AHC:Republicans killed as a major party in Depression

samcster94

Banned
What can be done to kill the Republicans in the Depression??? The Dems can have a brief one party rule, have a competitor on the left(some socialist-lite party), the right(the dixiecrats), etc .... but the GOP cannot sit in the White House again in this universe. No current events, as this is well into the past and barely in living memory.
 
- A slightly bigger Democratic swing at the congressional level in 1936.
- Avoid the court-packing controversy, and the premature attempts to balance the budget.

This hamstrings the Republicans efforts at a comeback from 1938.

From there, I think your best bet is to beef up left-wing competition. A Socialist Party vs a moderating Democratic Party, with the Republicans reduced to the Vermont Regional Party.
 
A couple ideas:

1) Give them a place they're comfortable jumping ship for. Keep the Progressives around a little longer or move the Depression up. If you can reduce the party to regional status you're most of the way there, and those remaining will be more likely to seek out ways to jump ship.

2) Tie the GOP more definitively to the Depression with a big, juicy corruption scandal. Maybe a specific company's downfall is seen as the start of the stock market crash. And maybe that company skipped out on congressional oversight by making friends with the ruling party, i.e. graft and maybe something more licentious. Have this trickle down to taint as many elected officials as possible, either by having them partake or by having them just stay loyal to the party structure.

3) As Maeglin said, have the Democrats be as perfect as possible.

4) Start the Democratic schism earlier. Again, it's all about giving people viable places to jump. If you're scrambling the whole political system you're less likely to have people hold onto their old oppositions with a death grip. If everyone's going down, it's time to make some new alliances. When the dust settles it's easy to imagine a situation where the "Republican" moniker is gone.
 
First I think the two-party structure is rather hard wired into our politics and even if the Republican party dies something simply replaces it. Next if you grossly simplify things we have four parties in this era, the GOP has two wings, conservative and progressive/moderate/liberal (whatever label you prefer) and the Democrats are divided North versus South. I think it is possible post-Depression to have the Northern Democrats and liberal Republicans effectively merge, this is what might replace the GOP if the civil rights plank alienates the South enough and it effectively pushes leftward in social issues but remains centrist on economic policy, while the Southern Democrats remain a strong second with the Republican conservatives that need a home and depending on if you believe the social and fiscal issues align, they could become part of these Democrats in effect an earlier shift as per OTL. So the Democrats splinter from their big tent height and the GOP splits to fill out the divide. Or is that just too much like OTL? Otherwise go back further and have no Red Scare, let the socialists grow as a third party, bleeding off very liberal Republicans and soaking up the labor vote from Northern Democrats. Have the Southerners double down into segregation so they fall into third party/regional status, the Republican moniker fades as the progressive/socialists introduce a new name and the remnant conservative GOP struggles to find relevance beyond the Midwest and North East and maybe Southwest?
 

samcster94

Banned
- A slightly bigger Democratic swing at the congressional level in 1936.
- Avoid the court-packing controversy, and the premature attempts to balance the budget.

This hamstrings the Republicans efforts at a comeback from 1938.

From there, I think your best bet is to beef up left-wing competition. A Socialist Party vs a moderating Democratic Party, with the Republicans reduced to the Vermont Regional Party.
Where do Dixiecrats fall into this???
 
- A slightly bigger Democratic swing at the congressional level in 1936.
- Avoid the court-packing controversy, and the premature attempts to balance the budget.

This hamstrings the Republicans efforts at a comeback from 1938.

From there, I think your best bet is to beef up left-wing competition. A Socialist Party vs a moderating Democratic Party, with the Republicans reduced to the Vermont Regional Party.

No. There is always going to be substantial conservative opposition to the New Deal (even leaving aside the South, where racial concerns made it hard for a two-party system to develop). Even Landon came within twenty points of FDR (i.e., got over 40 percent of the two-party vote) in such major northern states as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, and very close to that in Ohio. And that was in 1936, a year of remarkable economic growth. When things got worse for FDR--and even without the court-packing fight, they would get worse, especially with the 1937-8 recession--the Republicans would make a comeback.

