the process whereby some Democratic voters switch over as Reagan Democrats did, as Obama-Trump democrats did. This liberal to reactionary undertow current continues. Trump sees it and promotes it.
7
With the coronation of a carnival huckster as their standard-bearer, the Republican party forfeited any assumption that they should be taken seriously going forward. They relegated themselves to the metaphorical children's table.
The adults will now debate serious, even existential, issues in the Democratic and Independent arenas. The Republicans will attend Trump rallies and avail themselves of other forms of delusional distraction. I pity these people. But, at the same time, the stark reality that each person wearing a red MAGA hat at the latest Trump rally has a vote equal to mine causes me to contemplate relocation to somewhere more conducive to base-level rationality.
4
The Reps will never die as long as the Dems keep coming up with bad ideas. The father of Meadow, one of the Parkland victims, has written a book on about the development of the shooter by the lax discipline in the schools.
There will always be a revolt of some kind against the chaos created by bad unworkable ideas, even when they are defended and promoted by the media. The Reps, or some reincarnation of them, will always be there.
We need something better than these two miserable parties.
2
To paraphrase Lily Tomlin, no matter how cynical I get, it's impossible to keep up. I desperately want this article to be true, but there is an "all other things being equal" aspect to it that I can't quite buy into. They are not.
To think that Russia and the Dirty Tricks Division of the Republican party are not sharpening their knives right now is just naive.
5
I suspect the Third Way, DNC, and CAP have their fingers in their ears and are humming la-la-la so they don't have to admit they are wrong - again!
A moderate candidate is a prescription for defeat. We absolutely cannot wait longer for the tide to finally, finally turn on the Republican war on government, which is really a war on us and on reason, fairness, truth and science.
We will die an ugly death from climate disruption if we don't act NOW. Ask the corpses on the Bahamas what that was like.
Bernie gets it. He gets it and he has the best climate action plan, the best educational plan, the best health care plan and the best organization to make it happen.
Get your head out of the sand, moderates. We need real change and we need it yesterday.
2
At least we have gotten past the pretense that Republicans are just a conservative political party. Republicans blatant corruption, misuse of government funds to enrich themselves, and desire to turn the US into a country under Putin’s control has been illuminating to say the least. There is not bottom for them, they have long ceased to be Americans. They may be able to decimate the US, that remains to be seen, but they will always be known as the fascists they are.
6
Political are opinions based on emotion, not reason!
My dear mother-in-law is 95 years old and has voted a straight Republican ticket all her life. This year, she registered as a Democrat and says she'll never vote for a Republican again. Change may be slow, but it does happen.
5
I voted for Reagan and the first Bush for President, but switched to democrat shortly after. I am a secular fiscal conservative who is socially progressive. There is no room for people like me in the republican party.
The one positive thing I can say about Trump is he will get democrats out to vote, something no democrat could do.
4
This pollster makes the same mistake the conservative columnists do, they think their opponents think like they do. They do not. Conservatives think very differently than progressives and progressives think very differently than conservatives.
2
2020 is an historic opportunity to wipe Republistan off the face of the political map.
For 39 years, the Grand Old Phonies have been leading the oligarchic charge over a Russian-Republican cliff of 'free-market' vulture capitalistic economic violence and record income/wealth inequality.
They have gerrymandered, neo-Jim-Crowed, and court-rigged their way into corrupt power so the 0.1% could surf their way to a tax-evasion and slave-labor-wage Shangri La, capped off by the 2017 Trump-GOP 0.1% Welfare Queen Tax Act, the dismantling of Environmental Protection Agency, and the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and blessing of GOP-gerrymandering.
The Republican Party has shown America who they are: greedy oligarchs hostile to the common good, to the environment, democracy, to paying their fair shares, to infrastructure, to fiscal responsibility, to justice, to affordable healthcare and to the economic dignity of the American people....and will to condone the daily feeding of religion and white spite to the duped masses in order to keep an extra dollar in their pockets.
The Republican Party has shown America who it is.
It is an historically destructive and undemocratic force that requires a resounding and devastating defeat at the ballot box.
Register.
Help others to register.
Donate.
Vote.
https://www.voterparticipation.org/support-our-work/donate-to-vpc/
D to go forward; R for reverse....over the cliff.
November 3, 2020
7
you forgot to mention that with rare exception the dems are all paid off as well.
1
The comments on here must be enough for Mr Greenberg to reflect, and think before he writes.
1
Much depends on how many more people vote in 2020
who did not vote in 2016.
Around 50 % of the people bother to vote in national elections.
If the Republicans can get 10 % more of their supporters to
turn out then the Blue Wave evaporates.
Just because you are an immigrant does not mean you
will vote Democratic and not every immigrant is in favor
of more immigrants.
Pamela Harris lost my vote by agreeing with the man
who called Trump a "Retard", such a lack of sensitivity
to the use of a disgusting phrase, one used against my
brother who lacked oxygen during part of his birth, over
and over again in school, shows a side of her that is
elitist and ugly.
Elections are strange affairs and who know what may happen
and who will say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
We were told that McGovern would sweep Nixon and his cronies
out of office but then Eagleton was given 1,000% support by
McGovern and then asked to step aside a few days later.
I like Warren, I may vote for her.
6
@John Brown
Who is Pamela? I don't think she is running.
1
Mr.Greenburg has gone too far in his imagination and I wish that he is right. The Republican Party is morally bankrupt and ethically scores minus F. But they are racially energized and financially rich . They know crook business and they are corrupt.
They are fake and fraud. But the Democrats are deeply divided and eating each other. The Courts are with the GOP. They are the best in rigging elections. The most important in our politics that most of us are politically naïve, ignorant , lazy and uninterested.
2
Trump will be re-elected. Republicans will maintain their ill gotten hold on the white nationalist middle of the country. There is no rational thought left in America.
3
Let's never forget who the NYTimes showed us to be the 'Tea Party' - it was a bunch of former Ray-gun-ites engaging in agit props:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/opinion/24fri2.html
Tea Party is a too often used misnomer for special interest activities.
1
The Republican "Party" died years ago. It was replaced by the Republican Cult. It's adherents are impervious to reason and they aren't going anywhere.
8
A comment in another NYT article included a reminder that the Russians also hacked the RNC.
nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election-hack
"They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks."
Why didn't the Russians publish what they found in the RNC hack? Does that give them leverage over the RNC/GOP as well as Trump?
The RNC/GOP has been corrupt for quite some time. They, along with Russia, seem quite content to have Trump as their useful idiot. But I wonder if being "spared" by the hack gives any insight into the degree of complicity of the RNC with Trump?
1
As long as there is racism, there will be an Republican Party.
6
As long as there is something to hate, there will be a Republican Party.
13
You nailed... something. The Democratic Party may be in its last throes as a nationally followed organization.
While most workers and most followers of the Judeo-Christian ethic have been secured to the GOP's crusade for black, Latino and female employment, the minority running the Dem party makes the most childishly irrational statements - and plans! - about how they will outlaw or end -
most energy industries,
most auto travel,
all access to airplanes outside of government officials,
the meat industry - for the kookiest rationale ever,
the private ownership of rifles that actually created this country in the first place, and -
need I go on?
What will cost the Dems so many elections is that THEY cling to the very things they would deny regular Americans.
THEY ae the ones with the gigantic carbon footprints, people like the Obamas are the ones craving pork ribs, the progressives' properties are the ones surrounded by high walls, and the Left is today's enemy of free speech.
2
@L osservatore, of course, everything you impute to Dems is either misleading or entirely false, but you love DT, I get it. Yeah, the Dems are gonna take your guns, your pickups and your cheeseburgers....except, we will all have to give up our “way of life” as we know it if we want a livable planet. Where is the voice of reason and reality in the Republican Party that articulates that? Nowhere. Which is exactly where you are...even if it looks like Verona.
6
The sky is not falling! The sky is not falling!
Yes, it is.
5
From that title to God's ears.
2
"Source: Democracy Corps" LOL
1
If politics were a football game, the Republicans currently lead the Democrats 55-3 late in the 3rd quarter.
Pundits have been predicating the demise of the Republicans for years and as recently as 2016.
To quote Divya, "fool me one shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me"
1
Bragging about how your opponent is doomed a year before kick-off never seems wise.
12
"...a Republican Party determined to destroy government outside of defense..." I think a more accurate phrasing would be "The Republican Party is determined to destroy government...PERIOD." They want to destroy the very thing they are a part of, so that Big Business can run rampant over the country--destroying unions, destroying wages, destroying regulation and consumer protection, and making insane profits in the process. Meanwhile, the Republicans in government would do essentially...NOTHING. All while collecting a six-figure income at taxpayers' expense for doing little or no work.
The Republican Party is no more than a lap-dog for modern-day robber barons who would raze this country to the ground in order to fatten their bank accounts. I am sick to death of Republicans who still say, "The business of this country IS business." The business of this country is the safety and welfare of 330 million Americans. And Republican voters entrusted the welfare of this country to an orange-faced clown (who has NO idea what he's doing) and Moscow Mitch (who is determined to hold this country hostage while passing tax cuts for the "businessmen" who own him body and soul).
I intend to vote STRAIGHT Democrat in the 2020 election. I don't care if the Democrats nominate a popsicle stick in 2020. I'll vote for it.
Trump voters rebelled against Obama in 2016. Now Democratic voters will rebel against Der Trumpenfuhrer. There's a hard rain a-comin', Republicans. Payback is a...
4
Headlines like this are idiotic. Just fueling Democratic complacency. Last I checked, the Republicans controlled the Senate, and are skilled in the dark arts of gerrymandering and voter suppression, fueled by their potent potion of overt racism. Trump will win in 2020, the Party of Evil will continue to control the Senate, and I only hope the Dems can keep the House. And Mr. Greenberg can return to the woodwork and plan Hillary Clinton's 2024 campaign, since he did such a great job in 2016. Wish this were all not true, but I don't see much reason for hope.
2
A CIA operative confirmed that Putin ordered 2016 election meddling. That is how we got Trump, the most undemocratic president ever. I hope our country can survive him. But I worry daily. Too many people believe his lies and blusters.We have to regain our democracy. At any cost.
3
These are the same rehased stories from 2012 and 2016 - Dream on!
1
"This is a transformational moment. Do the Democrats understand how to take advantage of it?"
All they now how to do is play a winning hand to a loss.
1
Half of top US economists surveyed either agreed (46%) or strongly agreed (4%) that "low-skilled American workers would be substantially worse off if a larger number of low-skilled foreign workers were legally allowed to enter the US each year."
http://igmchicago.org/surveys/low-skilled-immigrants
3
This editorial seems like a lot of wishful thinking..and useless statistics...-- Remember, the statistics said Hillary Clinton would win in 2016.. Wrong!
....--Also, Republicans currently hold the Presidency, the Senate, Supreme Court, and most of the Governorships... Is this what
Mr. Greenberg means by the 'end of the Republican party'..?
--It takes a whole lot more to 'transform a nation' then merely winning an election.. We saw that with all the Obama hype. It really starts with ourselves, and not waiting for some messiah to do it for us..
--Though, getting rid of Trump would be a big step in the right direction.. (But don't count your chickens yet..)
3
Republicans drool at the thought of being able to destroy social security and medicare, they are the party of the rich, the party of corporate greed. They have no interest or desire to help the real people of America, and until the average Republican voter realises that, they will continue to vote for the party that is actually against them. The Republican Party would have no chance of surviving without the electoral college, the majority of America knows how the republicans operate, and the majority of America is against their greed, dishonesty, and immoral policies.
5
As a conservative (not a synonym for Republican), I left the Republican party more than a decade ago. Its support of the imperialistic, militaristic policies of the military-industrial-religious complex is what soured me on it. There is no way I could ever vote for a buffoon like Trump, no matter the policies he may support that I agree with. He is a despicable human being. How it is that the Evangelical Christian community (the majority of it) can support him is beyond me, but it shows its bankruptcy and that it has thoroughly disregarded the the teachings of Jesus Christ. If I had someone to vote for in this election, it would be the first Democrat I ever voted for for president and it would be Tulsi Gabbard. She's an honest broker.
1
And then there is the electoral college ....
2
What I expect from a Clintonite. Only talks about himself.
First. Show the numbers on democrats as a percent of the voting population over time. Then show the approval rating of democrats as a party over time.
Second. Government is not your toy to get what you want.
Third. Every time by which I mean every time some democrat talks about being true to the cause they will not show the numbers on whether a majority favor whatever cause they tout. The true to the cause crowd does not have the numbers on most of their causes.
And yet. Blah blah blah.
2
Dem candidates PLEASE hear this!!! This is what you need to stand behind!
"More than three quarters... believe that sharper regulation of business is necessary to protect the public, that government benefits for the poor don’t go far enough, that racial discrimination still blocks black advancement and that stricter environment laws are worth the cost. Two-thirds believe that corporations make too much profit.... a very different America from the one Republicans have forged."
3
Do we?
I dread to write this but as a Democrat I must.
For me, Biden is our Trump.
No, not the lowlife narcissist or the greedy capitalist but Biden is our party's concrete garden statue, a holy cow that no one can touch.
Biden tells a huge lie and it blows over. Biden flubs a debate and it blows over.
Biden is ahead of all the other candidates.
Wow, that affirms my point.
We have our very own Trump that defies the facts, doesn't have the original ideas we desperately need for 2020.
If he runs and wins, I fear he will be governed by the people around him. Then we will have a paper president. A nice guy. Makes a bad joke pretty often but means no harm.
What Trump has done is set the standard so low we are willing to push a guy who, though a good and loyal servant of the United States, is way too old to be president.
Sherrod Brown, where are you?
Do the Democrats know how to serve the Republican Party it's Coup de Gras?
No, I don't think so.
2
Both parties are broken. You can talk about the dysfunction in the GOP all you want, but you're whistling past the graveyard if you ignore the dysfunction of the Democrats.
Congresswomen Cortez, Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, et all are driving the Democratic Party so far to the left, that moderates may once again face no good choice.
For all Trump's bombast and ugliness, wages are finally rising and black unemployment is at its highest levels ever. As Tim Russert's dad, Big Russ used to say, "You've got to eat."
Trump is the devil people know. And as long as jobs are coming back and wages are rising, I wouldn't bet against him.
3
As my Grandma Rose used to say, "From your mouth to God's ears."
1
Did you see the Trump rally in NC? I still cannot believe we have such people in this country.
4
As long as the electoral college hangs around the barbarians will always be at the gates.
4
Republican of Lincoln extinct. Monarchy of Donald and his descendants reigns. The Constitution is thrashed.
2
According to Forbes in 2011, the Democratic party was doomed, *especially* its left wing!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardminiter/2011/07/18/why-the-democratic-party-is-doomed/
Somebody is either wrong here, or we just keep going around in circles with these dire predictions of one party or the other's death.
Gee, could it be both?
2
Regardless of party, a president presents an image of the USA. the Obama familly presented a "good image" - handsome, young, charismatic and stable family values. The current POTUS totally lacks all of these qualities, which hopefully will contribute to his ouster via the ballot box in 2020. He is a buffon and a liar and does not command respect.
3
Gun violence is the number one issue for the Democrats now, whether they realize it or not, because irrational gun violence is the most immediate and tangible threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to most Americans and their children.
Tragically the Democratic candidates are not focusing on gun violence, which is the one single issue that unites most American voters.
In my Congressional District, for America, polls indicate 85% see gun violence as issue #1. GOP registration in my District exceeds Democratic.
Yet many Democrat candidates are campaigning on many other issues which are much more controversial among the general electorate.
Go figure!!!
2
A wonderful column, and I agree wholeheartedly with its conclusion.
That said, I'm well aware that the DNC and the central power structure of the Democratic Party aren't all that unhappy with the status quo and really don't want the Democratic Party to once again be the "party of the people" that it was in its Glory Days. I think they'd rather have four more years of Trump than four years of Sanders or Warren.
That scares me.
2
Wishful thinking. Any attempt to rationally analyze the status of the Republican Party is doomed precisely because it has amassed a coterie of non-rational supporters who support it for ideological reasons - antiabortion, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-government, anti-taxers, anti-diversity and a host of additional antis.
3
As much as I despise Mr. Trump and the Republican agenda of tax relief for the wealthy and removal of fiscal & environmental safeguards, I do not see the Democratic Party as the standard bearers for progressive solutions. For 40 years Americans have been subjected to "Conservative" ideas and the Democrats meekly went along with it. The damage done by Gingrich, Norquist, Cheny Laffer, Falwell, Fox News et. al cannot be easily repaired since there is no clear contravening ideology to combat them. We have been beaten into believing that unions are evil, greed is good, government is the enemy, taxes are bad, welfare is nefarious and a litany of other "truths" expounded by the right. I fear we are doomed.
5
Do you know what hits the hardest, the most devastating, the deepest in our gut? It is the shame. It is the loss of our identity. It is the realization that we have given away our peace, our strength, our happiness to the crass pettiness of life in the gutter of selfishness. Where is our open-hearted love of people? What has happened to the power of liberty and equality? What have we done to our humanity? Can we survive our own downfall?
4
If the GOP is [already] doomed, the Democrats need do nothing. If the moment is [already] transformational, the Democrats need do nothing.
Sorry, but I can't resist picking apart cheerleading.
1
As brilliant and refreshing as this article is, my gut tells me this is wishful thinking. 80 percent of repulblicas support this president. we are split right down the middle. look at the elections since gore. doesnt matter who runs. similar razor thin wins. immmigrants are not all democrats nor voters. Race is all Trump needs and as he says if you have a hit show don't change it. This worked for a few guys over the course of history. putin has a hit show too.
1
Mr. Greenberg made an excellent case for Democrats to not vote for Joe Biden.
2
Hopefully, these ideas will influence the upcoming Democratic campaign to unseat Trump.
While championing small government and frugal budgets, Tea Party Republicans have enabled a level of greed that has weakened restrictions on corporations and created a gigantic and growing level of income disparity between the wealthiest and the poorest in America. Trump was able to fool many Americans into believing he would stand up for them despite the obvious reality that he cared vastly more about his own fortunes than theirs and didn’t possess any of the skills needed to accomplish what they thought they were supporting.
What he does understand is greed. It is the foundation that underlays and supports the Republican Party. That greed is antithetical to what the voters who supported him in 2016 thought they were voting for. Democrats need to look at the data presented here and stop obsessing about Medicare for All.
Greed! Avarice on a vast scale that has and will continue to run amok if left alone to breed it’s special brand of contempt. This is the winning theme of the 2020 campaign. Slap that label on every single Republican running for any office, anywhere. Make the Republicans own it and force their shameless self-interest into the light.
The policy plans are OK, but they need to be bathed in a blinding light that reveals how Republican corruption is working against average Americans. It may not matter which Democrat prevails, as long as there is a clear focus on greed.
1
I definitely agree that the time to go big for Democrats is now. Among the shocks of the 2016 election was the discovery that even rank and file Republicans are done with Trickle Down economics, want a more activist government, and want to trim the power of corporations.
This is right in the Dems' wheelhouse. The problem? Their stand on illegal immigration, which is the liberal version of climate change denial.
They refuse to admit that an uncontrolled in-flow of desperate, destitute, unskilled, often illiterate people into the workforce obliterates our ability to shore up the middle class, increase blue collar wages, rebuild unions, obtain a $15 hr. minimum wage, get "free college," provide comprehensive healthcare, reduce costs of housing - even have functioning pubic schools and other municipal services.
They will not only deny reality, but slander anyone willing to say the truth as a "bigot."
3
@Livonian
Absolutely right on. Lots of us are scared about changes to "entitlements" and the inequality of wealth. The erosion of environmental safeguards. If the Dems stuck with those things, I and a lot of other Republican-leaners would jump on board. In a heartbeat.
But they colossally misjudge the immigration issue (on which Trump is dead on right), and then add reparations to the stew. Oh, and on all matters racial, a white Boomer male like me simply needs to shut up.
I'm not at all convinced the Dems won't blow it again.
2
Oh I really hope this happens, but I'm skeptical. Maybe its just because I live in a Red State (that went Blue for Obama 11 years ago), but it seems like Trump, for all his personal repulsiveness, has genuine admirers and supporters. I can't name a single Democrat with that same kind of support.
Remember, the GOP is the dirty party, and my God, they play dirty. They even eat their own - think of John McCain in 2000 when Dubya's campaign passed out the smear in the south that his adopted Bangledeshi daughter was his love child with a Black woman.
This is a party that invented the Whitewater "Scandal" out of thin air and acted like it was worse thing for 10 years. This is the party that accused Barack Obama of every crime in the book and of being a communist when in reality he had rather moderate and even some arguably conservative policies.
This is a party without a conscience, without a soul. This is a party that has convinced virtually an entire religion (Evangelicalism that is) to side with it above all else as an article of faith - even when its policies violate the tenets of the Bible. This is a party that will go to any lengths to win, with no thought of decency or patriotism to stand in their way.
And why? My God, why? Because they are being paid a whole lot of money, and because - hate sells.
So I while wish the Democrats every victory and plan on supporting whomever is the Dem candidate, I am not sure we should break out the champagne just yet.
2
I hope your optimism is justified. I used to be a Republican when they were a party of conservatives, not the trillion dollar deficit party of Trump and racist demagogues. I changed my registration to independent which means I can vote in either primary since I live in Colorado. I will be voting in the Democratic primary based on electability. I can appreciate Warren; I would have to swallow hard on Sanders, but he is not Trump. That's what matters most to me.
4
Seems like we should remember that Trump didn't really win the presidential election in 2016. He only won the Electoral College and that is where the US has gone wrong--TWICE!!!
2
@bbop
To win the Electoral College is to win the presidential election. THAT is what we should remember.
1
You really need to take a basic Civics class.
1
I have little to no confidence in the political skills of the Democrats. Just look at 2016 if you think I'm being too harsh.
They should have folded up their tent when they couldn't beat an obviously unqualified G.W. Bush...TWICE. Once was even after Bush had started a needless war!
For decades they have been bringing a knife to the political gunfight the Republicans have been waging. Sadly I don't see any changes coming from this current crowd.
4
Nice dream. More likely our country is doomed, in which case so is the world.
2
"This is a transformational moment. Do the Democrats understand how to take advantage of it?"
The circular firing squad forms up...
2
The Republican Party is Not going to weakened until its huge money supply is dried up.
A spy from Britain noted what is different from the Cold War days is that Oligarchs in the West are now working with the Oligarchs from the East.
Oligarchs in the West who are so far to the right that they make a kind of natural cause with those on the other side of the world. Both of them have in common a great contempt for the ordinary conduct of democracy. They want to diminish it. They see it [democracy] as their enemy.
John Le Carré On His 'Legacy' Of Spying
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=548632065
The only tool we have to deal with our own Oligarchs here in the USA is with Taxes. We have to drain away enough of their wealth to inhibit their bad behavior and control their very destructive influence that they have over others.
This goes a long way in explaining the behavior of Republicans in the House and the Senate.
1
"The Republican Party is doomed," says the Democrat poll cat. Yeah, sure, and Hillary had the election in the bag. When Idi Amin, I mean Trump's machine goes into the next election, expect to see super sized fraud, violence, voter suppression, closed polling places, sheriff roadblocks, ballot stealing in polling places and post offices, hacked computer voting machines, ballot stuffing of Richard Daley proportions. The Dems who have been known to cheat and fix elections are virgin Girl Scouts compared to what the Republicans will do. The Democrats had better find ways to stop GOP operatives from shamelessly cheating in the next elections. that will be tough, even if Dem turnout is at record highs.
2
Observant catholics supporting Trump? The Catholic Church made Mother Teresa a saint - now called Saint Teresa of Calcutta. How is support of Trump consistent with that? I suppose the poor and needy should just be told to get lost.
1
I have become convinced that the democrat's slogan should be "Do Something!" Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Government. Boy does that sound like the promised land to this exhausted citizen!
1
No. Americans have a choice between a smart President or a democrat and if (and that's a big if) you can find democrat that is smarter than a brick..., well, we'll wait till that happens.
If the Dems pick Vice President Biden to be the nominee then I fear that it is the Democratic Party that is doomed.
2
Saying the Republicans are in trouble because they did so poorly in 2018 indicates that the writer isn't thinking too clearly.
Obama and the Democrats got steamrolled in 2010. I seem to recall him doing OK in 2012. Reagan got blasted at the polls in 1982. I seem to recall him winning 49 states in 1984.
I surely hope we kick this bum (and his buddies) out next year. But 2018 doesn't mean anything.
2
I don't share Mr. Greenberg's optimism, but I do agree with this statement: "the fight is ... to set the agenda and motivate voters to get involved and pick a side."
Exactly why Hillary Clinton lost.
1
Obama is examined by rational people and seen to have been a disaster in more ways than one. He escalated the troops abroad in general and the Afghanistan war. He bailed out the banks. He created a horrid medical plan which gave the private companies great power; not a medicare for all. In Israel and Palestine he made horrid, biased criminal decisions. He made the tax break to the wealthy permanent. He did nothing for unions. He was a moderate Republican. He supported the military industrial complex like all the neo-liberals do and he took great sums of money from Wall Street and the wealthy and did nothing to control the huge disparity in wealth in america. He carried on just like all the administrations do pushing Americans closer and closer to the brink of destruction. There will be no medicare for all, no elimination of nuclear weapons, no control of climate change, no change in the wealth distribution problem nor the horrid monies in the campaign finance system. Doom is in the air and we all can feel it. The corporations control everything and what the people want is ignored. Corruption will continue though.
3
To respond to the question, based on recent comments made by Democratic candidates, it's not likely they will know how to respond. They will probably whimper and whine about some single progressive issue and pose little more than a distraction. Meanwhile, the presidency will slip by them in the next election as they hand it over to the Republicans. Sad, sad and sadder still.
As someone with an MA in political science & PhD in IPE from a prestigious Ivy school,
let's begin by recognizing that, as currently devised by Greenberg and other mainstream pollsters,
polls measure ONLY the pollster's understanding of the things to be "measured"
Should the pollster NOT understand either relevant internal dynamics, or how the dynamics of what she wants to measure relate to other interdependent phenomena,
the results are intellectually humorous and politically absurd
This seems to be the case claiming the imminent demise of the RPBs
Quite apart from being deeply if unintentionally fallacious, the argument avoids addressing, let alone solving, the key un-formulated but politically crucial question:
If the "data" do, in fact, say what he says they say,
what does that mean for the concrete policies & candidates Dems at ALL levels should run?
A "list" of "findings" is nearly useless in guiding choices for many reasons,
not least that "single-issue" voting is a major reason RPBs can continually construct seemingly heterodox, yet consistently winning, coalitions
Within the modern Dems, there are two main wings:
the corporate, exemplified by Biden, the Clintons and Obama;
the progressive, exemplified by Ted Kennedy and, variably, Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren
To be useful, Greenberg needs to say which wing, espousing which program, can do better in the current scene
He avoids this completely
Given this, what's the point of the whole exercise?
3
The mistake Democrats can make here is to go too far to the left in a mistaken belief that those who have left the Republican party behind them are not endorsing some basic reorientations in the purpose of government. Many Americans are just not as enamored of the Scandinavian welfare state's cost as some American socialists may believe. On top of everything, the Democrats have to come up with an immigration reform plan that is not based on amnesty first, implementation second.
3
@Adrienne
So, GOP policies are just fine as they are, and you doubt they could ever implement anything better
1
So rather than asking voters which candidate is more “electable” or who has the best chance of defeating President Trump, we need to ask which leader best understands this tumultuous period. Which candidate has a theory of the case that pushes aside other interpretations and critiques?
... Yang?
