for the people who want the GOP to fall apart....

[Virginiá]

What do you want to have replace it?

I want the Republican party still, but a much more moderate one with less attacks on civil rights, campaign finance regulations and voting rights. They have really gone off the deep end and it's not good for this country.

What do you think would replace it?

Hard to say. The way things are going, Trump may have forcefully reset the GOP's platform by finally energizing this long-ignored and forgotten part of the Republican base. If these people continue to voice their opinions as strongly as they are now, and participate even in remotely the same numbers, then the Republican party will be forced to acquiesce.

So what we see now might be what conservatives get.

I'm very curious about the first question.  You can't possibly think Democrats will just win every election or that that would be a good thing.

...

What's the best case end game for you?

What I hope is that the GOP fractures temporarily (as in, for at least 10 - 15 years) and allows a strong Democratic majority to arise at the federal level and across many states so that we may finally implement our agenda and see how it goes for America.

Since Reagan, this country has shifted far right and it has not helped us at all. Their policies have been failures and have largely supercharged inequality and morally bankrupt corporate power. Liberals have not had any real good chances to implement and try our agenda for many, many years (2008-2010 does not count, as we did not have the votes or the time to implement anything but a tiny fraction of our policies, some of which were even watered down to get moderate votes), and considering the country is now moving left, I think their time is over and their obstructionism must stop.

I hope that the GOP reforms as a more moderate party, especially considering that their more moderate voters will temporarily go somewhere else, possibly the Democratic party, and if they are bringing conservative values than quite frankly I don't want that at this point in time. That will help drag us back to the center when what we need is to move away from the center, where we have been imprisoned for far too long.

[Virginiá]

I kind of agree with you guys, and that scares the sh**t out of me.  Do we really want to be a one party country, even if it's just for a Presidential cycle or two?  Does that ever turn out well?  On the other, more brighter side, The Democratic Party isn't really one party.  More so today than traditionally.  It's a big honking circus tent with pretty thick walls built up on the inside keeping the occupants separate from each other.  Being put in charge will just shine the weaknesses with a brighter light and maybe bring the mess crashing down too.

Actually, it has. The 1930s saw essentially one-party rule by Democrats for close to 8 years in terms of New Deal Democrats, after that they lost more influence, but still, look at all the good that came from that. We still take for granted what they delivered to the people.

Large Democratic majorities during the LBJ era also delivered Medicaid, Medicare, and a slew of other things.

And yet, I sit here and wonder, what have Republicans done for us in the past 30 years? Granted, they didn't have unified federal control for awhile, but they did have a very cooperative House and the Senate during Reagan and that set in motion 30+ years of exploding inequality and deregulation that persists to this day. These people aren't like the Eisenhower's or even the Nixon's - They are doing nothing but harm to America at this point. Maybe not intentionally, but out of sheer stupidity and greed because they won't look past their failed policies.

So yes, I think given what the Democratic party's agenda is, a cycle or two of unified control with them would probably be much better for this country rather than a Republican majority that obstructs everything but tax breaks for the wealthy and deregulation.

[Virginiá]

GOP under the Reagan rule was much better then the Dems under LBJ

Assuming you're talking about achievements -

Really you'll have to excuse me if I don't just take your word for it. You really need to back that up. LBJ was far from what I would consider inspiring, or even a good person, but he pushed through a very decent agenda. Voting/civil rights bills, social programs, etc. His foreign policy was a disaster, though.

With Reagan, it's hard to make a comparison unless your idea of a good agenda is slashing the top tax brackets, blowing up the deficit/debt for pointless military spending and inspiring a generation of Republicans to go off the deep end with destructive policies. I'm sure he had some good achievements but it doesn't compare to the domestic policy achievements of LBJ, imo.

If you're talking about the quality of the parties themselves - I have no comment.

[Virginiá]

30 years? Dems have had the Presidency for 2 out of the last 3 decades and you are blaming Republicans alone for the last 30 years of policy making?

The Dems did have unified control and the American People in 2010 said they didn't want that.

That doesn't change the fact that America underwent a conservative political realignment under Reagan - Arguably with roots going back as far as the late 60s. Bill Clinton went from aspiring "new liberal" to triangulating centrist once Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and remained as a majority for 12 years. In addition, they had unified control for 6 years under Bush. Since Reagan, America has been dominated by variations of right-leaning policies, at least up until 2008 with the growing power of liberal Millennials and minorities.

But no, I'm not blaming Republicans alone. I'm just saying that their worldview has been the focus of the past 30 years and they have had by far the most power since Reagan. It was only in 2009-2011 that Democrats had even half a chance to begin trying newly-adopted liberal ideas and that was hardly enough time, especially given the beginning of what would be 7 years of intense Republican obstructionism.

[Virginiá]

How have The Republicans attacked Civil Rights? Can you be more specific?

A few:

• Voter suppression
• faux-"religious freedom" bills allowing state-sanctioned discrimination of gay people
• Right to have an abortion (covered under 4th amendment in Roe) being impeded by Jim Crow-like laws.

and so on

The Dems agenda is more taxing and spend policies which doesn't work.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on at least some parts of that. I find great utility in various social programs and labor/business regulations.

