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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Yes. They will also open the border and amnesty the people who are already here.

It will lead to a permanent one party state.

Of course, this requires the Democrats to win the Presidency in 2028 as well. Nevertheless, the best way to prevent this from happening is to secure Republican control of the senate. Since senators are elected for 6 years, this election will influence the likelihood of a one-party state in the near future.

It will lead to a permanent one party state.

No, it will not. Demographics and attitudes have changed before. For example, around 1861, the (Southern) Democratic Party was openly pro slavery, and a few years later that was simply no longer a majority-winning proposition, thus the Republican party ruled in perpetuity.

Not. Instead, what happened was that the Southern Democrats went from pro-slavery to merely horribly racist, which still won them elections. As attitudes changed, so changed the parties, because any party which does not try to be palatable to the median voter will generally not win elections (depending on gerrymendering, obviously).

If your model is e.g. that the Democrats will invite in zillions of Muslim third-worlders to bolster their rank, I would predict that at some point the woke leadership would clash with the immigrants over LGBT and women's rights, for example. For a Republican, campaigning on "should minors be allowed to get puberty blockers against the religious objections of their parents" would be an easy win.

There have been, and still are, plenty of nominally democratic states with effectively single-party rule. While I don't think it's probable this happens in an electorate so evenly divided that it swings back and forth every few years, simply stating "no it will not" seems like rank it-can't-happen-here-ism.

I will grant you that there are even some actually democratic states where this is the case. The CSU has ruled Bavaria since the current iteration of Germany. It probably helped that their economic policy was generally sound, so there was no economic pressure to replace them.

Still, I think in general it is better to be part of a 60% winning coalition than an 80% one. You already had a solid majority with 60%, but now you need to spend a quarter of your political capital on their stupid pet cause instead of your great cause.

I think this applies generally to coalition-building -- if you plan a bank heist, you do not want to bring along extra accomplices who do not increase the probability of success.

Yes, but the question is whether it's also better to be part of an 80% winning coalition than, say, a 40% losing one. That's why there's a threshold effect - if a party becomes minority enough that its chances of ever winning decrease below a threshold, then every rational voter will abandon it and try to effect political change through the dominant party, which further decreases the minority party's chances of ever winning, creating a vicious circle.

I think this applies generally to coalition-building -- if you plan a bank heist, you do not want to bring along extra accomplices who do not increase the probability of success.

The bank is going to be robbed no matter what. The only question is whether you will be part of the crew that gets paid for the job.

There are even single-party, diverse democratic states that get positively cited here regularly: Singapore, for example.

Democrats very obviously intend to grant themselves overwhelming electoral advantages by making significant changes to America's political structure. They've been publicly discussing methods to achieve these goals for decades.

  • add states that lean overwhelmingly Blue to shift the electoral math.
  • Pack the Supreme Court, declare Redness unconstitutional.
  • Grant mass amnesty and voting rights to all the illegals.
  • Crush the ability of opposition to organize politically through the power of the federal Bureaucracy, destroy various corporate allies (notably Musk) who stand in the way.
  • Use lawfare to discourage professionals of any sort from joining or cooperating with Republican governments in the future.

Most of these tactics, individually, stand a good chance of excluding Red Tribe from political power for the foreseeable future if implemented. You can claim that this is not the same as a one-party state and that all of these are legitimate and even necessary actions if you like; I'm sure that other Blues will agree.

Though they didn't do most of those the last time they had a trifecta.

They thought they didn't need to. Coming off GWB, they were riding high. Hope and Change, Dempgraphic Destiny, and a strong majority to prove the obvious superiority of Technocratic Progressivism.

Then they got hit with the double-whammy of losing to Trump just as they were starting to grasp that Technocratic Progressivism was a total failure. The last 10 years has been the worlds longest toddler-tantrum shitfit, spiraling deeper and deeper because the only way out was to develop some humility and it was more cathartic to wallow in hate.

(How did that recent line from James Carville go? "If there was a pill that made me hate Trump more I'd take it every day"?)

No, it couldn't be that just being good at homework wasn't actually enough to "solve" major issues like healthcare or the environment. It was all those looters and wreckers! If only all the looters and wreckers could just be... stopped, in some sort of total and final manner, then they can just be right about everything again!

I think the claim is that if these things happened, the Republican Party would simply move leftwards to maintain equilibrium; so you could get a hegemony of current-Blue-Tribe values without one-party rule. Which I realize might come across as a distinction without a difference to an actual Red Triber, but from an outside view, "the Overton window moves leftwards but the parties continue to exist as separate entities opposing one another" is something that has happened before without destroying the country, unlike one-party rule.

That would have its own issues even if it happened, but counterexamples like Chicago exists, and examples in favor of the theory like California have had their own responses turning them into disproofs.

Yes, I think this is obviously how Blues would and do perceive the question, and this is my point. I think you and other Blues here could probably supply the negative space to the comment you've made here; my point is that you aren't really inclined to, and in the final analysis that lack of inclination is probably dispositive. Blues will do things they've said they want to do because they really do want to do them, and because they can't summon the conviction to argue that they shouldn't, or even to really grok why it might be a bad idea.