3
If Democrats gain control of the political system it will not last long. To fund the continual expansion of government and benefits that generates public support, you must eventually reach more deeply into the pockets of those that you relied on to provide a winning majority. To produce a pre-ordained equality of outcomes, you must jettison merit and eventually cast aside many who bought into the rhetoric of a benign government that cares for all. To expand the state's reach into more areas of life, you must limit the liberty that many of your supporters thought the government would provide. Eventually, you either lose elections or you more tightly hold onto power via the government colossus you have created. Either way, the democratic political panacea you started out to create can't last forever. All politics is, if not cyclical, constantly evolving.
3
@Robert
Stalin solved this inherent Grand Collective problem with gulags and state confiscation of wealth.
Warren, Bernie, Buttigieg, et al. know this truth, just not willing to be honest about where it will take us all. Total control of healthcare is just the beginning.
The citizens and the property of the state are the same--listen closely to Bernie, Warren, Buttigieg, Booker, and Harris.
I share the countless different concerns of the countless tribal special interest groups (tall/short, rich/poor, black/white, gay/straight, etc) but I value my paycheck more. I have a 1/3 of my check directly withheld as income tax and probably have 1/2 or more taken in tax once you include them all (gas tax, property tax, etc). I don’t think the world will be any better off by my losing even more of my paycheck. I share this because it’s a powerful unspoken motivator at the ballot box for anybody who has a job.
5
Yes!
Ask Sister Marybeth of the Fillipini Order here in Morristown NJ about her lifetime commitment to social justice; she is an inspiration to anyone who enthusiastically practices Jesus’s commandment “love your neighbor as you love “. She does this around the world by helping educate orphans and many other life transforming/saving efforts.
1
Incredible how this facially thorough piece ignores the Democrats’ Achilles heel: identity politics and the progressives’ social justice platform. We’ve known that most Democrat gains in ‘18 were by moderates - not AOC progressives. We’ve known that economic populism has solid crossover appeal. But if the Democrats pick a social progressive, we will learn again that even if the Republican Party is woefully damaged, voters will vote the middle, as they do, and as we know, and treat the Democrats to another electoral - and possibly popular - drubbing. We are blundering ahead in the face of a known danger. Why?
4
@MWR
Because "moderation" means moving to the right. More corporate welfare, less healthcare, more inequality, more punishment of the poor, more oppression of women and minorities. To me, that is Democratic Moderates represent.
2
The Electoral College still ensures an over-representation of voters in less-populated states, most of which are "red."
Also, I'm very alarmed by the Democratic Party where two of the front-runners -- Biden and Sanders -- are obviously too old to take on such a job as President in January 2021.
2
I am cautiously optimistic that trump can be defeated in '20 if the Dems avoid radical or controversial candidates, but progressives that address the concerns of voters who feel left behind or ignored.
And as important, the Dems must get their base to the polls. That means the base of all the Dem candidates!
2
Obama did the right thing. He took one for the team by going to the mat—and spending a ton of political capital on health care reform, to say nothing about bailing out car companies and pushing through a stimulus program in the face of stiff, and largely unprincipled, opposition. Yes, Dems took a hit in 2012. It was worth it.
1
I wish I were optimistic about transformation but over the last four decades the GOP has succeeded in systematically weakening the ability of the electorate to be fairly represented. The measures they've implemented, combined with the Electoral College and disproportionate red state influence in the Senate, present a formidable obstacle to the transformation sought by most Americans. Here's the latest example: closing polling places in red states
2
I did consider myself a genetic Republican as I am a descendant of William Henry Seward, the Secretary of State to President Abraham Lincoln. But I am not of anything that Donald Trump stands for. So I will vote Democratic in 2020. I was impressed with John Kelly and Jim Mattis who often kept a check on President's worst impulses. I am reading "Call Sign Chaos Learning to Lead" by General Mattis. I never have been comfortable with governing by Twitter. Most presidents know how to operate behind the scenes and then come out to give press conferences on important stories. The Shuttle Challenger explosion Ronald Reagan, 9/11 George W. Bush, the death of Osama bin Laden Barack Obama.
Some of the incoming Democrats, both female and male are pragmatic and many are combat veterans. Some former prosecutors. Women, especially of color are more prevalent.
Republicans used to be for fiscal restraint. Under Trump this year we are likely to break a $ 1.0 Trillion deficit.
And states are in lockstep saying no Republican primary for 2020. Even though there are three good candidates.
Notice that Trump gives a few off-hand comments on the way to Marine One, the presidential helicopter. His rallies are the way he gives his supporters red meat. Almost always castigating and blaming the Democrats for everything. If he mentions "The Squad" one more time, for me it will be time for a stiff drink.
9
If Republican voters applied logic to their selection of candidates, the party would be doomed. That has not, and will not happen: Republicans are ignoring all the things that are wrong with trump and trumpism out of their hatred for "elites, Liberals, people living on the coasts and Democrats in general".
2
Would that Mr Greenberg is correct, but I am reluctant to trust Democratic pollsters after the monumental mis-call in 2016.
5
Make no mistake. The GOP isn't waging war on government; it's waging war on democracy, itself. The GOP understands that their power holds up only by depriving the majority of proper representation in government.
9
Instead of the phrase "observant Catholics," might I suggest "right-wing Catholics" or -- if that's too pejorative -- "conservative Catholics." Like so many other groups (Latinos, Asians), Catholics are a very diverse bunch. While there's a modest link between regular Mass attendance and support for Republicans, it's by no means a given. Many observant Catholics are deeply committed to social justice and progressive policies. Just ask any nun.
4
We have a family member who lives in the midwest and visited our city, out on the West Coast. In the midwest, Fox News reigns and so does Trump, no matter that this relative is highly educated.
When this relative visited our city over the summer, he was surprised to see the misinformation he had been fed. Example: local FOX news in his town in the midwest had reported an exodus of people leaving our City...False..He spent 2 weeks with us, plane ticket paid by my husband and while he was with us and after dinner we got into some pretty healthy conversations about the "true" nature of all Trump things. Alas, once this relative got back to the midwest, he got into his typical Fox News and "I support Trump state of mind." Why? because everyone around him also supports Trump.
4
Greenberg’s inspiring, evidence-based analysis must not become part of a presumption of Democratic victory that likely caused some Democrats in 2016 to not vote, due to presumption that Clinton would win. We must work for 2020 victory as if Trump is as likely to win as he brashly believes he will.
The real message here, to my mind, is buried at the end, as the conclusion to a long, well-argued case: “Democrats should ... get to work building a bold era of progressive reform.”
EXACTLY what needs to be done to quickly undo Trump’s damage, when the Democratic presidency hits the ground running?
Think of where the economy would be, if the U.S. had followed through with the brilliant Trans-Pacific Partnership that, with U.S. engagement, would compel China to comply with its WTO commitments.
Think of the greater willingness of corporate America to comply with the Paris Accords agenda, if they could rely on U.S. leadership.
Think of prospects for avoiding military action when collaborative global leadership works diplomatically. Business investment wants this! Think of the cost savings to national debt.
On and on, one could imagine: Infrastructure programs that will give U.S. business greater futures than tax breaks that get funneled into buy-backs and dividends.
But the Democrats must dress their progressive policy proposals in an inspiring vision for overworked citizens who can’t keep up with details.
Democrats must not shy from authentically inspiring rhetoric.
3
Make voting mandatory.
The Republicans will be a powerless third party.
5
Just out of curiosity, how are you going to get someone to vote if they don’t like any of the candidates?
The answer is: no, the democrats don't. They are still back at the 2016 primary when it was centrism vs progressivism - that is where their focus is, sadly. The loudest voices on the left are sending the message to America that it's either full blown democratic socialism or Trump. This idea that Trump will be SO BAD that democrats will have no choice but to have their revolution at long last. It likely won't go that way because they'll lose the middle and Trump will be right there to snatch it up...
2
The problem with both parties right now is how they are being bullied and manipulated by the most extreme elements of their parties. The moderate Republicans are being manipulated by the Trump-supporting extremists, which is why Republican politicians often act sycophantic to the President and his base. Meanwhile, the Democrats are being manipulated by the "woke" twitter mob, which represents only a small percentage of their party.This often makes people like myself, someone who is in the middle of the political spectrum feel like a man without a country. Hopefully, this election will be a referendum against radicalism of any sorts.
3
Maybe, maybe not in 2020. But I tend to agree long term. What really strikes me is the tone of these comments. It's truly amazing. So much civility and intelligent discourse. After looking at Fox News commentary a number of times, it really blows me away with the contrast. Are Fox readers such a minority? Or are there just so many people out there able to hide their hate/ignorance so effectively?
2
Articles like this ignore the massive right wing propaganda machine ('a 'la Fox News), the behavior of the electorate, and the temerity of the media in not truly challenging lies and deceptions by the Republicans (a point the Times' Paul Krugman often laments). Trump's base is alive and well, as is the Republican party, who will have plenty of victories in 2020. And quite possibly again in the White House. Mr. Greenberg needs to widen his lenses.
3
Here's what is missing: there aren't anymore Trumps. That why the GOP is doomed. None of your "he's losing the support of this or that group of white people". He's going to make a solid run in 2020 and, if he loses, he'll be back in 2024. Stop and think: there IS some chance he'll lose in 2020. Then what? He isn't just going to disappear. He'll either demand a rematch--fabulous television; better ratings than LaBron got--or he'll do an apprentice-type show (Spring of '23) to find his own replacement. Outcome: it'll go right down to the wire (Pence vs Kid Rock )and he'll say, "I just have to run again myself". What a finale!
3
It's obviously just a matter of time. But how much--and can we last that long?
From your mouth to God's ear. But I'm not as optimistic as you are. The Democrats have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Just yesterday I believe there was an article about Sanders supporters who did not vote in 2016 or were ashamed to admit they voted for Hillary. If Biden gets the nomination they will stay home and elect Trump.
5
The Republican Party is doomed? Be interesting if Trump wins again.
2
What the Democrats must do is make the case that unless we take care of our environment, nobody wins and the Earth will reclaim us. That should be an easy case to make, and it's a win-win, creating real jobs when non-renewable industries are closing up shop and/or feeding at the trough of corporate welfare.
The Republicans are backing the horse that will bury us in waste.
3
The American people decided some time ago not to vote or educate themselves about the nuances and complexity of their beloved nation. They decided to forget that the country was built on principles of liberal democracy and they decided to ignore the inalienable system of ethics underlying said principles. If it were any different, every city in this country with more than a thousand people would look like Hong Kong has for the past several months. The Republican Party is in control permanently. Get used to it.
1
"... the Republican Party as we know it." Republicans as I know them, starting back in '63 or so, are; law abiding, flag waving, "my country right or wrong", "love it or leave it", pro government, pro business, tax paying, police supporting, church going, folks who imply they have more and better morals than you. So what do the Republicans of yesteryear, "as we know" them, have to do with the tax cheating, fraud scheming grifters with ties to corrupt foreign leaders, money laundering, lawless liars we now see occupying the White House and other political offices, judges benches and cabinet seats?
2
How better to personify Republican doom than our zombie president?
Trump was doomed in 2016. Perhaps you grossly underestimate the number of White Nationalists in this country.
5
Or the fact the Hillary was a known and unpopular candidate. And I’m being generous.
I hate peace and prosperity ,bring on the dems .
3
I’m a moderate republican that voted twice for Obama and against trump
Based on the socialists running on the democratic side I will either sit out this election or swallow the vomit in back of my throat and vote trump 2020
4
@alec you should read more about socialism before you comment. None of the democrat candidates are calling for the state/government to take over industry, business, all means of production. What some of them are advocating for are better services, protections and supports for the people. Before you go on about “welfare” please think about the current tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest people, the tax payer supported farm bills that only support corporate farmers, the minuscule cost, thanks to the taxpayers, the extraction industry and cattle industry pays to ruin our public lands...I would rather our taxes go to supporting medical care for everyone, free education, restrictions on things that threaten our health and safety, daycare for working parents- in other words all the things citizens of civilized nations enjoy.
2
NYT might want to clarify the following misleading text: "...his administration's rescue of the big banks..."
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (the bank bailout) was signed into law by President George W. Bush before the 2008 presidential election.
3
Vote Blue, no matter who.
3
This appears a bit too pedantic and intellectually oriented for even an NYT Op Ed. Democrats need prepare 3-4 word slogans that precisely present Trump’s harm and Democrats answers —responsive to, and delivered to each critical voting area of the nation.
1
“Automatic weapons”?
There we’re NO automatic weapons used in the various mass shooter events in the USA in the past few years. Repeat it after me. “NONE.”
The black rifles that this author tries to cite are SEMI-automatic weapons.
An automatic fires so long as you hold the trigger. It’s darned near impossible to buy or possess these legally as a civilian. Can’t buy them, can’t even find them, not unless you’re rolling with big time drug dealers and arms smugglers with international connections.
The semi-automatics used in the attacks fire only once per trigger pull. The removable magazine enables a fast reload but there is nothing magical about the weapon. One squeeze, one bang. Bigger magazine means more shots before reloads.
They do not spray bullets like in a cheesy action movie. It can be fast but it’s not the brrrrrrrrrrpppppt of a Rambo movie.
Get it right. GET IT RIGHT! Stop lying. Words matter and people on the other side know immediately when you have it wrong. When you get it wrong, everything else that you just said becomes meaningless because you’ve proven that you do not know what you are taking about, dear author.
1
Automatic, schautomatic. We all know kind of weapons of war did the killing in Newtown, Dallas, Las Vegas, Odessa, Orlando, Parkland, etc etc. We all know they were all purchased after Bush II let the Clinton-era ban lapse. We don't need to split hairs. We have it right: More Guns = More Deaths. Military weapons have no place in a civil society; reasonable people are starting to catch on to that. Gun worshippers have left lus little choice: Repeal and Confiscate.
2
I have great hope that this entire editorial is true and wil unfold throughout the 2020 election. But we Democrats will not win next year with ridiculously expensive proposals like Medicare for all and free college tuition for all which Trump and the GOP will scream that all income taxes will have to rise to pay for those ideas. And the constant drumbeat of impeachment with only 14 months before the election is an unnecessary distraction as most voters feel impeachment should happen in Nov. 2020 and not before. Stick to the issues and the facts if we're going to make Republican rule a bad memory.
1
Is Mr. Greenberg a secret Republican? 2018 was about Republicans taking away your health care. If Warren or Sanders are the nominee, 2020 will be about Democrats taking away your health care. If thats the kind of transformative change being offered, Democrats will lose. Losing, even when its is easy to win by doing the popular thing, is one of Democrats' core competencies. Mr. Greenberg is one of the reasons they are so good at this.
"Mr. Greenberg is a Democratic pollster"
Great and why should we care what he thinks about the Republican Party? This whole "the right is doomed" has been circulating for as long as I've been around. It's wishful thinking.
Think about this: it's not a coincidence that Americans are politically divided 50/50. Traditional bases of support may change, but we should expect the 50/50 left/right divide to continue for the time being. In a two party system, that seems almost inevitable.
2
Eulogies to the GOP have been happening for a long time, I can find several saying the GOP was a finished party in 1964 after the loss of Goldwater. In my lifetime I remember that being said yet again in 2008 after their major loss under Obama.
Somehow reactionaries survive. The simple fact is as long as we have billionaires we will have the GOP. The Democratic base and the Democratic Party Leadership are two very different things. The problem with the Dems is that the leadership is actually vehemently opposed to most of their own constituents goals. This is why they always come across so wishy washy and weak. They have force behind them but rather then targeting and unleashing it, they capture it and attempt to diffuse it. Trading large powerful programs like M4A for small victories in the world of manners towards elites and respect for the media. The Democratic Party its incoherent because the leadership badly needs to be completely replaced.
It is funny for me to hear some of the cautioning against things like Medicare for all and eliminating private insurance. People love their private insurance, they say. Really? Who actually loves their health insurer? Those with insurance through their employer know only one thing: medical care will still be very expensive, but if you did not have insurance it would bankrupt you. Where is the love in that? Employers change their insurers every year. I never hear anyone say, "Oh, no, don't change to Anthem, we must stay with Blue Cross Blue Shield!" No one pays any attention, except to complain about both, probably. And yet, Medicare has a very good reputation. People love Medicare. So, I think, some see political danger, political suicide, where it does not exist. The Green New Deal, what is so scary about that? It's an infrastructure plan. Finally an infrastructure plan. A jobs plan. Finally a jobs plan. Who cares, green whatever, we need infrastructure, we need jobs. Why is this so scare. To the voters, it is not. And so on.
2
"The 2020 election will be transformative like few in our history."
Sorry but I'm having transformation fatigue.
1
Never, at least in our USA, has political doom been more deserved.
1
My grandfather was a small businessman who was doing quite well before the great Depression. He lost everything but to his dying day he blamed Roosevelt for his problems not the bankers and financial factors that were the real cause. Today when I talk to small business owners they are overwhelmingly for Trump and blame most of their problems on the government. Some things never change but luckily the majority of people in this country are not small business owners.
2
For the last 40-50 years, the federal government has been unable to address teh type of problems which it historically handled reasonably well. Infrastructure: whether it is "crumbling" or not, it has not kept pace with population and economic growth. That was NOT true before 1975 or so. Education: This is primarily state responsibility, but the ridiculous variation in quality and the emergence of debt peonage for many who obtain 'higher' education were and are matters of at least partial federal concern. Healthcare. Inncreasing inequality, which is both a cause and consequence of the failure to address these other problems. The reason is the Republican Party: its refusal to offer solutions or cooperate with Democrats in fashioning them. Obamacare is symptomatic: the Democrats passed Romneycare on a national scale, only to face bitter, implacable and mindless opposition from the Republicans.
3
As better minds than mine have observed, it may be democracy that is doomed. Even our founders weren't convinced that the populace at large could govern themselves, and our political system reflects that. That was before the chaos of instantaneous connections, social media, and networks devoted to misinformation. They feed the most reactionary parts of our primate brains. All over the world democracies are being shaken at their foundations and authoritarianism is on the rise. Now add in weapons of mass destruction, the growing threat of cyber warfare in a world ever more dependent on technology, and environmental issues. Our future is not so bright.
2
I think it's wishful thinking. The Republicans are so strong in so many parts of the country - those which can produce the electoral college votes. Maybe those big states that Hillary lost in 2016 will go Democratic, but what does that need to happen? A great Democratic candidate. Maybe one pf the current leaders will develop into someone we can rally behind with enthusiasm. Let's hope.
And, those who call for impeachment are probably just ensuring Trump's re-election. His real failure is not (just) that he is corrupt to his core, but that he is completely unfit for office - mentally unbalanced and totally incompetent to boot.
2
My parents live in Florida. Their experience doesn't match this article at all. I live in Chicago and get out to Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin pretty regularly. I don't see this in the midwest either.
I don't think that any poll was made for the oddity that is the Trump presidency. The whole thing is so abnormal and pushes all the American buttons on race in such a way that I don't think polling will ever be accurate.
5
I want to say so many things.
We need to make it mandatory that every single adult in the country has to vote in every election and issue that comes up to be voted on by the people.
There is no valid or legitimate argument to be made against the idea. How could making us more democratic be bad?
I'm not naive, I am sure the same forces who worked for decades to come up with the scam reagan pulled on us to destroy the New Deal & get us here will find ways to corrupt that system too. But to not do it is like not putting your money into a bank because they get robbed.
1
The Republican Party might be doomed if they do this in Trump's 2nd Term:
Donald Trump won’t say it, but Republicans in the Senate will: Social Security and Medicare would be on the chopping block in a second Trump term. Pointing to rising deficits, Republican senators have all but promised to gut entitlements if Trump gets four more years according to Forbes.
3
This assumes election results will be honored. There is increasing evidence Republicans do not hold such a view if they lose, their plan b if their constant disfranchisement of the populus on occasion fails. Indeed it is almost certain Trump will not leave office if he loses, confirming his alter ego Michael Cohen's prediction. It is time for citizens to confront this question directly.
2
These read more than like the rambling fantasies of a partisan zealot than the sober assessment of a pollster. Perhaps this is why the polls were so off in 2916, leading some to ponder - other than the polls what other evidence is there that Hillary is ahead?
6
@Wilbur Clark The polls were not off. On the eve of the election, they largely predicted a toss up. While Clinton was still favored, most pollsters recognized that Trump could win in the way that he did.
5
Been waiting for it since last century. Hope you’re right.
2
Trump won the electoral vote. Never had a mandate. This was done by kicking off millions of voters from the voting rolls and having a little help from Putin. Fox so called news tells as many lies as the man in the white house which is aired from coast to coast. Only one republican has said anything against Trump. The republicans have done nothing to help this this country at all. I love dirty air, I like the environment getting trashed, I like my autos to get five miles per gallon and on and on.
2
"End Racism" is about as meaningless as "Pay Equality in Sports"--as if there is anything equal about sports, male or female, from ability to ad revenue to fan-following.
In tennis, for example, how is it equal work for equal pay when women play best of three, men five? If the issue is biology isn't "fair", Nadal v. Andreescu, so, despite innate ability and its necessary limitations, culture--the Committee of Public Safety--should do what nature didn't do?
And the ad nauseam "bloody shirt" waving of the left aside, where is "racism", save in college admission policies--which have produced nada--where competence becomes secondary to Cultural Marxist dogma? Whatever self-serving DNC Politburo ideology says it is?
1
@Alice's Restaurant
Therefore all those who think racism is a real thing and a bad thing are communists?? Good grief. Think much? And by the by, women make about 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man, often for doing exactly the same job. Wake up.
1
@B
It just so happens Cultural Marxists wave the "bloody shirt" as if "racism" is replete--like corruption in the deep swamp. Certainly isn't in the Post Office, or TSA, or airline workers of all sorts, or med school graduates, or many thousands of other jobs done by us all in America.
And that 80 cents on the dollar is propaganda for those who like simple answers--don't like to "Think much". Men and women have different interests--e.g., orthopedic surgeons v. family medicine, Boeing engineers v. secondary teachers, the list goes on--which pushes them into different occupations with different pay scales.
Now, if you are suggesting that a female healthcare workers should make what a male plumber makes, you have an argument--the Cultural Marxist uber alles argument.
Can we pray for a fair election?
1
To answer the question posed in the headline:
No. No they don't.
1
From your mouth to God's ear, Mr. Greenberg.
3
Stop calling it the “party of Lincoln.” That has not been true for many, many decades. Now it’s just another right wing lie.
5
I can't believe how many of my friends and Christians support Trump like good German lemmings on Kool aid as the cliffs grow closer.
He embarrasses them, but they mumble: "Well, the economy is good" or "the Bible says there are no perfect men."
To paraphrase Mencken: "You can never convince somebody of something they think is contrary to their economic interest."
Factors bound to make it tough on democratic candidate:
Roaring economy, Reduction of government restraints, Tax breaks, Voter suppression, Unsecured ballot boxes..Putin.
The democrats have no obvious choice. The Republicans haven't started all out maligning. Kerry was up 20 points -- and lost to a man who was playing golf while he was being shot at on the Mekong River.
I appreciate the author's sentiments but I'll believe them when I can celebrate.
1
We all know what polls are worth...
2
The Republican Party is not "doomed" and Mr. Greenberg does not remotely imply that it is. He just believes Trump will get a smaller share of the popular vote in 2020 than in 2016. Absent a war, he is probably right about that.
The Democratic Party leadership is clueless and gutless, and has been for many years, and the GOP leaders have known that for many years. For this reason alone, the GOP will survive the defeat of Trump.
If top Democratic politicians were fighters with backbones, their Republican counterparts could not survive for long degraded into the Party of Trump as they now are. But, in a two-party duopoly, where only one of the two parties is consistently ready and willing to fight hard, and to unscrupulously exploit any possible weakness of its "rival", that fighting party can escape doom even though it has almost no principles or purpose or redeeming value to the country left.
Once Trump is gone, the GOP will quickly pivot away from any discussion of him. And the Democratic Party will soon enough be forced to stand for something other than being anti-Trump. The two will then contest the rubble they helped create, one fighting aggressively, the other wringing hands.
Abraham Lincoln's grave is troubled. FDR and LBJ would be shocked.
America will survive.
Its political system as we have known may indeed be gone. But the two parties that have helped bring it down will live on. Americans appear incapable of imagining politics without them.
1
We've heard this before--after the Goldwater debacle of course but also other times. Take it with a grain of salt, but make sure you vote and financially support the Good Ones.
Donald Trump won’t say it, but Republicans in the Senate will: Social Security and Medicare would be on the chopping block in a second Trump term. Pointing to rising deficits, Republican senators have all but promised to gut entitlements if Trump gets four more years according to Forbes.
3
Let's not be optimistic or pessimistic about 2020. Let's be realistic. If the recent past is any indication of the recent future,
the Democrats will continue to cannibalize themselves instead of putting their party above themselves, thereby snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not only that, if more of them would decide to run for the Senate, House or governor, they would set
the agenda through 2028.
Remember, Trump never thought he'd win and managed his expectations. Dems would benefit from borrowing that page of his playbook.
Vote.
The Republican Party is not doomed unless the Democrats start getting some teeth and do some critical thinking and take on Trump. At the moment on the facebook page of 'Donald J Trump' official, he has some competition where you buy a straw and can win a free hat if you send in a photo of yourself with straw. Straws are made of plastic and pollute the environment and plastic kills dolphins and other fish in the ocean. get some young Democrats in the party to take him on and get yourselves some media time. Trump gets media time because he is controversial and it costs him nothing. It you don't get gutsy and take him on, and stick to your policies when criticising him, the democrats will not be seen as strong. Get your younger party members to take him on and have some guidelines; someone notable or personalities who will get media coverage time.
Someone needs to point out that a free Trump hat won't get you hospital care or pay the bills. It's not a personality show and people should remember you're voting for policies not personalities.
2
Currently, each Dem candidate is vying to be accepted by the most vocal social and environmental warriors. Keeps the negativity down. Their current promises and pronouncements are, of course, untenable to what is a mostly-moderate voting public.
Once a Dem candidate is anointed, one would expect a much more rational, more do-able party platform. If not, the Republican Party won't be the one that is doomed.
I working on Barack Obama's campaign in 2008 and 2012. I was particularly impressed with OFA - Obama for America. This was an operation with flawless execution, vision, leadership at every level and a great ground game. I am not seeing this kind of organization today in the Democratic Party. There was a poll out today indicating the dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party was at the same level as the Republican party. After the success in 2018, voters are expecting results from the Democrats, which they are not seeing. And neither am I. We need to get more organized and ready to fight the Republican machine or we are going be sorely disappointed in 2020.
Yes well, haven't we heard his before. As long as democratic pollsters and pundits don't distinguish between legal and documented immigrants (everybody loves them) and illegal and undocumented (70% of voters are against), they will never understand the mentality of (especially) lower income voters whose jobs and wages are threatened by such undocumented persons (we should not refer to them as immigrants).
1
To the extent the party is Pelosi, who is out of step with much of the party, her answer to the transformational moment will be to continue her supine fear of Trump's power.
Sadly, the Republican Party is far from doomed, and Trump could easily be reelected. I appreciate the data provided and the graphs, but I remember seeing similar data prior to GWBush being reelected in 2004. And, remember all the polls that said Hillary was sure to win?
That said, I think Mr. Greenberg is onto something when he says the key to winning against Republicans is to correctly identify exactly what fight is being fought. Hopefully, a Democratic challenger will emerge (Not Biden or Bernie), who can convincingly make that case
As a pollster, Greenberg has a lot of statistics to prove his argument. Unfortunately voters can and will say one thing and do another. It would be same thesis if I were to say, based on my view of the upcoming election through the eyes of the NYT, that the GOP will be smothered in 2020.
