Could it be that both parties are doomed?
I say--a pox on both their houses..
"The GOP is running as smoothly as a dry Slip 'N Slide made from sandpaper. That the party is as dysfunctional as the human resources department at the Weinstein Company stems from a host of ideological, political and structural problems that are only compounded by the fact that the president grabs the public's attention like a spider monkey running through a church with a lit stick of dynamite.
The Democratic Party, meanwhile, has gotten drunk on the spectacle. And as with many a drunk, it's grown oblivious to its own decrepitude. Like a bitter lush sitting in his own filth amidst a sea of empty bottles, moldering pizza boxes and fried chicken bones, it shouts at the TV and boasts how it could do better.
Donna Brazile, the longtime high-ranking Democratic functionary, was made interim chair of the party shortly before the 2016 election in the wake of revelations that the previous chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, seemed to be playing favorites in the primaries, tilting the scales toward Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders. In an excerpt from her forthcoming book, "Hacks," Brazile reports that Wasserman Schultz wasn't simply partial towards Clinton. She was in fact Clinton's vassal."
"Brazile reports that the party was so hollowed out with debt that Hillary Clinton essentially scooped it up in a distress sale. Wasserman Schultz cut a deal with the Clinton campaign in which Clinton would raise millions ostensibly for the party, particularly at the state level. But those funds were sluiced back into the Clinton campaign coffers in Brooklyn, and the campaign extracted de facto control of the party's messaging and hiring. Team Clinton mocked Sanders as a paranoid dotard for claiming that the Democratic primary system was rigged against him. As it happens, his paranoia didn't go far enough.
It seems axiomatic that any party weak enough to be taken over by Hillary Clinton is not in good health."
"But the important point is that dysfunction isn't zero-sum. Right now, the best argument Republicans have is "we're not Democrats," and the best argument Democrats have is "we're not Republicans." Like two punch-drunk pugilists leaning on each other in the 12th round, if one falls, the other may well fall too.
Everywhere else in America today, disrupters -- Uber, Amazon, etc. -- are dismantling established institutions. Perhaps both political parties are the next institutions to crumble under creative destruction. Or maybe not. But if it happens, no one can say they didn't have it coming."
I say--a pox on both their houses..
"The GOP is running as smoothly as a dry Slip 'N Slide made from sandpaper. That the party is as dysfunctional as the human resources department at the Weinstein Company stems from a host of ideological, political and structural problems that are only compounded by the fact that the president grabs the public's attention like a spider monkey running through a church with a lit stick of dynamite.
The Democratic Party, meanwhile, has gotten drunk on the spectacle. And as with many a drunk, it's grown oblivious to its own decrepitude. Like a bitter lush sitting in his own filth amidst a sea of empty bottles, moldering pizza boxes and fried chicken bones, it shouts at the TV and boasts how it could do better.
Donna Brazile, the longtime high-ranking Democratic functionary, was made interim chair of the party shortly before the 2016 election in the wake of revelations that the previous chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, seemed to be playing favorites in the primaries, tilting the scales toward Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders. In an excerpt from her forthcoming book, "Hacks," Brazile reports that Wasserman Schultz wasn't simply partial towards Clinton. She was in fact Clinton's vassal."
"Brazile reports that the party was so hollowed out with debt that Hillary Clinton essentially scooped it up in a distress sale. Wasserman Schultz cut a deal with the Clinton campaign in which Clinton would raise millions ostensibly for the party, particularly at the state level. But those funds were sluiced back into the Clinton campaign coffers in Brooklyn, and the campaign extracted de facto control of the party's messaging and hiring. Team Clinton mocked Sanders as a paranoid dotard for claiming that the Democratic primary system was rigged against him. As it happens, his paranoia didn't go far enough.
It seems axiomatic that any party weak enough to be taken over by Hillary Clinton is not in good health."
"But the important point is that dysfunction isn't zero-sum. Right now, the best argument Republicans have is "we're not Democrats," and the best argument Democrats have is "we're not Republicans." Like two punch-drunk pugilists leaning on each other in the 12th round, if one falls, the other may well fall too.
Everywhere else in America today, disrupters -- Uber, Amazon, etc. -- are dismantling established institutions. Perhaps both political parties are the next institutions to crumble under creative destruction. Or maybe not. But if it happens, no one can say they didn't have it coming."
