I’m certainly not as SMART as Thomas Friedman, but I’m just going to throw this out there:
SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM DOES NOT WORK! Never has, never will.
In the Democrat party today, please identify the “center-left” wing of the party. Do they hold their meetings in a phone-booth?
Thomas Friedman is a waste of neurons to read it, a waste of electrons to transmit it, a waste of ink to print it, and a waste of paper to distribute it. Other than that, he’s a really really smart guy.
Methinks Tom is wrong on the Democrats, based on Crowley getting bounced. The Bernie acolytes have wind in their sails.
Friedman is so predictable.
these people are so blind they’re pathetic. if they had any idea of what the tea party was all about 10 years ago...or perot before that, or Ronald Reagan for that matter.
Friedman you idiot! Sanders and his quasi-socialist army is the center of your party, but the rest want to go full blown communism. Talk about more MSM spinning!
But between 2000 and 2010, thanks largely to digitization and automation, “manufacturing employment plummeted by more than a third,” in the U.S.
Wrong, this was largely due to outsourcing overseas and Mexico. I work in manufacturing and most of those jobs replaced by humans.
The establishment refused to represent the citizens and the rule of law.
Both parties could not continue to represent illegal aliens and their employers leaving the citizens unrepresented.
Bush League Republicans thought they had US in a box and we would have to vote for their amnesty candidates endlessly because the Democrat was always worse.
Maybe enough ‘members’ finally wised up to the fact that those parties were more for their executives and cohorts and less for the actual membership.
Just look at how deaf the Republican Party leadership has been in this century (2000). Even going back to the days of Hastert, Frist and Lott, they were indifferent to the ‘membership’ as they pushed such unpopular topics as comprehensive immigration. Note that about 70% have opposed comprehensive immigration because it is little more than another attempt at amnesty. Since the year 2000 about a half-dozen immigration/amnesty bills have been defeated in the House or Senate.
Look at how many run as conservatives and Tea Party supporters, only to change their positions as soon as they crossed the Potomac.
Think back to Whigs and Tories. There is a reason they no longer exist in the US. Parties should die after a few decades, especially when they become more self-serving for the leadership and elite and ignore their ‘members’.
Republicans aren’t anti-immigrant. Republicans are anti-human trafficking.
“The U.S. Democrats are fractured between a Bernie Sanders quasi-socialist wing and a center-left wing, but are glued together for now — thank goodness — by the overriding need to defeat Trump.”
The Democrats are, indeed, fractured. But the fracture is between the Bernie Sanders Mensheviks and the race-baiting, anti-white, anti-heterosexual Bolsheviks. Both are angry and not only don’t mind the violence in the streets, but encourage it. Note that the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were both Communists who fought to overthrow the Czar, and then fought each other for control over Russia (the Bolshies won, for those that don’t know - that’s Lenin, Stalin and the rest of that crew). As for the center-left wing...it is a corpse. That’s the Bill Clinton wing, which recognizes that there are at least SOME rules, and that pissing off a majority of the country is not the way to gain or maintain power.
Not going to click on it but...
Political parties in the west are not listening to their constituencies and acting on the best interests of their citizens.
People are getting frustrated with this and looking for alternatives.
Democrat party was the poster child fo this phenomenon when they rigged their own primary to nominate a proven liar and obvious criminal over Bernie Sanders and his millions of supporters.
Opinion polls in the U.S. show overwhelming support for border control, even among Americans of south/central American heritage, but the politicians won’t do anything about it. The politicians make promises to look tough - and then they do the opposite.
Seems simple enough to me; the old parties failed to react to the mass migration coming out of the Middle East and Africa and so are being replaced. Clumsily, awkwardly, but that’s the way these things go.
Western civilazation being invaded by hoards of violent and ignorant people who will stupidly vote in the very same shiiithole practices of thier former lands of oppression they left, probably has a lot to do with it.
Because no one wants to live on your flat world.
The First World's becoming the Party of Trump... freedom keeps chaos at bay...
The Third world's becoming the parties of Commie Carnival barkers offering wealth transfers in exchange for devolving into a Venezuelan hellhole. Delusion keeping chaos at bay for a time...
And the answer?
Switch incentives so power of - and 'to be' a hellhole - is taken 'off the table'...
Arrogant stupidity based on intellectual vapidity.
I would've used 'unglued' but that's just me.