3
Analyses that only examine aggregate national data cannot predict elections. Because of the Electoral College, it is necessary to query voter preferences state-by-state, with a focus on the swing states. Looking separately at groups by race, class, ethnicity and gender, while a step toward a more complete analysis, does not account for regional variance within these groups. The suburban women of Scarsdale cannot be assumed equivalent to their counterparts in Birmingham.
Unfortunately, this article, like the national polls that missed the 2016 Democratic defeat, provides no state-level breakdowns.
1
More sunshine and lollipops (or rainbows and unicorns). It all works as stated if we ignore:
1. The Electoral College
2. Russian interference.
3. Voter suppression.
4. Hackable voting machines and computer systems.
5. Corrupt election officials.
6. Corrupt administration officials.
7. Right-wing stacked courts.
8. Hundreds of millions of dollars from the Koch family, Sheldon Adelson and other billionaires protecting their fortunes and power.
9. And on, and on, and on...
Sad how progressives scream about how damaging all of these things are, only to leave them out entirely when projecting Trump's demise. So, do these things impact presidential elections, or are they just things to bitch about (aka "fake news")?
6
@gleapman Probably because you have bought in lots of new immigrants from corrupt nations that are high up on the world corruption index. These people get jobs in government position and lower your nations status as not being corrupt.
1
@CK Funny. Clearly the Trump administration and all those Republican governors and secretaries of state have hired primarily immigrants (especially new ones) to fill key roles, especially those that handle elections. Trump is all about rewarding new immigrants. (Maybe you are Louis CK.)
We were in your town two years ago. Our sense from speaking with the locals is that New Zealanders are well-versed on US politics. But, of course, ever country has clueless people.
1
@gleapman I suppose I should apologise for being born! lol! The 'qualifying words are,' ..from corrupt nations that are high up on the world corruption index'. We've had a number of court cases where the media has exposed new immigrants bribing ministers by giving donations to their election campaigns - one had to resign because of it. The media keep an eye of corruption and bribery in government, by having access to the , The Official Information Act.
NZ was also the top least corrupt nation, on the less corrupt nation index but I think we've slipped a point or we might have climbed back to top spot after investigations into bribery of politicians by new immigrants from corrupt nations.
I hope you're right, but this country is far from democratic. It's a republic with states' rights that supersede voter's rights. The US Senate is not representative with 67% of the people in the 16 most populated states getting the same 32 senators as only 6% of the people in the least populated states. This is tyranny of a minority, an unrepresentative Senate and taxation without fair representation. Since the unitary President picks SCOTUS justices that are either confirmed or not by the unrepresentative Senate, five/sixths of our alleged government for the people is autocratic, really plutocratic since the super-rich pull the strings. I'll get lots of push back that the House is the house of the people. That's nice except for the partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But, it doesn't make up for the rest of this autocratic government. Democrats have to win by large margins to ensure a win in any state or in a federal election. And, due to this unfair representation, the unfair Electoral College is gamed by overemphasis on a few states in the election of a president.
I really hope I'm wrong. Trump could loose the "popular" vote by more than 2.85 million and still game the Electoral College. And, what exactly will happen if this occurs again? What will happen if he looses by 4 or 5 million votes and squeaks through in this unfair, antiquated Electoral College? I don't know, but it scares the crap out of me.
8
Of course every moderate I know, every independent I know and every Democrat I know will vote straight Democratic ticket in 2020! Even my Republican friends are quick to reassure others that they did NOT vote for Trump in the last election! Perhaps some of them are lying, but if you're too ashamed to admit you voted for him BEFORE we got wind of what he is really like, well then, imagine voting for him now. The reality is everyone I talk to has already decided on this ticket for 2020: ANYONE but Trump. More moderate Republicans (and there appear to be only a few left) are not going to run against Trump because they know the party is tethered to the anchor of Trump's sinking ship. The "base" they keep pandering to is only about 20-25% of this country, at best, many of them old, and many can be swayed by foundering economics--(like Wisconsin dairy farmers who are declaring bankruptcy like never before thanks, in part, to Trump's tariffs and trade wars). Young people can't stand him; women can't stand him, the educated despise him, Blacks know he is a blatant racist who views all minorities as criminals, anyone who is or has an immigrant in their family hates him too, and so do environmentalists and most American Jews and anyone who is LGBTQ. Please tell me who is left? His "base" of old, white, rural or uneducated people? Really? Anyone who lived among society in the last few years must realize how that is, at best, a rapidly shrinking populace. We just need to vote.
5
One factor that's mentioned only in passing in this article, but that we shouldn't forget, is Republican weakness on gun safety. I'll always remember the sign I saw a young woman holding during last year's post-Parkland March for Our Lives demonstration in DC. It read:
"An Entire Generation Is About to Reject the Republican Party."
7
I'd love to believe Mr. Greenberg's poll data!
But since he is not a non-partisan pollster, I wonder if we can.
We are drowning in government debt. FDR/LBJ socialism has created a permanent underclass, especially in the African American community. So, your answer Is more intrusive, sclerotic federal bureaucracy? The death of the Republican Party would be the death of America as we know it.
3
@Art Hudson Corporate Welfare debt that's been steadily climbing up and up since 2008. Corporate Welfare and bailing out big business - now that is communism and socialism. Someone needs to analyse government debt and why Trump gave tax cuts to the top 1% when the public debt is so high - a tax cut for the richest is socialism.
9
@Art Hudson - Let's look a some history on the debt.
After WWI, we had 10 years of balanced budgets. Here are the debt figures:
07/01/1920 $25,952,456,406.16
06/30/1930 $16,185,309,831.43
In 1929, the debt was only 16% of GDP
AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED !?
BTW History shows us that every time we embraced austerity and paid the debt down 10% or more, we got a depression and every depression followed a period
of surpluses.
After WWII we had even more debt as a percent of GDP, but we had mostly deficits for 27 years,
Here are the debt figures:
06/28/1946 $269,422,099,173.26
06/30/1973 $458,141,605,312.09
As you can see, the debt almost doubled, but we got the interstate highway system, Medicare. a median real household income that was 74% larger, and we even fought a couple of wars.
1946 - Public debt 109%, Gross debt 121%
What about today?
Public debt about 77%, Gross debt about 101% (Much lower than in 1946)
It way past time that folks like Art understand that the finances of a country that can create as much money as it needs out of thin air are NOTHING like your personal finances (unless you have a printing press in your basement).
Without social security and Medicare I would be dead. And so would most senior citizens.
2
What Mr. Greenberg describes looks more like just another partisan boom-and-bust cycle than the beginning of a stable electoral majority for the future. It sounds suspiciously like a rehash of the now discredited myth of the "Emerging Democratic Majority."
The fat-cat funded tea party revolt took less than 6 months to crystallize after Obama's inaugural. One of the Koch's is dead, but there's always the other, and plenty of people still take Ayn Rand's idiocy seriously. No sooner will Biden or Warren get elected than Mr. Greenberg's polls will start heading in the opposite direction with a burst of corporate propaganda.
I regret not supporting HRC in 2008. Unlike Obama, she would never have wasted her time believing the Reps could be her friends - which is also Biden's delusion. Warren knows better and I don't see her rolling over and whining about how mean they are.
2
Great piece! I have an idea. Why don’t you put out a pull out section in the Sunday Times entitled “ Europe vs USA, what they have that we don’t”. List the amount of money (taxes) each country pays and the benefits citizens receive. Put it all in black and white. Dispel the myth once and for all that Europe pays higher taxes than Americans. My theory is simple: if Americans ever really knew and understand just how poor their quality of life is compared to other industrialized countries, they would actually vote. We pay for everything in this country and get bombs in return. Last I heard, you can’t put bombs on the dinner plate. Do the pullout and educate Americans as to the truth. We pay the most and get very little in return compared to Europe. Sometimes the truth just hurts.
11
Deja Vu - Seems to me the same smug attitude predicted the death of the republican party in 2016. How did that work out?
3
The Democrats need to get into TACTICAL ploys if they want to get seats and win. NZ political system is different to NZ but the National Party used to drop off candidates standing for an electorate so votes wouldn't get halved between two candidates thus putting in the party candidate that would get the most votes and put out the candidate whose party wouldn't vote to pass legislation with your political party. It requires strength of character to bowl out of electioneering so the political party with similar policies as yours can get elected.
There seems to be too many Democrats standing in Texas, compared to Republicans, and that's because they don't want their votes divided up and they loose the electorate.
Trump seems to be focusing on his voters, only and stuff the rest of the country. Democrats need to be tacticians like Trump is. The Democrats seem to be all over the place and need to show up the errors in Trumps comments so people get 'facts' and not 'tweets'. Pull out stats or show up what the stats are leaving out.
1
@CK Ooops! Should read NZ political system is different to USA
While the demographic and issue-related data Mr. Greenberg relies on might be accurate, Republicans could very well continue to win elections based on changes to voter eligibility, registration, and election administration that will continue to further entrench a flailing minority. Voter ID laws and other disenfranchisement schemes have abounded in the lead up to, and since, the 2018 midterms. Remember the Georgia governor's race? What about the Florida State Legislature's response to the ballot measure restoring voting rights to ex-felons? The Florida Legislature passed a law making voting almost unconscionably risky for ex-felons, who are subject to criminal penalties if they register to vote, even under the mistaken impression that they have paid their court fines and fees. This functionally nullifies voting restoration to 1.5 million people in Florida.
This is all without even mentioning gerrymandering. So, while I fervently hope Mr. Greenberg is correct, I can't help but take a more cynical view in light of the way political power is wielded against non-Republican US citizens.
3
What should be more explicitly expressed is that presidents can put 1000% tariffs in place and still manufacturing jobs are never, ever coming back to this country. Those jobs will be soon be filled by robots. So then what? Corporations paying their fair share of taxes and our government investing that money in infrastructure and education is what. No one working three minimum wage jobs to pay their bills is going to tell you the economy is good. And they're right. They have no chance to get ahead! But good paying infrastructure jobs might just fill the gap until the next generations have the education necessary to move us out of manufacturing and into the future.
2
With regards to the issue of immigration discussed in this article, the descriptive word omitted is 'illegal'.
Many Trump supporters are legal green card holders or naturalized citizens who deeply resent that they have waited their turns, often for years, while illegal entrants get ahead of the line. This is a deeply unethical policy pushed by Democrats who even want to extend them financial benefits, while our own legal immigrants still struggle to pay off medical, educational, and vocational loans.
9
@subway rider - Let's have some data on what undocumented immigrants give to this country.
Find the link here https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/51-new-reports-on-the-
contributions-of-new-americans/
New York - "If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from New York in 2008, the state would
lose $28.7 billion in economic activity, $12.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately
137,013 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a report by the
Perryman Group."
New Jersey - "If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from New Jersey, the state would lose
$24.2 billion in economic activity, $10.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 103,
898 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a report by the
Perryman Group."
Pennsylvania - "If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Pennsylvania, the state would
lose $5.3 billion in economic activity, $2.3 billion in gross state product, and approximately 27,
718 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a report by the
Perryman Group."
The report provides similar information for every state in the union.
I am sick and tired of reading descriptions of undocumented immigrants as drains on our economies and society. They provide huge cultural and economic benefits that need to be better understood in order to bring our immigration debate into a saner realm.
The article begins:
"The 2020 election will be transformative like few in our history. It will end with the death of the Republican Party..., leaving the survivors to begin the struggle to renew the party.... It will liberate the Democratic Party from the country’s suffocating polarization...."
At best, this is wishful thinking. At worst, it's just plain fantasy and indicates that the author is either blind to reality or willfully denying it.
According to the pundits in the press, every election is going to be "transformative." They never are, not should they be. Obama wasn't a transformative president. Reagan, by any real measure of impact here at home, was not a transformative president. Even including Lincoln and FDR, the entire concept of transformative presidents is a topic for debate.
Every four years, we hear of the impending death of one of the two major parties. Whichever loses the last election has its death knell sounded, then whichever is the party in power is said to be on the verge of expulsion and perpetual irrelevance.
These things never happen.
Whichever party wins, things will not change. Congress is intransigent. Obama spent his first two years with a Democratic congress. What changed? Not gun laws. Not abortion laws. Not immigration law. Nothing except the introduction of a bad heath care program proposed by the Heritage Foundation.
In short, nothing is going to change, at least not very much. And, that's exactly how our system is supposed to work.
3
Trump will win in 2020 because Kris Kobach's Interstate Crosscheck will see to it that millions of legally registered voters will be purged from the voter rolls by election day, as they were in 2016. That's how Trump took power, and that's how he'll stay in power, because nothing has been done to stop it. Everything else is noise.
1
Steve Bullock, Democrat, Governor or Montana is the man for this time. He's not from the east coast and he can talk and reason impartially. He's a Democrat, reelected by Republicans and Democrats in Montana. He sees money as a corrupting agent in politics and isn't afraid to say so.
For the Republicans, "It's never not about the Money", they have lost any idea of what's morally/ethically good and what's morally/ethically bad.
Republicans' talk is cheap and it's costing us our country.
2
Dear Dr. Greenberg,
you say that the GOP are doomed. Are you saying that the Democrats will retake the Senate in 2020? Because otherwise the word "doomed" is meaningless. Doomed parties do not keep control of the Senate.
3
All of this will be moot if the Democrats do not take control of the Senate in 2020.
265
@MRod Parts of this column are very inaccurate. Americans are not more favorable to illegal immigration and immigrants. That's the word you left out: illegal. Voters are against any legislation that would increase the flow of illegal immigration. The right word to use is illegal simply because they're illegally in the US. The left wants to stop others from using the term illegal immigrant, often invoking the idea that no human being is illegal, but that's nonsense. The term is accurate. It's not a semantic discussion. I think, when the left hears illegal, they say let's change the word & we'll be done with it. Is there something about illegal immigrant per se that is so dehumanizing that it can't be used in polite discourse for people who are trying to have an honest conversation & aren't trying to spin it? We need to speak clearly so we define what's at stake. Undocumented seems to imply that some people forgot to fill out the correct paperwork when crossing the border. That's not what happened. They entered the US knowing they were breaking the law. They're here in the U.S illegally. That's why it's an issue. Can the left admit that a large number of illegal immigrants in the US, gives rise to economic competition that harms job prospects for voters who live here? This plays perfectly into the FOX News narrative that Democrats are offering illegals free healthcare, welfare, drivers licenses, in-state-tuition, & sanctuary. Guess what they're right. This is a terrible idea.
10
@Bill Brown
Liberals don't want an honest discussion about illegal immigration, hence their allergy to the adjective "illegal" and their disgraceful insistence on the euphemism "undocumented."
We have about 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, and over 100,000 such individuals have come across the border *each month* so far this year.
Progressives are unwilling to admit that the endless inpouring of desperate, unskilled, often illiterate workers into the US makes any progressive goal they can imagine - to rebuild unions, rebuild good blue collar wages, provide "free" college, get a $15 an hour minimum wage, provide comprehensive medical care, make housing affordable, even maintain functioning public schools and municipal services - is undermined by their numbers.
Progressives like President Obama, Paul Krugman, Cesar Chavez, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Jordan and others used to be able to admit that we can't have both an endless supply of unskilled labor AND these things. Now we can't, because of "white supremacy" and Donald Trump.
8
@MRod Democratic control of the House and Presidency in 2021 means the GOP is Blocked; just like they have blocked us. Dems passed 285 bills so far; Grim Reaper blocked almost all of them. Republicans are in deep; deep; deep trouble. America is tired of Big Business making tons of money; NRA allowing us to be Murdered; and Trump/Republicans painting brown people/immigrants as criminals.
18
The Democratic Party is a gaggle of geese, and the pronouns to use are not "it" and "its," but "they" and "theirs."
And that's going to be the most distressing thing of this election: THEY won't get THEIR act together well enough to adopt and commit to a unified message.
Their problem has been well-documented by many observers, but by none so well as Mark Lilla of Columbia in his little essay, "The Once and Future Liberal." All progressives, and particularly those with any involvement in strategizing for this election, should be familiar with it. Only by coaxing the geese into some kind of order will the party be able to hasten the "doom" of the comparatively unified and focused Republican Party, as Mr. Greenberg hopefully suggests.
1
Seems premature. Surely the Democrats will still need to demonstrate clearly that they’re doing their job as the center left party, which includes looking out for working people without regard to race or gender.
1
I am skeptical of anything that comes from looking through a lens of any ideology from political "science" (which is not in any sense a science unless one includes astrology as a science) that like any ideological blinder distorts reality. Of course, the Republican Party has looked through an array of ideological lenses for a few decades now and though Trump has replaced some of those lenses with his own hallucinogenic filters, I am not convinced that enough Americans are unaligned with those distortions to allow his defeat. It is in part irrational fear prompted by racism that prompts Trump's voters and though Greenberg's reading of the polls is the basis of his prediction, I see much of the reading as biased by his own ideological political "science" viewpoint. I see his bias as a rose-colored view of the citizens of the United States. To a person with reason, Trump's behavior and the failures of his policies which have been pushed through by the Republican Party he now controls would rule out his re-election by a nation of reasonable citizens. But a reasonable person viewing the citizens of the US would also realize that they are not in any sense reasonable. There is, for the most part, a complete void of reason among them. In part this is due to the various societies being engulfed in a morass of pop culture, a people without any sort of reason-based education (most of them cannot even read with comprehension). All they know is pop culture.
I'm hopeful this next election will be transformative. The Republican Party does not represent working or middle class interests. They are increasingly the Party of WEDGE issues that fewer Americans care about over bread and butter issues like access to healt care, housing, and education. The Republican Party of today cannot even grasp the mantel of fiscally conservative since the current Administration has managed to borrow over $4T in just 2.5 years. Americans are tired of wage and social inequality and growing weary of headlines indicating that billionaires are paying little to no taxes at all on their massive income while most working class people are paying more under the so-called tax cut. Enough is enough. If people vote their own self-interest in the next election, Republicans are in for an astonishing defeat.
3
Setting aside Betteridge's law of headlines (the adage that any headline asking a question can be answered with "no"), I unfortunately still think Democrats have no idea how to take advantage of this situation. All of the points made here are great and encouraging, but they still fail to account for the willingness of the GOP to lie and obfuscate, the unwillingness of Democrats generally to come together on key issues, the anti-factual secular religion of Trumpism, and the ease with which people on the fence can be manipulated via social media and elsewhere.
The Democrats face a lot of headwinds in 2020, and I genuinely hope they can find a winning strategy, but it's not enough to be "on the right side of history."
3
Mr. Greenberg states that: “…leaving it [Republican Party] dominated by evangelicals, the Tea Party and observant Catholics.” Currently, six of the nine members of SCOTUS identify as Catholic. The Catholic Church has well known positions on the theological and moral acceptability of several current legal rights in the US. Additionally, Thomas Piketty has delineated the role of the inter-generational transfer of wealth for the 1% and for the 0.1% in maintaining wealth and income inequality. Importantly the 2017 "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" enhanced the position of the 1% in this regard; but is vulnerable to future changes. POTUS has repeatedly indicated that an election loss will be challenged and additionally that a term longer than 8 years is a desirable goal for his presidency.
The critical importance of a continuing Trump presidency to the evangelicals, the Tea Party and the Catholic Church and its theology as well as to the 1 % and its inter-generational transfer of wealth, suggests that the most plausible outcome of the 2020 election is a second term for Trump.
1
I wish I could share the author's optimism. Schattschneider is an interesting name-drop, but what group is more mobilized to further its own interests, with less transparency, than business and industry? We have reached a point late in the development of corporate capitalism where government has mostly been captured. As have the two major parties. One reason Trump is so popular among his base is because he's letting the evangelicals have whatever they want. Usually the GOP pays lip service and ignores the culture issue constituents.
As for the democrats, their inability to project a coherent party message isn't all bad--marketplace of ideas n'all. But the DNC is a cabal of politically-connected elites.
Perhaps another author to consider would be Steven Lukes ('Power: A Radical View"), who explains how power has multiple dimensions, the most insidious being structural and appearing as simply the natural order of things. And the trend to support Lukes' 'third face' view? Trump's election and continued popularity, despite the fact he is consigning his own base to second-class citizenry with a few perks (rallies, merchandise, the comfort of confirmation bias).
If the lessons of Trump's 'success' are those that democratic leadership takes to heart and seeks to put into practice, we'll just keep drifting toward a waterfall of undetermined height.
1
I agree with this article and THANK YOU Stanley B. Greenberg.
The Green New Deal is good for business because of all the work that is needed to accomplish it along with Infra Structure spending. Spending produces taxes and spurns more NEW business. Those who are invested in the old will not stand to gain and that is what I think Maryland talked about 56 minutes ago.
2
This is not chiefly about how activist or big the government should be. Trump won because he explicitly *didn't* go on and on about small government and deficits and such like a typical conservative. Pretty much nobody wants Koch Brothers type government anymore. However, that in no way means that people want an empowered government to shoehorn in pet progressive projects.
As one example, I want a much bigger government in the form of hiring way, way, way more immigration judges and court officials. But I want them so they can slog through the gigantic backlog of spurious asylum claims that have been piling up for the past five years so that the people making them can finally be deported and we don't have to house them, hold them, or otherwise keep them here for years while they wait.
1
@Lesley Ragsdale Clinton won the people's vote. Trump won the Electoral College. The Democrats have good ideas to go forward. The Republicans want to go in reverse, less rights for women, gay, handicapped. I want to progress, not regress.
Human knowledge is cumulative, not progressive. It's a historical and logical fallacy to conflate those things.
Of the six people I know who voted for Trump in 2016, two decided they had made a mistake by summer 2017, two more joined them before 2018 ended, and a fifth just told me a few weeks ago that he'll vote for anyone but Trump or Bernie.
This is all anecdotal. My circle of conservative friends may not be at all typical. But it does give me hope that people can change their minds as long as they haven't locked the door against new ideas and thrown away the key.
For that reason alone I am continuing my political activism, even in the face of current Trump idiocies.
Hope is not enough. Real change requires real action.
Vote.
1
The Republican part will not disappear, but it is indeed becoming something different from what it was. I think that's what all these republican retirements tell us.
The GOP was in my lifetime the party of low or no taxes, free trade, no regulation, and government is at best a necessary evil. They were also the party of Christianity and social conservatism. The latter has little changed, but the former is changing markedly.
Many look at how Trump has governed and think him a typical Republican, beefing up the military budget and lowering taxes, even when not needed.
But that isn't how he campaigned and that isn't what made him popular. He campaigned saying that he, as head of the government, would fix people's problems. He would get them better, cheaper healthcare. He would make sure they had jobs. He would take on our trade imbalance and get manufacturing going again in the U.S.
None of that jives with the old GOP.
1
Oh well, Trump was still worth it based on the Supreme Court candidates he was able to advance. And we will likely get another appointment before the 2020 election.
2
Worth it? Really? He has lowered the standards of truth and integrity that have been associated with that office, and rendered commitments made by any US President dubious. He has thrust us into more debt, and we now see the rate of people without health insurance going up for the first time since the ACA was enacted.
3
@Mark Marks Yeah, but the alternative was Hilary Clinton.
Trump has governed like any traditional republican, lower taxes and less regulation. The trade war with China had to happen, and Trump has actually done more to reduce our entanglements in foreign wars.
Agree on the lowering the standards of the office, which is why I didn't vote in 2016 (that, plus Illinois was already decided).
I thought I was suffering from severe Deja vu. But no, I was simply remembering the 2002 book by a couple other Democratic party hacks called "The Emerging Democratic Majority." It made, essentially, the same points, give or take a dire reference to "the Climate Crisis" or "Black Lives Matter."
Turns out, Americans aren't ready for a 16 trillion dollar Green New Deal, or to pay for a trillion dollar default on student loans, or to erase the southern border and allow unrestrained illegal immigration -- with the accompanying taxpayer bills for health care, education and food stamps, or to pony up a trillion dollars to pay for reparations, or several other far-left initiatives.
Moderate Americans would gladly sound the death knell for both of the extremist parties that hold us hostage, if only a champion would emerge to relieve us from the excesses of the far right and the far left.
5
@Philboyd
None of those things were pushed by Kerry, Clinton, or Obama.
Key, Clinton, and Obama protected the status quo and all paid dearly for it.
Obama ran to the left and won, but governed from the center and got nothing done.
When the Delights Party moved right, it only helped Republicans.
Left to win hearts and minds, and the election and legislation.
@Philboyd Fact Check; there is an election today in N Carolina that Republicans should win easily; no sweat; no work. This district has elected Republicans for 55 years. GOP spent $5 million and flew Trump in last night to "help" their man. GOP is worried; very worried. They should be.
1
The author writes, hopefully, that "American voters will not disappoint us again."
News flash: American voters did not "disappoint us" in 2016 or in 2000. The electoral college did, as it overturned the will of the majority of Americans and put clearly inferior candidates (to put it politely) into power.
Anywhere else, such a system might be called corrupt. In the United States, it's called democracy.
Go figure.
1
Trump is fracturing the people apart, but so are the Democratic candidates contributing to the divisiveness with proposals that are not considered in terms of building support for them but to excite specific constituencies, while ignoring the challenges that they obviously present to everyone, else. We are in for a nasty and divisive 2020 general election campaign, and it's not clear that Trump will not be re-elected as a result. It's also not clear that either the Republicans or Democrats will endure or not into the future. Neither seems to want to deal with reality by bringing together a consensus of the citizenry of the country. Both seem to think that electoral victory entitles them to dictate to others how they should live.
2
Nonsense: Trump shot the dice because he was getting too old to wait. The Democrats lost the election by being absurdly overconfident. The presidency of Obama convinced too many that it was a "woman's time" and that the NY Times -poll was evidence enough for them,(see Dewey v Truman,'48) Even Mr Trump gave up active campaigning in the last month because he was convinced that he was losing . He won only because Democrats-so absolutely positive they could not lose, decided to punish Clinton for not being far left or liberal enough, and voted for third party candidates.
Had the voters who decided to punish Hillary , voted for her, instead, she would have won the election.
Trump didn't "know" anything that anyone else didn't also know. His election was a miscalculation that Democrats often make and that Republicans also made in 1992, electing Bill CLinton.
The difference is the GOP's learned not to do that, again. Many who often vote for Democrats become so convinced of their godliness, sure they only know the way , that they repeatedly throw elections in the trash, declaring they ought to have won-and will win next time-and then lose out of arrogance, again. Democrats of the "left" are the X-mas present the GOP always wishes for.
@meloop
We aren't punishing Hillary. We we abandoned by a Democratic Party that told us we should compromise with the Right instead of following or own values. How did Democrats think that insulting Bennie supporters would win them the election?
Bernie is more of a "real Democrat" than Hillary will ever be. Compare the policies to FDR.
If you do the same thing again, Trump will win again.
It was necessary to get rid of Hillary. Now it is necessary to get rid of Trump.
1
@meloop Doesn't explain Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2 and the LONG line of rightwing extremist maniacs we have had elected here. It is far more plausible to consider Obama the aberration.
1
Can a party so well financed possibly be doomed?
1
Democrats should, nonetheless, organize and vote as if the word "Republican" in the headline of this op-ed was actually "Democratic".
This election, and all subsequent elections.
2
Don't allow yourself to get complacent; the Guns and Oil Party have baked-in advantages in their favor: Disproportionately high Senate power for trump supporting states, Electoral College, their own "news" network (Faux News), the ENTIRE AM radio band, a growing lack of civics education among poor whites (resulting in no understanding on the role of government), a large group of billionaires eager to get even greater amounts of wealth, The Koch Brothers octopus, a complete and utter zeal for lying, cheating, voter suppression, and, finally, Uncle Valdamort Putin, who knows what trump is doing to our country, and gleefully offers his significant support. Better to get all of your friends and children to register Democratic, and get their friends to vote as well.
