> I would go even further and say that
> the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party, as well as
> (mostly feigned) ideological splits might even lead to
> a reallignment in which the Democratic Party is, as
> you intimate, dissolved and a third party will take
> its place as a major party.
If the DP dissolves, it's unlikely that another party will become a major party for a very long time. The left is just too small and disorganized to produce a party that big. Instead, one would have to expect that the Republican Party would essentially become a one-party state, like the LDP in Japan, with a badly fractured opposition, divided between several factions ranging from what is now the center of the DP towards the left. This would simplify matters, for those who believe that we have an essentially one-party state now, but it wouldn't help the working class at all.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ It isn’t that we believe in God, or don’t believe in God, or have suspended judgment about God, or consider that the God of theism is an inadequate symbol of our ultimate concern; it is just that we wish we didn’t have to have a view about God. It isn’t that we know that “God” is a cognitively meaningless expression, or that it has its role in a language-game other than fact-stating, or whatever. We just regret the fact that the word is used so much.
— Richard Rorty