Chafee and Webb announced.

[nadinbrzezinski]

104. I just posted that in my view

and that of more than a few academics, the US is now an oligarchy.

It is a view that started to jell for me in the early 2000s and now it is fully formed. It is a view now increasingly coming out of academic studies as well.

I do not get excited about parties, and the Democratic party is THE OTHER PARTY OF BUSINESS according to many working class folks, I hear this regularly. We see parties NOT remain the same regularly. I predict the Dems will finally jetison labor, or labor jetison the dems, in the near future. Who will jetison who, or whether it will be mutual, is a good question.

I talk to regular people every day. And what I hear is not nice, if you are a partisan for EITHER party.

People are fed up. This is also a feature of oligarchies by the way.

And yes they are big deals, have you looked recently at the size of the middle class? And have you explored policies to help that middle class in both blue and red states and when they are implemented? I have. I do this regularly. In some ways the ACA is an outlier.

Could the democratic party go back to the New Deal coalition? Perhaps, but that will only, maybe, perhaps, happen if people do a lot more than just vote. As long as the only goal is to either get votes, or demobilize voters, people will keep seeing this increasing distance from parties to their respective bases.

As to crazy republicans, yeah they are, and... radical anything is baked into the US. The language of crazy whatever is not as frightening for many people as it used to be. The language is not as effective because the voters, they are not seeing their leaders, whether at city hall, or the US Congress, be that responsive to them.

You are right, this is not the "right thread," because when you are not willing to listen, you will get even less voters showing up. For the record, 2010 and 2014 were the failures they were for Dems, for the same exact reason. We will see if the same happens in 2016 when the electorate should be more pro dem. That will be an interesting exercise. If history is a guide though...