Prediction 2020: The End of the Democratic Party

My title focuses only on one of our two major political parties. As I have written elsewhere, the Republican Party is already dead, buried alive in the avalanche that is Trump.

Those who escaped the party while the avalanche was still rumbling down the hill are now wandering about the political landscape trying to find a resting place. The Democratic-Party affiliates offer some nice picnic spots, as we are hearing on CNN and MSNBC from Never-Trumpers and other centrist Republicans — themselves a breed dying pre-Trump — pushing their anti-Trump rhetoric.

But the Democratic Party itself is undergoing a transformation. After 2020, there will be no turning back. The Democratic Party will not look the same, not even remotely.

If Biden is the nominee…

If the Democratic moderates, centrists, corporatists, and establishmentarians have their way, Joe Biden will be the 2020 presidential nominee. The establishment view is that only a moderate/centrist like Biden can beat Trump. Bloomberg might have had a chance, if he were taller, more telegenic, quicker-on-his-feet, without such a terrible (read: racist and misogynistic) record, and didn’t substitute when running a bag of money for personality…but of course that says a lot about his personality.

As it is, it looks like Biden will be the nominee. He’ll lure moderate Republicans to vote against Trump (more than for Biden), because Biden will stick to the center, rub Wall Street’s back, scratch corporate underbellies, and push toward progressive programs through incremental change with the intention of getting something (anything!) passed with Republican help. Bless his heart, which is almost always in the right place…unless that place is seated before Clarence Thomas, standing with Clinton signing the Crime Bill, writing the bankruptcy bill, or sharing drinks and bonhomie with segregationists.

Should Biden’s nomination come to pass, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, led by Bernie Sanders — now ostensibly disturbed by yet another rigged nominating process — will break off. George W. Bush never quite got the apothegm right, but it goes: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” I think that with Biden as the nominee, the Democratic left will have had enough.

Sanders and his army of progressives will march off to start a different party. They think that, from their perspective, the health of the planet, the health care of all Americans, and the living conditions of our workers demand nothing less than full-on political revolution. None of those concerns will be addressed, let alone resolved, with Democratic centrists who still dream, as Obama did to the end, that Republicans will be reasonable and reach across the aisle. Take those thoughts and dreams to the Fantasy Isle.

If Sanders is the nominee…

Of course, if Sanders wins the nomination, then his wing becomes the predominant wing of the Democratic Party. Indeed, I think it becomes the Democratic Party. The exodus, then, will be by moderate/centrist/corporate/establishment Democrats. They’ll continue to reach across the aisle. This time, however, the reach will be to join with moderate Republicans and Never-Trumpers in creating a new center party.

Having learned nothing in the past 60 years of Republican political history, these centrist Democrats — Bless their hearts — will think that they will be equal partners in this new coalition. How long will it take for many/most/some of them to wake up to the burglary, as their own policies are stolen and moved to the right? To get anything done, they’ll say, we need to move some for the Republicans. Funny, though, the movement is rarely if ever to the left.

The new political-party alignment

So, I am predicting that in 2020 the political-party landscape will transform. There will be two “far-out” parties: a Progressive/Democratic Socialist Party on the far left and a Nationalist/Trump Party on the far right. In the middle, naturally, will be the Centrist Moderate Party.

Those three parties will not be alone, however. Right of the Center Party, but not as far right as the Trump Nationalists, will be the Neo-Con Party, those internationalists who believe in the jingoistic export of American military might and in the cooperation of transnational corporations in organizing a global economy.

Left of the Center Party will be the Elizabeth-Warren Progressives who believe in addressing climate change, economic justice, and racial justice through transformative legislation, but who also want to regulate the capitalist economy to squeeze inequalities and inequities out of the system. This party, too, will represent internationalists who believe in cosmopolitan alliances with transnational democratic organizations that oppose global-corporate hegemony.

So, after 2020, the spectrum of political parties in the United States will look like this:

Far Left: Sanders-Style Democratic Socialists/Progressives

Left Center: Warren-Style Capitalist Reform Progressives

Center: Democratic-Republican Moderate Establishmentarians

Right Center: Bush-Era Neo-Conservatives and Religious Right

Far Right: Trump Nationalist Evangelicals

The realignment along of the lines of these five parties — and there could be many more parties — heralds the dawn of a new era of democratic politics in the United State. Citizens are more likely to find a party that represents their views and interests. With many parties, it is also likely that their chosen party can meet with some electoral success.

With this multi-party democracy should come rank-choice voting. Ranking our candidates and expressing our preferences through multiple-party choices permit our ballots to reflect the many interests that constitute each of our identities. We citizens thereby have a greater chance of electing someone we are comfortable with, if not enthusiastic about, when we are not forced to decide between the “lesser of two evils.”

So regardless of the nominee for the fall election, the Democratic Party will be no more. The Republican Party is already dead. A multi-party system will require coalition building and honest brokering, something American democracy has been without for decades.

There is, of course, the possibility that neither Sanders nor Biden will win a majority of delegates needed to win. Then the Democratic National Convention might turn to a compromise candidate, one like Elizabeth Warren, who can represent both moderates and progressives. Now suddenly I find myself on Fantasy Island.