With Doanld J. Trump as the President Elect of the United States of America being a shock to the whole world, will this cause a dramatic shift in both political parties? For the Republican side, Donald Trump's views have been so obsure that it has divided the Republican party in the beginning and eventually brought it together and saved it by the time he became president elect. With that being said, would his views and actions in the future reshape what the Republican party is now? Would the Republican party that we see now, be different in the next four years? On the Democratic side, the DNC are getting heavily criticized for Trumps victory, saying that if they haven't rigged the primaries for Hilliary to win, and riled Trump up to win his primary for being an "easy canidate", Bernie Sanders would've won. They literally took out an S&W 500 revolver and shot themselves in the foot in this one. Probably to the point where they won't be able to recover from it. This wouldn't be bad if Hilliary did win, but in the end it just went to Trump's favor. In conclusion, do you think the Political Parties will change forever due to the elections? Will the Republican Party be reshaped by Donald Trump? Is the Democratic Party going to collapse?

Political parties need to die. They make it so easy for people to vote based on meaningless "in group" affiliations, instead of based on the person's views, actions, accomplishments and experience. The DNC definately screwed up when they decided to put forward the worst candidate in their party's history instead of a candidate heavily favored to win against all of the opponents and liked by people on both sides to some degree. I doubt any actual splitting will come of this though. The DNC will quickly forget their mistake and the GOP will scratch their heads again when people even crazier then Trump run and do well 4 years from now.

> if they haven't rigged the primaries for Hilliary to win, and riled Trump up to win his primary for being an "easy canidate", Bernie Sanders would've won. This 'if only Bernie Sanders had run instead of hillary' is going to be the enduring myth of this campaign. Bernie Sanders would not have beat Trump. He would not have even come as close as Hillary did. He had a huge following on the internet, but that doesn't translate into actual votes. Yes, the DNC should not have nominated Hillary, nor should they have put influence to screw over Bernie in the primaries...but that doesn't mean he would have won. > Political parties need to die. They make it so easy for people to vote based on meaningless "in group" affiliations, instead of based on the person's views, actions, accomplishments and experience. You know, I don't support any political party [ignore the trump pic, i lost the he-man one] but I honestly don't know what this even means. You mean the single politician's views, actions, etc etc? But it is frequently not about the individual, it's about who he brings in, who his cabinet is. The US system, despite the fanfare, gives a lot less executive power than most countries. No country in the world runs without political parties unless they have such a tiny population that they can vote nationally the same way you would for a municipal election. It isn't 'meaningless in group affiliations', the reason your country's parties are meaningless is because they're both center-right parties with no distinguishing features. That isn't the case everywhere, and the solution isn't to get rid of them, it's to open the board for more of them. Unfortunately, that requires both electoral reform, and societal willingness. I mean, Stein and Johnson ran, they just didn't get anywhere because the majority of Americans don't agree with them.

> Yes, the DNC should not have nominated Hillary, nor should they have put influence to screw over Bernie in the primaries...but that doesn't mean he would have won. Technically you're correct. We don't know what the future would have been otherwise. However, there's every reason to suspect that he would have done better, given polling and the reason most people voted for Trump (hint: it's because Trump wasn't the most hated political dynastic figure of the century in the USA). > You mean the single politician's views, actions, etc etc? But it is frequently not about the individual, it's about who he brings in, who his cabinet is. Yes. Most people vote based on whether the person belongs to their party or not. They don't actually know anything about the candidate, including their cabinet. > No country in the world runs without political parties unless they have such a tiny population that they can vote nationally the same way you would for a municipal election. Just because it's human nature to form in-groups and out-groups and to (redacted) follow the leader doesn't mean that's the way we should be acting. > I mean, Stein and Johnson ran, they just didn't get anywhere because the majority of Americans don't agree with them. They didn't get anywhere because the pervasive thought is that you've wasted your vote if you go third party, because third party can't win.

The moment you said 'sheeple' was the moment i lost interest in this convo.

> The moment you said 'sheeple' was the moment i lost interest in this convo. Changed my previous post just for you.