Although Landon lost the national popular vote by 24.25 points, some of FDR's margin consisted of "wasted" unnecessarily huge percentages in the South. If Republicans carried all the states Landon lost by 20.56 points or less (and the two he won) they would actually win the next presidential election with 273 electoral votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1936 That may seem like a tall order, but it only requires about one-tenth of the electorate to change its mind. There had been bigger shifts--e.g., from 1916 to 1920 or from 1928 to 1932.
 
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Why has it been impossible for a major American political party to die since the 1850's the way the Whigs did then and the Federalists had done previously? Michael Holt in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party credits (or blames) the Australian ballot:

"During the twentieth century, American electoral politics has always been organized around the same two major parties--Republicans and Democrats--in large part because the adoption of state-printed ballots in the 1890s measurably increased the difficulty of launching a third party to challenge them. Since those major parties had an automatic slot on the ballots and since the legal hurdles for other parties to get on those ballots were so high, Republicans and Democrats effectively monopolized voters' choice. During this century, therefore, the Republican party has been the only realistic alternative to the Democrats. Thus it, and not some other party, has usually benefited when voters sought to punish Democrats and to replace them in office.

"In the 1850s and for most of the nineteenth century, however, the rules of the political game encouraged rather than inhibited the creation of new parties. Instead of state-printed ballots that gave legally recognized major parties pride of place and disadvantaged other groups who sought to be listed on them, political parties distributed and printed their own ballots. As a result, it was far easier for new parties to challenge the old ones. As Whigs would learn to their dismay, therefore, politics in the 1850s was not a zero-sum game...Unlike their twentieth-century Republican successors, in sum, Whigs could not monopolize opposition to Democrats and that simple, if easily overlooked, fact more than anything else explains the death of the Whig party." https://books.google.com/books?id=hMkYklGTY1MC&pg=PA772

I discuss Holt's argument at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/hv7W-s__VeU/fGGAg9HyMgoJ
 

Thomas1195

Banned
I think it is possible post-Depression to have the Northern Democrats and liberal Republicans effectively merge, this is what might replace the GOP if the civil rights plank alienates the South enough and it effectively pushes leftward in social issues but remains centrist on economic policy, while the Southern Democrats remain a strong second with the Republican conservatives that need a home and depending on if you believe the social and fiscal issues align, they could become part of these Democrats in effect an earlier shift as per OTL.
Have both Wilkie and FDR living long enough to get their Liberal Party take off and effectively become a coalition between Liberal Democrats and Liberal Republicans. Meanwhile, keep the rump Conservative GOP and Dixiecrats from merging.
 
Have both Wilkie and FDR living long enough to get their Liberal Party take off and effectively become a coalition between Liberal Democrats and Liberal Republicans. Meanwhile, keep the rump Conservative GOP and Dixiecrats from merging.

Even if Willkie went along with FDR's plan he would simply not take enough Republicans with him to make that much of a difference. The Republican Party would still call itself the Republican Party, not the Conservative Party, and would still have a large moderate wing exemplified by people like Dewey. It would still have a de facto alliance with conservative southern Democrats in Congress, but no merger and certainly no new name. Willkie by 1944 was really a pariah in the GOP, and his joining FDR would have less significance than many people think. It's like Colin Powell's supporting the Democrats from 2008 on.
 
Why has it been impossible for a major American political party to die since the 1850's the way the Whigs did then and the Federalists had done previously? Michael Holt in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party credits (or blames) the Australian ballot:

"During the twentieth century, American electoral politics has always been organized around the same two major parties--Republicans and Democrats--in large part because the adoption of state-printed ballots in the 1890s measurably increased the difficulty of launching a third party to challenge them. Since those major parties had an automatic slot on the ballots and since the legal hurdles for other parties to get on those ballots were so high, Republicans and Democrats effectively monopolized voters' choice. During this century, therefore, the Republican party has been the only realistic alternative to the Democrats. Thus it, and not some other party, has usually benefited when voters sought to punish Democrats and to replace them in office.

