If the Republican party ever becomes irrelevant, Democrats will be stuck waiting to find out what their new opposition party will be. If it winds up being an actual progressive party, I don’t really see what options Democrats would be left with. Either they try to gain support from people leaving the Republican party, or they try to be “progressive enough” without losing corporate support?
If Democrats share that uncertainty about a post-Republican future, and if they think the way most status quo actors seem to, then I imagine they’d prefer the Republican party to hang on as long as possible.
What I think that strategy would look like: Democrats going as fiscally conservative as they can while still remaining left of Republicans. Democrats lamenting their inability to make progressive changes, all the while not investing much more than lip service towards advancing said progressive changes.
If the Republican party ever becomes irrelevant, Democrats will be stuck waiting to find out what their new opposition party will be.
My guess is a split between moderate Dems and fleeing “90s Republicans” on one side, and more extremist progressive Dems uniting with extremist Republicans as allies of convenience on the other, fighting to be more isolationist and nationalist.
Essentially I think the future debates will be over the role of America in society, as economic issues are largely a “solved meta” and most social issues tend to fall by the wayside as time marches on. No political party is seriously trying to contest gay marriage the way they did abortion, for instance.
Middle vs non-middle seems like the battle of the future.
You don’t have any extremist Dems. You have a right wing party that has two centrists and you have a party full of fascists.
