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Speaking as someone who strongly hopes for a Democratic victory in 2024 (and indeed in pretty much every election), I would probably be much more inclined to get whichever Republican was most likely to lose nominated rather than aiming to win it for the least worst moderate Republican.
I think this is a really bad idea.
how confident am I in identifying the worst candidate?
is the difference in candidates even enough to swing the election?
what signal am I sending for future primaries?
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I would probably consider the possible second-order effects here. If the Republican nominee is going to be weak, then seems likely that the Dem candidate might also be weaker than usual since the candidates on the Dem side will sense an opportunity.
Likewise, would you want there to be a general norm of outside-parties sabotaging the primary process of the parties so as to ensure the worst picks win every time?
Would it be good or bad for the nation (which, I presume, is where you live) if the parties consistently nominate weak candidates despite 'objectively' better options existing and entering the fray?
If this were an accepted tactic by the Democrats I would honestly consider it strong evidence for the GOP's "The Democrats are anti-American" thesis, since pushing weak candidates towards national offices will have the predictable effect of leading to weaker candidates running the national government, and what kind of actual patriot would ever want that for their country?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
In an ideal world, you would want your election for the most powerful role in the country to be a 'fair' showdown between the best possible candidates that can be mustered. Because the national election is supposed to ultimately be the culmination of a friendly competition to advance the good of the whole, and efforts to undermine that are inherently self-destructive, no?
Like, we wouldn't want the winner of the Super Bowl to be some mediocre team that happened to be good at sabotaging all the other teams behind the scenes, would we? They could hire thugs to kneecap star players and try to sneak drugs into their opponents' water cooler, and that would help them win! But that would kind of tarnish the whole affair, and be a poor reflection on the state of the sport of professional football. All participants are competing but are still better off if contests are decided by skill at the game and not backstabbery.
Your model assumes that our political contest is similar to competitive sports, a cooperative exercise in pursuit of shared goals, and may the best man win. I don't think this is the way most politically-active people on either side see things these days. I don't think it's possible to reasonably assess the claim that either party is "Anti-American" without understanding that the two parties' members disagree pretty strongly on what America is and should be.
I guess I'm a tad bit old fashioned in that I think what "America" the nation-state is and should be is defined in large part by the Constitution which created said nation-state. And that it is completely fair game to criticize and even undermine that document as a valid founding instrument worth obeying... but you don't then get to aggressively enforce obedience/adherence to the very political ties/institutions that were created by said instrument. The States agreed to cede political power to a Federal government in exchange for very substantial limits on what the government could do. I see no reason why the States are morally, ethically, or legally required to continue to obeying the Federal government when it begins to blatantly exceed those limits whilst still claiming to be operating by that founding document.
So I see shit like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
And I conclude that they (Democrats, which can include at least part of 'the left') simply do not care much for the nation "America" that was founded on a particular set of ideals and with a particular set of rules, but VERY MUCH like "America" the economic/political unit that is currently the most powerful human-controlled entity on the planet. And they will pretend to support the former in order to maintain control of the latter.
So to make my point clear: I have concluded that the Democrats, on most levels, are completely against the norms, traditions, and legal boundaries that were supposed to define the nation they aspire to govern, and more relevant, are completely willing to discard said norms, traditions, and boundaries whenever they're an actual impediment to their own party's interests.
I don't even have to invoke the concept of "The Cathedral" to reach this conclusion, I generally just have to look at Democrat rhetoric surrounding the First Amendment ("Hate speech isn't free speech, AND I don't care if Corporations violate free speech!" and their insistence on forcing Christian Bakers to bake gay wedding cakes and claim its not violating religious freedom) and the Second Amendment (ignoring any language therein aside from "well-regulated militia") compared to say, their rhetoric around the "right" to abortion which simply does not exist under any sane reading of the actual founding document, but which could surely be added via the prescribed amendment process if it had the overwhelming support they claim.
