It is time for a new political party in the U.S.
Dear @MikeBloomberg: You have an historic opportunity to save us from a national insanity. You have an opportunity at the same scale and…
Dear @MikeBloomberg: You have an historic opportunity to save us from a national insanity. You have an opportunity at the same scale and import as when Abraham Lincoln was elected the first president from the Republican party in 1860.
Most Americans know that Abraham Lincoln was an important president, if only because he was president during the American Civil War not to mention that he was the president who abolished slavery in the United States. But few know that he was also the first modern Republican president and really lead the establishment of the political party that now appears to be in the process of nominating Donald Trump as their choice to run for President of the United States.
So what is the national insanity? Except for the fringes of the Republican Party that is in the process of nominating Donald Trump, most sensible people can agree that Trump is a political idiot and would be a national embarrassment for our country if he was elected.
But the real insanity is that the political system in this country has become so polarized that each party is threatening to nominate candidates from the extreme edge: Donald Trump for the Republicans and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats. Our political system was designed to steer the voting public toward gradual change influenced by the center. If our system can no longer serve the very function our founders designed it for, then we need a fundamental change — a new political party that will re-align our system for the next 100 years.
This same kind polarization happened in the mid-19th century when the issue of slavery tore our country apart and lead to open civil war. Between 1789 (when George Washington was elected president without opposition) and 1860 (when Abraham Lincoln was elected as the first modern Republican), we had one Federalist president, four Democrat-Republican presidents, five Democrat presidents, and four Whig presidents. With the election of Lincoln, the Whig Party imploded and we have since “only” had Democrat or Republican presidents.
Before 1860, we did not have a stable two-party system. Instead we had one dominant party and a series of attempts to consolidate and form an opposition party. Lincoln was able to make that consolidation effective and establish the Republican party that has lasted — until now. Now we appear to have a system that is destabilized and spinning out toward the edges, which is terrifying for people who care about the center, about the middle class, about the future of our country.
So @MikeBloomberg, You have an historic opportunity, but it is NOT to run as an independent candidate, as reported recently. No one has ever been elected as an independent, because our system is designed to discourage non-party candidates. The opportunity instead is to establish a new party that is an effective opposition to the Democratic Party and recreate the centrist tension that our system requires to flourish politically and economically. Please, please do save us from this national insanity that we have been witnessing for the past year! And do it before we find ourselves fighting some insane civil war over immigration and freedom.