We have only one more chance to defeat the evil that the GOP represents; if we blow it, we will nd lose our democracy, aautomatically revert to a dictatorship overnight in November 2020.
4
I'm a person who did quite well after the Great Recession and am looking forward to a very nice retirement. And I'm someone who survey after survey (including the one the NYT just ran) says I should be a conservative and a Republican. And you know what: I'm voting for and work for Warren. Because I know that our country can't go on the way it is going Because I know the average person is not getting a fair deal and because I know the game is rigged. The Republicans have spend years and millions slowly turning my country into a servant society for the very rich. This must stop
Warren in 2020
8
@sjs In other words, you are already rich and converted your income into equity investments. So, higher taxes on income won't hurt you.
Thanks for pulling up the ladder once you made it to the top!
2
@James
Don't read what isn't there. I am not rich (although I don't have any money worries because I frugal) and no, I have not converted my income into equity investments (although I do have a nice portfolio built up over 30 years). I'm still going to work and getting a paycheck. And yes, the actions taken by trump did hurt me. But most importantly, I doubt you read past the first sentence (or did you make it to the second?). If you had read the entire comment, you would know that I am very concerned that America no longer rewards hard work and playing field is long past level. As I said, things can not go on the way things have been going. Vote Warren and give people a fair chance again.
1
He wants to help his fellow Americans, not the super rich. If you bring in ten million a year you can afford a marginal tax that would be lower than the tax Eisenhower imposed. If you stand to inherit $3.5 million, you can afford a estate tax. If you are going to inherit $1 billion, you can afford to be taxed—and you will still be filthy rich.
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Trump knows how to keep his core. Give them judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, kowtow to the NRA, provide cover for racists, and build a wall. That about covers it, and it's enough to keep them all on board. despite polls that look at disparate single issues and aren't tracking the voting intention of the responders . Trump has his eye on the electoral college, and no national polls are going to give us the granularity needed to win each state.
3
@edv961
Trump knows this is a base election.
Do the Democrats?
The truth is, both parties are Capitalist parties, whose function is to reward the handful of billionaires--who pay for the campaigns of both Democratic and Republican politicians--with government policies that increase further their power and wealth. . . . The alternative fund raising method, via millions of small contributors over the Net, has made possible the candidacy of the Socialist Sanders, which is why he is anathema to the leadership of both parties. . . Under President Honest Don, the G.O.P. has already gone Fascist. If the Democrats remain simply one half of the Capitalist political duopoly, they are doomed. If they can transform into a Socialist party, they can save American democracy.
4
@Red Allover
Yes, the left must take over the Democratic Party to save democracy. Tell your left friends.
"...a Republican Party determined to destroy government outside of defense and a Democratic Party determined to use it expansively." Well, at least later you recall that this has been going on since before FDR, but why should this be the time that it sticks long term? Wonderful majority opinions, but will that majority get out and vote proportionally? And even that may not be good enough, given how far the gerrymandering has gone. America is sinking fast; get out and vote or we're doomed.
1
Although the writer is clear on the current trend of people's frustrations with Trump and the GOP's embrace of pathological lying and sychophancy that ultimately rots the the native ideal of the former Party of Lincoln, there's an entirely new dimension that isn't discussed and that has to do with the rise of a poisonous combination of rightwing propaganda and international conspiracy that helped torpedo an election of 2016. There was an attack on our American democracy as never before which enlisted the efforts of a Russian dictator as well as the efforts of members of the Republican party in key battleground states by the use of gerrymandering and voter suppress aided and abetted by the propaganda network known as Fox News.
The fatal flaw in our elections was well identified by GOP operatives by the concerted effort to obtain overweening power in the so-called battleground states. It was an effort that paid off handsomely for the extremists of the party both racially and culturally in their effort to elected a pathological liar and con man to the highest office of the land.
The continued political attacks of Republicans used against the Democratic frontrunner based of spurious charges known as 'Benghazi' helped undermine her candidacy successfully, a subject they openly bragged about.
Add to that the unique fumbling of the FBI and against the Republican efforts helped weaken and suppress an otherwise strong candidacy of the Democratic nominee.
3
I don't buy this notion that Trump is on some kind of libertarian crusade to abolish the federal government. No president in US history has ever claimed such sweeping, unrestrained power to dictate the course of business and override the self-determination of free enterprise.
Trump uses his regulatory powers to punish businesses for attempting to voluntarily limit their own pollution output. He believes he should have the unilateral power to suppress the free speech of any private entity. He thinks that he can single-handedly order all American businesses to stop doing business with any country that he doesn't like. He's steering us towards a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy in which all businesses are controlled by the government.
Under Trump, profit and innovation have taken a backseat to his demands for loyalty and ideological conformity. The worst part is that none of this is intended to benefit America. He makes his decisions with the intention of benefiting foreign countries. He's intentionally destroying our ability to compete because foreign leaders are telling him to do so.
3
This is an opportunity for Democrats. Let's hope the DNC eschews the policies and direction they took in 2016 and don't run a Republican Lite Neoliberal Candidate. Sanders, hate him or love him, and the Squad have established a far more progressive blue print and direction for Democrats that is very much embraced by younger voters and some of us older ones who remember that Democrats once represented working and middle class Americans before they represented big fossil fuel companies, corporations and Wall Street. It is more than obvious with looming issues like Climate Change that we can no longer indulge the extravagant avarice of unregulated capitalism.
The Democrats continually put the "hate" on big corporations but they forget that 350 million people in the US have to be fed, clothed and housed every day along with medical care, etc. Only large corporations can deliver this scale of operations efficiently cost-effectively and upon demand. Ask the USSR how that central planning and forced collectivization plan worked out.
1
You are creating a false choice. Businesses were highly successful in the past in the US (and currently in Germany and other countries) while paying real wages and offering some security in retirement for their loyal employees.
Now they pay as little as they can get away with and have stripped any semblance of security from most jobs.
The alternative is not central planning and no one is suggesting so.
It’s Unions and decent minimum wages. It’s guaranteed (not free) Healthcare. It’s access to affordable tertiary education.
5
Yes, trump has pushed the moderates, not to mention real conservatives, out of the republican party. But have Democrats given them an alternative they can live with? I don't know any Democratic moderate voters, most of the voters I know, who support removing the negative consequences of entering the US illegally by both decriminalizing illegal entry and then providing health insurance to those who do, and eliminating private health insurance, each of which was bought into by the top-polling presidential candidates at the first debate. If the Dems can't forge a coalition between progressives and moderates, they will leave a vacuum into which trump will swoop. Again.
2
The daily harangue against progressives and in favor of "moderate" Democrats. When a progressive wins the Democratic nomination, will you still be campaigning against them? Why is Bernie so much more scary than Trump?
@Glassyeyed: Trump looks more presidential.
Probably not. The guess here is that over time it will adjust it's philosophy and agenda so that it can reclaim a greater share of the electorate. Republicans have some smart and moneyed (influential) people atop their organization. Republicans did not capture the White House, the Senate, and thus the Supreme Court by accident or chance. In a more perfect world the Republican Party would get it. That it seems to be more out of step each day with mainstream America indicates decline, not demise, however. The proof will be in the pudding. 2020 will be a good indicator.
Why does a growing part of my Democratic Party want to follow an election strategy of complaining about President Obama? What reality are you in? Not one lived in by a majority of voters across many segments of this great country .
1
@david: Obama did nothing to turn out Democrats to vote in the critical 2010 census year election. That ended his capacity to accomplish anything.
No surprises here. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become the party of Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Colter. Speaking of Lincoln, the great man would have switched parties long ago. Nominating Trump to Lincoln would have been the moral equivalent to Congress passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. I'm serious.
1
I agree with everything here except on immigration. I don't think it is good policy to be for open borders, or even increased immigration. Immigration causes GDP per capita to fall. The idea that immigration is always good is erroneous.
I read that because of China's one child policy, the number of Chinese people today is about 400 million less people, had they not enacted that policy.
Think about that for a moment. That is more people than there are in the U.S. or even Europe. China would be so much poorer today had they not enacted that policy. Partly because of that policy, China's GDP per capita rose THREE times in the last twenty years or so.
1
Rumors of the death of the Republican Party are greatly exaggerated. If I remember correctly, if not supposedly dead pundit opinion had it on life support when Boehner quit and nobody wanted the job. Some death.
1
Progressive magical thinking at its worst.
6
@GANDER-FIR
Have to agree with you here. The propaganda network, the hundreds of billions and the relentless plotting, strategizing and working will continue. It’s not going to disappear because they lost an election. There is always an appetite for resentment, fantasy and lies.
I hope you are correct, Mr. Greenberg. I have heard this opinion over and over and yet the Republican party continues to strengthen itself and gain more power every decade. They control the media, they gerrymander, they suppress votes, they receive money from corporations, billionaires and the NRA. I don't see the Republican party, dominated by rich white men and their heirs, going away soon.
1
OK, so increasing majorities of voters are hostile to CEOs and think immigrants are a positive. Got it - good news. If those are the most important issues in swing voters' minds then the GOP is about to be toast. But if at kitchen tables in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania the important issue is how much Democrats' policies are going to stress their already uncertain economic pictures, the toaster is about to pop up some crispy progressives.
1
There is no question that the Republican Party, if not doomed, is going into a transitional phase. However, the next question is what about the Democratic Party? It too is in a transitional phase. The problem with the Democrats is that their leadership does not appear to recognize that anything is wrong. They, sadly are living in a bubble, out of touch with the Average American. They seem to want to live by polls, which is dangerous.
A word of advice to the Democratic leadership: Go listen to Tom Russell's song "US Steel". Now, if when you listen you think it is only about the US Steel corporation, you are failing to grasp the real message of jobs being shipped overseas. Listen and get the message and maybe, just maybe, you might begin to understand the plight of Middle America.
1
Under the heading of "understanding the political," do you have any thoughts on how to avoid overreaching? If the Democrats overreach, such as by pushing the abolition of private insurance or decriminalization of border crossings, they can put the Republicans right back in the fight.
3
If this happens it will be short-lived. The Democrats might have the trifecta (President-House-Senate) for two years at most. The 2022 elections will be a reaction to the Democratic wins, and the GOP will retake one or both houses of Congress. In that respect, I would urge the democrats not to waste their opportunity like they did the last time, catering to the likes of moderate centrists like former senators Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln. They must use their short available time to destroy the Republican structural advantage: pass anti-Gerrymandering bills, make election day a full week-end, pass a tax incentive for those who vote, outlaw disenfranchisement, support the interstate compact, and many other things. I'm not sure Nancy Pelosi is the one to lead us through that short-lived but incredibly important period, but I hope the next president sees the urgency of the situation.
8
I wish I had a dollar for every time in the past 25 years that the NYT has told us that the Republican Party is doomed.
11
They’ve been so “doomed” that their every agenda item has been codified. They never get convicted or imprisoned for anything substantial. And the Dems are complicit with them. So don’t hold your breath.
The Republicans had and still have the winning platform, which is "we will help you keep your money in your wallet". The Democrats have a much harder sale with their message "give the government more of your money so we can make things better".
Most people know that the government misuses and wastes money and the more money they get the more the waste and the misuse. So it's an uphill battle for Dems.
6
As my mom used to say, "from your lips to G-d's ears". My it be so that the Repubs are utterly crushed in 2020, the Dems take the Sentate, White House and expand their lead in the House. Then let's get to work together to address the massive challenges - and opportunities - facing America and the world. Climate change, corporate and personal greed beyond the pale, the lying. the corruption the disregard for American values and trashing those that built America - all of us are immigrants, by choice or by force (slavery), and we committed genocide on the Native Americans who were here long before anyone else. Time for truth, trust, honesty, and a higher level of consciousness and collaboration. Good luck to us all.
@LoveCourageTruth my sentiments exactly.
From your keyboard to God's ears. If only the DNC could get their act together. It's their election to lose and they very well might blow it.
Take a page out of Grover Norquist's playbook: shrink the Republican party until it is small enough "to drown it in a bathtub."
2
As my Mom used to say, "From your mouth to God's ears."
2
Lincoln stood for a strong Federal government that was willing to go to war to enforce its progressive, civil-rights agenda on the States.
The republican party has no commonality with Lincoln at all.
1
Mr. Greenburg aptly asks the question, "So rather than asking voters which candidate is more “electable” or who has the best chance of defeating President Trump, we need to ask which leader best understands this tumultuous period. Which candidate has a theory of the case that pushes aside other interpretations and critiques?"
As a moderate myself, what we're looking for is a candidate who presents a clear vision and understanding of what today's problems are and regardless of how we got here, has the solutions to navigate the times and place us on better footing. For me, there is really only one candidate who embodies this and that's Andrew Yang. His identification of technology and automation as huge transformational forces, economically and socially are spot on, and his solutions present an America of the future, rather than one that's trying to relive an economy (and a past) that is looong dead and gone. And in his vision, he's already found support among moderates who are tired of old and used up talking points which continually echo through the halls on both the left and right.
Andrew Yang may sound like a futurist, but isn't that what America presently needs? Recent polling suggests his support is broad enough to soundly beat Donald Trump. To restore our union we must retire old playbooks and embrace the fact that the world is intrinsically different than at any other point in history. Yang recognizes this and the Democratic party needs to as well.
1
I seriously doubt the Republican Party is doomed. Trump will probably be re-elected. I hope I am completely wrong on both accounts.
9
paragraph #6 brought it all flooding back..... and it didn't feel good. such a terrible time. obama was and remains clueless about his role in the slow rolling disaster. great. we had a black president. great. he was "smart"..... but he was as callous to the suffering as any republican. the wealthy got bailed out the rest of us were expected to find new bootstraps.
3
@coale johnson
Sorry for your disappointment about Barack Obama's presidency. You noted:
"but he was as callous to the suffering as any republican. the wealthy got bailed out the rest of us were expected to find new bootstraps."
How's Donald working out for you? Is he hearing your concerns? I ask because to me, he sounds like a fake New York billionaire wannabe doing everything he can possibly do to eliminate the framework of equality we have struggled for, for generations, to enact--regulations on the financial systems, the environment, on both civil liberties and civil rights, that attempt to empower the least wealthy of us with the same rights as the most wealthy. I get that your, and millions of other Americans, had your feelings hurt. We are paying that price now.
A year away from our next presidential election, we have a choice between the most corrupt, the most dishonest, most divisive, most incompetent, most self-dealing president this country has seen, and, well, just about anyone else--including challengers from his own party.
How, really, do that black president's slights to you stack up against the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans? The weakening of common-sense environmental laws? +++
There's a reason this generation of conservatives feels looked down upon and seen as, just this week, incandescent bulbs. You can change that in your own way by noticing that billionaires are NEVER going to be in your favor unless you are also a billionaire.
@Woody Packard i am capable of disliking obama and despising trump at the same time. don't get me wrong i am fully aware of the challenges obama faced and the things he did accomplish. the best thing about him was that he had a steady hand and a long game..... but the long game does not really work in this country anymore. there is no continuity there is a right wing that sees compromise as weakness.
As long as there are deep-pocketed business men with enough money to manipulate elections, and insecure racist white people, the GOP will likely keep going for quite sometime.
4
@Andy. And as long as there are people who hate socialism and big government.
2
I always scratch my head at the “Socialism” haters. I guess they don’t like police officers, firefighters, National Parks, mail delivery, highway systems, public schools, etc. List goes on. Guess we shouldn’t improve our infrastructure since that would be Socialism.
3
As long as people think it’s ok that Americans can’t afford expensive for profit health care. As long as people think it’s ok for young people to graduate college with high interest student debt that will take a lifetime to discharge. As long as people think starvation wages are ok.
"Mr. Greenberg is a Democratic pollster."
So begins a "thought piece," and one cannot help but think, "SURELY, he bears more responsibility than most for our having Donald Trump as President."
Obviously, Hillary ran a poor campaign, ... and she certainly WAS badly advised by pollsters, among others.
All but Nate Silver had colored in Michigan BLUE, and whatever else you can say, that boner was/is right up there with "Dewey wins."
So ... moving right along - we have the 20th iteration of "Just look at the demographics."
BUT ... the many new Latinos - the smallish percent who (for whatever reason) vote - are often TERRIBLY [sic] conservative, ready to pull up the gangplank now that they've gotten on board - among other things.
African-Americans? May be "nice & progressive" in NYC, but "women's rights" don't seem to resonate down South, among millions who have too much church and too little education.
And then we come to the anointed "YOUNGER GENERATION." There hasn't been activism "on campus" in any must-heed way since 1970! ... Just as hard-working union men & women, voting Dem. from age 20-50 TURNED on the party and its message somewhere between 1990 and now IN HUGE NUMBERS because they were ill-represented by the Dem. party ...
I predict that the half (is it that high?) of the 20-40 year olds who are doing OK in this economy and many of the others who find it easier to blame immigration than themselves ... will both welcome and be welcomed by the Rep. party!
2
If Trump loses, it will either be because (1) boring, apologist moderate Dems were able to grab the nomination and young people, POC and progressives will stay home AGAIN like they did in 2018; or (2) moderate Dems decide to stay home or vote for Trump if a progressive wins the Democratic nomination. Moderate Dems cannot understand that most people don’t want their version of bipartisanship that caters to companies and continues the status quo that screws the middle class, poor and POC. That is the reason Clinton lost and Obama could not convince people to vote to retake Congress. Obama, and lying Trump, won because they offered change and repudiations of the status quo. If moderates can’t get behind real change, then we will see 4 more years of Trump.
1
I disagree with this article.
One thing that I have noticed: Democrats haven't sold business owners on voting against Trump. In my county, business owners are die hard Trump fans. They see Democrats as bad for business and business is everything. Under Democratic presidents, they have to do more paperwork and make less money. I recently got into an argument over this--my job is purchasing and Trump has thrown purchasing into a state of chaos--but I am told that Trump is "fantastic for business and understands what this country needs." You can say any statistic that you want and people won't change their minds. In their mind he is linked to good business and "unless you're a business owner you won't understand."
If you could convince business owners that a Democrat would be good for business, I think Democrats could win the election. But how do you get there?
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@S Business owners are also fond of policies that don't hurt their bottom line. Like trade wars and tariffs. They also generally are NOT bigots, and respect the rule of law. All these things are way out of line with today's Republican party.
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@S
There's one thing that business owners, like the GOP, love more than anything else, even low taxes, and that's low wages. And the GOP, including Trump, is all about lowering wages.
Business owners claim to want "certainty." We hear this ad nauseum. But they want it only for themselves. For their employees, not so much. And, given that our economy is 70% consumer-driven, it would make sense for them to remember that their employees are someone else's customers and their customers are someone else's employees. And no business survives without customers.
If you could convince me that business owners are considering where and how they will come up with customers in a country of low wages and downward mobility, I might view their opinions as having some credibility. But I'm tired of their opinions. Despite the fact that they are a tiny minority of the American workforce, the country has been run to their advantage for the last forty years. The result has been increasing insecurity for the majority of citizens, lower mobility, and a lack of opportunity. Enough already.
Democrats need to convince *workers* that they are good for workers. Why? Because we're the majority.
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@S - "They see Democrats as bad for business and business"
Despite the fact that analysis after analysis shows that the economy, i.e., business, tends to prosper with Democratic governments and suffers under Republican ones. And they had a clear example from Bush to Obama. Yet they believe in their myths.
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we also have to face the fact that along with the Russians helping Trump win, we will also have the criminal regime of Saudi Arabia and Israel helping undermine our elections
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I’ve sat in too many focus groups of Republicans over the last year to believe this. I think not only is the GOP here today, but its partisans are even stronger and more resolved in their beliefs than ever. I do think more Democrats than ever see corporate greed as a problem, but without an alternative, aspirational vision for what our country could be like, this narrative just makes people mad, and doesn’t lead to action.
2
A Socialist society should be our goal. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
Could it be that the doom of the Republican Party becomes the undoing of the Democratic Party as well. If the Republicans lose big as the article is suggesting perhaps the outcome is many if not most of the Republican centrists and independents join the only party that matters or stay independents. Then vote their centrist views. The Republicans become a marginalized right wing party and the Democrats become the vast majority party that can't get anything done because of in-fighting. Most polls suggest the majority of Americans are centrist that accept progressive changes, but over time. Any party that ignores that and pushes to far left or right will be undone in the next election or two. Unfortunately we don't have a Center party so the push is to the right then the left and back again.
Promises, promises....
Keep dreaming- Trump wins again.
2
I like his points, but I will believe it when I see it.
None of my friends who voted for Trump have peeled off.
They still hate minorities and our government.
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@WesTex
"None of my friends who voted for Trump have peeled off. They still hate minorities and our government."
Nice friends you keep. Why do you do that?
19
@WesTex You're friends with people who hate minorities? Really?
I realize that it's so much easier to just demonize the other side as racist, instead of actually acknowledging a good faith disagreements (which would require actual engagement), but these people are your friends!
7
Maybe look for new friends?
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I have not seen much change in the Republican Party from thirty plus years ago when their patron saint, Ronald Reagan won the Presidency while playing the race card. Trump has just allowed the GOP to expand its platform to now include the KKK, the Neo-Nazis, and other far right groups. In fact, the White House has its own dues paying member in Stephen Miller.
Souther Republicans lead the pack. They were previously Democrats, only because Lincoln was a Republican. But with passage of the Civil Rights Act. they quickly abandoned the Democrats and formed the souther conference of bigots and bosses.
It will take more than just a good thrashing at the polls to change the long held racist beliefs of Trump loyalists.
3
It's the corruption, stupid.
3
To be realistic both the Republicans and Democrats are ignoring the whole of this country and making no effort to achieve any consensus in any manner. Each Party is controlled by narrow issue groups who could not give a damn about anyone else. Each proudly proclaims how they will lead this country into their ideas of perfection without the annoyance of discussing what they want and their priorities to see what they can work out that satisfies everyone’s concerns. The gridlock in the Congress is reflecting gridlock across our politics.
I would like to think Mr. Greenberg is right, but the implosion of the GOP has been repeatedly predicted for 40-odd years and right now, with the recent exception of the House after the mid-terms, they ARE the Government. Moreover, they control the electoral college outcome in numerous key states that they have gerrymandered to the point where they will always hold power in those states, having stacked the courts as well.
So, barring a massive shift among the electorate and a massive turnout for the Dems, I'm not very optimistic.
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@AMS
I'd be more inclined to agree with you EXCEPT that a NORTH CAROLINA court - I forget whether there was 1 Dem out of 3 or 2/3, but the ruling was unanimous - basically said (and this after the Supremes - no surprise - decided to dodge gerrymandering by saying it was "not their job - legislators decide!") "NO, those lines are simply outrageous - violating one person, 1 vote!"
Yes, there's some heavy headwinds blowing here, but Mr. G's point is along the lines of "When it gets to 50% 'natural Democrats' and 15% 'swing voters,' you simply HAVE TO like the Dems' chances."
I'd be more "with him" on all that, except that the RED team seems to show up more predictably on E.Day - most years!
6
@pfusco friendly reminder: both parties have gerrymandered districts. be careful what you wish for.
1
@G.G.
It is true both parties have gerrymandered districts, but the current gerrymandering is almost exclusively a Republican tactic. Many Democratically controlled states are pushing for reforms which will help end this travesty.
10
By electing and enabling Trump, the GOP has etched its own epitaph. After the Presidency of Donald Trump, millions and millions of Independent and Democratic Americans will NEVER vote for any Republican or any office ever again because they know that the GOP DOES NOT CARE ABOUT THEM.
I could go on forever with examples but we all know it's true. Trump isn't even pretending to be a President for all Americans. The GOP isn't even pretending to care about anyone but their voters/donors. And that's bad. That's awful. That's un-American.
But what really pushes this from "next election" to "not ever"? It's that millions of regular voting conservatives see this, know this, and don't also don't care. The conservative voters of American have apparently decided I'm ok with ignoring their fellow citizens because "we won".
This demonstrates that the modern GOP voter lacks empathy and principles and believes in only power which should be used only for their party's benefit and not for the benefit of all Americans.
If you're not part of the GOP this is easy (and depressing) to see. And millions of Americans are never going to vote GOP now, ever again. It's not everyone. But it's enough to push the GOP into the minority forever and soon.
1
I don't know that fascism is ever entirely doomed, any more than history ever ends, but that is without a doubt what the Repubican Party stands for now. Destroying the reputations of good people with chatter and dismissing critical ideas with anti-science cultism, while uplifting the most despicable of frauds and promoting destructive nonsense.
Today, it radiates outward from Putin in Russia, from Mitch and Trump in the USA, from Balsonaro in Peru, Johnson in the UK, and reverberates throughout the world fanning riots, lynchings and even genocides. The forces of contempt, division and domination are fanning hate everywhere, because rational solutions are not what they do. In the end, they have only disaster to offer.
1
Republicans have always wanted to destroy government except for defense. That's nothing new.
So that ersatz de novo nugget makes me wonder about the validity of the rest of this piece.
The only message that matters is turnout. If blue voters voted for Democrats with the same reliability and regularity as red voters vote for Republicans, the GOP would vanish overnight.
So no more pouting, no more staying home, no more 3d-party votes.
Unless you want to see Donald Trump re-elected.
1
Pitching to the far left for a primary is not the same as campaigning for POTUS. It was far right who delivered Trump, and as much of a disaster as he's been, he still has advantages. But, if Dems continue down HRC road of slice and dice, many voter may stay home. Dems need something more compelling than what we've seen.
1.) Presidential command. Trump can call his base white trash and they'll still cheer. Too many Dems are acting like they want to be teacher's pet, and won't survive Reps' seasoned bullies.
2.) Vision all Americans can buy into. Reps create fear then come in as savior by selling a 19th c. fantasy (and 21st c. plutocracy). Dems - i.e. "America's success in the 21st century means restoring to all Americans the power to succeed."
3.) Focus on values, not details. The devil is in the details, and no one likes the devil. Support Medicare for All -- as a future policy goal. We cannot deliver now anyhow, so strengthen this basic 'American right' that "Reps want to destroy," instead of taking away something many like.
4.) Don't take the bait. POTUS is a leader of people, not an underling with spreadsheets.
5.) Go very high, and let Americans watch as Trump digs a new low.
I've been hoping for a long that that the GOP just goes away, and the Dems split into 'center' and 'left'
Really, they've been an irrelevant and evil party of racism since before I was born, with Nixon. The Reagan era really set them on the path that has culminated with Trump, though.
"Do the Democrats understand how to take advantage of it?"
Probably not.
1
Democratic Pollsters are not to be trusted given recent experience of the 2016 election.
Vegas Oddsmakers have Trump beating any and all Democrats.
The smart money says this pollster is full of it!
2
The Republican party is NOT doomed. Recent history (since Reagan) has shown that the American electorate has enuf believers in the nGOP ideology that the party will remain viable and operative.
“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, 1926
One can only hope than Mr. Mencken will be wrong this time...
I do not think the Democratic leadership understands how to underscore what they have done. Pelosi called her first bill regarding voting rights HR1....does she understand the American public does not have a clue what HR1 is? If the Dems cannot even let the public know what they have tried to do in English...I do not have hope they can take advantage of anything.
We should never underestimate the Democratic Party's ability to drop the ball.
1
Nothing like NYT objectivity: a Democratic party operative opining on "bipartisanship" and why the Republican Party needs to leave the scene. I applaud the editors for their out-of-the-box/never-would-have-expected-it/unparalleled-fresh-insight approach to "issues."
2
From your lips to God's ear.
2
Talk about an out-to-lunch pollster. We're going to be gagging on Republican legal rulings for the next 50 years because of all the right-wing judges appointed by McConnell Inc. up through the Supreme Court. Even if he were correct, the epic battle between the 3 branches of government and states hasn't even begun. As I've realized in recent years after moving near the South, the Civil War never really ended - it just metastasized into multiple other issues. The modern Republican Party is a continuation of the pro-slavery Democrat Party of the 1800s, and it'll just change shape again in the future.