"In the 1850s and for most of the nineteenth century, however, the rules of the political game encouraged rather than inhibited the creation of new parties. Instead of state-printed ballots that gave legally recognized major parties pride of place and disadvantaged other groups who sought to be listed on them, political parties distributed and printed their own ballots. As a result, it was far easier for new parties to challenge the old ones. As Whigs would learn to their dismay, therefore, politics in the 1850s was not a zero-sum game...Unlike their twentieth-century Republican successors, in sum, Whigs could not monopolize opposition to Democrats and that simple, if easily overlooked, fact more than anything else explains the death of the Whig party." https://books.google.com/books?id=hMkYklGTY1MC&pg=PA772

I discuss Holt's argument at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/hv7W-s__VeU/fGGAg9HyMgoJ

This brings up another pretty obvious route, which is electoral reform. Find the right triggers to affect the way we conduct elections. In addition to positive reforms, doing this while the GOP are on the mat after the Depression gives you some potentially under-handed options the Democrats could try to game the system in their favor.
 

samcster94

Banned
This brings up another pretty obvious route, which is electoral reform. Find the right triggers to affect the way we conduct elections. In addition to positive reforms, doing this while the GOP are on the mat after the Depression gives you some potentially under-handed options the Democrats could try to game the system in their favor.
FDR losing to a Republican in 1936 via EC only victory, but the Congress is extremely democratic as are most states.
 
Have both Wilkie and FDR living long enough to get their Liberal Party take off and effectively become a coalition between Liberal Democrats and Liberal Republicans. Meanwhile, keep the rump Conservative GOP and Dixiecrats from merging.

Although I am dubious if some united second party never occurs, effectively this, a hard cast shift in the progressive/liberal factions to become the new American umbrella party, leaving no room for an effective alternative. Perhaps made easier if the Depression gives us a stronger socialist party to polarize the far-right pushing more into the center from both ends?
 
Why has it been impossible for a major American political party to die since the 1850's the way the Whigs did then and the Federalists had done previously? Michael Holt in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party credits (or blames) the Australian ballot....
I discuss Holt's argument at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/hv7W-s__VeU/fGGAg9HyMgoJ
Well, that is interesting. Do you know how it works in Britain, voting for the Westminster Parliament?

Like the USA, the British legislature is elected first past the post, I presume by some kind of secret ballot for the actual voting mechanism. Like the US a two-party system is dominant, but on the other hand they normally also always have significant numbers of third party seats elected as well. Consensus in other discussions of this says that's because Americans have an independent President, and the need to pick just one individual intensifies the need to limit choices to "realistic chances of winning" ie "don't waste your vote" to a true 2-party duopoly, and this carries over to Congress as well somehow. In Britain presumably third parties exist largely as the regional second party, with one or both the mainstream parties locally driven out of contention, so the 2 candidate race is between different parties than in other regions, but in America it is a liability to have a locally favored party that never connects to the President. So that theory says anyway.

I don't know about this other theory about ballots though. It seems to me that actually most states routinely do allow a few alternate parties on their ballots, and they are not thereby helped to attain the kind of status perennial British third parties attain. By national proportional vote for instance the Libertarians ought to have a dozen or so Congress members--even looking at the difference between proportional and what filters through FPTP, the latter being a lot less for third parties, the British Liberal party ought to have 40 or so MPs but they do have 4 or 5. That's outrageously low--but way more than the Libertarian's zero! This despite the fact that the Libs have got near total ballot access.

So I suspect Holt may be barking up the wrong tree. I do not mean to discount the effect that generations of ballot access blocking has had, in convincing people that candidates of other than D or R parties have no chance, a self-fullfilling prophecy. But I do think that if we went back to party-supplied ballots tomorrow, it would not improve the fortunes of US third parties much.

