As we close in on the 2024 election I want to give as much information and yes, opinions, on the trends and stumbles that society may expect.

There’s no shortage of plausible explanations for why U.S. politics has become so polarized, but many of these theories describe impossible-to-reverse trends that have played out across developed democracies, like the rise of social media and the increased political salience of globalization, immigration and urban-rural cultural divides. All of these trends are important contributors, for sure. But if they alone are driving illiberalism and hyper-partisanship in the U.S., then the problem should be consistent across all western democracies. But it isn’t.

What’s happening in the U.S. is distinct in four respects.

First, the animosity that people feel toward opposing parties relative to their own (what’s known as affective polarization in political science) has grown considerably over the last four decades. According to a June 2020 paper from economists Levi Boxell, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, the increase in affective polarization in the U.S. is the greatest compared to that of eight other OECD countries over the same time period.

Second, the change in how Americans feel about their party and other parties has been driven by a dramatic decrease in positive feelings toward the opposing party. In most (though not all) of the nine democracies, voters have become a little less enthusiastic about their own parties. But only in the U.S. have partisans turned decidedly against the other party.

Third, more so than in other countries, Americans report feeling isolated from their own party. When asked to identify both themselves and their favored party on an 11-point scale in a 2012 survey, Americans identified themselves as, on average, 1.3 units away from the party that comes closest to espousing their beliefs, according to an analysis from political scientist Jonathan Rodden. This gap is the highest difference Rodden found among respondents in comparable democracies. This isolation matters, too, because it means that parties can’t count on enthusiasm from their own voters — instead, they must demonize the political opposition in order to mobilize voters.

Fourth, and perhaps most significant, in the U.S., one party has become a major illiberal outlier: The Republican Party. Scholars at the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have been monitoring and evaluating political parties around the world. And one big area of study for them is liberalism and illiberalism, or a party’s commitment (or lack thereof) to democratic norms prior to elections. And as the chart below shows, of conservative, right-leaning parties across the globe, the Republican Party has more in common with the dangerously authoritarian parties in Hungary and Turkey than it does with conservative parties in the U.K. or Germany.

(fivethirtyeight.com)

All that aside what is needed in America is a third choice….but before all the nay-sayers jump in….read on….

A study shows the American voter is dissatisfied with our choices for governing elites….time for a third party?

A study by the Pew Research center found that 61% of U.S. adults today find the Republican Party unfavorable, while 57% shared the same sentiment toward the Democratic Party. About a quarter of Americans say they have an unfavorable view of both major parties, a considerable jump from just 6% in 1994.

Some experts suggest that the two-party system could be blamed for the political polarization we find in America.

“It’s a two-party system and you have to pick one side or the other,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at New America. “If we are in a situation in which one party believes that the other party winning the election would be so disastrous to the country that maybe we should intervene to prevent the other party from winning, then you don’t really have a democracy anymore.”

More than half — 56% of Americans — believe the current parties do such a poor job that a third major party is needed, according to a survey by Gallup. Indeed, minor parties are seeing an uptick in support and interest in recent years.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/03/increasingly-dissatisfied-voters-favor-getting-a-third-party-choice.html

Seriously?  The voter does not have the guts to vote third party.

Let’s be honest….the choices are pretty slim for the election of 2024….the GOP is choke full of batcrap crazies and the Dems are as useless as tits on a flashlight…..so what to do with your vote?

A presidential candidate from 2020 Andrew Yang and a bunch of disgruntle GOPers have come up with the idea that things are so bad for the two parties that another centrist big business party would be an excellent idea (a proposition that I do not agree with)…..

I made my thoughts known when the announcement was made….

A New Third Party (Here We Go Again)

I do not think this has a chance……and I am not alone…..

Dozens of former Republicans and Democrats have joined forces to launch Forward, a new centrist political party. Its founders include Andrew Yang, the onetime Democratic presidential candidate; Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey; and David Jolly, a former GOP congressman from Florida.

“Political extremism is ripping our nation apart, and the two major parties have failed to remedy the crisis,” Yang, Whitman, and Jolly wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.In the last two years, there has been a “spike in political intimidation,” they said, and “if nothing is done, the United States will not reach its 300th birthday this century in recognizable form.” The op-ed cited a 2021 Gallup poll that found half of U.S. adults identify as independent and 62 percent believe the Democratic and Republican parties “do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed.”

“That’s why we are coming together — Democrats, Republicans, and independents — to build a new, unifying political party for the majority of Americans who want to move past divisiveness and reject extremism,” Yang, Whitman, and Jolly wrote. They didn’t share any of Forward’s policies. On the party’s website, it lists its core principles as “free people,” “thriving communities,” and “vibrant democracy,” and says it supports ranked-choice voting, nonpartisan primaries, and independent redistricting commissions.

https://theweek.com/third-parties/1015513/does-americas-newest-political-party-stand-a-chance

This will just be a redo of the Dem Party of 1992….and we are living with the damage the Dems did in the 1990s onward…..we do not need another crappy future…..

Remember this–If you elect clowns, you get a circus and so fat the voter has helped create the world’s largest sh*t show

We need a third party but not a carbon copy of the two we have now….we need a party that is truly committed to progress….and that is something I will not see in the lifetime I have left.

I will re-post this when we get into the meat of the next election.

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