The GOP has it's own problems in this regard (military adventurism in particular), but it's blatant to the point it cannot be ignored when it comes to Democrat politicians.
Either we can agree that the Constitution is the valid founding document under which our political institutions are legitimized and have our fights within that context, or we don't, at which point one or both parties can, I think, validly said to be 'anti-American' to the extent they refuse to accept such founding document and the rules it imposes.
I agree with pretty much everything you've written, as far as it goes. The problem is, other people don't, and it seems to me that nothing you've written is persuasive to them. You've given an excellent description of one side of the divide, but what we need is a way to bridge it, and what you're offering won't work.
Do they agree that they're criticizing and undermining the document, or do they think they're implementing it as designed? The latter seems to match Progressive self-perception much better. I don't think you'll get Progressives to agree that anything they've done with or to the Constitution has been in any way untoward or unseemly, or that they've sacrificed their right to federal enforcement of their values in any way.
More generally, the fact that this disagreement can't actually be adjudicated in any binding way makes me pessimistic that the Constitution was ever going to last in any case. The document is, at best, a coordination mechanism. It can't make things work on its own.
Aren't both parties "anti-American" from each other's perspective, and "American" from their own? What makes the other side accept your definitions and judgements? Are you willing to accept theirs? ...People rag on me for pessimism and rabble-rousing, but honestly, I think everyone would be a lot calmer if they stopped looking for the consensus that they absolutely aren't going to find.
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I often see very similar rhetoric in left-leaning spaces levelled against Republicans. Are you confident that Republicans hew to tradition, norms and legal boundaries?
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This doesn't actually work; it just displaces the substantive questions to various interpretational meta-questions like: "what does 'Necessary and Proper' mean?" and "Is the 'militia clause' prefatory or limiting?" and "what does 'Due Process of Law' mean?"
If only there were a theory of legal interpretation which sought to determine the original meaning of those words as intended by the drafters and signatories to the document at the time it was drafted and signed.
Which, incidentally, is how almost all other contracts are interpreted by courts.
Okay, so now you've just displaced the object level arguments one meta-level higher; now it's a battle over whatever historical evidence you can turn up or torture to support your position. Originalist arguments can be made on both sides of most constitutional questions if you work hard enough at it, and there are may very smart, well-paid, and/or motivated people who work full-time at doing just that.
But this whole debate is pointless; you can't make people conform to an interpretational theory. There's just no processing or proceduring your way over serious substantive conflicts in society, or stopping the inevitable drift in culture, language, economic relations, technological circumstances, morality, and language that occurs across the generations.
I'd say that there was a few decades there where people were 'made' to conform with the 'living constitution' interpretational theory.
So it apparently does work on some level.
Sure. And in years past this resulted in actual amendments being passed via the prescribed process. Women can vote now, Chattel slavery is outlawed, we have an income tax, and at one point alcohol was banned nationally.
Because it was, seemingly, agreed on that this was the proper approach to ensuring the document kept up with the culture of the nation.
I don't think there's anyone who thinks that the Constitution is unable to be changed or updated, but many object to this being done by judicial fiat without giving citizens the chance to have a voice in the process.
I really don't know what your point is, otherwise.
Either the Constitution is the solid foundation upon which the Union of states is supposed to operate, and should be treated with sufficient reverence by the institutions involved, or it is not, and we are not held together by anything but historical momentum and a bare sheen of national brotherhood arising from shared history.
Where do you derive your definition of "America" from?
No, people were made to conform with the views of people who used the 'living constitution' interpretational theory to justify their desired policy results. Seriously, go back and read a lot of the progressive decisions from the Warren court era - it's pure power in there. Why did Roe find a right to abortion? Because Harry Blackmun wanted to find one, process and interpretation be damned. Even retrospectively-sainted cases like Brown v. Board of Education don't hold up well if you look at them just as examples of judicial reasoning. Brown's whole rationale was based on social-scientific and psychological findings that segregation created "[a] sense of inferiority" which "affects the motivation of a child to learn," and therefore "[s]egregation with the sanction of law . . . has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system." That's not a legal reason; that's a policy choice.
You can't rely on turning policy and power questions in to legal and interpretational ones. You clearly have a view on how the country should be organized and run. Fine! But argue for the view on its own terms, on the objective level. Don't divert the argument into legalistic questions of interpretation - that's not going to get you the results you want, and will distract everyone from the actual debate and disagreement at issue.
Oh but citizens have had chances to have their voice heard! The fights between gilded age lassiez-faire capitalism and progressive-era "scientific management" were cultural and political fights that reshaped government without constitutional amendment. The New Deal was mostly a legislative and administrative plan, not a judicial one. Even the Great Society and the rise of the modern concept of anti-discrimination law was at least as much legislative as it was judicial in origin! The people keep electing legislatures who pass giant enabling acts, and Presidents who vow to make use of those powers through imperial bureaucracies!
Moreover, there's nothing that requires the courts to have the authority they currently wield; the Constitution is actually extremely vague about courts; and Congress has extreme power over what courts exist, what their competencies are (and, just as importantly, what they aren't), what causes of action exist, what remedies are available, etc. Even SCOTUS isn't immune from this; it took an act of Congress in the 1920s to give SCOTUS the ability to pick and choose what cases it takes. Similarly, the ability of the Court to pick particular policy questions out of the morass of any given lawsuit and only decide on them - the basis for the institution's current role - depends on legislative authorization.
Por que no los dos? The Constitution is a set of rules and a political compromise. It is also, along with the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address, the holy text of the American civic religion. However, rules don't exist without people, who insist on being imperfect and quarrelsome things, to whom virtue comes uneasily if at all. Why should you, I, or anyone expect any set of rules, no matter how well designed, to hold a single shape against the efforts of centuries to game and twist them? What faith, civic or otherwise, can survive as long as the U.S.'s has without doctrinal drift and corruption amongst the hierarchy and/or laity? What political compromise has endured, unchanging, from the 1700's 'til today? It's not for nothing that there are all those quotes from the Founding Fathers sounding ominous warnings that the whole thing could fall apart:
"[O]ur Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: 'A republic, if you can keep it.' The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health."
"While our Country remains untainted with the Principles and manners, which are now producing desolation in so many Parts of the World: while she continues Sincere and incapable of insidious and impious Policy: We shall have the Strongest Reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned Us by Providence. But should the People of America, once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance; and displays in the most captivating manner the charming Pictures of Candour, frankness & sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and Insolence: this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World. Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition and Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams, To the Officers of the first Brigade of the third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, October 11, 1798
". . .[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." - George Washington, First Inaugural Address
No, we treat these things with reverance in no small part because of the historical momentum behind them. And we use them to forge national brotherhood from disparate peoples despite the lack of shared history. Whether the project is working or not is something for interested observers to judge for themselves. But we Americans have always been a fractious lot, so a modicum of historical perspective is suggested before drawing any conclusions that are too alarmist.
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They did it in 2016, this was the pied piper strategy
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Yes, I have updated a couple times towards the Democrats being an 'Anti-American' party. This isn't me endorsing the GOP, however. This shouldn't be a difficult tactic to counter, either.
Wildcard rule, this is annoying, stop doing it.
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Hahaha. The two parties are corrupt coalitions of monied interests led by gerontocrats who, trump excepted, generally obey the machine rather than giving the orders. In practice the R or D next to the candidates name tells you a lot more about what they’ll do in office than the actual name does.
For our purposes I'm pretending that Third parties have some influence when they put forth a candidate.
But if we go with the "all political candidates are inherently the product of the party machine" then it suggests one should REALLY focus on improving their own party's machinery rather than futzing with the opposition's.
Or focus on burning both down.
Why? Shouldn't your model conform to reality?
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