Until he -- and the scourge of Regan-republicanism that he metastasized -- is gone, we are still under siege. This piece feels good but should be no excuse for anyone to let up on the diligence this moment demands. Resist. Resist. Resist.
2
The implication of all this number-crunching is that "America" is ready for an activist, even a progressive wave election. Maybe. The trouble, as we are all painfully aware, is that the Electors in a few districts in a handful of states wag the national electoral dog. My question is whether Mr Greenburg's thesis applicable in Western Pennsylania, etc., right now? Or will Trump be granted four more years to destroy the country while opinion slowly shifts just outside the borders of these places? Is this a thesis about a broad shift, or one presuming to direct a 2020 electoral strategy?
2
@Gregory Adair: A court has ruled that a presidential elector can vote as they choose. Voting in US presidential elections is about to get even more ridiculous. The 2020 election could be litigated for years.
One quibble with your terminology: you say "large numbers of observant Catholics" support Trump. As a LIBERAL "observant" Catholic who knows many others like me, I can say NO, we are NOT Trumpers. We are socially-progressive Democrats. You're confusing "observant" with "conservative." Religious participation does not exclude liberal thought and actions.
2
@Mary the Librarian
And you're confusing anecdotal evidence with broad trends.
The NY Times today has an article about how the surging energy sector in Texas has created many new jobs for down and out Americans. As the article points out, the USA has now become the world's largest oil producer. The Democrats would work to destroy the fossil fuel sector and on top of that massively expand social programs when we have a trillion dollar deficit already. Is that a formula for dooming the Republican Party? I don't think so.
3
Your point completely ignores the true cost of fossil fuels, and what their use will ultimately do to the US economy. Try to imagine what the climate-induced depression will do to our employment rate. Fossil fuel production is just another trump sugar high - it's not sustainable, and comes at a dear cost.
6
@Aerys Well, Barack Obama just plunked down $14 million for a beachfront estate in Martha's Vineyard. He doesn't seem to be too worried about global warming and rising sea levels.
A trillion dollar deficit doesn’t seem to matter when the issue is tax cuts for the rich or more trillions for our bloated military industrial complex. But investing our taxes in the health and education of Americans? Oh no! Can’t have that!
This all sounds so wonderful, but I remember a lesson I learned in grammar school, that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
First of all, if Mr. Greenberg is a pollster, is he polling people from both parties or just Democrats? Second, is he communicating his findings to the candidates? Most of the present bunch of Democratic candidates seem pretty clueless as to how to beat Trump, Joe Biden most of all.
The other commenters I read are right. Ignorance is a strong force to pierce through and the fervent believers who are convinced that acting against their own best interest is the right thing to do will be hard to beat once Trump starts whipping them into a rabid frenzy.
And if the lofty goal is achieved of more firmer control of government by progressive choices, the defeated party won't ride off into the sunset or scatter to dark corners. They will continue to make themselves heard in the destructive manner which they have adapted since Trump began encouraging and empowering them. Even the change in administrations could be disorderly and violent if Trump won't admit defeat, which is entirely possible.
I will bookmark this article and go back to it the day after the 2020 election to see how accurate Mr Greenberg ends up being.
4
Hillary's shocking loss (stolen election) and Trump's outrages have awoken the women in this country who have been more passive in the past. Moms Demand Action on more than just gun control!
We are never going back or taking anything for granted again. We will remake this country to OUR vision-so it works for us and our families!
BUT: This article can only come true if there is a vast and continued turn out of Democrats and left leaning third-party voters working together to remake our country.
Democrats must pick a Progressive candidate who energizes the young so that they actually turn out to vote like they did for Obama.
2
The stake in the heart of the GOP, the silver bullet, will be the overhaul, if not outright abolishment, of the electoral college, which has undermined, and made a mockery, of our democracy. Let each vote count and the majority rule.
9
@riddley walker Can we assume there will be a majority? Why not a six-way split with the "winner" getting 20%? We haven't seen another Perot since 1996, because Ross Perot and all other billionaires discovered in 1992 that you may affect the outcome of the election but you have no chance to win under the current system with 20% of the vote because it won't garner you votes in the Electoral College. If only the popular vote counts and in a multi-candidate field no one gets more than 20%, it's worth jumping in as a billionaire, and getting your 20%, which might be a winning total. It's true that the obvious benefits of the EC (usually inflating the margin of the popular vote winner) have been replaced with serious weaknesses. That does not mean that any new system will serve us better. It could be worse. Have a runoff? And how much longer will our two-year election campaign take? Can the runoff be squeezed in before Inauguration Day, what with more debates and printing new ballots? Ranked voting: How long did it take to determine a winner in one lonely House seat in Maine in 2018? Imagine the legal challenges to ranked voting in a close national election. Anyone think someone like Donald Trump, for one, would go quietly if he/she won the popular vote in the first round without a majority, but lost in the count of 2nd place ballots, like Bruce Poliquin in Maine? Would those legal challenges end before Inauguration Day? If not, who is president on January 21, 20XX?
1
@riddley walker: That miserable coward Trump could have gotten the Electoral College consigned to the trash heap of history by refusing to take office 3 million votes short of a plurality. Instead he has played "Gotcha!" to a helpless nation.
While I’m glad the message is one of an imminent blue tsunami, we’re fourteen months from the election and anything can happen. Trump can start a war. He can change VPs. The economy might rebound. Democrats might choose the least attractive candidate. GOP defections in the House are a promising sign. But if I were advising the Democratic nominee, I’d suggest that he or she deliberately embrace a moderate agenda and tone, and spare the public the details. Remember, Trump promised a big, beautiful replacement of Obamacare even though wiser heads knew only repeal was on the agenda. Republicans never agonize over policy details because they’re anti-intellectual. They just wrap themselves in cultural values and call Democrats anti-American. It has worked for decades. Democrats need to borrow a little from this playbook. People’s eyes glaze over when Democrats argue over the merits of single payer and public option. Reasonable people just want to make sure Dems aren’t going to do more harm by lurching too far to the left, even if we Dems want it. The nominee should avoid sounding wonky, not overpromise and sound the least threatening possible. Then, when elected, go big.
6
I agree that post-2020, the GOP will be a transformed party. The question is whether it will be crushed in a blue wave, or morph into "national socialism," with the added frisson of evangelical inquisition.
2
The Republican Party is unraveling, a pollster just told us so. He backs his Opinion piece up with great stats and polls and the result of the last midterm election. Where incidentally moderate Dems won. But 85% of Republicans support Trump. If the Republican party is falling apart there will be fewer votes cast for Trump. So all the Dems have to do is turn out and vote. HaHa. Do it and stop complaining about the other side or the Media which daily published Trump's tweets which tells all. Just vote
5
What the United States will get, at least for a number of years, will be a stream of federal court rulings. Some may undo the modern regulatory state that began to develop under Theodore Roosevelt and flourished under Franklin Roosevelt. Clean air, safe drugs, safe food, and much more may disappear as the authority to regulate returns from agencies to Congress.
@David Martin: Congress has abrogated its most important powers because the state elect drones to it to avoid adult supervision.
For a doomed party, it appears to have rather stable vital signs. The current Republican Party has successfully manipulated the fear and anxieties of rural whites and aging suburban homeowners with the skill of a maniacal Elmer Gantry. As long as there remain a class of Americans who are skeptical of science and afraid of anything 'other" I suspect the GOP will continue to be able to feed cash into the mouths of the wealthy whilst pacifying their starving constituents with reassurances that they are protecting them from people who wish to take their guns from them and force them to embrace Islam.
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@Robert
As long as centrists control the Democratic Party and refuse to offer a real alternative to policies based on hate, greed, and violence, the Democrats will continue to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Republicans represent the richest .01% and the richer 20% that they pay to promote their policies. The Democrats are supposed to represent the 60% of the population that works for a wage plus their families.
With odds like that Democrats should never lose. Indeed, Democrats controlled Congress for nearly 60 years when they promised to tax the mega rich to invest in All Americans. Democrats won when they enacted policies Republicans decried as "socialism," like Social Security, Medicare, giant public works programs like the WPA and CCC that employed a combined 11.5 million people building infrastructure, built the Interstate Highway System (with a signature from Ike), funded basic research and put a man on the moon, sent kids to college, paid down the debt from WWII, and more, all with high taxes on the very rich.
Ever since centrist Democrats started giving away our values, getting nothing in return, turnout is down and they lost control of the states, were election law is made, and the Senate for 16 of the last 20 years.
If the Left does not take over the Democratic Party and make it the Party of workers once again, workers will not vote, the Left will not help, and the Centrists will whine that no one voted for their "safe" candidate, yet again.
16
@Robert Farmers still support Trump even though farm bankruptcies and suicides accelerate. If they still don't see the con man for what he is they need to leave the farm every now and again.
12
@McGloin
You've got it backwards. The center is no more in the Democratic Party. It is all about the evil white Americans and removing any barriers to even reasonable controls on poor, uneducated, unskilled immigrants flooding into the country. This doesn't benefit anybody who works for a living or pays taxes of any race. The center at one time, stood for working people, the environment, tax fairness and main stream issues. No more. The left and their identity focused and free everything politics have taken over.
1
There is really only one way to take gerrymandering out of US Congressional elections: electing the state's entire delegation in an at-large state-wide election.
3
Will you please stop referring to anyone who doesn’t live in Nebraska as elites? It’s a divisive, political talking point, not an accurate characterization.
6
@Dave Kellogg: Where one lives defines one's political relevance in the US. It doesn't matter how educated one is if one's vote counts for nothing for living in a wrong place.
1
During his tenure, the Democrats representation in state governments plummeted but Obama was always just about Obama. We all got to feel good about ourselves for electing a black man as President and then he gave away the store to Wall Street and his Ivy League buddies, after delegating a Citibank chairman to pick his cabinet. Having left office, Obama now snaps selfies with billionaires, which should surprise no one. This bait-and-switch paved the way for Trump and his faux populism.
I'm still waiting for any of the Democratic candidates to swear that there will not be one Wall Streeter in their cabinet; now that would get my vote! Not even Warren or Sanders has yet taken that oath.
@stan continople: Obama made quite plain in "The Audacity of Hope" that he wanted to be a kinder and gentler Ronald Reagan who would crowd-source political solutions. He got so much Republican money to run against Hillary that he believed the party would support him as president.
It’s facile to say this is just wishful thinking. However, 2018 is proof of this wish fulfilled. There is no reason to believe that the 2018 wave was a fluke or that things look better now for Trump and the Republicans. Today, we learn from the Times that people are losing healthcare because Trump and the Republicans are taking it away from them. Republicans are bailing from Congress like rats on a sinking ship. Democrats need to do what the people want, not what the Tea Party and CEOs want.
3
@Doug Lowenthal: Money front-runs the voters in the US. Republicans have been funding selected Democrats for decades.
Good luck with that bold progressive reform now that McConnell has stuffed the courts with radical ideologues who will side with every challenge to every "reform" the Dems throw out.
1
@gdurt
Even right-leaning judges will *usually* put the rule of law above just winning. Yes, there will be decisions that don't go toward restorative justice or advance progressivism but not many decisions will re-instate segregation or take the vote away from women and minorities either.
The 44% who didn't vote in 2016 are coming back to the polls and will give Trump and the GOP lasting comeuppance for governing as if they had an actual mandate.
@gdurt: These "judges" can't even honestly tell us what an "establishment of region" is.
I've been reading articles like this for 20 years and I'm getting the impression that we all could grow old and die waiting for the Republican party to be doomed. All it does is get noisier, more racist, more spendthrift, more tax avoidant, more anti-science, more anti-women, more vote-suppressant. Considering how solidly mobilized the reactionary financiers of the party are it would not be surprising if this power matrix simply leads to the abolition of voting and elections altogether. It's not as if the current party sees any legitimacy in the Democratic opposition.
5
The lame “Russia” excuse has been beat to death.
The only thing the Russians did of impact was exposing DNC’s own internal e-mails. Which shined a needed light on their candidate and campaign.
Just about everyone with a modicum of accurate information disagrees with you.
Wishful thinking at best, unfortunately...
I read these same words in 2015.
1
I'm not impressed with the conclusions. hard to see the death of the GOP if 26% of the population view immigrants as a burden, and 16% of moderates still identify as Republicans.
GOPers are with Dorothy, skipping down the yellow brick road in search of courage, a brain, and a heart. May they all stay in the land of OZ
@John MD: The diehards will stick it out to their deaths because that's when the payoff is supposed to happen: happiness forever.
@John MD Probably the best and funniest comment I read so far.
So unspeakably sad the delusion behind this piece, that there will be a "free" election in 2020 for president or any other office...because Putin has already decided to keep 45 in the White House. Good luck running interference around Russian interference, since the Russians also know that our venerable two-party system is a dead joke.
2
This column is profoundly ignorant of US history and encourages the already complacent democratic party to just sit back and let it happen.
Real analysts and informed people are aware of the period following US Civil War and reconstruction ,and how it took
almost 75 years for the franchise to become freely available to women and african-americans.
Many Trumpers are quite open in their ambition to repeat that period with violence, vote suppression and use of a see-no-evil supreme court to maintain supremacy for a group that considers only itself really american.
2
A political party that denies that public sectors of mixed economies were created to conduct socialism is just plain sociopathic and worse than useless.
The far-left Demos agenda is doomed. Trump will easily win re-election in 2020 and will save the USA from a far-left socialistic doom.
3
Yeah! Americans can never have what citizens of every other first world nation have had for decades! We will never invest our taxes in the health and education of our citizens!
Let’s have more medical bankruptcies! Let’s chain our children to high interest student debt! Tax cuts for the rich!
We are all doomed. What else is new?
1
Beware! Beware!
Such a smart man is Greenberg but so wrong.
This analysis is the kind of sweet-tasting pap that led to the week-after-week predications on the front page of the NYT online in fall 2106 of a HRC victory "probability" of 75-80-90!%
Remember always: HRC won the popular vote, but it is the ELECTORAL COLLEGE that decides the election, not the 3MM votes in Cal.
And as that Ornstein-Mann analysis reveals: increasingly, 70% or the electoral college vote will be in states with 30% of the population, and 70% of the population in states with 30% of the electoral college....
Greenberg is not helping us with this stuff.
4
Trump, a cruel and mendacious narcissist, has been a moral catastrophe for the nation. How much of the damage he has done can be remedied?
Maybe Mr. Greenberg is correctly diagnosing the trends in the electorate, but at this point I'd settle for a good person as President. Not a saint, but simply a person without hate in her or his heart.
1
@Mel: We all come with the same set of emotions. The differences lie in their relative importance to us, and our capacities to manage them.
The Republican Party was a rotten shriveling corpus without Trump. But beyond 2020, Trump is a reputational disaster for them. A generation of kids coming of age in last four years, whether they were ready or not, gained political consciousness, and will associate Trump's vulgar hateful racist incompetence with the Republican Party for their life time. The Republicans may remake itself and become a viable party for modern America at some point, but they'll have a Trump legacy problem for years to come.
1
Excellent Piece!
“....a defining partisan difference: a Republican Party determined to destroy government outside of defense and a Democratic Party determined to use it expansively.” And do Dem leaders know how to make advantage of this?
I say no, they do not. Because The GOP strategy & tactics dating back to Gingrich’s “The New Contract for America” was not a political assault but actual anarchy against The USC or the lawful, legal & identifying framework of our Public governance itself.
Impeachment’s, Impeachment’s & Impeachment’s Proceedings against not just Presidents but any and all US Public Officials guilty of improper conducts as judged by Peers (House Members) but not by public courts and or The Public itself is the first essential Duty of each House member even before doing legislation. Congress is ‘the’ self-policing and judgmental Body of the USA.
One does not have to hold a law degree or a high school diploma to be elected President or a Congressperson. ‘Good’ wisdom, judgement, honesty & trustworthiness are the requisite personal qualifications required to perform the job. Senate or House members can remove each other by simple majority votes without an impeachment Trial!
What are ‘We’ suppose to wait every two or four years to exercise a new Voting judgement? While those We are paying and are in direct charge are politically befuddled. Firing employees is seldom comfortable but sometimes necessary. Manage personnel or resign now!
2
@Samuel Owen: Newt Gingrich is proof that failure to enforce minimum standards of decency surrenders any human pursuit to the foulest.
1
@Steve Bolger
Well said, Sir!
1
Mr. Greenberg you may be correct, but over the years I have read so many post mortems on the Republican Party I've lost count and yet, they are in control of the United States. Almost lock, stock, and barrel.
Bobby Jindal said that Republicans had to stop being the 'stupid' party and then that same party doubled down on stupid and won again! The Republicans are just like Marvel's 'Hydra,' cut off one head and seven will replace it!
Never count these people out - never. They are well financed, they have the finest strategists, covert operators, and think tanks that money can buy. They may re-brand, they may say 'new and improved and now with extra (fill in the blank) ' but they will be the same people pushing the same agenda.
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@JD Ripper Good points and it will take decades, but even the Republicans can't fight all of the trends going against the party forever.
More women, more minorities, more urban dwellers, less religious and more educated are all where this country is going and where the Republican party is not.
18
@JD Ripper
I don't think that Greenberg is saying that we shouldn't work to win the election. I think he is saying that to win this election you have to trust your own values and not try to sacrifice your values to win a center that doesn't really exist.
What Greenberg is trying to show you with his numbers, is that moderates are not halfway between extremist Right-wing Republicans and sellout centrist Democrats.
Moderates lean left, because the left is not nearly as extreme the Right, despite corporate media telling us that the left is just as dangerous as white supremacist terrorist sympathisers, because they vigorously oppose white supremacist terrorist sympathisers who openly call for ethnic cleansing in the USA.
Extreme is helping a president who acts like a king by calling for violence against citizens without due process, demanding personal loyalty from public servants (fealty), claiming he can ignore the 14th Amendment to take away citizenship from those born here, musing about multiple terms in office or being "president for life" which he equates to "king" and saying that Americans should "sit in attention" for him with "fervor," and always governing by personal whim rather than faithfully executing the law.
Extreme is an entire party taking the side of a hostile intelligence service attacking our elections, while attacking the FBI.
There is nothing like this on the Left whose values are aligned with the Constitution. (Read it and compare ).
Left Values Win.
16
@JD Ripper That is the threat. There will always be new people to co-opt. Repealing Glass-Steagall financial protections and consolidating commercial banking with mortgage lending unquestionably led to the trauma of 2008, but somehow, the bankers got to party on the bailout passed in the last days of the Bush administration, and the Obama administration was never able to go for full reinstatement. Citibank and Goldman Sachs, the principal architects of this disaster, today remain forces for unbridled, anti-democratic exploitation worldwide. If you have any doubt about their intentions just search the web for Citibank's infamous "plutonomy memos." They identified the "one-person, one-vote" governing principle as the sole remaining risk to the their very wealthiest clients, but not an insurmountable one. The convergence of plutocratic interests from Putin to Trump to Johnson, empowered by Russia's disinformation campaign, Murdoch's propaganda empire, and well-funded Republican think tanks, has nearly neutered any hope for governments "of the people, by the people, and for the people," to promote rational, democratic policies in the face of the constant bark of fear and hate. "Divide et conquista." No one knows that better than the heavily tax-exempted 1 percenters.
7
The author's argument assumes the American system is perfect, therefore capable of self-adjustment at all possible scenarios. This is evidently not true: America will disappear someday; it's only a matter of how and when.
the largest metropolitan center in the United States that the Republicans had went blue in 2018, Tarrant County, Texas. Reading the Tea leaves as many as 9 Republican representatives have elected to spend more time with their families in Texas. Texas will go blue next year and with it the Republicans electoral college chances of ever regaining the White House. Republicans win when the turnout is 55% of less. The turnout next year will be in excess of 70%, at this level the Republican party will cease to exist in most areas of the country. Hope is Trump was worth it.
The pendulum swings, and then it swings back the other way. There is nothing unusual about what is going on here.
It is very possible that the Democrats will win in 2020, and maybe even win big. But then they will over-reach.
They will misinterpret a disgust for Trump for an endorsement of everything progressive, and that will be a huge mistake.
When Obama ran as a centrist in 2008, at a time when Bush Jr was vilified for his foreign wars and the great recession, it was very likely that a Democrat, any Democrat, would win. Obama took that and ran left. He was able to enact the ACA, but antagonized enough of the country to ensure he could not get much other legislation passed after that, and his further executive actions around transgender bathrooms and the Dreamers further divided the country. And that gave Trump the opening he needed.
If Elizabeth Warren or another progressive wins next year, it won't be because so many Americans want to give up their employer-provided insurance or because they want open borders. It will be because people are tired of Trump and want "anyone else".
But if the Democratic winner starts to enact Green New Deals, reparations, or Medicare for All, we will likely see Trump Version 2.0 in 2024.
Republicans are not doomed, as long as Democratic winners overreach. And they always do.
5
I respect Mr. Greenberg, but NO ONE knows what will happen next year. So many voters were complacent in 2016, thinking Hillary was a shoo-in. Therefore they stayed home or cast spoiler votes. This must NOT happen again! Yes, your vote DOES count!
1
I have said it before and I will say it again: The first thing the Democrats need to do if they ever again hold the House, Senate and Presidency simultaneously is to lift the cap on the total number of seats in the House. It is why Republican gerrymandering is so effective and why the Electoral College so tilted. As long as the map is so tilted toward less populated areas of the country, the Tea Party strategy/message will continue to choke the system.
3
"Democrats should be looking not just to defeat Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but to get to work building a bold era of progressive reform."
Exactly. This is the moment we built toward.
We must avoid those who want a return to status quo before Trump. They are the ones insisting that defeat of Trump is all that matters.
Many are really Republicans who just want a better Republican candidate, safely from the Democrats so the Republican ideas cannot possibly lose.
Mr. Greenberg, I hope you are right.
However, your op-ed reads more like a hope and less like a data driven consensus view. It seems to be mixing cause and effect with desired outcome. I wonder if the same type of mistake in 2016 caused the complacency that led us to current state. Please remember that what is happening can sometimes be very different from what we wish would happen.
America has always had a dangerous affection for misplaced rhetoric and ideology. That is how we elected Reagan. That is how we got to Trump. I would not at all be sanguine about this ship turning around this soon.
4
Mr. Greenberg writes: "A quarter of Republicans were moderates in 2018." How does this figure jibe with current polls that indicate nearly 90% of Republicans approve of Trump's performance in office?
2
@Larry Sherman It means most of the moderates have left the party probably to become independents.
Please stop referring to people living on the coasts as elites. Most of us are not and we're struggling as much as anyone else is to survive. It's these types of labels that push people away from good ideas and interfere with their ability to listen and understand what is being proposed or discussed.
As far as this reader is concerned both parties are filled with and run by people who have no comprehension of what life has become for the average American. Nor do they care because they are more interested in getting elected, getting in the news, or making a viral tweet. The hard work of governing the country is beyond most of them. It's easier to be wooed, flattered, and "whined" and dined by rich donors. Those rich donors are the elite, not the people in the cities, living on the coasts, or going to college.
7
@hen3ry: Scoring political popularity by how much money candidates raise gives positive feedback to wealth concentration.
1
Americans may be gaining an appreciation for immigrants and their hard work, but the gun lovers will always vote Republican, as will the right-to-lifers and all the evangelicals, no matter what. It will be a close race and it will all come down to turnout, with Republicans having the advantage of voter suppression and Gerrymandering. No, Republicans might be morally bankrupt, but they really know how to hang on to power. Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.
10
@Jim Dennis: These folks just cannot abide the constitutional prohibition of faith-based legislation. They believe they act for a God that is just themselves in their mirrors.
2
I don't believe that the majority Americans are single issue voters. Yes the gun lovers and anti-abortion people probably won't vote Democratic, but they are relatively small numbers compared to the voters who recognize just how damaging Trump's Presidency has been to our country.
2
@Mebschn - I can only hope you are right. I wouldn't discount the numbers, though, especially for gun rights. For abortion, I think the two sides are evenly matched.
This analysis leaves out two important facts: Many districts in potential "swing" states are extremely gerrymandered. Therefore, although the total number of votes garnered by Democrats exceeds Republican, Republicans continue to hold many more Congressional seats. Secondly, the Electoral College system favors the GOP candidates - even Trump. Liberals are concentrated in large, urban areas. Winning by a landslide in CA and NY doesn't mean anything. Unless people in FL, MI, WI, PA, and OH decide to swing a bit to the Democratic side, Trump will win again. The number of electoral votes given to large population states dominated by Democrats is not proportionately large enough to out weigh the states that will always vote GOP. Smaller conservative states have an influence much larger than there population deserves, and this is why Democrats win national elections by number of votes, but still lose.
5
@dairyfarmersdaughter: This entire system revolves around making votes not count at all.
Oh, do I wish the title of this editorial were a true statement. But alas, with the vast majority of Republican voters choosing their party no matter who the candidate is, I doubt that The Republican Party can be vanquished from national government.
148
@Eric Holzman
No one can "vote for their own interests," if one party offers them the interests of billionaires and the other side offers to compromise with that.
What does it even mean to compromise, when you haven't offered an opposing view to compromise from. Compromise is not a party platform plank. It is the last step of the process, after two sides offer opposing solutions, and make strong cases for why they are right. Only when the negotiations are near the end are you supposed to trade away items from your wish list for items on their wish list. Values are the things you never give away.
Values are your power and GET YOU ELECTED.
If Centrist Democrats stopped helping Republicans push through bad policies by refusing to actually oppose them, but instead, compromised with the Left base of their own party, who (despite lies from corporate media) mostly tries to help workers and their families with programs like the minimum wage, healthcare, education, and infrastructure, then many workers on the Right would follow their greed and vote for the party offering them "free stuff."
Mitch McConnell is in the Senate because he brings $2.50 in federal spending to Kentucky for ever $1.00 they pay in federal taxes. When Republicans say they don't want "free stuff" they are lying. Greed is all about free stuff and they praise greed.
Workers will trade racism to help their families, but you have to promise to actually help them, not tell them, "there is no money."
Left values win
6
@Eric Holzman In the words of Grover Norquist, and mixing metaphors a bit, the Republican Party might someday be small enough to strangle in a bathtub.
4
i'm leery of most attempts to argue one's personal and already convinced opinions from polling data. the 2016 election showed us all, definitively, what polls are not good for: they are not good for predicting the future -- especially the future that one passionately desires.
i prefer the method of groundhog day, which is that you have one really good, really reliable predictor of the future, and you go with that. some people prefer a large rodent for the coming of spring; i prefer the sentiments revealed in widespread behavior.
i see no widespread repudiation of racism, or the public flaunting of firearms; no pullback from extremist crimes or conspiracy theories; no groundswell of material support for the poor and newly arrived. i only read a lot of wishful thinking or dire forecasts in the press about social trends that have piddling significance in comparison to climate change.
over a century ago hans eysenck defined the personality trait "toughmindedness" in political opinions and implied it had a genetic basis. i see no reason to believe that the "crazy 30%" of the electorate, strongly motivated by religious superstitions, will relent in its opinions anytime soon. "the poor will always be with us," -- yes, and the misguided too. they have the ballot, and they will not conveniently fade away.
1
@drollere You’re wrong. The polls predicted the popular vote win for Clinton almost exactly. They were well within the margin of error for the slim wins in three states that gave Trump the electoral college.
2
Great article, but political parties and their voters and control of branches of the government (both state and federal) are not driven by logic and reason.. they are driven by reptile brain reactionary conflict based US vs THEM emotions.