I'm torn. It's not a complicated conversation to have, and you and others don't even seem all that opposed to having it, but my point is that at the point that this is the conversation we're having, its probably already too late for the conversation to do much good. "Why is a one-party state a bad idea" would be the obvious starting point, but I've never seen a Blue get even that far; "It's not a one-party state though." Correct, it isn't. Do you think it should be necessary for someone else to argue why there's still a serious problem? I can do that, if so; I'm pretty sure I can do it entirely by quoting my own previous comments. We can probably have an interesting discussion about it. It seems to me that underlying this idea is the Blue axiom that there's some sort of foundational requirement for that conversation to settle the issue by mutual consent: if Reds can't convince Blues that it's a bad idea, then Blues have a right to do it and Reds have to suck it up. But of course, these issues are issues because Blues can't actually persuade Reds, so this rounds to "we will force you, you must persuade us", which is in my view a fair summary of Blue Tribe's understanding of how politics should, has, and does work generally. It's even true, as far as it goes; so how far does it go, and where are we when it stops?

Another example would be Trace's old argument about Reds getting wiped out of major institutions like the legal profession. It's a thing that is happening, and could plausibly continue to happen right out to the asymptote. Trace's argument is that this is Reds' own fault for various reasons, and so it's on Reds to solve the problem or accept complete exclusion. My perception is that he's not really interested in discussing the question of what happens if Reds don't aw-shucks and just take the L, and would rather imagine that excluding a third to a half of the country from (all?) major centers of power means Blues win and everything is basically fine. I think that's a very foolish way to look at the world, especially given recent history, but then I'm a Red, so what do I know?

Another example would be Trace's old argument about Reds getting wiped out of major institutions like the legal profession. It's a thing that is happening, and could plausibly continue to happen right out to the asymptote.

I think about that article any time I see lawyers in the Trump admin do something that leads me to believe they've never heard of the Administrative Procedure Act. It is the easiest possible way for a hostile judge to shut down something the administration has done, and they keep stepping on that rake repeatedly. "You can just do things," right up until you run afoul of basic notice of proposed rulemaking or public comment requirements. Sometimes it feels like Stephen Miller is the only competent conservative lawyer in the admin.

It doesn't matter if they follow the rules or not. The statutory language for ending Temporary Protected Status explicitly excludes the decision from judicial review, yet judges kept striking down the administration's ending of it for various groups (and now that the Supreme Court has ruled in the administration's favor, I believe some judges are still doing it).

It's not a matter of the Trump admin not following the rules. It's a matter of the game being Calvinball.

The blue tribe is unable to maintain its way of life in the face of the red fertility advantage(and this is independent of any political advantage conferred on either team) without destroying the red tribe's ability to propagate, or it will assimilate their children because people want a peer group. We're already starting to see this- pop country(which is what conservative normies listen to) is at the top of the pop charts(and this used to literally never happen), SEC schools have booming enrollment. The blue tribe demand isn't going to be dumber gun laws or more abortions; it's going to be state repression of the red tribe, and the red tribe is the organizing principle of the republican party. A big enough blue trifecta gives us something like PL dominance in Brazil.

Yes, but this claim needs more than just gesturing at the marginal voter theorem. Porkpiehat is right - this can be a completely stable system. You only need to reach the tipping point that people feel they have more influence by voting in the primary than in the general for it to come to pass. The numerous municipal governments with single-party rule show exactly why this works: the real election is the primary. For the general, the winners all go vote for their person and the losers mostly stay home. Importantly, almost nobody votes for the other party in the general, because everyone has already invested all their networking, patronage, and coalition-building efforts in The Party.

You only need to reach the tipping point that people feel they have more influence by voting in the primary than in the general for it to come to pass.

When this happens the obvious next step is that the party splits, the more conservative half leaves and forms a "moderate" party and gobbles up the majority of the previous party. It's happened before. The reason this hasn't happened in places like Chicago or California is that they're anchored to the national race.

That said, the fact that a Civil War was fought seems to me to make it clear that at least one side infinitely preferred one-party rule to "the Overton window moves [until you are no longer included] but the parties continue to exist as separate entities [arguing how to implement things you hate]".

If your model is e.g. that the Democrats will invite in zillions of Muslim third-worlders to bolster their rank, I would predict that at some point the woke leadership would clash with the immigrants over LGBT and women's rights, for example. For a Republican, campaigning on "should minors be allowed to get puberty blockers against the religious objections of their parents" would be an easy win.

That's a nice thought, but it's usually not how things tend to work.

A one party system is even more stable than a two-party system. Why haven't the Chicago democrats splintered? Why are so many blue cities corrupt shitholes and still elect Democrats every time?

Once one party controls the spoils system, there is no point in being a member of any other party. You want a policy goal? You need to work through the only party that has a political chance. There are tons of places where the primary is the real election. This goes doubly so if the ruling party uses the legal system to persecute other parties. (Because that's also on the menu in 2029 if Democrats get a trifecta).

America does not need to, nor does it have an easy path to, ‘import millions of third worlders’ to get lots of new voters. This isn’t Europe; opening the borders gets us Latinos who aren’t that socially conservative in world terms, although they aren’t politically correct either.

opening the borders gets us Latinos

Au contraire, mon frere. It gets us anyone who can afford a plane ticket to the US, Mexico, or Canada.

Who are mostly middle class chinamen and the like, not actual third worlders.

You've gotta update. The Third World gets richer and richer every year. An airplane ticket is what, like $1500 at most? Now consider how much an American illegal working under the table can send in remittances to his entire clan. Enough to afford dozens of tickets every year.

No need for remittances; the NGOs will pay the price, ultimately from taxpayer dollars given as government grants.