Visiting Column #11 -- Where a Third Party Could Actually Happen

If you go back to the very, very first column on this site, you will be aware that I have believed that there is no such thing as a "moderate"; that people's opinions on a variety of issues assort so readily into two poles that it is impossible for someone claiming to be "moderate" or "centrist" to have sufficiently popularly-supported opinions to have a third party congeal around him.  Or her.  Or whatever (it is 2019, after all).

Never, however, did I account in that well-reasoned position for the possibility that a third party could indeed materialize, as long as it was not in fact an attempt at some form of centrism, but actually one which planted its flag to the distal ends of the scale.

Specifically, I am observing the curious dissipation of the Democrats.  The party that was once a mishmash of union types, people between 20 and 30 whose brains hadn't yet developed, urban black voters, etc., has mishmashed itself into an odd group today.

The Democrats have always tried to represent themselves as for the "downtrodden" in society, trying to pit themselves against the Republicans, whom they portrayed as the party of big business.

Now, in order to do that, they have been continually adding new versions of "downtrodden" -- where it was once women and black people, they have been gradually adding new presumably aggrieved groups.  Those groups now include Muslims, gays and lesbians, transgender people, illegal immigrants, people with every psychiatric disorder under the sun, and the psychiatrists who keep adding newly-described disorders to that list.

Of course, that's a problem.  For example (and there are more), it's not anti-Semitic to say that Jews in the USA have voted heavily Democrat over the decades, even when it was not in their best interest to do so.  And when there were hardly any Muslims in this country to speak of, that was not an issue.  But now there are, and these two historically antagonistic groups are not cohabiting well under the idyllic tent that the 2019 Democrats claim to be, particularly when it comes to Israel.

The Democrats' response has been to try to widen the door to that tent even further, and that has furthered the bottom line argument of the left -- that Government is the source of all solutions, and if you vote Democrat and for big government, you will get taken care of.

In other words, whoever you are, we of the left will give you whatever you want -- free this, free that -- and create a socialist paradise to get there.  Rainbows.  Unicorns.  Sort of like that "Imagine" song that I always hated.

Now, that old party, the one with union types and the like, well, they know better than to believe that kind of crap, but they're also historically antagonistic to voting Republican unless it is an exceptional situation -- Ronald Reagan on the 1980s, or Donald Trump in 2016.  They might vote for Joe Biden in a primary, but they can't support Bernie Sanders, or Kamala Harris, or Spartacus, or Pocahontas, or "Beto", or pretty much the rest of the current Democrat candidates.

And it won't be Biden, an old white guy, getting the nomination of a party that is trying to find a half-black transgender Muslim female abortionist to run, as if they're trying to win a government contract by checking every preferenced group.

Every single one of those candidates is pushing further and further to the left, promising everything for free even while ignoring Constitutional guidance.  And in that drive toward socialism, what passed for mainstream in the Democrat Party is wondering what hit it, including Nancy Pelosi, who is trying in futility to run to the head of the stampede to look like she is leading it.

That is the point.  There is a fertile ground for a new party, and it is not in the fields of the old Democrats but in those of the new ones.

Here is the prediction, or at least something I thing could easily happen.  The Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders or one of that type, and get defeated in 2020 again.  This time, realizing that they can't keep trying to blame the election on Trump and going all Mueller on him, they will look inside, and the split will be permanent.

One or more of the losers in the primaries, and possibly including the losing nominee, will realize that they can't stay old-time Democrat.  A New Socialist Party, further out than traditional Democrats, will be the answer.  This third party will leave the Democrats and will quickly pick up all those aggrieved groups and split them off.

They'll even win some House seats and possibly a Senate seat or two in places like California and Massachusetts, depending on what happens to the Democrats remaining.  And we will have three parties.

Except that the third party will be an extremist one as opposed to a centrist one.  I think it is not inevitable, especially given that the mainline Democrats in power today will realize that they'll lose power completely, and God knows they're only about power.  They'll fight hard.

But much as people both calling themselves "Democrats" are at a state of verbal war regarding issues like Israel, the Democrats of 2019-20 are inevitably splitting, and I believe it is the socialist wing that will be what leaves and creates its own "tent."

Let's look back in a couple years, shall we?

Copyright 2019 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton