party play

Beautiful timing

The Democratic Party is set to break apart. It probably won’t but let me dream for a minute. Currently, educated, African and/or young people support Obama. Older women and uneducated men support Hillary. Florida and Michigan voters should be justifiably annoyed their state representatives played chicken with the DNC and lost.

Now, let’s play what if. What if Hillary gets the nomination? Either because she wins the last few primaries by a respectable nomination or she sacrifices some virgins to force the super delegates to support her. Either way, the young, the educated and the black (not mutually exclusive) are going to say she stole the nomination. Let’s take this scenario a little farther. What if Obama then drops out of the Democratic Party and forms a new party? He is able to bring 30% of elected democrats with him from congress and state and local levels. Al Gore sees a chance to finally stick it to Bill Clinton for costing him enough votes to lose the 2000 presidency, so Al joins the new party.

The conservatives don’t really like or trust McCain. They support him because if they don’t a liberal will win the presidency. A bad conservative is better than a good liberal from their point of view. If the Democratic Party fractures, they won’t need to support McCain anymore. They form their own party, maybe with Mitt Romney as their candidate. Their new party should be able to convert at least 30% of Republican elective officials.
With four major parties, independent voters can find much closer common ground with a party. Instead of having two parties trying to court the middle and, therefore, not providing much real distinction, we will have four parties. In order to differentiate themselves, the four parties will actually have to move away from the center.