With the political situation this year, I figure it’s time for another post. I\u00a0know that I’m not good at posting regularly, but this year is just too good to\u00a0pass up. So here goes.<\/p>\n
First off, I have a prediction about the presidential election that I made last\u00a0year about this time. I predicted that Trump would burn out by December at the\u00a0latest and it by this time this year, it would be Cruz vs. Clinton. I guess we\u00a0all know how that turned out.<\/p>\n
Watching Trump rise, I realize that one of two things is happening, and I’m not\u00a0sure which it is. One is good (and I would actually rate it as very good) and\u00a0the other is very bad.<\/p>\n
One possibility is that we have gone so celebrity crazy and politically stupid\u00a0that society evolved to think that a reality star would be a good choice for\u00a0a president.<\/p>\n
Several years ago, a movie came out named “Idiocracy”. This is NOT a\u00a0recommendation that you see the movie. It’s not horrible, but it’s\u00a0not a movie that begs to be seen either. If it weren’t for it’s\u00a0description of society, I would have completely forgotten it. It\u00a0shows a possible evolution of our social and political system where\u00a0intelligent, motivated individuals have few or no children, while the\u00a0lower economic class (who tend to be less educated and less interested\u00a0in the political process) continues to produce most of the children.\u00a0Eventually, this class forms the vast majority of the voting\u00a0population, and they vote in people who appeal to them. As a result, in\u00a0the movie, the president of the United States is a professional wrestler\u00a0who, at the height of his popularity, ran for office and won (and in the\u00a0movie, this is not a singular event, but is representative of how the\u00a0elections typically play out in that society).<\/p>\n
The similarities are certainly obvious. Trump, coming off a\u00a0successful and very visible reality TV career, is a perfect fit for\u00a0the position if this is indeed the evolution that we are seeing.\u00a0Franky, I see him as no more and no less qualified than the wrestler\u00a0in the movie. If that is the way we are going, I predict that Kim\u00a0Kardashian is a great option for Trump’s successor!<\/p>\n
That’s possibility number one. The second is what I HOPE is going on. It\u00a0is the death of the two party system.<\/p>\n
For the past several elections, I have observed a strong pendulum\u00a0effect. When Bush (senior) was in office, by the end of his term, I\u00a0saw people saying ‘save us from the Republicans’ and Clinton was\u00a0elected. At the end of his terms, I saw a lot of ‘save us from the\u00a0Democrats’ and Bush (junior) was elected. Then Obama was elected to\u00a0save the country from the Republicans again.<\/p>\n
And while it is true that there have been some things that a party\u00a0could point at and say ‘See! Our party is making things better!’,\u00a0there have been far more that say exactly the opposite. The economy\u00a0is not better. The national debt has gone up every single year,\u00a0regardless of party. Civil rights have been trampled, regardless of\u00a0party. We have been constantly at war, regardless of party. The gap\u00a0between the wealthy and the poor has grown, regardless of party.<\/p>\n
I hope that people are realizing that the pendulum isn’t working. Based\u00a0on the pendulum, it is the Republican’s turn to win the presidency, but\u00a0I am hoping that people are so sick of the Republican party that they\u00a0are saying “I want something different!”. And the one quality that\u00a0Trump undeniably has is that he is something different. I’m not\u00a0terribly surprised that the Republican party self destructed first.\u00a0In the popularity contest side of things, the Republicans have not had\u00a0a candidate who was good at saying ‘Look how good I am’ for long\u00a0enough that they have lost support from a sizable portion of their\u00a0constituency. As a result, along comes a person who’s seemingly only\u00a0dominant characteristic is that of saying how good he is, and suddenly\u00a0he’s a front runner!<\/p>\n
And another thing I find interesting is how Clinton and Trump are\u00a0actually benefiting each other. If there is a candidate that would\u00a0drive the Republican party to band behind a candidate, no matter how\u00a0poor of a choice he was, it’s Clinton. The Republicans absolutely\u00a0hate Clinton. Of all of the Democrats who ran this year, her being\u00a0the front runner has forced Republicans to unite (to some extent)\u00a0behind their leading candidate, despite the fact that it is Trump.<\/p>\n
And the opposite holds true too. Of all the Republican candidates who\u00a0ran, Trump is the only one who could get the Democrats to unite behind\u00a0Clinton. The Wall Street Journal shows that the percentage of voters\u00a0who view the candidates negatively have both Clinton and Trump over\u00a050%. None of the previous 6 front runners (Obama vs. Romney, Kerry\u00a0vs. Bush, or Bill Clinton vs. Bush) were over 50%. The disapproval\u00a0of both candidates is high enough that a significant portion of their\u00a0own party disapproves of them, and yet, Democrats have rallied behind\u00a0Clinton in large part because ‘anyone is better than Trump’.<\/p>\n
In this perfect storm of an election, Trump is Clinton’s number one\u00a0advantage, and Clinton is Trump’s number one advantage. Take away one\u00a0and I suspect the other would crumble (or at least it would have if it\u00a0had happened earlier in the election process).<\/p>\n
Back to my second point. If the fact that Trump is the front runner\u00a0represents the dissatisfaction of republicans with their party, then\u00a0some good may come from this election. I am waiting anxiously to see\u00a0what percentage of the popular vote will go to a third party. Anyone\u00a0who has read any of my blog knows that my vote will be for the\u00a0Libertarian.<\/p>\n
Let me tell you what I HOPE is the result of this election and which I\u00a0think is at least in the realm of possibility. Obviously, my real\u00a0hope is that the Libertarian would win, but I am fully aware that that\u00a0is not realistic.<\/p>\n
I hope that the Libertarian party succeeds in getting a lot of\u00a0attention as a viable alternative to Trump and as a result, an\u00a0important part of the Republican party deserts Trump to vote third\u00a0party. I hope that a significant part of the Democratic party,\u00a0viewing how fragmented the Republican party is no longer feel the need\u00a0to get out and vote for a candidate that they really do not care for.\u00a0Due to the dissatisfaction of both parties with their candidates, I\u00a0hope that the total number of people who vote drops significantly from\u00a0the last election. Of those that vote, I hope that the Libertarian\u00a0party gets about 15% of the popular vote, Trump gets about 40% and\u00a0Clinton gets about 45%.<\/p>\n
Even though I predict a Democratic victory, in this best case scenario,\u00a0I think that the fact that the Democratic party lost so much support,\u00a0and was barely able to get a victory over a badly fragmented Republican\u00a0party would signal a huge upheaval in the party, hopefully fragmenting\u00a0it as well.<\/p>\n
And in the aftermath of it all… hopefully we’ll have more than two viable\u00a0parties.<\/p>\n
That’s my hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the political situation this year, I figure it’s time for another post. I\u00a0know that I’m not good at posting regularly, but this year is just too good to\u00a0pass up….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sullybeck.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}