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OP, check out the election map from 1984. You will see a vast sea of red from sea to shining sea, including not only California but also New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois; with the only exceptions being Minnesota and the District of Columbia. And yet, in the eight presidential elections since then, the Democratic candidate won four of them.
Texas outside of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Austin are too conservative to become a blue state. In fact, most large cities and metros leans left while the rural areas leans right.
I don't think California would become a red state because most of the state is filled with liberals.
I'm a political agnostic, having little to like in either party. But given that both houses of Congress, the White House, thirty-three governors mansions, and 67 of 98 state legislative chambers (Nebraska's forbids party at in their legislature) are now firmly in the GOP grasp, it can be argued that we're teetering on the edge of being a one-party country already.
Here is a shocking number for you: Republicans control nearly 1,000 more state legislative seats than they did in 2009, when Obama took office out of a total of 8,000 possible seats. That is a 12% swing, which is huge, bordering on catastrophic. With the sole exception of Obama's re-election in 2012 (Which had zero coattails) the national elections have been thrashings of the Democratic Party.
Even worse, the minority party's most effective tool in Congress, the filibuster, was nixed by Democrat Harry Reid a few years back in one of the most short-sighted moves ever. So Democrats in Congress are now essentially toothless and about to get steamrolled. And you know all those executive orders that Obama signed to get around a Republican Congress? Now Trump will do exactly the same thing. Oh boy. That's the problem with executive orders. Once a guy you like enjoys expanded powers to use them, there's nothing to stop a guy you don't like using them.
And here's something else to ponder. If you think that Elizabeth Warren and Barry Sanders are going to save the Democrats with a tilt to the left, you're smoking crack. At some point, you'd think the Democratic leadership would freaking wake up and give us a decent option at the polls. But they show no signs of slowing down their march over the ideological cliff. Remember when Nixon edged out Humphrey in 1968? Democrats thought the solution was to lurch leftward then as well. The result? Tricky Dick won forty-nine states in the most humiliating electoral rout in United States history. It took a combination of Watergate and Jimmy Carter (A centrist) to bring the Democrats in from the cold.
Americans are reasonably laissez faire on social issues and reasonably conservative on spending and national defense. If one party would actually own that space, they would mop up on any given election day.
There is a politics section. This belongs there. That BS just ended, and you want to start the drama for next election already. WTH is wrong with some people?
Agree that the democrats haven't a shot at winning with their current role models. They need to again be a party of the people and find a leader who relates to middle America and their economic problems. As long as their main focus is civil rights, they will continue to aleinate voters who are concerned with jobs and affordable health care.
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