I keep hearing how "we need a viable conservative party." Why? What for?

[thucythucy]

43. It will be tough

to bring about their "dissolving into the ether"--but it's not impossible.

The best way, and only way I can think of at the moment, is for President Biden's administration to use this two year window--and especially this first year--to push through a series of reforms which he pledged to do during the campaign. Passage of his Covid rescue plan would be first on the list. If President Biden and Vice President Harris can be seen to have brought the pandemic under control--or even to an end--and return life and the economy to something resembling what it was prior to Trump, I think this success will be rewarded in the midterms. Which is why Republicans are so desperate to delay and diminish the full plan. This is what they did to President Obama. They had him compromise so much of his plan in 2009 that it took an extra year to bear fruit--well after the midterms, which saw the GOP take back the House and Senate, and thus derail pretty much everything else he wanted to do. It looks like Biden has learned the lesson--that the GOP doesn't ever negotiate in good faith. Even now there are GOP senators saying they'd favor censuring Trump as opposed to convicting him. This is an obvious ploy to keep the Republican Senate caucus on board for acquittal. Once that happens, those same GOP senators will suddenly discover they're actually opposed to censure as well.

If the Biden administration is successful enough for us to keep the House and expand the majority in the Senate (which the numbers right now favor us to do) then we could see more popular efforts underway, such as I described in a previous post in this thread. Biden may not run in 2024, but I hope Vice President Harris will, and that she will be elected, and then re-elected. Twelve years of control is what we need to turn this country around in ways that can't be altered by a single GOP administration. FDR/Truman had twenty years, but I suppose that's too much to hope for.

Even twelve years will be a challenge. But having Democrats and pundits out there talking about how we "need" a strong conservative party isn't helpful. What we desperately need--most especially in order to work toward racial justice and to take serious measures to make the transition away from a fossil fuel dependent economy--is Democratic control of the levers of political power. Which can only happen, at least for now, if conservatives remain in disarray and unorganized. Otherwise we're doomed to repeat the cycle of Republicans fuck things up, Democrats get elected and repair the damage, only to have Republicans back in power to fuck things up again. And each spin around the cycle things get worse.

This dynamic has to end. And it can only happen with national conservatives reduced to a pittance of their present political selves. Hence my OP: who needs conservatives at a time like this? FDR welcomed their hatred. We should welcome, at least for the next decade or more, their political impotence.