Stellar editing job. Calling people 'sheeple' is a good way of dehumanizing them. It's also condescending, which fits into your larger point, regardless of how redacted you make it. And I was just called condescending by three different people today, so I suppose that makes me an expert. You think people shouldn't follow political parties because of groupthink, but you don't have an alternative. And no, 'just think of them as individuals' doesn't cut it. You can run a city with individuals making up a council, but you can't run a country that way. You can't even run a state that way. Have you seen the UN? Those are individuals, representing their countries. They don't have political parties. And it's a mess. > Yes. Most people vote based on whether the person belongs to their party or not. They don't actually know anything about the candidate, including their cabinet For a moment there I thought you were agreeing with me. I think I'd like a source on that 'most people' line. Because I have a hunch that you mean 'most of the sheeple I see and make assumptions about'.

> Calling people 'sheeple' is a good way of dehumanizing them. It's also condescending, which fits into your larger point, regardless of how redacted you make it > For a moment there I thought you were agreeing with me. I think I'd like a source on that 'most people' line. Because I have a hunch that you mean 'most of the sheeple I see and make assumptions about'. I agree that it's condescending, but the dehumanizing claim is melodramatic. I'm not literally calling them sheep or saying they're less human, I'm saying they don't vote based on the candidate running but whether they're in the party they affiliate themselves with. Ironically, I'm explicitly saying it's because of human nature they're acting that way, which is about as far from "dehumanizing" as you can possibly get. I see that I need to explain in detail though, due to the assumptions/inferences it's so easy to draw about my views over this topic. There is definitely nuance to this, along with a chicken/egg consideration. Do people vote Democrat/Republican because they in general tend to identify with that party's views, or do they hold those views because they consider themselves part of that demographic? Do people call themselves Democrat/Republican when they're going to be voting for a Democrat/Republican and switch labels accordingly, or do they vote for Democrats/Republicans because they consider themselves to be of that party? Obviously there's people on both sides of that. Here's what you can't get around: we only have two choices in the USA. The reason for that is the political party system. What we've set up are two options, with vague general political beliefs associated to each. It reduces every candidate down to whether they have "Democrat" views or "Republican" views. Because so many people strongly associate to one party or the other, it's viewed as inevitable that one of those candidates will win, making it a self fulfilling prophecy that one of them will since no one wants to "waste their vote" on a candidate they AGREE with, and in turn let in a candidate they dislike. Aside from the misunderstanding of statistics, here's the psychological aspects: http://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/06/vote.aspx Ultimately the result is that people are either voting FOR the party they agree with, or AGAINST the party they dislike more. Thus, my conclusion that people vote based on party lines, and not based on the candidate specifically. The most that the vast majority of people are voting for in that respect is whether they agree more or less with Republicans/Democrats. This election particularly saw that more than ever, with Republicans voting in large part to keep Clinton out, and Democrats voting to keep Trump out. It's not a vote for who you think will do the best job, it's a vote for who you think will do the worse job and to keep them out. We've decided to aim for "second-worst" instead of "acceptable", and it's ridiculously stupid. The primaries aren't a way around this either. The candidates who get picked for those are overwhelmingly chosen based on the die-hard supporters of that party. The most involved, lifelong Democrats/Republicans who are the most likely to be voting on party lines are the ones who end up choosing the nominees for their party. The nominees chosen are the ones who will fit the political party's agenda. So what we get are people who vote for people based on their group affiliation views, that the rest of the populace is forced to choose between, and the actual issues or comptency of said candidates take a third seat to whether that candidate is in your party or not in your party. I don't think that, if we were to take away political parties, people would so easily fall into this trap. Not only would there not be a strong social pressure to affiliate with a particular group, it would eliminate the party monopoly on the system, make it much harder for people to be indoctrinated into a specific political view, reduce insulation of viewpoint by making it so people can't lump themselves together under a label they assume means they have the same beliefs but really dont, and allow for the candidate's ideas/competency to become the priority instead of choosing the lesser of two evils because the outcome is considered inevitable between two choices. Let's also not forget the general animosity and group-think that occurs when we label people and assign them to bins as if they're all the same and the implications that has on people's votes. http://www.people-press.org/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-animosity-in-2016/ **tl;dr, it's more complicated than assuming I'm literally calling them sheep and that I'm saying almost everyone is a total mindless idiot.** Sorry it's a wall, but my brief statement clearly had far too much room for misinterpretation of my views. > Have you seen the UN? Those are individuals, representing their countries. They don't have political parties. And it's a mess. I really don't think this is comparable in any way. The reason the UN is a mess isn't because people voted for who they liked best to represent them. It's because it's a collection of people from every country who have no actual authority over what happens in their country and are stuck in a quagmire of political agendas and conflicting international interests. The situations are completely different.

