Anderson: Why the Democrats – and Republicans – are doomed – The Ledger

We are products of our times, politically. The ideological intransigence and the complete absence of compromise in the political realm may well result in a foul and disagreeable stalemate.

In 1972, the Democratic primaries spelled apocalypse for the fate of the Democratic Party in their efforts to pitch out one of the least popular GOP presidents, Richard Nixon.

The Democratic National Committee had been floating by endorsement a hack senator from Maine named Edmund Muskie. Nixon was hated by the left, who were galvanized, and Muskie was horrible.

Primary voters who make up a much smaller proportion of the voters who will eventually cast a vote for the party tend to be more ideological than the great unwashed. In the overheated atmosphere of the Vietnam War, Nixon, and a growing culture war, the milquetoast Muskie, and his mainstream heir, Hubert Humphrey, didnt have a chance.

When the dust cleared at the national convention many months later, the Democrats had nominated George McGovern, an anti-war lefty from South Dakota.

The mainstream Democrats abandoned ship, the GOP held firm for Nixon, and McGovern went on to suffer the worst beating any Democrat has ever received in a national contest, losing 49 of 50 states.

The parallels with 2020 are uncanny.

On one hand, if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, hell nail down the radical left but may stand to lose all or at least a significant part of the center of the Democratic Party. Hes also laughably unlikely to bring over any Republican voters or libertarian-style independents.

On the other hand, should someone emerge from the center Mayor Pete or Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., for example, or Mike Bloomberg, whose campaign will not truly be underway until Super Tuesday the crybaby core of Bernie supporters will probably sulk and whine and then sit on their seedy socialist couches at election time.

Either ugly scenario means defeat for the Democrats, without President Donald Trump doing a single thing differently including being crazy.

So, if Trump wins, the GOP wins, right?

Wrong.

For one thing, barring truly bizarre circumstances, there is almost no room for GOP success in the House. The fragility of the few districts up for grabs plays to Democrats, with rare exception.

At best for the GOP, nothing changes, which means four more years of the same static, harrowing trip of having a Trump presidency which can pass (and fund) policy only with the collaboration of the House Democrats.

But it could also turn worse in a hurry. Trumps recent savage and vengeful victory lap following his impeachment acquittal (coupled with the extremely questionable commentary about interfering in judicial processes), The Washington Post observed, could endanger the reelection chances of five senators in competitive races: Joni Ernst of Iowa, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona, as well as [Susan] Collins [Maine] and [Thom] Tillis [N.C.].

Which might mean that if the Democrats are able to hold what they have (though they will likely lose Alabama) and turn at least a few of these seats in the competitive races, the real firewall for the GOP in the U.S. Senate goes down in a ghastly inferno, leaving the Democrats with a slender majority in both chambers.

This would mean the Democrats would have the ability to block presidential appointments to the courts, as well as to create anarchy, chaos and despair for any Republican initiatives anywhere else theyd like to.

And after the past three years theyd like to, thanks. Vengeance cuts both ways.

We are products of our times, politically. The ideological intransigence and the complete absence of compromise in the political realm may well result in a foul and disagreeable stalemate.

We will, in William F. Buckleys famous phrase, have a government that governs the least if it governs at all.

There may be an advantage to this: it may give us four more years to change the way we do the countrys business. We are the reason weve come to this.

If its to change, that, too, will be up to us.

R. Bruce Anderson (randerson2@flsouthern.edu) is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics at Florida Southern College in Lakeland.

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Anderson: Why the Democrats - and Republicans - are doomed - The Ledger