The country shifted so far right under Reagan-Remember the Dems controlled the US House when Reagan was President. I do think the Dems have shifted left on issues like Immigration Enforcement, and Environment too.

With a Republican Senate and a friendly House stuffed with conservatives willing to support parts of Reagan's agenda. Suffice to say, he had far more support than Obama could have ever hoped to have.

Wait we have imprisoned on the political center for too long? I thought you said the country went far right? Now you are saying we are in the center? Which one is it? Far right or center that where we are at now?

No, hopper. Democrats have gone too far to the center, not everyone. When I said the country has shifted far right, that is relevant to the position of the observer. Republicans went further and further right, while Democrats went from the left to center-left. As a whole, yes, a rightwards shift.

[Virginiá]

Voter Suppression-You could argue all day about it but you still you have to get the ID if that's what your state requires in order to vote. I am not gonna comment about "The Religious Freedom Bills" that passed state legislatures  because I don't know enough about them. I don't know enough about the bills restricting abortions.

I'm actually fine with requiring an ID if it is actually needed and would actually prevent significant voter fraud. The problem is there is little-to-no in-person voter fraud to speak of. They are only instituting these photo id requirements because they know it will reduce the number of Democrats who vote. The same thing applies to screwing with voter registration laws as well. Kasich didn't assist in repealing Ohio's same-day registration law because he actually thought "things needed tightening up", he did it to help get reelected and to reduce the number of Democratic voters.

Florida Republicans didn't reduce early voting and make new cumbersome rules immediately prior to 2012 to do anything but try and discourage Democrats from voting. The result of their changes were massive lines and a massive spike in provisional ballots. Some estimate as many as 200,000+ voters decided to go home instead of wait for hours to try and vote.

North Carolina didn't pass a massive "voter reform" bill in 2013 because the changes were actually needed. They didn't institute voter id or try to end same-day registration/pre-registration because of fraud. They knew that Democratic-leaning minorities benefited much more from those services and that by cutting them, they would discourage/prevent a lot from voting.

These are just more Jim Crow-like laws meant to prevent their opponents from voting. How is this not infringing on civil rights?

---

As for abortion restriction bills - They are blatantly meant to close down most, or all of the abortion clinics in the state(s). The ridiculous regulations and requirements they have put into place were crafted in such a way that they knew almost all of the clinics wouldn't meet them, and thus have to close down.

This is exactly the kind of sh**t conservatives have been doing for over a century now. If they can't outright ban something they don't like, they put into place a million useless regulations that make doing whatever they want to ban so annoying, cumbersome or difficult that the people just give up. It's Jim Crow tactics all over again.

For people who talk about loving the Constitution, espousing freedom and respecting the rule of law, they sure as hell don't seem to have any problem sh**tting all over it when it comes to something they don't like.

[Virginiá]

I see this a lot, but it isn't true. In June 2001, Jeffords went independent and caucused with the Dems, giving them control of the Senate until 2003. So Bush only had unified control for the first 4 months of his first two years (Gore actually had the controlling vote in January 2001 until inauguration). In practice it probably didn't matter much other than in the summer of 2001. Once 9/11 happened Congress acted in a largely non-partisan fashion resulting in bipartisan bills like No Child Left Behind, McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accounting reform, and the Help America Vote Act.

Good to know, thanks! I was pretty young at that time and without a care in the world, so I'm not very aware of any ad hoc coalitions in that time frame.

However I still don't think this changes my other points on the general ideological shifts and the overall right-leaning influence at the policy level. Even at this point in time after 7 years of a liberal administration, actual liberal policy goals have gone largely unmet for decades with the exception of what was rammed through during Obama's first 2 years (I find it difficult to accept PPACA as a liberal idea that we actually wanted, given that its foundation is something one would expect from a contemporary Republican)

[Virginiá]

I don't even disagree really. I guess, though, the political situation being what it was, what passed, passed with basically the bare minimum of votes (and after Scott Brown's election to the Senate, the version of the bill the Senate passed was basically fixed in stone). I generally come down on the side of it being better to have an imperfect (even VERY imperfect) framework in place that can be improved upon, than to torpedo the whole thing by trying to pick at one of its imperfections at the time. If the Labor buy-in was what got some of those votes, and what you described was what Labor demanded for its buy-in, then while that sucks, it at least can be fixed later after the framework is in place, right?

I do agree that it was good for getting coverage to many millions that didn't previously have it, but even that doesn't change how I feel in general about certain parts of the bill and the reasons for them, as muon2 stated.

Further, I resent Obama for pushing such a special interest giveaway in the middle of an economic crisis. It ended up helping Republicans decimate our electoral progress and costing us the ability to advance basically any other significant parts of our agenda. Not to say that we probably wouldn't have experienced somewhat large losses either way, but it really did not help and came at the worst time. So I'm not sure if it was worth it, especially considering when he should have pushed for a major infrastructure development package and something like paid leave for workers and not some toxic early Christmas present for SEs like PPACA was.