CAN OUR FRACTURED POLITICAL PARTIES EVER COME TOGETHER?

….This poster asks an important question!

 

It’s too hard to see if each party will eventually come together.

 

With all the hoop-la going on in both political parties, I’m surprised that none of the major TV networks have talked much about how fractured both parties are for the 2016 election.  This division is just one more example for demonstrating how concerned the people are about where the country is headed, especially for helping stop the shrinking of the nation’s once vast middle-class.

 

When you have multiple candidates that have all now won different states, and there is now a chance that both parties could go to their conventions with definite leaders.  But they also have large groups totally committed to their candidates and none that are willing to compromise.

 

Just look at who is supporting these different candidates.

 

·       The largest group that supports Donald Trump is those very angry, older, poorly educated white males.

 

·       The groups supporting Cruz are the evangelicals and the super Trump-haters.

 

·       Bernie Sanders has the younger, idealistic voters and those upscale, educated white liberals.

 

·       Hillary Clinton has the older white Democrats and most of the minorities.

 

·       Kasich has what’s left of the sane Republican “establishment” vote, but his anti-women attitude is keeping the largest block of Republican voters from supporting him.

 

However, the point for all of these groups is that other than the top 2% of the well-to-do in America, they all have been touched by income inequality.  They all have a problem with a US Congress that is not doing the people’s business.  They also have issues and concerns about the nation’s national security.

 

…This could one of the most important elections of our time.

 

Each of these candidates have a different idea for how to deal with all of their supporter’s key issues.

 

·       Trump has ridiculous ideas that would never work and they are mostly either against the law or unconstitutional.

 

·       Sanders wants to do things about education, health care and Wall Street that the Republicans running the Congress would never approve.

 

·       Clinton has the most workable ideas, but the GOP has tainted Hillary’s reputation for so many years, she will probably be “stone-walled” like Obama was, if she gets to the White House.

 

·       Cruz is a fanatic who’s idea of a flat-tax has shown it would never work, and he wants to take health care away from 18 million Americans that now have it for the very first time.

 

·       Kasich, as a reasonable conservative has the best ideas for the Republicans, but he has won so few elections, he probably doesn’t have much of a chance.

 

On top of all this, is that the nation’s fragmentation is so complete and definite for the Democrats, that 30% of those that support Sanders say they would not vote for Clinton, if she is the nominee.  And 15% of those that support Clinton would not vote for Sanders, if he is the nominee.

 

Similar issues are dividing those that would support the Republican candidates.

 

So far, there is very little being shown that the parties will ever come together.  Maybe it’s just too early for that kind of party unity to be displayed.  But the point is that the division and anger that we have been witnessing within the different groups has seemed to be getting stronger, instead of us seeing the groups coming together.  Today, you hear more of the individual candidate’s support, and very little within either party of the “I’ll support whomever is the Republican or the Democratic candidate.”

 

The 2016 election is showing complete proof that this party fragmentation has been in process for many years.  America has reached the point in our politics where we are not only polarized within both parties, but we are polarized within the factions of each party as well.

 

Our divided government has given us gridlock for most of the last 8 years, especially when the Republicans swore to make the president a “one-term president”.  And we all know how well that idea worked for the GOP.

 

Today, we have a highly partisan US Supreme Court and the GOP has been very successful in implementing voter restrictions in many of the Red states in the country.  This has just made the political fragmentation that much stronger at the state level.

 

With the disparity between the four main candidates and their four very different groups, the 2016 election could either bring everyone together, or it could make the fragmentation that much worse.

 

I guess that only time will tell.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016