> *Originally posted by **[Jantonaitis](/forums/9/topics/681314?page=1#10834621)**:* > You think people shouldn't follow political parties because of groupthink, but you don't have an alternative. And no, 'just think of them as individuals' doesn't cut it. That's really the problem with so many of these 'grand utopian ideas'. The current system is stupid, yes, but it's that way because it works with human nature. Improvements are always welcome, but an improvement that doesn't work *with* human nature rather than against it, is nhot an improvement at all. Saying "just think of them as individuals" **won't work**, precisely becasue it's not base human nature to do that. We group, we pidgeonhole, we associate, stereotype and stimatize. All of that is going to happen, no matter how you might bemoan it, because that's how we think as a species. Any ecology of scale (such as voting) has to work withthe basest, crassest parts of our psyches, because because that is how the vast majority are going to think, and that's not going to be changing any time soon.

From what I have seen since the election, liberals have not been able to understand the outcome of the election. They think everyone in our country wants a socialist country. They can't wrap there heads around the fact the majority of Americans who voted, voted to keep america free. This was a repudiation of Obama and his policies. He has taken in more and more money from the people through taxes and still runs a deficet. He opens our boarders to anyone who wants in, including bombers and radicals. The corruption in Washington is rampet at this point and the people elected Trump to clean it up. Read his contract with America and what he wants to do his first 100 days. People are tired of the crap being shoved down their throats for the last 8 years. Lets be honest, Hillary is the epitomy of corruption. She has commited treason and is a habitual liar. The people of the U.S. aren't stupid and if you wake the bear, as progressives did, you get the consequences.

> *Originally posted by **[Holy2334](/forums/9/topics/681314?page=1#10832382)**:* > In conclusion, do you think the Political Parties will change forever due to the elections? Will the Republican Party be reshaped by Donald Trump? Is the Democratic Party going to collapse? The democratic party is dead, and the republican party is dead or transformed into a new monster. Fascism is on the rise, and historically, and you can see that already in the states, as a response socialism and radical communist/anarchism is on the rise. Politics of the world will likely be changed forever. We're heading into a new dark age of Fasicsm.

> *Originally posted by **[Zachary_Greene](/forums/9/topics/681314?page=1#10840349)**:* > > *Originally posted by **[Holy2334](/forums/9/topics/681314?page=1#10832382)**:* > > In conclusion, do you think the Political Parties will change forever due to the elections? Will the Republican Party be reshaped by Donald Trump? Is the Democratic Party going to collapse? > > The democratic party is dead, and the republican party is dead or transformed into a new monster. > Fascism is on the rise, and historically, and you can see that already in the states, as a response socialism and radical communist/anarchism is on the rise. Politics of the world will likely be changed forever. We're heading into a new dark age of Fasicsm. Thank fuck for that, down with stagnation! Plus we got some [really amazing art last time!](http://www.art.com/gallery/id--c24103/futurism-prints.htm) Finally time for Merkel and the CDU to take a hike, hopefully permanently! *Come ooooooon Tatjana!!!!* > *Originally posted by **[jhco50](/forums/9/topics/681314?page=1#10839710)**:* > From what I have seen since the election, liberals have not been able to understand the outcome of the election. They think everyone in our country wants a socialist country. They can't wrap there heads around the fact the majority of Americans who voted, voted to keep america free. This was a repudiation of Obama and his policies. He has taken in more and more money from the people through taxes and still runs a deficet. He opens our boarders to anyone who wants in, including bombers and radicals. The corruption in Washington is rampet at this point and the people elected Trump to clean it up. Read his contract with America and what he wants to do his first 100 days. People are tired of the crap being shoved down their throats for the last 8 years. > > Lets be honest, Hillary is the epitomy of corruption. She has commited treason and is a habitual liar. The people of the U.S. aren't [stupid](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/14/why-the-trump-protests-like-the-wisconsin-uprising-will-fail/) and if you wake the bear, as progressives did, you get the consequences. Should see [what](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/11/blaming-everybody/) [the](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/11/hillary-out-and-the-donald-in-good-bad-or-impossible-to-say/) [real](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/15/break-up-the-democratic-party-its-time-for-the-clintons-and-rubin-to-go-and-soros-too/) [progressives](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/14/why-the-trump-protests-like-the-wisconsin-uprising-will-fail/) have to [say](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/11/the-long-death-march-of-the-dismal-dollar-democrats/) about that. They're [reveling](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/11/trumps-victory-arrogance-defeated/) in it! [(even before election day)](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/22/desiring-trump/)