Anyway in the context of this ATL challenge, your apparently encyclopediac knowledge of the Depression/Wartime/Postwar 1930s and 40s seems a lot more valuable and relevant; even if Holt were correct the deed was done generations before, and in the '30s and '40s, state-printed ballots were the norm, with all the consequences that entailed. So this theory of Holt's is moot as far as the OP challenge goes, unless you want to suggest that a counterreform to go back to party printed ballots is in the cards. I don't see how it would be. Perhaps reforms imposing rules on the states making it easier for third parties to get traction, such as Federal legislation establishing (as a resource, to get around the Constitutional assumption the states have charge of election processes with stringent limits on exceptions) a national Partisan Registry office, enabling organizers to register identity and thus some kind of unambiguous national code numbering system allowing voters in any state to write in a party preference and have it identified clearly, so there is no excuse to throw out the vote. As said the Federal government cannot, without an Amendment anyway, mandate to the states what sorts of ballots they must have, but perhaps either some loophole permitting some control (Congress is granted some oversight of its own elections, which is a form of federal scrutiny of state run processes) can strongly incentivize the various states to somewhat standardize, to include write in lines for all offices for instance?

Nevada currently has no such option, and by the way did not include the Green Party candidate in the 2016 Presidential race--had I dared consider casting a protest vote to the left of Hillary Clinton my ballot provided absolutely no way to do that! I could vote for "None of the Above" but that has no legal effect whatsoever. This seems in a way a perfect example of what Holt was talking about of course--in 2016 a leftist voter in Nevada had literally nowhere to go but either Clinton or hell. Right wing voters had more meaningful choices--and of course in the two party trap, if it is foregone that any vote but to either the Democrat or the Republican is thrown away, that was big victory for the Democrats, since it channeled all such voters to be forced to support Clinton (not that I was personally planning to do otherwise) while potential Trump voters might fall astray and be lost in the various optional pits.

States by default though get to decide their own rules, and this is very clearly spelled out in the matter of electing the President. So some changes must be a matter of persuading each of the 48 (in this period) state governments separately, and probably failing to affect every one, and affecting different ones differently. Short of a Constitutional Amendment which requires both supermajorities in House and Senate and the ratification by 3/4 states, you aren't going to see a national reversion to party ballots, and it would be unlikely to realize any particular reform in mechanics.

How did party ballots allow split votes? Say, to vote for a Democrat for Congress but a Republican for Governor and a Socialist for Mayor? My guess is, they didn't of course--in effect every voter cast one vote, for one party, and let that stand for all their choices. Given the way that constrains voters, how could reverting to it ever be popular?

I'd love to continue discussion of various wonky electoral mechanics and their probable bearing on historic outcomes, and the ATL possibilities offered by new methods such as range voting, but I don't think it has a lot of bearing here. The question here is clearly not mechanical. The Party of Lincoln would be hard to erase unless Lincoln's heirs did something massively disgraceful and even then it would tend to recover unless in the mean time the majority of those temporarily driven from its place on the elector's spectrum were to converge again in a party of similar position by another name, and even then they would tend, once gathered together again, to reclaim the old GOP mantle by adding that name to the objectively new party.

The great relevance of your point is pointing out how the state printed ballot, being already in effect, would tend to act as a ratchet to lock the party out from a comeback once it dipped low enough to fall off the state ballot. But given the special advantages the Republican name would enjoy among conservatives in the long run, I think it could leapfrog its way back far more easily than a genuinely new party could establish itself for the first time. And we know that a half dozen or so such alternative parties do manage to get onto most state ballots, it is just that hardly anyone votes for them most of the time. If the Republicans were eclipsed for a while but the political niche for them were reconstitutued by circumstances, they could indeed come back, and once on the visible ballot, rocket up the polls to reclaim their former place among the top two, unless a new party had the solid grip on that. But they still would return with greater strength than say the Libertarians, I think. Enough to seriously dream of a Presidential run someday soon.

The discussion lies elsewhere then. Two of them, one for this thread, just what could kill off the desire of the public to reconstitute it, and elsewhere I would be interested in talking about electoral machinery. But the latter has little bearing on the former I think, in this case of killing one of the classic old parties.
 