1
After watching and listening to Trump the past couple of weeks, I don't think there is much of a chance that he will last until November 2020. He is obviously mentally compromised and looks like a physical wreck. Even his makeup has become very clown-like. What is going on? What an horrible spectacle this has turned into. What a mistake.
3
Don't count your chickens. Everyone else must vote.
1
Correct on all points.
Dear Mr. Greenberg,
I will believe it when I see it. Republicans are like dandelions in my lawn. No matter what I do, they still pop up and try to kill my lawn.
3
I hope so
1
I've seen this obit before, but the GOZP (zombie) continues to stagger back to animation ad wreak havoc.
Yawn. Another op-ed that says the days of the GOP are numbered . No way. The party will survive Trump, even his reelection, which is looking like a sure thing. Don't underestimate those who did not and will not vote for Trump , but have zero faith in the direction of the Democratic Party. The ideals of limited but focused government, personal responsibility, and fiscal responsibility will stand in the face of the administrative\nanny state that AOC and Beto are espousing. It'll be a different Republican party, and needs to be, but it will survive. Have a great day!
2
@My Aim Is True And the 2018 midterms prove your point how?
Wishful thinking on the part of an avowed liberal.
The Republicans under this idiot President will suffer but as the electorate watches the venerable Democrats inch closer and closer to Socialism and enslavement of people of color with debilitating government programs all they will do is usher in 4 more years of this kook.
Democrats led by AOC and the other "Brides of Isis" will do nothing but snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
1
Every good American will be working to oust as many Republicans from every level of government possible in the coming years.
Their violent racist xenophobic ideology is poison
2
All these Times Op-Eds are the same:
- President is evil but actually has a point about ____
- Democrats are better but actually will lose because of ____
Once again, the ONLY way this dude can win re-election is he same way he won his first "election" ... by CHEATING
1
Yes! Now let’s follow up with stories about people who are organizing, registering, running for office, and show people how to be active in this democracy! Enough with the Trump rallies and the fetishizing profiles of Trump voters. Show us the 60% who are mad as hell and are going to fight to save our Republic; Berners, Buttigiegs, mod Dems, new candidates at every level...why aren’t all these patriots featured on these pages every day?
5
It's significant that one of the articles cited at the end of Greenberg's piece was "Trump Is Starting to Lose His Grip," written almost a year ago. Well, guess what? Trump may be losing his mind, but he's not losing his base, despite more and more evidence that he's screwing them. And never underestimate the ability of the Demos to shoot themselves in the foot - after shooting at, and fatally wounding, each other. As one letter-writer said, "I'd love to believe you're right." But I ain't holding my breath.
The notion that the Republican Party is dead is premature. The same has been said of the Democrats over the years. Political parties cycle in and out of power.
The Democrats have a great opportunity. I hope they don't waste it.
1
I respect Mr. Greenberg's work, but take issue with the big-picture conclusion. The GOP is ALREADY dead, it just hasn't fallen down yet. It died when a two-bit punk from Queens hotwired it for a joyride and then kept it. The politicians and party "leadership" showed just how brittle they were, and how thin their convictions were, by their abject capitulation to this Trumpification. The Trump Dynasty party without The Donald will be risible and pathetic. Led by... Junior? Ivanka? Please.
Not to say that that the Democrats couldn't screw this up with great aplomb. We have great talent, we can run unopposed and lose.
2
Even though the Feds are saying they do not predict a recession, the housing market is starting to slump. In addition there are other indications that the economy is at least slowing. This is on top of the large amount of crap-jobs that we have a choice of.
The problem with this administration is that they have a way of saving Trump from any embarrassment, even if it means burying the truth. Clearly, contradicting him means the death of employment, see NOAA.
I do not know if the republican party is done, but I wouldn't even consider voting for a moderate republican, even if he were the epitome of honor. I like John Kasich, but he should look for another political party. The current Republican party is now synonymous with white boy anger and hate. And they have shown themselves sympathetic to the plight of white supremacist terrorists. By the way, we are now 10x more likely to be shot down in the supermarket by one of these blue-blooded Americans, than killed by any immigrant.
3
All that matters is how voters feel: I for one am motivated because I am tired of an unfair field of play. I want to see a middle class and a lower class that has more power over politics than the Koch clan's billions do...
And Democrats, some of them, understand that they need to connect the dots on how government can fix our social problems.
I continue to hope for an end to corporate welfare, useless tax breaks, and a return to a nation where we expect those who receive the greatest profits to shoulder a commensurate responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of that same system. Hell, maybe we can even get a senate that debates and passes legislation! That would be wild!
5
A political party that foisted presidents like George Bush and Donald Trump on the American public did more harm than good. Such incompetents allow national problems to linger on and on without any resolution. Trump has created an immigration problem practically out of whole cloth while at the same time trying to take health insurance away from millions of Americans.
1
Headlines like this make me cringe.
Presenting an opinion as a statement of fact is not helpful. You can reference all the polls and studies you like, slap up a few charts and graphs analyze it all to your hearts content and it all adds up to nothing. The only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Mr. Greenberg, despite your intelligent analysis and wide experience...you, and so many other pundits, JUST DON'T GET IT. This whole autocratic, authoritarian, strong-man movement - led by Trump and the Republicans - is all about fear of the "other" (i.e. race/religion, sexual orientation), at least as much as it is about economic fears. Trump sparked people's fears about "illegals," brown people and women - coming in and taking so-called good jobs and entitlements that white males are supposed to have (which is total myth but they believe it). Sure, Dems can try to go after these "fear-based" voters, but if the Dem nominee is a person of color, or a woman, or gay...those fear-based voters are probably not going to pull the lever for them. Just saying.
3
@Sdtrueman Yes, fear of "the other." The left is morally pure and has never had a bigoted thought about Christians, pro-life supporters, those that want a strong border, Catholics, those that favor a one state solution for Israel, Trump supporters, anyone that believes in God or religion, white men, anyone that went to prep school, anyone that wears a red hat, those that are supposedly "rich," or dares to hold an opinion outside of liberal orthodoxy. Talk about fear of "the other!" It's fear, loathing and hate!
OK Stan, and Hillary is going to win with 93% of the vote, 100 million votes to 1. Go away Mr Greenberg!
From Stan’s lips to God’s ear.
1
When will we see an NYT-hosted debate between Mr. Greenberg and Bret Stephens? That I’d like to see.
Sure, I'll believe it when I see it.
"Which candidate has a theory of the case that pushes aside other interpretations and critiques?"
And critically, how does that candidate dumb that theory down enough for the public, which seems to have the attention span of a flea, to swallow?
1
There are some very good points and analyses in this piece. The most salient, is that elections are essentially about emotion, and the winners are those who understand those emotions and are able to use that understanding to seek votes. So, when the leading Dem nominees are: a rigid, scolding Socialist committed to follow a failed ideology from the 1930s, an intellectual professor who comes across as harsh, and a comfortable, soothing, unchallenging moderate with experience in government during the “good old days”, who is likely to win?? But, for change to occur, Americans must be willing to briefly put down their mobile devices, accept their responsibility as citizens, get off their butts, AND VOTE!!
3
I am far less sanguine than Greenberg that the 2020 election will sound the deathknell for the Republican Party. But if the party does die it will be from self-inflicted wounds.
Once upon a time the GOP was the party of fiscal and secular conservatism—made up of Alan-Simpson-type conservatives who wanted government out of bedrooms as well as pocketbooks and led by white-shoe professionals who saw themselves as the adults in the room. But Richard Nixon couldn’t win with that base, so he lured in conservative Catholics with an anti-abortion plank and the Southern defenders of white privilege with promises of “states’ rights.” And the party has been a magnet for social and white-pride conservatives ever since.
And now they’ve taken over the store. According to Greenberg, seventy percent of the GOP base now consists of evangelicals, Tea Partiers and Catholic conservatives. And while not held across the whole, look at their causes: the preservation of white privilege and a white majority, Christian Zionism (which sees Jews as eschatological pawns), the marginalization of the LGBT community in the name of religious liberty, the unconstitutionality of abortion (which would institutionalize diminution of women’s power in the name of the “unborn”) and fiscal conservatism (to the extent it denies benefits to the “undeserving”).
Trump rode these issues to victory in 2016. Whether they sustain him and the GOP will be up to the turnout of voters who see their malignancy.
3
Great article and I hate to quibble over details but the phrase ‘Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump’ is bothersome. If you have to ask why, you are probably not a woman of a ‘certain age’.
Just this: I hope you're right.
1
Hope this column is not Pollyannish. Greenberg has been wrong before. But the column does make one consider how critical the issue of “electability” should be. If this really is a wave election for Dems, why elect a more-of-the-same guy like Biden? Warren’s many plans will have to go through a congressional wringer of more moderate Dems who will file down the sharp edges before they become law, assuming Dems win the Senate (a big assumption, despite Greenberg’s optimism). Things need to get done after so much Republican cruelty and opposition to even mild solutions. Climate is threatening, women’s health care is jeopardized, specifically, and for all middle class and below generally, our foreign “policy” is bad to non-existent, guns need to be reined in, the New Gilded Age must end equitably . . . the list is long. Why nominate another person beholding to Wall Street who seems to be happy throwing a Dixie Cup of water on the flames when a fire hose is necessary? Warren is smart, appealing in an earnest grandma kind of way, and does not campaign by trashing others. It is still too early to take sides, but, at this point, the gods seem to favor Warren. That is not a bad thing.
3
".....but it also revealed what has become a defining partisan difference: a Republican Party determined to destroy government outside of defense and a Democratic Party determined to use it expansively."
Greenberg, you nailed it in that sentence. Your extraordinary article should be required reading for every Democrat and non-Trump Republican. We can save our democracy from the rampant unbridled capitalism that has been devouring the heart and soul of this country for decades.
4
The decremental arc of the Republican Party is complete. Allegiance to Trump is now absolute, and adherence to principled values is now extinct.
As a tool of the wealthy, and wielding wedge issues as its weapon, the Republican Party has, for the last several decades, kept America from its goal of egalitarianism... not socialism.
The Republican Party has been a spoke in the wheel of America's progress for the profit of the few. It will not be missed by me.
3
I think we have arrived at a time in history where the very fundamentals of our democracies need to be scrutinized – not just in the US, but around the world. Despots terrorize their populations, but officeholders in the great democratic nations did not push previously push their powers to the extent that we are now witnessing. The party that successfully guided the Union to victory and its role in the abolition of slavery is now a vile shadow of its former self. A century ago the Republican Party underwent an ideological shift to the right and since then has inexorably mutated into one that now both courts and supports a ‘wanna-be’ dictator. Abraham Lincoln would be shocked, appalled, disgusted and disappointed with what the GOP has become, and immediately disaffiliate himself from this party.
3
@R. Law. They’ve already abandoned both.
1
Nice article, Mr. Greenberg, but I don’t buy it. As a high school kid in 1964, I read articles predicting that Goldwater’s loss was so devastating to the GOP that the party would never recover. Four years later, Richard Nixon was elected president. Four years after that, he was re-elected. Eight years later, Ronald Reagan was elected. And so on. Trump offers simple answers to complex questions, and that’s the perfect lure for voters who lack intelligence, curiosity, and logic. And there are millions and millions of them. Trump wins in 2020. Count on it.
1
From Greenberg's lips to god's ears as they say.
I do think this is an era when the world needs radical progressive change. If Trumpism is beginning to fade, let's hope timid centrism among the Democrats doesn't thwart progressive momentum and allow Trump to sneak back in as the only candidate who can excite the masses.
5
Democrats could screwup the recipe for making ice!!! They have proven time and time again how dysfunctional they are as a political organization. They have no message that resonates with their constituents. Pelosi is herding cats in Congress dealing with the daily nonsense from AOC and her gang of odd balls.
The GOP is on the rise.
2
"The elites who mostly live in America’s dynamic metropolitan areas were satisfied with America’s economic progress after the financial crash, but overall it helped make Donald Trump electable."
It seems that the term "elites" is a pejorative meant to conjure up Dems and Independents in the tech sectors with good educations and stock grants. I think it's an overused term with an elastic definition that is meant to separate "real Americans" in rural (Red) taker-states from those who live in the Blue giver-states that fuel America's economy. Let's get real about where our money comes from.
How do you categorize Betsy DeVos and Wilbur Ross? They certainly appear elite to me. Aren't the Trumps elite? The Murdochs? The Kochs? Isn't it true that Trump prefers those with Ivy League educations?
Either define your terms or don't use them please.
6
As long as there are greedy people and people who hate other people, the Republican Party will survive.
4
Good Riddance! G.O.P. - R.I.P.
As long as Democrats call everyone racists and sexists and call for socialism, moderates like me will stick to free enterprise, liberty-loving Republicans. Democrats have lost the center.
4
Lest the Democrats forget the words of James Carville, "The economy stupid".
Most Americans now view the Democratic party as the anti White party. Don't expectto win with a platform like that.
5
@Cookies & Milk Hillary got three million more votes than Trump so I'm not sure how accurate your post is.
@Cookies & Milk
Then most Americans are either stupid or don't take their eyes off Fox Fake News because that is decidedly not the platform of any of the Democratic front runners.
Funny. And untrue.
2
If only...
So foolish. They will never die! They will cling to life just long enough for the world to burn
1
Senator Dianne Feinstein was asked about Senator Susan Collins.
====
“Yes,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), when asked if she’s conflicted. “I’m very fond of her. I consider her a friend. I trust her. I believe she’s a good senator.”
====
Apparently Feinstein thinks the Senate is a girls club. Also Speaker Pelosi didn't impeach Bush and won't impeach Trump. We are dealing with the gang that can't shoot straight.
New data makes it clear: Nonvoters handed Trump the Presidency.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/09/new-data-makes-it-clear-nonvoters-handed-trump-the-presidency/?arc404=true
"The data also makes another point very clear: Those who didn’t vote are as responsible for the outcome of the election as those who did."
Translation: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "NOT" VOTING. If you "don't" vote, you vote by default.
You say you can't change things by voting? BULL!
You in fact DO change things by not voting.
I'm going to post this every day until Election Day, 2020.
The only meaningful political activism is to put your time, energy and focus into registering voters and getting them to vote.
All other protest and demonstration is just playing defense. Playing political defense, the best you can do is tie. You cannot win.
If you don't vote, the people empowering ICE, stay in power.
If you don't vote, the people putting children in cages, stay in power.
If you don't vote, the people heating up the planet, stay in power.
If you don't vote, the people polluting your air and water, stay in power.
If you don't vote, the people making the rich richer, and the rest of us poorer, stay in power.
Not voting is exactly what to do, if we want to keep Trump and the Republicans in power, and keep ourselves powerless.
2
Who can do it Mr. Greenberg?
1
I saw the headline “Republican Party is Doomed” and had to wonder if I was reading The Onion. The GOP controls the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and a healthy majority of state governments. The Democrats wish they could someday be doomed to a similar fate. I have been reading about the imminent demise of the GOP since the Nixon Administration. Remember all those polls that said Hillary would wipe the floor with Trump’s hairpiece? This sort of article only leads to complacency on Election Day. Trump would love Greenberg to write a piece like this every day.
311
@Victor James
It is presented as the long view, not the short cycle transaction of today.
The only lasting power of the republican party will be their salting the judicial system with conservative (and sometimes inept and pliable) judges. This can be overcome with good control of the other two branches, which Trump is single handedly helping repbulicans to lose both.
15
@Chuck "It is presented as the long view, not the short cycle transaction of today."
That's not what the opening paragraph states.
"The 2020 election will be transformative like few in our history. It will end with the death of the Republican Party as we know it, leaving the survivors to begin the struggle to renew the party of Lincoln and make it relevant for our times"
As far as that statement goes, I think someone forgot to send it to the 30 state legislatures controlled by Republicans (18 Democrats, 2 split). Turning those kinds of disparate numbers around probably won't happen overnight (or next year, for that matter).
18
@Victor James
What Greenberg is trying to tell you is that you have to have faith in your own values to win the election, because the vast majority leans to the Left. Look at his data. That is what he is trying to show.
Democrats keep losing because Centrists refuse to oppose the Right and would rather attack the base of their own party than their actual opponents.
The Right is Extreme. The Left is not. Moderates know this and as soon as the Democratic Party stops attacking its own base, but instead tries to grow it, Democrats will win.
18
As long as republicans keep indoctrinating their youth at Hillsdale College in Michigan and Liberty University in Virginia, they will continue to pump out mindless drones parroting the politics of division, hiding behind God and patriotism.
The republican party is not doomed until someone cuts off the money being poured into the republican party by wealthy private and corporate donors.
3
I love these “pronouncements” by pollsters. Is that really still a job by the way?
Anyway - like it or not, there are tens of millions of people like me who don’t like Trump but will hold my nose and vote for him. Why? Because the left has completely jumped the shark and frankly I don’t think the system needs to be torn down.
I’m sure this echo chamber of NYT commenters will call me racist, xenophobic, or some other label that they love to pin on people with different opinions. But that’s the reality. Get a viable candidate with a pragmatic platform and I will listen. But right now Trump is the safer play.
4
@Jason Sadly, I am forced to agree with you, and I am a registered Democrat. The Left has devolved into lunacy.
Instead of seeing red flags and listening to wake up calls, it sees enemies and hears conspiracy, and then convinces itself to step on the gas and drive off the cliff with greater determination.
If Trump wins the next election, one wonders whether even this will be sufficient to actually wake the Democrats up.
2
@Jason Sadly, I am forced to agree with you, and I am a registered Democrat. The Left has devolved into lunacy.
Instead of seeing red flags and listening to wake up calls, it sees enemies and hears conspiracy, and then convinces itself to step on the gas and drive off the cliff with greater determination.
If Trump wins the next election, one wonders whether even this will be sufficient to actually wake the Democrats up.
Mr. Greenberg doesn't want you to remember this but he was Hillary's pollster. And predictably, he has a new book out that's favorable to Dems and attacks those mean Republicans.
Mr. Greenberg's data doesn't really show his conclusion -- that the Republican Party is doomed. But his article will be taken as a matter of faith by the NY Times Progressives. More importantly to him: it should help sell his new book. Which is the purpose of the exercise, after all.
My takeaway from this article is that, whether or not the Republican Party is doomed, by Mr. Greenberg's own assessment the Democrats apparently don't have a clue about how to actually find and select a viable presidential candidate.
So, doomed party or not, it still appears that Mr. Trump, awful as he is to all right-thinking Progressives, will find a way to squeak out a victory in 2020. And then we can all look forward to Mr. Greenberg's new book that he'll write thereafter, telling us all why the Progressives were wrong, he was right, and, once again, the Republican Party is doomed.
The thing that most gives me hope in the accuracy of this prediction is that California went through an ugly anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action period in the 1990’s, as the state’s population shifted from majority white to majority people of color. California Republicans lead this divisive, destructive charge—and their party here is now thoroughly out of power. This same demographic trend is now happening nationally, and the Republicans are again leading a divisive, destructive charge. Hopefully they will be as thoroughly out of power nationally as they are in California, as a consequence. Hopefully then government and the elected officials running it can get back to the business of enacting solutions to the nation’s problems.
1
Obama was not perfect but he did know how to behave as the leader of the Western World, which could use America’s leadership right now. He also provided optimism, hope and stability to the ship of state - one that is now constantly rattled by inane tweets and emotional outbursts that are pessimistic, angry and leave chaos in their wake. Trump has debased the GOP politically as reflected in this article, but also legally, morally, economically, financially and racially. As the party of Trump, what does the GOP plan to do for anybody else?
1
Don't be too sure. 3 million popular majority for Hillary wasn't enough to overcome the "electoral college" and voter suppression by a Republican party desperate to retain domination of the USA. America will not win back the government from billionaires without a fight. Fight!
1
This is an interesting and astute analysis. But as Abigail Adams advised her husband, don't forget the ladies. Women also worry about the economy, the rise of anti-immigrant bigotry and its practice in separating thousands of children from their families and cruelly abusing them.
Women do not approve of the forced birther movement that denies the most basic rights of bodily integrity and reproductive health decisions to the woman herself.
You cannot lose a gender and have a viable future, politically or otherwise.
1
Except, that no one person or organization can compare with the collective Democratic Party's ability to continually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Didn't see any discussion of how this might possibly benefit Dems in the Senate. Haven't seen any coverage of competitive Senate races where Dems can take back the majority there. Crickets.
With a GOP majority in the Senate, there will be no transformation.
1
"This is a transformational moment. Do the Democrats understand how to take advantage of it?"
Let's consult the Magic 8-Ball. We ask the question, turn it over, and the little triangle appears in the window on the bottom: IT'S THEIR ELECTION TO LOSE.
The test of this thesis is now on as Mark Sanford can run against tRump saying what GOP voters should be listening for.
“American voters will not disappoint us again. Mr. Trump’s frantic efforts on immigration will not work. Taken as a whole, the voters want to affirm who we are as a country — and to marginalize a Republican Party that stands outside the mainstream on so much of our recent history, on civil rights and immigration in particular.”
Donald Trump isn’t just leading a political party, he’s leading an ego cult. And to that cult he bestowed one gift: arson.
There are few things as revolting as the thought of Donald Trump managing to wait out the statue of limitations, by securing that narrow electoral college victory. And still, we all know that Donald Trump will not simply relinquish power.
Democrats need to stop being the party of free giveaways. Trump won because he understood the plight of the working class. To Democrats they were a basket of deplorables. Democrats need to be the party of OPPORTUNITY for ALL. FDR got It Hillary never did. Beating Trump with continued loss at the state governments will not be a true victory.
1
isn't it pretty to think so.
(hint: voter suppression and gerrymandering)
If the Democrats nominated Mr. Ed, the horse, I would crawl through barbed wire and broken glass, to vote for the horse.
I have a feeling that I am not alone with this view.
I get that many progressives are anti gun... so much so, that this singular issue is what keeps the Dems from gaining the political power they need to show people that government can the force for good that I believe it is... except for the constant danger of "we are coming for your guns"... so when talking about your anti gun vitriolic position, at least have the decency to get it right... these are long barrel SEMI automatic weapons... fully auto was outlawed many many years ago (not that a few aren't allowed here and there... but automatic weapons are HEAVILY regulated and haven't been used in a shooting in quite some time....)
An effective Government responsive to the People is necessary to address the urgent and extraordinarily complex and existential issues we face today.
Unchecked Capitalism fosters life nasty, brutish, and short.
Compassionate Democracy encourages Life worth living.
I've seen this prediction proven untrue so many times that I don't believe it anymore. I made the prediction myself after the disastrous presidency of W. Yet, like sequels to bad horror movies, they keep coming back. They outmaneuver Dems on the state and local levels. They leverage every systematic advantage possible. They use money, gerrymandering, voter purges and deceit. They win. They survive. I wish they were doomed, but I'll believe it when I see it.
1
I think millions of Republicans -- even Mitch McConnell -- already understand full well the disaster that Trump has turned out to be.
But this will not dissuade them from continuing to support him and vote for him.
They know which side of the bread has the orange marmalade on it.
They know they are as guilty as he.
1
"Of course, Mr. Obama was met by a Tea Party revolt that helped push many white working class voters away from the Democratic Party, but his administration’s rescue of the big banks, along with prolonged unemployment and lower or stagnant wages for the whole of his first term, meant that the Democratic base failed to turn out and defend him in election after election."
Cool story, bro.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was authorized by Congress on October 3, 2008. Congress authorized it through the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. President Barack Obama was elected to his first term on November 4, 2008.
"Alongside this, his [Trump's] America First, populist trade policies cemented the addition of a large number of observant Catholics to his coalition."
The support for Trump among Catholics is overwhelmingly based on Catholic opposition to abortion. Who doesn't know this (besides you)?
Why in the world would Catholics as a group be more motivated by concerns about populist trade policies than any other demographic groups in America? Baptists have a much higher percentage of families making less than $30,000 annually. Do you not understand that a large portion of the nearly 30% of Hispanics who voted for Trump did so because they're Catholics and their church opposes abortion?
When you can't even report accurately when TARP was enacted or properly analyze demographics, don't expect any of your exercise in disinformation to be taken seriously.
1
This article is choke full of valid observations, alas much of the analysis is canceled by the author's unwillingness to address the single, glaringly obvious issue on which Trump can still get re-elected, even without any improper interference. It is perfectly OK for the Democratic party to be pro-immigration. It is far less OK to be pro-ILLEGAL immigration - it is in fact suicidal politically. Over the past two years Democrats have gradually moved to the point where they are openly advocating for open borders and decrying any enforcement of the immigration laws as racist... I strongly suspect that there are many reasonable, moderate voters in the proverbial Middle America who may choose to keep Trump in office on this issue alone, even though they are perfectly aware, and do not approve of, all the outrages of this administration.
The fact that the author chooses to ignore this issue completely, and in fact keeps using the word "immigration" in place of "illegal ..." or "undocumented immigration" throughout the article significantly reduces his credibility as a fair analyst.
2
I totally agree, as I am one of those. I also, however, favor a restriction on immigration until we achieve a zero population growth rate. We have doubled our population to unsustainable numbers as far as an ecological carrying capacity in only a few decades. Why will no one discuss this?
Look - if GOP (i.e. Trump) wins, USA is doomed and so is the rest of the world - simple, straightforward truth.
1
Blah - blah - blah. And Hillary was to supposed to win in a landslide. I don't doubt for one minute that Trump will be re-elected. His base simply isn't budging. And I'm a Dem. Other than universal healthcare, the candidates are tripping over themselves to shoot their own foot with one extravagant offer after another. And with the exception of Warren and Bernie, no one has the same plan from day to day. Their visions change with the wind and audience. Democracy is seriously broken in the U.S. and Europe. It's only a matter of time before all so-called democracies have a strong man (or woman) in charge as de facto dictator.
Stanley Greenberg's excellently penned, incisively analyzed Opinion foretelling the imminent demise of the Republican Party compellingly illustrates the continuing shift of attitude expressed by Americans that the GOP be relegated to permanent minority party status. The electorate, finally confronted with witnessing and experiencing the constant incompetency of the Vietnam War draft dodger's go it alone attitude, spoke loudly in November 2018 to strongly rebuke right wing motivated policies. The Republican Party made its Faustian bargain with the diminutive dwarf, believing that playing the race card and persistently pushing unfounded xenophobic fearmongering would save America from the alleged invasion of dark complexioned peoples. Saving jobs, preserving so called 'American family values,' and keeping people of colour 'in their place' are the hallmark indicia that attracted less than educated, blue collar working, and clueless Caucasians to the Republican party. Never mind the GOP Congress pushed through a record breaking deficit generating tax cut, which traditional Republicans - even Barry Goldwater - would decry. And ignore the fact that climate change is real because the draft dodger has expressed doubt. The Democratic Party is the future of America, multiracial, multiethnic, and multi immigrant, In this new party we shall overcome the bigotry, racism, antiimmigrant loathing, and homophobic demonization. The Republicans face oblivion due to race baiting. Race matters.
Mr. Greenberg's lopsided analysis is an inducement to two habits that are typically disastrous: underestimating the opposition and complacency. I think Brad Parscale would've paid him out of his own pocket for an essay so potentially helpful to Trump.
I’ve read articles about the death of the Republican Party for decades. I almost believed it before the last presidential election. Then came Reality with a vengeance.
1
@Darkenergy Agree - he has a solid 35-40% approval rating no matter what. Some help of the Russians- and a recurrence of the “Clinton-Sanders Syndrome” of 2016 - voilà - Trump wins.
The Democratic Party and its leaders are on the verge of the annihilation of the Democratic Institutions - that constitutes negligence, IMHO.
Businesses are not very smart. Left to their own devices, they always crash the market that supports them. Like the scorpion on the frogs back, they simply cannot help it. It is in their nature.
