DarkHelmet wrote:Again, I really don't care who the Democrat nominee is as long as thy can beat Trump in the battleground states.
I think I'd have a hard time voting for Gabbard, and might at that point consider who else there is on the ticket not named Trump. I can't imagine a version of the United States where that ends up being the ticket, though, so it's probably just an unpleasant hypothetical. Like The Man in the High Castle. Otherwise, in the sense there isn't a chance I'd vote for Trump over any of the current candidates on the ticket I agree. Yes, even Michael Bloomberg were that to happen. Though the country might actually be on fire were that to happen in certain scenarios where the progressive wing of the Democrat party feels the nomination was bought and stolen from them at a brokered convention. Again, probably just an unpleasant hypothetical but one more likely than a Gabbard/Trump contest.
Which brings me to why I decided to post. I actually care quite a bit about the differences in the Democratic party. Biden and Sanders aren't ideologically in the same country, let alone belong on the same political ticket in most points in our political history. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michael Bloomberg would be more likely to murder the other than find common ground on a shared party platform. There are serious movements taking place there.
I think most of us agree the Republican party is broken. Possibly irredeemably. That didn't happen overnight. It happened over a couple of decades as radical elements of the party combined with too-smart-for-everyone-elses-good politico-types combined with conservative talk radio and eventually Fox News to enflame anti-government sentiment they thought they could keep aimed at the Democrats. Newt Gingrich led a change in the nature of the party that has directly resulted in the Capital trading in comradery among members regardless of party affiliation and replaced it with a form of ideological trench warfare where the suggestion of compromise with the "enemy" is viewed as treason.
Before Trump, the Republican party began to fracture as Tea Party conservatives and Freedom Caucus members treated the moderates of their own party as no better than the most leftwing members like Sanders. Mike Lee in Utah replacing Bob Bennett in 2010 is an example of an old guard Republican Senator being primaried out by a radical Tea Party challenger in their primary who then went on to win the Senate seat and disrupt the Senate for the next 8 years. Ajax tells us all the time that RINOS are fifth columnists among conservatives who are even worst than open socialists because at least they aren't lying...because people like Ajax as certain they have the world figured out and anyone who doesn't think like them is obviously wrong. It doesn't matter by how much their views differ, it is just plain wrong.
The Democrats are just behind the Republicans in this evolution to being a broken party. There are major, important differences among the candidates that do matter. Some are ideological and the kind of differences necessary for political debate and a healthy democracy. But some are of a kind with the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus. There are modern equivalents of the same forces that turned the Grand Old Party into a circus that view moderate Democrats as little better than Trump enablers, who oppose moderate politics as having no place in modern 21st Century US politics. Who would see Democrats primary one another to ensure no one willing to compromise gets elected.
The future looks pretty dark, politically speaking.