I think a good way to do it would be for the Teddy Roosevelt split to be long lasting. He would dominate the Republican Party's vast majority (the Western wing, the Midwestern Progressives, the Urban Machines) while leaving the Gold Standard worshipping New England wing to form a rump party of sorts, which would be in loose alliance with the remnants of the Black Republicans in the South.

So you'd have a three party system. The Bull Moose Party which would be named something else (say, the American Party or the Progressive Party or the National Party), the Democrats, and the Republicans (the somewhat outdated New England WASP section and what is left of the Civil Rights wing).

And what would happen is that when the Depression strikes, Black voters as in OTL would join up with the Democrats, while New England would slowly but surely be subsumed into the Democrats with the Republicans being a totally minor sectional party by the end. And this would mean that the lines of battle would be between the Midwestern and Western Teddy Party and the Democrats.
 
Well, that is interesting. Do you know how it works in Britain, voting for the Westminster Parliament?

Like the USA, the British legislature is elected first past the post, I presume by some kind of secret ballot for the actual voting mechanism. Like the US a two-party system is dominant, but on the other hand they normally also always have significant numbers of third party seats elected as well. Consensus in other discussions of this says that's because Americans have an independent President, and the need to pick just one individual intensifies the need to limit choices to "realistic chances of winning" ie "don't waste your vote" to a true 2-party duopoly, and this carries over to Congress as well somehow. In Britain presumably third parties exist largely as the regional second party, with one or both the mainstream parties locally driven out of contention, so the 2 candidate race is between different parties than in other regions, but in America it is a liability to have a locally favored party that never connects to the President. So that theory says anyway.

I think there are two separate questions here. The first is why the US has a tendency to two-partyism, and things like first-past-the-post and the presidential system may help to explain that. But there is a separate question--why have the two major parties been the same parties since the Civil War era? The tendency to two parties doesn't mean they must always be the same parties. In the US, there were first the Jeffersonian Republicans versus the Federalists; then there was the Jackson Party versus the Adams Party, with the Jacksonians increasingly calling themselves Democrats and the Adams supporters calling themselves National Republicans; then there were the Democrats versus the Whigs; then in the 1850's when it was clear the Whigs were dying, there was a transition period when it wasn't clear whether the main opposition party to the Democrats would be the Republicans or the Americans (Know Nothings). But after the Republicans won out over the Americans, there have been no further changes in the identity of the major parties. And why that is so, is the question I am asking. [1] It may be that the institutional obstacles to new parties are not the answer--at least not all of it--but then we have to ask what is. (I think part of it had to do with the legacy of the Civil War solidifying people's self-identification as Democrats or Republicans. Thus, in 1884 some reform-minded Republicans still reluctantly supported Blaine because they saw the Democrats as the party of "treason" during the Civil War; in the 1890's many radical southern Democrats refused to join the Populists, because only the Democrats were seen as a "white man's party." This historical attachment also kept conservative southerners nominal Democrats in the 1930's and 1940's, even though they were closer to the Republicans on economic issues. And the very fact that unlike the Federalists, National Republicans, Whigs, and Know Nothings, the Republicans endured for decade after decade may have made people take Democrats-vs.-Republicans as the natural order of things, and thus ensured their further survival.)

[1] And note that the changes I have mentioned were not just changes in party names. The National Republicans were not the Federalists under another name; both JQ Adams and Clay had been Jeffersonian Republicans, and some ex-Federalists like Louis McLane joined the Jacksonians. The Whigs were not just the National Republicans under another name; they included Antimasons and even southern Nullifiers. The Republicans weren't just the northern Whigs under another name, either; especially in states where the Whigs had been weak, like Michigan, they attracted many ex-Democrats, while many conservative ex-Whigs joined the Democrats.
 
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I certainly think you've legitimized the discussion of mechanisms that might have locked the 2 party system into the same two parties over time, and the ballot thing might be quite significant, though you've gone and offered a second quite different theory to consider, that of deep identities anchoring party labels to deep things hard to change. Certainly in the modern generation the notion of Democrats as party of elite ivory tower idealism versus Republicanism as identity of homespun down home Archie Bunker nationalist righteousness seems to be the salient divide post Nixon. It is sustained on both sides despite the self-limiting of the divide.