1
The downfall of the Republican Party took place when greed and money became their blatant creed - turning a blind eye on the most fundamental principles of ethics - compassion, due process, respect of human rights and fairness.
1
Republicans have been pushing the same agenda since Reagan, and most of it never worked to the benefit of the country but only to corporations and investors who decided to profit through global rather than domestic enterprises but not ever have any candidates confronted the public with those facts.
Neither have they confronted four decades of running the budgeting funding of the government off of borrowed money instead of tax revenues. In fact, I don’t think that aside from global warming much of our public discussion has dealt with hard facts.
It’s been one big dumb display of melodrama which never honestly deals with any problem. The result is an endless generation of imaginary scenarios attempting to explain most social problems, few of which actually address all the facts.
Taxes are too low and wealth creation domestically is low and not shared reasonably. Few people are better off than the were if they were around forty years ago. It keeps people from improving their circumstances and their dependents. If people are not affluent already they are less likely to become so. It’s resources not virtue that propels material success.
This country is full of racists and misogynists and homophobes but never in history has there been less of it and more popularly challenged. The rise in reactions to these injustices is understandable, people are listening, but it goes too far, stereotyping people as open or stealthy adversaries when they are not.
Our politics are poor.
"From your lips to God's ears."
But, fellow readers, please: no complacency! We MUST turn out in HUGE numbers to defend democracy, justice, ordinary decency, the environment, and the lives of the 99%!
"...his America First, populist trade policies cemented the addition of a large number of observant Catholics to his coalition"
What?
Why on earth would you claim that "observant Catholics" would be attracted by America First, the successor to the anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement?
1
Hillary had a 90% chance of winning two weeks before the election.
The Evangelical voter has not changed their point of view.
Until they are faced head on the USA will continue to be run by Republicans and folks who clearly want to witness the end of the world.
Tax them. Educate them. Challenge their leaders. We have lost years now when we could have addressed climate change. Their belief in their shortsighted, corrupt leaders over valid science is affecting the lives of children and grandchildren, perhaps irreversibly.
1
As I recall, the word was out in 2008 that the Republican Party was dead and buried after the election of Barack Obama...We were entering the long-anticipated period of post-partisan politics...
And them came the passage of Obamacare and the walloping of many congressional Democrats to the point that the Democrats lost control of the House...
In our republican system of democracy, the rules of the game of each race is "the winner takes all". That being so, it is the nature of elections that two parties are favored as opposed to those electoral systems that specify proportional representation.
Until such time as proportional representation makes it into the constitutions of our federal and state governments. and/or a viable third party is capable of contesting one or both of the other two, our nation's political discussions will be between two parties.
While the fortunes of our political parties ebb and flow over time...a good feature of any heathy form of governance, the prediction of the demise of one of our great political parties is about as foolhardy as suggesting that that cow over there will jump over the moon next Wednesday as 9:47 pm EDT.
So, let's cut the hyperbole and get on with working together to solve the problems of our cities, our states, and our nation And just maybe, if we are able to work together on these levels, we might be able to reach across national borders to solve more internationally based problems.
How about giving it a try?
1
Stanley, you assume the GOP intends to play by the rules. Don't you think that the demographic trends, the shifts in public opinion, the loss of women voters, the change in mentality with the younger generation, the inevitable loss of a white majority, etc., have been obvious to the GOP for years? They can't possibly be so stupid that they didn't see this coming. And yet instead of putting on the brakes and changing course, they doubled down and floored the accelerator pedal. Why?
The answer is simple, and already obvious from their prior actions. They engage in foreign policy alone, at times working with foreign powers to undermine the lawfully elected US president (e.g., the Iran deal). They gerrymandered districts to prevent loss of seats across the country. They have engaged in severe voter repression and disenfranchisement, purging voters, implementing strict requirements, etc.. They have been packing the courts and blocking Democrat nominees. They have been filibustering everything in the Senate. They gave us debt limits, shut down the government time and again, and treated a president who was elected with a minority of votes as if he had a huge mandate.
When pro-slavery Democrats realized in 1860 that they were going to lose in the long-term, they decided to secede from the USA. What will the GOP do in the modern era? Do you think they'll just give up and go along with the emerging Democrat majority? Will they respect democracy now, when they never did in the past?
1
The Republican party has needed a remake for some time, and this may start it, but only if the majority of conservatives are able to wrest leadership from the evangelicals and racist factions. Our country has a long history of both parties making bargains with unified groups out of step with the majority. It is the Republican's turn this time.
The evangelicals will still have their judges and will lose interest in politics (while they gladly enjoy healthcare benefits courtesy of the Democrats). The racists will never change but will pay their NRA dues and arm for the coming apocalypse, also losing interest in politics. As they age, and their needs are met by immigrants and a healthcare system they don't pay for, perhaps the grim reaper will slowly erode their numbers, Then, a new Republican party can be born.
1
This wildly over-confident prediction of a Democratic victory in the 2020 presidential race as well as a fundamental realignment of American political sentiment towards an anti-nationalist left-liberalism is delusionary, a rerun of pollsters' hubris in 2016. The Democrats will likely lose on immigration alone. Among the polls Greenberg ignores at are those of Harvard's Center for American Political Studies. One finding speaks volume: a huge majority -- some 76% of Americans of all backgrounds -- wanting immigration slashed by 50%. This isn't consistent with Greenberg's heralding of the victory of multiculturalism. The DEM's midterm victory primarily registered Trump's personal unpopularity. Admittedly, the hyperbolic media babble about "concentration camps" on the borders and Gestapo ICE agents -- and the genuinely distraught reaction to the separation of the children of illegal aliens from their children -- had an impact. But the President's very smart moves over the last few months have much reduced the inflow of the illegal population. The 9th Circuit (amazing) overruled a District Court which now permits the US to detain would-be asylum seekers in Mexico rather than release them into America and the Mexican government has been strong-armed into protecting their sovereignty along with ours, etc. Americans cherish their familial history of legal immigration through Ellis Island, but they are strongly opposed to the illegal sort. Greenberg doesn't get it.
2020 will only be transformative if democrats win and Agent Orange hair ACTUALLY concedes and respects the outcome. Recent daily episodes of abuse of power do not make me optimistic.
If Democrats can stop obsessing about gender, race, and sexuality long enough to focus on these universal kitchen table issues, they can crush the 2020 election. Basically, the platform of someone like Warren or Sanders is a winner, and the divisive culture warrior attitude of Harris or (the thankfully gone) Gillibrand is a loser.
Didn't virtually all the polls pick Clinton as the winner in 2016?
The democratic party didn't even campaign in Michigan in 2016.
Your polls are apparently flawed.
Wishful thinking if you don't get out there and talk to the common man.
Wishful thinking if you don't get boots on the ground in 2020.
The Democrats, the conservative party of our time, fear Mr Greenberg's prognosis like the plague. Many of the comments here indicate that fear. That is why the Democrats lost so many offices at all levels of government during the Obama years. Benign neglect, refusal to build a movement, and then blame the Republicans for getting nothing done, was and still is the plan. And of course, should they exhibit the same arrogant disregard for the people that was on display in 2016 by nominating a Biden type candidate - Biden being one of the most right wing Democrats ever to run for president - then they really do deserve to lose again to the absolute worst presidential in the history of the United States.
Really? Really? Trump pushed moderates out of the GOP?
Every major Democratic Presidential Candidate wants Medicare for all, decriminalized boarder crossing and free healthcare for illegal aliens.
Which party is expelling moderates? One. Democratic Party (which lost seats in the Senate and lost the SCOTUS for a generation or more). Thanks OBAMA!
Of course there are many Republicans who don't like how Trump governs, even if they like or have benefitted from some of the policies. But none of these people are big fans of progressive economic policies or progressive social policy. To decisively win, Democrats need to turn out their voters in large numbers, and get 10-15% of Republican voters from 2016 to either switch to them, vote for a third party, or stay home.
So the question is whether the system that the Democrats have put together to choose their candidate will lead to the nomination of omoeone who can do these things, and get disaffected Republicans to hold their nose and vote for the Democrats.
And a different point. The clickbait headline is reminiscent of the crowing 11 years ago that the Republican party was doomed in 2008, and that doom lasted....for a whole 2 years. That will repeat, in that once Trumpism is defeated dissafected Republicans will return to the party.
1
The logic of Mr. Greenberg's argument is sound, but I will believe that the Republican Party is doomed when I see it. I worry that this kind assurance breeds compliance, just as it did in the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton's presidency was "assured" in polls and opinion pieces. If people want to oust Trump, they need to actually show up and vote. That's all there is to it.
3
Mr. Greenberg provides sound arguments with supporting evidence - very refreshing in this Trump era of nothing but mindless statements. I also appreciate his strategy recommendation to the Democrats and his avoidance of hate filled anti Trump rhetoric. I used to belong to a republican party, it was for free trade, fiscal responsibility and containing the deficit - but that party is gone. We need to depart from the Trump era at the earliest possible date - we need that 1776 spirit and George Washington leadership.
102
@donnyjames today's republican party is the endpoint of your politics and you don't want to admit to it. fiscal responsibility and containing the deficit was a dogwhistle for defunding social programs that benefited minorities and the poor, free trade facilitated globalism and moved factory jobs out of this country. its interesting that folks who preach the most about personal responsibility will never take any for their own rhetoric playing out
6
@donnyjames Washington was a slave owner and disloyal to his king during a tax revolt. Trumpets are loyal and will do anything Dirty Don says.
1
@Concerned Citizen
So, it doesn’t matter what a republican tells you he’s for, you’ve already decided it’s a “dog whistle”. Racism is to you what Socialism is to Republicans. Both terms are meaningless. Conservatives don’t like social programs for anyone! White or black, doesn’t matter but for some reason you’ve decided to put EVERY intention of a republican as being racist. Every Republican in this country would vote for Thomas Sowell if he ran. Has NOTHING TO DO WITH skin color but with ideology! Jeez! This is why Democrats miss the mark time and again. You don’t know how the other side really thinks, they’re just dumb, evil, backwoods caricatures to you.
1
Is the GOP really doomed, once again? The answer is found in the number of people who go to the polls, not in the number of people who answer them. Vote.
376
I remember when Mr. Greenberg and other "experts" were predicting after the Republicans won the House in 1994 that the demographics were against the Dems ever regaining it.
As someone once said, it's hard making predictions especially about the future.
104
@Steve
Someone is probably Yogi Berra.
2
@Steve
@Richard Frank
Get out the vote!
@wcdevins Wikiquote says it's misattributed to Yogi. It claims it has Danish origins. Niels Bohr said something similar. He was Danish, so perhaps he'd heard it there.
1
If Greenberg is correct, nominating Biden will be a huge mistake.
254
@Gone Coastal
... And if he's not correct, then it will be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. That's how it is, with opinions and predictions of the future: they may, or may not be correct.
10
@Gone Coastal But if not Biden then who?
3
@Gone Coastal - he is correct, and nominating Biden would be a misreading of Obama-then-trump voters (who wanted what Obama seemed to promise but didn't deliver) and a colossal mistake.
But no worries. Elizabeth Warren is the real deal (finally!) - as we all will soon see in the early primary results.
That said: VOTE BLUE - NO MATTER WHO
44
Agree on almost all - but his mistaken “slaughter from automatic weapons” was cringeworthy. Automatic weapons are largely illegal and very rarely used in America. The slaughter is from the proliferation and easy access to semi-automatic handguns, and weapons and ammunition designed for war (such as the AR-15). It’s difficult to argue with the NRA when you don’t have your facts straight - and the facts are strong enough in this argument. In so many current Republican policy directions, the facts are NOT on their side - so a critical strategy for Democrats is to push back on current Republican ideas with facts, science, proof. Let the party of reality TV, conspiracy theories, failed trickle-down experiments, war on press/facts/science/higher education own those labels all by themselves.
3
Logic and good reason may yet again abandon the electorate. Unfortunately, the impacts of the media and the internet on voters are huge unknown factors in the next election. The mainstream media has 2 major flaws - they will try too hard to appear fair to Trump and GOP and water down any reporting on their flaws and they will over report any minor twitch or stumble from the democratic side for the same reason. Add to that the uncontrollable spread of misinformation on the internet.
140
@rd The fact that you think the media is too easy on Trump and GOP is proof of how out of touch you are. The fact that not every news anchor is Rachel Dowd does not mean the media is being easy on them. I implore you to find one news story from the past 3 years where the mainstream media painted any sort of Republican action in a neutral (forget positive) light.
1
For the first time I am working at my local polling place, I am pulling the straight blue lever and I am using all my free time to register voters. 2020 is all about turnout. We cannot be outraged here and do nothing in our home towns. We all need to do something to improve turnout. What will you do?
953
@Deirdre, thanks for your efforts!
What am I doing? The same things I did when I realized back in 2008 what GW Bush did to our country (yet seems so minimal now):
- Work at campaign offices doing canvassing, voter registration, or making phone calls
- Donating small monthly amounts to any Democrat running against a Greed Over People party Senator
I'm a baby boomer who goes to local Democratic meetings and campaign offices and sees 60-70% of the attendees having white or grey hair. We want to pass the baton, but need younger people (any age group under 60 years of age) to step up.
Thanks Deirdre for doing your part! Don't let it be the last time you work on campaigns. It is up to citizens to recognize that We the People may mean more than voting to undo the Citizens United damage to our democracy.
69
@Deirdre
I am headed to Wisconsin in the Spring for a month of voter registration.
36
@Deirdre Been doing what you're doing for 21 years. Currently volunteering on City Council campaign. Have volunteered for 8 campaigns since 2015 (Obama neighborhood organizer in 2008 and 2012).
And I'm burned out! Where are the young people, and the youngER people?
14
To these excellent points, I would add a potential constituency: small business. According to inc.com, "the number of companies less than a year old had declined as a share of all businesses by nearly 44 percent between 1978 and 2012." Subservience by both of the major political party establishments to big corporations and big money is harming American entrepreneurship.
4
Did Mr. Greenberg predict the Democrat losses while Obama was in office? Did he predict Hillary losing? If not, why would anyone hire him to make predictions? Anyone can make predictions, the important thing is to make predictions that become reality otherwise you are just like the person who takes rental car reservations but doesn’t hold the car. Holding the car is the most important part of the reservation.
2
@Shamrock
The greater theme to examine would be these polling numbers he presents. It is a well known fallacy in polling that people will gravitate towards giving pollsters the answers they believe they want to hear. The constant drumbeat in the media that an aversion to more immigration is pure prejudice still carries the day.
This essay presents a useful analysis based on national polling data and favorable trends. Unfortunately, all of our elections are fought at the state and district levels. Advocacy and dark money groups are well aware of how to win locally and cobble together working majorities or obstructive minorities. They’ve also used the last decade to stack state and federal courts with right wing robots as a backstop supporting conservative goals.
Republican operatives will narrowcast their messages and disinformation based on detailed, voter-by-voter information. And they have gobs of money to spend and a cadre of propagandists in right wing media to dutifully amplify there messaging. I guarantee they’re busily looking for opposition research and electoral fault lines to exploit. And if all else fails, they’ve left many of our state electoral systems highly vulnerable to hacking.
Democratic presidential candidates have won the popular vote in five of the last six elections, but we still ended up with Bush junior and Trump, probably our two worst presidents. The electoral college is slanted towards smaller and rural states, and gerrymandering has stacked House elections for a decade. Voter suppression and even voter fraud (see NC’s special election today) too often blunt the Democratic Party’s numerical advantage.
So I’m not so sanguine about 2020. 2018 was a great harbinger, but past results are no guaranteed of future performance.
5
@Michael Tyndall My conservative, Trump supporting mother was admitted to a skilled nursing facility last April. She still maintains her home for now and one of my jobs is to collect her mail. Despite not responding, she still receives over one hundred pieces of mail per month from right wing advocacy groups and the Republican Party and its surrogates. Trump, Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter (?!?!?), et al. The message of all this garbage is uniformly crafted to terrify seniors and of course shill for money. Think of it. The right wing kleptocracy advocacy block has such deep pockets that it continues to lavish thousands of dollars in collateral and postage on a single, essentially broke, old woman without receiving a single response.
1
@Michael Tyndall My conservative, Trump supporting mother was admitted to a skilled nursing facility last April. She still maintains her home for now and one of my jobs is to collect her mail. Despite not responding, she still receives over one hundred pieces of mail per month from right wing advocacy groups and the Republican Party and its surrogates. Trump, Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter (?!?!?), et al. The message of all this garbage is uniformly crafted to terrify seniors and of course shill for money. Think of it. The right wing kleptocracy advocacy block has such deep pockets that it continues to lavish thousands of dollars in collateral and postage on a single, essentially broke, old woman without receiving a single response.
A pollster predicting the future. I hope you are right Mr. Greenberg.
1
@John
Yes. Just like I only want a stock analyst that makes predictions that become reality. I try to stay away from people who make predictions that don’t become reality. I would like to see Mr. Greenberg’s record on predictions. How do I know he does better than my 5 year old granddaughter?
We forget that during the Obama administration, Republicans blocked and delayed nearly every attempt at Democratic legislation. Great ideas stalled, Republican legislators pulled out all the stops to try and prevent what might make Democrats popular. Of course better stragey to defeat their blocking would have been good, but it wasn't for lack of trying. The R's must be held to account for everything they blocked, and everything they are now ruining.
21
@lh
And Democrats block every Republican idea. What’s the difference? Or are Democrats just superior beings?
@Shamrock
Clearly it's the latter. Democrats offer real solutions to real problems. Republican conservatism is an ideology that is based in emotion and not fact. It's completely reactionary so there are no historical examples of it succeeding, ever, anywhere.
2
I agree with @Been there, the Republicans have perfected the art of lying and cheating their way to power through voter suppression, rampant gerrymandering, and the Electoral College.
Unless Democrats gain a majority in the Senate and/or take the Presidency, you can bet on the minority part keeping control.
A primary goal for Democrats is removal of the Electoral College unless they want smaller, less populated States to continue to lead our country around by the nose.
12
Party of Lincoln is such a funny misnomer. The GOP hasn't been the party of Lincoln since the 19th century -- that's not just one, it's two centuries ago. Party of McCarthy, party of Bob Jones, party of Robert Welch, party of Mitch McConnell, party of Trump -- any of these would suffice, but not Lincoln. Lincoln wouldn't recognize these people at all.
16
I wish I could be as sanguine as Mr. Greenberg. But the animating vision of The Times's 1619 Project is that antiblack racism is intrinsic to American life. Reagan's, the Bushes', and now Trump's political careers are inconceivable without it. Its irrationality made a mockery of every 2016 election model. And for each supporter hollering out his racism at Trump's Three Hour Hates, how many more stay home, declining publicly to wear the bigot's red cap but determined to vote that way in November 2020?
I can only be pleasantly surprised, and hope to be next year. But when it comes to race, I learned a long time ago -- Election Nights 1980 and 1984, to be exact -- not ever to put my faith in the American electorate.
4
I live in a GOP controlled state. Our legislature, like those in many red states, has done its best to suppress the votes of those who will likely vote for Democratic Party candidates. Voting hours for early voting have been significantly reduced, New voter ID requirements have been imposed that can prove difficult for those who do not have a drivers license. Moreover, if you lack a birth certificate or a state issued ID, you will need to get a copy of your birth certificate which costs $24 and takes 6-8 weeks. Many poor people will likely think voting is not worth this modern day poll tax of $24. Then once you have your birth certificate you can spend several hours at the DMV trying to get your state issued voter ID issued there.
Folks, voter suppression is alive and well in old Dixie. For that reason the data reported on on voting day will always lag behind what polls report. To sweep Trump and the GOP from power, we will need a landslide.
24
@Bill
If voter suppression means having to show an ID then all first world countries have voter suppression. Canada, Australia, Germany ALL OF SCANDINAVIA! Wow! Racist countries all of them by forcing people to prove citizenship aye?
It’s a simple message. The Republicans are the party of obstruction, destruction and division. They have broken the government in order to serve a small group of the wealthy elite. Because of this the quality of life for ordinary Americans has gotten worse for decades.
We need to help ordinary Americans build prosperous, healthy lives. We need to fix a government that can no longer act the interest of all Americans. That is what Democrats are here to do.
7
I am ready for a "bold era of reform". In fact, I am past ready, I am hungry for it. May this column prove to be prophetic. I can no longer tolerate living in a county in which evangelicals the Tea Party and Catholics blindly provide votes while dark money, corporations and the extremely wealthy provide policy and the majority fo secular, rational middle class people suffer and pay and pay and suffer. I want to live in a democracy that appreciates the self-evident truths we as Americans hold so dear to our hearts. I am ready, I am hungry.
682
@JW
There will be no era of reform without first a reform of the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court which the right has established as a backstop against all reform. And reforming the judiciary, if the Democrats ever regain power and have the stomach to do what is necessary, must be backstopped with an immediate reform of the electoral process to guarantee that a reactionary minority never again gains the power they have today. Ultimately, the Senate must be changed to a representative legislative body, not a supercharged power base for Wyoming and other conservative small-state voters.
16
@Pete "Ultimately, the Senate must be changed to a representative legislative body, not a supercharged power base for Wyoming and other conservative small-state voters"
The Constitution allows for the House to represent populations and the Senate to represent states. This allows for the populous states to have more power in one body while still being recognized equally as a state in another. This seems more than reasonable to me and I also live in a populated state. Of course, if you think an Amendment would pass containing what you wish, good luck. I'm not a gambler, but I'd bet the farm on that predictable outcome.
3
As I read this hopeful and extremely illuminating article, I can look out my window and see my American flag hanging outside my house. I am not a religious man, but every day I offer a prayer that the day will return when instead of using it as a pretty piece of decoration it will once again stand to represent a country that I am proud of.
I left the republican party last year after 38 years of voting straight R's almost every election. The only way to bring this country back to what it was and should be is to end the republican party as it now stands.
Everyday brings a new outrage from 45 and a scandal that would end most presidencies. Under our system of government the only thing I can do is vote to change it. So right now I am biding my time, waiting for next November as I waited for last November;
To vote and do my piece to make me proud to hang my flag again.
1262
@KEM I haven’t flown my flag since the clown in chief was”elected “ if I was a few years younger it would be flying but upside down.
31
@KEM
Under Our system of governance, We the People have far greater responsibilities than voting. We the People are the official authority behind the Constitution and the law. We are responsible for keeping track of what our government does, communicating with each other about what is happening and how We can make our Union more perfect, and hold public servants accountable to Our Will.
Your comment is a fine example of a citizen fulfilling their responsibilities.
And there other things that can be done between elections.
Not only corporate lobbyists are allowed to seek redress asked policies from Our Government. The Constitution protects our right to peacefully assemble because protest is an effective means of educating the public and pressuring politicians.
Mass Media has been almost completely bought by billionaires directly or through controlling shares, and while mass media calls itself "liberal," it actually keeps demanding that the Left gives up our values (which are aligned with the Constitution) to compromise with a Party that espouses hate, greed, and violence. It is not an accident that corporate media (which also received massive tax cuts from Trump) pretends that aggregate statistics weighted by billionaires wealth measure the well-being of workers who are losing ground. We must use creativity to force the media to discuss the real problems of real people.
We the People must take time to manage or public servants every week, or criminals will steal the USA.
51
@KEM - as a Maine voter you also have a unique chance to achieve these goals by voting Democratic in your state’s US Senate race. That vote is equally important ... jus’ sayin.
76
This analysis provides a foundation from which we can better understand the polling which continues to suggest Trump and Republicans are deeply out of touch with the majority of Americans. Today's polling showing a further erosion in Trump's support simply confirms what Mr. Greenberg is projecting over the long-term for Republicans.
3
But first they need a candidate everyone can actually rally around, and a specific, detailed platform with a realistic plan to fund it, that nearly everyone will support. The paying for it part is the tricky part. I don't think focusing on immigration or other controversial social issues is a great strategy. The Democrats are at their strongest when they focus on pocket book issues like wages and health care.
2
Just a quick note: 45% of the US population support Trump. Republicans support Trump at the rate of near 90%.
The Republican Party is doomed you say?
On the contrary, they are here to stay.
The question is: how do you govern when a significant segment of the population believes the lies they are told by the Republican Party on climate, race, education, war and peace, infrastructure spending, college loans, health care, student indebtedness, vaccinations, the Russian threat, non-taxes for wealthy campaign contributors, the weather, endangered species, and oh, unless I forget, the crimes committed by the President?
12
@Robert G. McKee And how large, now, is the remaining Republican/Trump Party - that 90% of its members support Trump?
1
@Robert G. McKee
"The Republican Party is doomed you say? On the contrary, they are here to stay."
Even after they've been voted out of power?
@KEF
How large are they?
About 45 % of the voting public.
Observations about the current state of our politics and the current campaign tend to be overblown, alarmist, and repetitious about the events of the past three years. Calmer analysis and less repetition would be appreciated.
@William The ignorance, racism, fraud, and lies continue every day. Reporting the news will remain the same as long as the story remains the same. I know that is not appreciated by those who support same.
Am I the only one who thinks that the Preamble to the Constitution is the proper scorecard for the performance of our government?
It never seems to get mentioned by the big shots, probably because few would want to own up to the results of an honest report on our achievement of its six objectives:
>form a more perfect Union,
>establish Justice,
>insure domestic Tranquility,
>provide for the common defence,
>promote the general Welfare,
>and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
When did we last dare to be that honest? But there are inklings that time is coming. Pray God, for the sake of our children, let it be now!
16
Certainly, both demographic trends and Trump's and the Republican Party's weaknesses provide a basis for hope. But the Democrats next year will be running not only against Trump, but in effect against voter suppression efforts in many states, Russian and perhaps other foreign efforts to manipulate matters, state voting systems that (thanks partly to Mitch McConnell) remain subject to potential hacking and other abuses, and Trump-appointed federal and Supreme Court jurists who may do little to reign in any of these problems. Plus, Trump will do his execrable worst to divert attention away from policy solutions and toward racism, nativism, sexism and exploitation of his opponent's actual and alleged flaws.
Finally, given the above challenges and the structural advantages Republicans have in the electoral college, the election could still come down to key districts in key states. I'd feel a lot better about Greenberg's very optimistic analysis if he translated it into state-by-state results that in turn point toward the transformational Democratic victory he predicts.
5
The Republican Party has not been the "party of Lincoln" in at least 50 years. The GOP was the progressive force in America during the latter 19th century. Among other things, they used the power of the federal government to force the South to end slavery and permit black men the vote. They were the dominant institution promoting civil rights. Can you even imagine the GOP promoting African American voting rights these days? In fact, they have replaced the old conservative Democrats in a stealth campaign to deny African Americans the right to vote. If Theodore Roosevelt were alive today, he would be a Democrat.
9
@Ladyrantsalot
...and Abraham Lincoln.
Maybe.
However, you need to remember that the Democrats overplayed their hand so many times, and have proven so remarkably adept at shooting themselves in the foot that the kind of transformative change you think is coming may not be coming so fast.
Hillary, don't forget, was the presumptive candidate in 2008 until an unknown freshman senator from Illinois came from nowhere and beat her AMONG DEMOCRATS. The same thing almost happened in 2016: Bernie almost beat her and may well have succeeded had not the DNC had its finger on the scale for her.
Regardless of your thesis and your polls, a candidate with whom people are comfortable IS important. Grand ideas are less compelling than the perceived temperament of the nominee. Democrats will nominate a shrill, wildly ambitious and divisive candidate at their (and our) peril.
Running for president is NOT about great ideas, but about service. It will most likely be he or she who demonstrates interest in voters' concerns, rather than inflated and grandiose programmatic proposals, who prevails.