I remain interested in discussing stuff like the ballot control aspect, ideological anchoring, and it certainly would all bear on whether it is possible to kill the Republican Party in the 1930s.

@Raferty, you overlooked that whether or not Progressive Republicans could be found in large numbers in the Midwest, beside them there were the conservatives like Taft (shown to be a bit of a maverick with a handful of semi-progressive concessions, but still basically Mr. Conservative) who separate from progressives, had their own strong persistent base in that region--I am tempted to consider your New Englanders in places like Vermont and Maine just a branch of those. Same party, very different policies--though one can also discern consistent differences between Republican progressives and Democratic progressives in the north; just as Robert Taft made a few humane concessions to progressivism (prophylactic, it seems to me--admit a few instances of welfare state intervention so you can claim that is the absolute limit and anything beyond that is crazy short-sighted moral fabric eroding welfare statism, road to serfdom and all that--the prophylactic stuff appeases some of the more egregious and demoralizing downsides of raw competition and can have a special case made that doesn't open the door to welfarism in general) so progressive Republicans must prove they are nevertheless less leftist by having a few hardline positions. Nelson Rockefeller for instance was the despair of such semi-supporters as Thomas Dewey late in his life for his high welfare state spending in New York state--"Nelson, I love you, but I don't think I can afford you" Dewey said--but he also adopted a very Nixonesque hard line "war on drugs" position which proved he was no soft-boiled egg. Alternatively one could be consistently moderate between hard conservatism and standard issue liberalism and thus prove to be holding the line against moral rot that way--"let's be reasonable but not let it get out of hand." Anyway your 1930s conservatives would despise that sort of compromise (except judiciously--and Taft took flak from the harder right, those guys were however clean out as Presidential prospects in the Depression generation, it would take Cold War reaction to rehabilitate them and even that would not be enough for the Presidency until Nixon cleared the way--Nixon himself being a "mixed bag" moderate I suppose--hard on this, soft on that, as opportunism offered).

So actually the leftover hidebound Republicans would command a lot of territory west of New England, and indeed the mix in the Mountain west seems exactly a spectrum between extremist conservative Republicans and very progressive ones, not really a lot in between them--one western Republican would be a rock-eating Neanderthal, another just a bit toned down from Socialism but often with some pet right wing bee in his bonnet to prove he was no Commie.

So peeling all the progressives away into their own TR worshiping party would seem harder than it looks--they ballasted themselves with this or that hardline right wing position but often not the same one, is my impression. This proved they were all independent minded free thinkers but it would make it hard to make a party with just them--mix in the Neanderthals whom they could each agree with on some right wing shibboleth or other, to justify sharing the same party, and they collectively could form a progressive stratum over the rockhead base and it made sense.

Recall that part of two-party dynamics under FPTP, especially if the single person office of President helps crystalize each of the two parties into separate identities, is that each candidate must be all things to all people, or anyway enough people to comprise 51 percent of the electorate--among those 51 percent are lots of subconstituencies with contradictory interests. A bit of schizophrenia comes in handy then, particularly when each separate individual candidate claims to have their own personal philosophy that make their odd mix of right and left interests seem reasonable. Then their peers have a different mix and different philosophy. It means they are all respectable free thinkers who come to their conclusions by rigorous thought, not a bunch of clones. The fact that they act in lockstep is the beauty of the system! If the various publics all had equal power as free individuals, you would expect a kaleidoscopic balancing act of shifting compromises over time, and sooner or later, everyone gets their back scratched, and that seems fair. Now to a more Marxist thinker like me, I perceive it as certain sectors who have more property get their needs catered to first and must be kept pretty happy all the time, and others get a juggling act that gratifies them verbally sometimes and seeks to console them to inevitable losses, and tries to convince them it raineth on just and unjust alike and every dog has his day....someday. It just ain't your night tonight. But hang in there! This is America, the greatest land, and if your deal seems raw, imagine how much worse it would be overseas!