3
It may be a minor point, but this article is too kind to Republicans.
The shutdown of the government after 2010 was not ideological. They understood the need for stimulus perfectly and did everything possible to prevent it. No Democratic President would ever deliver the Koch tax cuts, so it was scorched earth to produce dissatisfaction for the 2016 election.
It's common enough for parties to disagree on how to govern. It's not common to deliberately govern against the country.
26
@Jerrryg
If you did not benefit from the tax cut you either make tons of money or live in a high-SALT blue city.
I work with Millennials and Gen-Xrs every day. Even if the ageing red state Boomers were to give Trump a second term via the Electoral College, I think that will represent the last dying breath of the GOP. These "kids" don't listen to Limbaugh or the other right-wing shouters, they don't watch Fox News or any network TV, but they want and need higher pay, more job security, more affordable health care, less expensive higher ed and better terms on higher ed loans, they don't go to church but care about each other...and the environment. In short, there's no question in my mind that the "values" of the "conservative" Boomers are going to be kicked into the dustbin of history in the very near future no matter the outcome of the Presidential election of 2020.
17
@Cowboy Marine
Cowboy, good points! However, I'm an original Boomer who lives in a red state, yet I voted twice for Obama and am 100% against Trump and his divisive, hate-filled rhetoric. And while it's true that we are "headed for the dustbin of history" (along with the WW-II "Greatest Generation), I know that I'm not alone in my age group in feeling this way. Americans--young and old--CAN make a change in 2020.
3
@Cowboy Marine you do realize that those millennials will get older and many/most will naturally gravitate to a more conservative mindset just as the boomers did.
The Baby Boomers were the last idealistic Americans to be born in this country, people who believed that everyone could live well and enjoy liberty and equality before the law. That people could work together without being totalitarian drones. That all began to go South when the economy went South, and never came back.
1
Simple. If the Democrats insist on replacing private health care - rather than augmenting/improving Obamacare - with universal Medicare, we will lose. If they decriminalize otherwise illegal border crossings - we will lose. How many people from"around the world" will they allow otherwise illegal entry into our country? One-million, two-million...... ? Compassionate, moderation of our immigration laws/policies is the answer - not a "free for all." Unless that is, we want to snatch election-defeat from the jaws of Democratic victory.
9
@logic
I don't believe for a minute that decriminalizing border crossings will lead to mass immigration. It should and hopefully will be part of a broader immigration reform package which will manage immigration, provide a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in this country, and provide border security with technology not walls.
Stanley, where I live, Trump and the GOP are alive and well. You can't be elected in the region if you are a Democrat - just will not happen. I think that the GOP is not in any jeopardy in the rural areas of this country and that's a lot of space. Just saying that what is true in NYC and Boston or CA does not mean it is true for the rest of the country.
9
@Sarah99 Might be true though in Reno, and Boulder, and even parts of Texas.
Polls. How'd that work out for you in '16. Want to beat Trump ? Come up with a better candidate. Clinton wasn't it. This time don't forget. You have to win the EC. That HAS to be your strategy. There are a lot of people out there who may not particularly like Trump's rhetoric. But they like the 'Green New Deal' a whole lot less. They don't want to hear about 'racism'. Don't want to hear about 'climate change'. Lose those folks and you've handed the '20 election to Trump on a silver platter.
7
@sheikyerbouti
You might be surprised how many people are exhausted by people like Trump, even the previous Trump supporters. They are done. So much so that they crave a positive outlook, need one, are interested in bright ideas, do want to heal the country of racism and see a leader who feels the same way, do want to hear practical and optimistic plans to tackle climate change and give their grandchildren and safe planet.
If You are one of these people, please vote for the candidate that understands you are absolutely finished with anyone who uses fear, division and pessimism as their manipulation tool.
4
Mr. Greenberg I am one those folks hurt by the economic crisis of ‘08-‘09. “Shattered” is not quite the word I would use but it certainly “changed” my understanding of my world.
I first felt demoralized as a business owner when I could no longer offer health care to employees. That happened right before this century. I thought at the time something will happen - a program, maybe. Certainly something to lower costs for small business owners.
Then prior to the economic crisis it looked like I was not going to be able to afford healthcare for my family, much less employees. Then ACA was passed and we still have a Bronze healthcare plan but there is no metal lower than that, so I hope the costs stay low.
Before ‘08 I had money in retirement. Retirement is now a dream. All our money goes to pay taxes, pay down the debt we took on to save our business and our house, and pay for healthcare.
I like the progressive proposals in your article but would feel better if they were grass roots movements rather than government programs. Most of the things you discussed boil down to a big labor movement.
The common denominator among the races is an economic one. Race, city, rural - compare the economic hardships and the country would come together. The Republicans have done a good job alienating us by race and elites or city dwellers. The Democrats should use the economics to show us how we’re all much more the same rather than different.
10
@Sheela Todd
Thank you for this important comment and insight, especially about the common denominator and the need for a unified message around that.
With one warning, catastrophic:
If the GOP keeps the senate, the Supreme Court will return America to the 19th century. Social Security, Medicare, even a woman's right to vote will be in jeopardy.
11
This article emphasizes economics but two issues that are very important to democrats are saving democracy from being destroyed by Trump and his white nationalist base and taking strong action finally to address a climate emergency. Younger people are particularity motivated by the climate change issue because they expect to be living in a catastrophic world decades from now if action is not taken now. And Democrats of all ages are worried about the US moving toward something that resembles fascism under Trump. Voters going to the polls are going to have to decide whether or not democracy matter them and whether the US having a decent long-term future beyond a few more decades matter to them.
12
@Bob I hope you are correct, I suspect you are. Climate change should be the number 1 issue for every politician. There is no longer any doubt that we have already emitted enough carbon to ensure that our climate will become more chaotic and damaging going forward. However, we could stop making it worse. Unless we address climate change, none of our other policies and politics will matter in a few decades.
1
@Bob
Fascism? White nationalist base? How can you say such things in seriousness? White nationalists are a miniscule minority in this country. Those guys marching in Charlottesville - that was pretty much all of them. It's considered so unacceptable to express even the slightest hint of racism in public discourse today that people can get banned from Twitter and YouTube or lose their careers just for making a joke. White nationalists have zero credibility in our society. And Trump is simply nothing like a fascist, he wants our troops out of the Middle East, he wants less government, not stormtroopers coming to take you away. He lies a lot and he's corrupt, sure, but that doesn't make him Hitler by any stretch of the imagination.
Warren is proposing a JFK like economic hope and expansion. Trickle up. Rich people, many of whom are major societal contributors, will still be rich and have access to abundant capital.
I believe Warren is proposing capitalism-for-all. Capital and government should both work hand-in-hand together. Trickle up economics.
14
It seems the GOP has been ripe to become nothing more than a Southern regional 3rd party for about thirty years now, with the Democratic party splitting in two between the progressive/liberal wing and the centrist wing. That has yet to happen. Greenberg nailed the 2018 midterms so I respect his opinion but I still think we have a lot of work cut out for us to create this progressive fast lane.
7
Historical/technical note: that Obama was the first president in a long time to have a smaller margin of victory the 2nd time is less notable than it might seem, because:
1) some presidents actually lost their reelection bid (e.g., George H.W. Bush, Carter, Hoover, Taft; and
2) In his first election, Obama faced neither an incumbent nor a substantial 3rd-party candidate--which one can't say of George W. Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon or FDR.
Although the Tea Party, the bailouts, the economy and the ACA undoubtedly cut Obama's 2012 margin of victory, the drop had much to do with his lack of challengers the first time around, and was not symptomatic of anything in and of itself.
3
I appreciate the optimism. Having said that, two things need to be considered.
First, while I agree that the GOP is eventually going to be toast, predicting when this will happen is a fool's errand. The ideology that drives political parties (especially one completely at odds with reality) runs deep.
Secondly, don't discount the cognitive dissonance of moderate Republicans. While many may indeed hate Trump, they simply tune out what that cannot bare to hear. There is still plenty of anti-government sentiment among these types. Just as the numbers may have improved in the Democrats' favor in the short time since 2018, these numbers could easily go back to where they were come 2020, if the Democrats ring the progressive bell too loudly. These "moderate" types will cherry pick what arguments to hear, and will choose to prioritize long-held beliefs that appeal to their fear of "socialism" and "handouts", if those become the calling cards of the left. People have short memories when it comes to current events, but don't give up ideological thinking easily.
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@Jason Vanrell
Absolutely! Think of the majority of white women who - barely a month after the "grab them by" tape - pulled down DJT's lever.
Next - and I know it IS elitist-sounding - while you and I may view Trump's every action as SELF-SERVING and - at most - serving the top 5% in terms of wealth, poorly educated, gun-toting Americans by the millions think Trump muscled through a genuine tax cut.
AND they think that his enemies - people of color, the press, immigrants, etc. [a long list, to be sure] really ARE "their enemies."
You and I may view the INCREASING gulf between rich and poor as part of Trump's legacy ... and one which should galvinize the bottom 3/5 of our nation (financially.) (They've all LOST GROUND since 2016, and the millions that still have subsidized health insurance do so "by a hair!")
But, just as in 2016, many of those people are mad as hell and determined to support a man who channels their anger. EVEN IF that person has absolutely, positively NOTHING else in common with them ... and has demonstrated his I-don't-care-about-youse almost every day for the last 3 years!
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No time to cogently address your thoughts this morning, Mr. Greenberg. My hobby-biz will take me into a town on the other side of the mountain today; absolutely necessary to supplement my anemic social security.
It is wise to remember that for millions of Americans, the need to rise at the sound of the alarm clock will place them in a situation where deliberation on anything other than pressing familial & economic concerns will be dismissed..and then there's television in the evening for most, taking them to another mental place where political deliberation is thwarted. For these people Green New Deals & environmentalism are bugaboos & threatening. Gottta go.
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@Apple Jack
What's the matter, you depended on social security to support your retirement, or did Bush and his deregulations rob your 401K plan?
The downfall of the Republican Party of today (which already destroyed the Republican Party of my parents, the GOP of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, or even Reagan) is one that this gay Democrat from a big city will surely welcome. But Democrats will need to cobble a new 'New Deal' that seriously tackles issues that are affecting not only my city's neighbors but also people from rural areas as well. I grew up in a small New England town that had several dairy farms and farms that grew vegetables. While we city people are angry by Trump's treatment of immigrants and his flaccid view of gun control laws, farmers are not happy with Trump's trade wars that destroying their business lives. And there is the opioid crisis that is also destroying lives in the countryside. Hence the need for a new New Deal. If a Democratic candidate has political smarts, he or she will talk about a new New Deal, which will be welcome by voters in both the city and countryside. It will be a real deal, not a fake deal promoted by Trump and his cohorts. Greenberg's timely thesis rests on such a deal.
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@Thomas Alton
Don't get your hopes up too much. After the almost complete wipe out of the Republican Party in the 1936 election it was thought that the conservative Republicans who had ruled the party since Theodore Roosevelt had left the presidency were done and the party would move closer to the progressive Dems.
Sure didn't happen that way.
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@Thomas Alton
I agree that the ideal candidate needs to appeal to voters in both the city and countryside and should offer a "real deal" that helps the working class. I would add that the ideal candidate should also understand what drove some voters away from the Democratic party in 2016, leading them to look to Trump for hope. Of all the candidates remaining in the field, Andrew Yang seems to be the one who gets it and has answers to the coming disruptions brought on by the inevitable automation of jobs. Also judging by what I have seen in the comments section for each one of his clips I have watched on YouTube, he is capable of peeling away both Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters, and that is quite a unique capability.
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@Thomas Alton...
Forgive me for pointing this out, but the opiod crisis is not a far onto the radar in Peoria's of the nation as everyone in the press is trying to contend.
Yes, there is a problem, and yes, it has serious impact on those who are addicted and their families.
I live in an area that has about 340,000 residents. There is a hard-core problem of drugs in the anchor city, and sub-rosa problems in surrounding towns. In the summer, when t he population doubles, walking down the streets of the "fashionable" town one is assaulted by the obvious smell of the smoked version of drugs, and are constantly passing the glassy-eyed and shuffling.
It is important that the accessibility of recreational drugs of any type are limited to reduce the chances of the general population having to deal with the risks of the stoned on the highways and sidewalks, but, please, concentrate the efforts on where the problems actually exist and leave the rest of us alone.
Personally I get suspicious when a commentator disguises his personal opinions as predictions for the future. Reminds me of Harold Bloom, the literary critic who proclaimed in 1997 that Harry Potter would be forgotten in 10 years.
More than a decade ago commentators said that minority groups would be able to dominate the country in the future due to their demographic advantage. Hasn't happened yet. The "prediction" turned out to be the result of wishful thinking and an undercount of the white population of the US ( people of mixed ancestry were classified as nonwhite).
Democrats need to work to get rid of Republican corruption, not to depend on prophecy.
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@Charlesbalpha I'd love to see a citation for the claim about Bloom. He certainly thought Harry Potter of no literary value, but I can't imagine he made any prediction about its continuing popular appeal. Are you confusing the two?
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@Charlesbalpha - who is Harry Potter?
These numbers may not lie, but the Republicans do, and they cheat too, which is why no one should take Mr Greenberg's confident prediction at face value. Although the Obama and Clinton approach may not have been radical enough to bring about the change that the country really wants, the true impediments to change have come from voter suppression, gerrymandering, and misinformation, all courtesy of the GOP and its media allies. Remember, this is the party which exists in order to prevent action on climate change, health care and gun control.
They are, in fact, the party of pollution, addiction, and death by carnage. Does anyone actually believe that they'll ever let a fair democratic process stand in their way?
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@Bob Chisholm
Giving up your values before negotiations start and without getting anything in return is not compromise, but surrender. Surrender is a losing strategy by definition.
You don't get control of the Senate by predicting you won't be able to do anything because you don't control the Senate. You get control of the Senate by explaining what you would do with 60 votes in the Senate.
Centrist Democrats keep helping Republicans cut taxes on the rich by claiming "there is no money" for the government to help worries afford their families. Let Republicans tell them three is no money. The job of Democrats is to raise taxes on the mega rich to invest in We the People, just as it says in the Constitution (Article I and Preamble).
Your values are your power, not a liability. Centrist Democrats keep demanding that We sacrifice our values to win elections, then complain that their base didn't come out to win the election.
Compromise is the last thing that happens in a successful negotiation, and you stop trading things away once you reach your values. Essentially, your values are the things you refuse to trade away.
If you denounce your values to get elected, you can't get elected, and even if you did, you would have no mandate to enact your values.
Obama ran to the left of Hillary and won, then governed to the Right and lost to Mitch McConnell.
Corporate Mass Media likes its tax cuts. Stop believing them when they say you must help Republicans to win.
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Greenburg needs to accept that polls are just less useful than in the past.
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Somebody already said, essentially, what I was going to say. I could take this optimistic view only if the Dems do NOT nominate Biden. He would lose to Trump.
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I think the 2018 mid-terms established the fact that making Trump and his behavior will not win a national election. What the Democrats do not have, however, is a coherent, sensible platform that will appeal to independents and practical-minded Democrats like myself (and I believe there are many of us!). I am not in favor of government-sponsored free health care for illegal immigrants, a one-pay health cars system, total student loan forgiveness and other "green new deal" policies that while laudable, are not practical.
The United States is a big ship. It cannot turn around n a dime. However, there are many things I support that would turn our ship around before it runs aground. For example, increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy (but not at confiscatory levels) to reduce the deficit, the restoration of programs to preserve our environment, the repair of Obamacare, the imposition of limits on political donations by corporations (meaning the legislative overturn of Citizens United) and wealthy individuals, and efforts to improve the lot of those less fortunate than me (subsidized housing, food stamps, and the opportunity to improve their own lot by education and work) would be popular with me. Add the social policies advocated by Democrats to the mix (women's rights, the removal of pro-choice impediments, a humanistic approach to immigration, etc.) and you have an affirmative vote from me...not simply a negative vote against Trump.
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The people may support a left-populist economic agenda, but they will be betrayed and disappointed once again, regardless of who becomes president after Trump.
Even if it's Elisabeth Warren, she will not be able to get any major legislation passed that will seriously reduce inequality. Because while the public pays attention to the presidential elections, the down-ballot races are almost without exception won by candidates who were bought by lobbyists and special interests.
Which is the fault of the voters. You wouldn't need a lot of money to win an election, if you were the best candidate and voters actively informed themselves about you - all the information is just a click away. But because voters need to be pampered and courted and bombarded with ads and even visited in their homes to care, only someone with a lot of money can win. And that money is always going to come from rich people and corporations, and they will own their candidate.
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As a weekly roadside anti-Trump protester, I generally agree with this analysis. It also struck me an explanation of Elizabeth Warren’s growing popularity - she seems to be hitting all the right buttons.
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Or, as hockey great Wayne Gretzky is often quoted as saying: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is, or was.
12
Superficially this thoughtful article seems to support a Democratic victory in 2020. After all, shouldn't the public respond to the wage stagnation, the obvious damage of climate change, the growing automatic slaughter of civilians like nowhere else in the civilized word--and a bumbling administration that must doctor weather reports because they can't get it straight.
But on the other hand, what this article seems to ignore is the simplicity of our citizenry. As Gibbons in his monumental work posited, the decline in the quality of its citizenry was the major factor in the fall of the Roman Empire. We still have very strong support for Trump among his base and among Republicans.
There are too many essentially one-issue voters: among gun owners, anti-abortionists, those who value the long-lasting extremely conservative judges above all else (in truth, they will influence the future). These one issue---where all depends on how that one issue is handled--are willing to ignore wage stagnation, cut in medical care, high prescription prices, the expanding swamp (with administration people profiting illegally and unfairly)---all of this can be overlooked as long as i got my gun, etc.
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@shimr
Yes - democrats need a single issue - that would be health care for all- to dominate the election and bring every conscious voter to the polls.
No more half measures that prop up the ridiculous private insurance industry.
It puzzles me again and again to hear people think the Republican Party is doomed to go down. I don't contest the thinking that leads them to such conclusions; but I question the conclusion. A party (no matter whether Democratic or Republican) is an idea, not the state or condition it is in right now. To conflate the two, is a mistake. Parties can be revived, reinterpreted, reborn. Parties are imaginary concepts and as such they show astounding persistence throughout time. In short: this can all change very quickly. People have a short memory; they forget. And they have a long memory, they remember, the Republican Party was once the party of Lincoln. Yes, the current state looks abysmal. But it's a grave error to count down something that's only a malleable form to begin with.
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"The Tea Party movement was animated by its hostility to Mr. Obama and his activist government."
With all due respect to Mr. Greenberg, that is patently false.
The Tea Party movement was animated by its hostility towards Mr. Obama's skin color, not by his policies.
The Tea Party ran on the same platform John Birch Society members have been preaching about for decades; low taxes, small government, restrictive immigration, etc. Yet these Tea Party members voted for the largest tax cut for the billionaire class in this country which has added trillions to our deficit. So the idea of the Tea Party running on some sort of fiscal responsibility is comical.
Their hatred of Obama was skin color, not policy.
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@Stos Thomas
One Tea Party platform that got amazingly little attention was a proposal to abolish senatorial elections and to have senators chosen by state legislatures, which of course are predominantly conservative and corrupt. The "choice" would be based on backroom deals that the public would never learn about. ("Choose me and I'll push your blah-blah bill in the Senate").
The Tea Part was animated by hostility towards democracy.
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@Stos Thomas The result was massive congressional opposition to Democratic policies and equally massive pro-Republican gerrymandering by new Tea Party majorities (aided by ALEC and similar organizations) by newly Republican legislatures.
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@Stos Thomas
If Obama had come in and broke up the global banks that crashed the economy, arrested the billionaires that stole their jobs a and their wealth, created millions of jobs with infrastructure spending, and championed a Constitutional Amendment to make clear to the Supreme Court that "Humans, not corporations are People with Constitutional Rights and money is not speech," the original Tea Party would have supported him against the crony capitalists, and the Koch brothers wouldn't have been able to coopt their movement. Workets on the right and left would have united behind the black president.
Instead, Obama bailed out the banks, put the same people who crashed the economy in charge of "fixing" it, and gave them bonuses too.
The corporate center has discredited itself by calling policies that only billionaires really want some kind of compromise began the Right and the Left.
This article shows that the real moderates do not share the values of the right, but the values of the Left, which are aligned with the Constitution. (Read it.)
The Right is extreme, promoting hate, greed, and violence as the solution to every problem. They call our government the enemy and defund it.
Most people understand that the government is not the enemy, but how the Constitution says democracy gets things done in our Republic.
Stop demanding compromise with those that call our Republic the enemy, while they take the side of a hostile intelligence service attacking our elections.
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The propensity for American voters to disappoint is almost limitless. The famous paraphrase of H.L. Mencken remains appropriate: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. And so it goes.
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As a liberal I believe America's greatness is predicated on innovation and yes, regulated capitalism. "Hostility towards CEOs" is a poorly scripted message with unnecessary generalization. That's not where democrats should be.
7
That so many more Americans agree that Immigrants strengthen our economy and our nation is a sign that this nation is not fear based as Trump and his base tell us, but still believe in possibilities for our growth. But immigration is only one issue as our country has needs that only Democrats seem to address like adequate health care for all, infrastructure and addressing income inequality. Americans want fairness, something that Republicans say they want, but belie in their actions as they support only their rich enablers.
One quibble about this article. Democrats are not anti profits for corporations, but rather that those profits are not shared with the workers who actually produce those profits.
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Obama's 'moderation' (and that's what it was) gave us Trump. And Biden will give us worse. It's too late in any case. The rivers of meltwater running through Greenland's icy cap, the assembly line of increasingly intense hurricanes coming off the Cape Verde islands, polar bears swimming to nowhere, the stench of death over the Bahamas - while we prattle on about bipartisanship and do a balancing act on the precarious edge of an increasing uncertain global economy. Reading the comments and the column give little hope. We're just not up to it.
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Every Presidential candidate should stress in their campaign stops and debates the importance of voting for Democratic House and Senate seats. The obstruction and gridlock will continue without that majority,
14
Does not matter if the Republican party is doomed, the Democratic party will ensure its resurrection by running to the extreme left which most Americans abhor as much as extreme right. The biased media and the main stream press have done an excellent job giving the Democrats an advantage by constantly demonizing a duly elected president. Will this advantage hold when it is election time and Americans open their minds and start thinking for themselves and not thinking the way the media and the press wants them to think? 2020 will not be a referendum on a single issue but on several issues that affect individual Americans and the state of the world as it is today. Will Americans reelect a known devil over an unknown one or vote for a lesser of 2 evils.
Reading the comments of registered Democrats and their supporters trying to brain wash open minded Americans in the NY Times forum one would say without a doubt that yes the democrats have a distinct advantage and backing of a foremost news paper in the country , NY Times which will without a doubt endorse a Democratic nominee for president in 2020 no matter who she may be. But this hollow advantage will fizzle out like the futzing Mueller if they do not identify the real problems facing the country and propose feasible achievable solutions instead of nonsense pie in the sky like Medicare for all and Green new deal.
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@Girish Kotwal
Why is universal healthcare pie in the sky? Every other civilized country has it it some form. It doesn’t have to be Medicare only. It also isn’t free, but it’s overhead is low and allowing it to negotiate drug prices would help the bottom line.
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@Girish Kotwal: The media did not demonize the current occupant of the White House. And even if had been so inclined, there was never a need -- he's done perfectly well at it all by himself. First there was his leading role in the "birther" fraud during President Obama's administration. Then came the general contempt for any woman not willing to comply with his every whim. The cozying up to Kim and Putin. The public mocking of the disabled. And finally his comments about all those "very fine people" in the white supremacist movement. There's not much need to demonize somebody capable of doing or saying those things.
@Girish Kotwal
Today "extreme left" has come to mean rational slightly right of center while the so-called Republicans go full authoritarian.
Reporting what the president does and says is not demonizing him unless what he does and and says is demonic. Then it would be "don't report what I do and say, report on what I tell you to say" after "don't believe your eyes and ears, believe what I tell you" - which he actually said.
There is much to be elated about and much to be fearful about in this analysis.
Many of us thought that Trump would be castigated to the rubble heap during the debates and that the Republican Party would never let him get the nomination, let alone win the presidency.
That's what polls told us. If we approach Mr. Greenberg's analysis with cautious optimism and apply dogged pursuit of voter motivation his prognostications could very well come true.
6
The Princeton Election Consortium had Hillary Clinton at greater than 99% to win on the eve of the election. And this past July, NTY's very own Nate Cohn argued Trump's Electoral College advantage might be even larger now than it was in 2016, and laid out a scenario in which Trump could lose the national vote by as much as 5 percentage points, far more than the 2.1 he lost by in 2016, and get reelected.
Lovely charts and graphs, Mr. Greenberg, but I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, assume a massive turnout is needed, because four more years of Trump is a serious possibility.
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Voter suppression and the Electoral College are the biggest obstacles.
5
The Democratic presidential nominee needs to be a bulldog who will not be intimidated by Trump, and be able to confront him directly. Non aggressiveness is not going to defeat Trump.
There is only one candidate who can accomplish this - Elizabeth Warren.
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I think most Americans want a country where having a child is affordable. A country where a medical calamity doesn't mean losing your home. A country where your retirement plan doesn't involve section 8 housing. A country where average work returns not only dignity but reward.
This is not the country where most Americans live. Trump certainly doesn't get it. Democrats though?
Hillary Clinton remains the most clear example of Democratic tone-deafness. We've made progress. However, Biden's purported position as front runner means Democrats are still secretly hoping for a return to 90s Clintonism. The Reagan Democrat persists within our electorate. Unfortunately, he or she holds outsize influence within the Democratic Party.
As an institution, I don't think Democrats learned their lesson after 2016. There are generations of voters whose experiences are defined from 9/11 to 2009 and beyond. There's a backlog of maintenance so to speak. If Democrats keep speaking in half-measures and small steps, they are going to lose. We are that much worse off for the moderation.
The time for action is now. It's been "now" for awhile now. Instead of action, we get Dianne Feinstein lecturing children about how their future isn't her first priority; she knows better. That's not a winning strategy.
10
Color me skeptical, but I’m betting “the government should do more to solve problems” gets a lot more support than statements like “the government should abolish private health insurance and put everyone on Medicare.”
That’s not to knock the merits of a single payer system, it’s just to accept the political reality that President Obama couldn’t even get a public option into Obamacare when Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House (translation: not enough Democrats supported even that small a move towards single payer).
In fact, at a time when people thought the GOP was dead, Obamacare— a moderate health care reform based on a plan proposed by Republicans back in the 90s and implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts— breathed new life into the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party and laid the emotional groundwork for Donald Trump.
A lot of people are very angry about Trump, and I suspect the frustration people feel over his presidency is driving a lot of newfound fervor for progressive solutions among people who, when it comes right down to it, may not be willing to pull the trigger when it comes to losing their own private health insurance.
This is not the first time we’ve heard about the impending death of the GOP, and it’s worth remembering that the last time we heard it was when Trump became their nominee.
6
If only what you wrote translated into how people will vote; based on your points, Trump’s popularity would be below 20% and his GOP support would at a minimum be speaking out against him. You portray the exit of moderate Republicans as evidence of the party crumbling, when in fact it indicates Trump’s stranglehold on the party and its transformation into a group of “yes” men. Then there’s the matter of Mitch McConnell. The GOP will retain control of the Senate, legislation will die there, and judicial vacancies will mount. Putting it differently, you provide a sound, intelligent argument, but the mindset of almost half of voting America (and probably half of those who will vote) remain mesmerized by Trump and won’t be influenced by what’s best for them and this country. I’m also betting you were confident of the demise of the GOP heading into the 2016 election.
5