And here we have the nature of the two party system in the mid 20th century I suppose. With a similar idiosyncratic candidate lineup among the Democrats, lefty on this, righty on that, it did largely come down to tribalism I suppose, only the Democrats were able to parley the contrasting images of Hoover versus Mr Fireside Chat lover of the common people and their Patron FDR and project it for generations to come and sell that their identity was Common People versus Moneybags. It didn't work with some audiences, and I think I would have to get drunk or something and write all night to juggle this into a fluid process that would show how the imagery shifted into the modern configuration where Reagan takes FDR's place as the Great Shaman, lubricated by Nixon's creative failure to do that (becoming the unloved prophet I suppose)..I am free associating here. Perhaps I should go think more about ballots or something.

But anyway I think the two party system has got some such complex, largely self-contradictory dynamics in it to try to capture solid majorities when in truth the publics of a complex society like ours would tend to split into more numerous, more sharply defined groups. The apologists for FPTP and other stuff I think of as reactionary argue that this is moderation and deliberation, whereas to me it looks more like a heads I win tails you lose fan dance, and I want proportional representation unchained (no damn hurdles, Hamilton assignment which is most inclusive, stuff like that) so people can make the small party that really speaks for them and the parties can sort it out as paid proxies in the legislature, no more superparty for 50 percent plus minus one.

I suspect that a true analysis would show that in the mid-20th century, this "fan dance" had to largely be played by ear and intuition, and so both superparties were haunted by a broad brush eclecticism overall; it was an art not a science what messaging would pull in the crucial 50 percent plus one and how to consistently orchestrate the message so the same voters made up that ruling majority from year to year. And gradually, starting already with people like Mark Hanna before 1900 and with Woodrow Wilson hiring Madison Avenue ad men and the advertising industry itself becoming more and more technocratic, and then WWII efforts leading to stuff like the CIA and really major scientific analysis, we got people like Karl Rove who could really refine it to a science and isolated the new Conservative ideology that would reliably resonate enough to win most of the time, and this enabled the parties to shed that alleged process of reaching out to a large consensus and settle for that sure thing 50 percent plus one, and enable the ideologies to double down on "screw the 49 percent, we hate them." If you can always get that plus one percent, you can afford to totally alienate and objectively hurt the other 49 percent you see, you are going to win everything.

Personally I believe the alleged creative moderation was always a sham and a scam of sorts, but when you get this perfected scientific voter analysis, it gets brutally blatant and the tribalism becomes a painfully divisive thing.

But historically in many times and places it was already painfully divisive so that model only works so far.

The relevance to the 1930s death of the Republican party is no, I doubt it could be done, because both parties had this protean diversity necessary for vying for the majority, and smashing the credibility of one set of party leaders left others standing to fill the vacuum. Killing either major party would have to happen through the other one achieving one party rule, but the tendency would be for voters to tire of either, because the "all things to all men" fan dance is not in fact catering to everyone equally but first of all to the ruling classes, and the neglected majority tires because their hopes are disappointed--not so much in the nature of things, but in the nature of a class society, so the Republican holdouts blown away in 1932 and 1936 were there to creep back into alliance with conservative Democrats (mostly in their Southern bastion, but you could find others all over the country) and later into the majority of the House. They retained their connection to other tribes of Republicans because whether it was consciously understood or not, conservatives and liberals in each party needed each other to maintain the balance of their overlapping fan dances for the majority vote.

But why not just form a new party as had been the norm up to the Civil War era? We probably need more discussion on that to identify why the same two parties marching on forever have been locked in apparently forever on into the future, despite each shifting drastically in perception from generation to generation.

I would want to say it is just very hard to get voters to make that jump to a third party, but actually it happens a fair amount even today and it used to happen every couple of decades. Getting rid of FPTP would make transitions easier but also enable many parties that never consolidate into two again, a bugbear feared by some, a holy grail to others.

On the ballot thing--which Britons among us can explain how one votes for Parliament MPs. Is it a state produced ballot, or do you write the candidate in, or what?
 
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