Will the President switch parties in 2020?
As we all send our thoughts and prayers to those in southeast Texas and Florida for speedy recoveries from devastating acts of nature, the President has cut a deal with Senator Schumer and Minority Leader Pelosi that may well be a turning point in American politics.
There has been much talk about a realignment of the two political parties. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency is clearly a decision by the electorate that they are dissatisfied with either political party, as Trump got a substantial number of Democrat crossovers. Further, the Bernie Sanders supporters rejected the candidacy of Hillary Clinton as a strong statement against the Democrat party establishment.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that Sanders may have won the Democrat nomination had it not been for the corruption of the DNC by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and her backroom thugs undermining the Sanders campaign and doing all they could to obtain the nomination for Hillary.
What Trump said to the Republican establishment last week with his Schumer-Pelosi deal is that there is no longer business as usual. We actually are going to make decisions on political issues based on the best for America, not the best for McConnel, Graham, McCain, Ryan or any other elite Republican, who collectively have done nothing for the advancement of important causes for America.
They are bought and paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which donate huge political donations to moderate Republicans to maintain the status quo:
allow illegal immigration to continue unabated; maintain and expand the trade deals that are undermining the American job force and economy; after 7 years of assuring us they would change the health care policy in America, abdicating that responsibility completely. And McCain, the deciding vote in the Senate to avoid debate on the issue, comes from a state with some of the worst conditions in the country regarding availability of health insurance. Even the state Republican Party in Arizona censured McCain as not being a Republican supporting the values of the party.
Donald Trump has now set the standard for bypassing party ideology and loyalty and has shown his commitment to fulfilling his campaign promises to the American people. He clearly places that commitment over any party loyalty and is reforming and reshaping politics in America, in effect, as an Independent.
This is called Populism and it works. The grass roots American people are beyond frustration with a system that has failed them. They elect Republican majorities in the House and Senate and what happens? In effect, nothing changes.
That is why Donald Trump getting past party politics is so vital and will reshape the future of political decision-making at its core. Now that the electorate has made the huge change in voting for an outsider, we are seeing the impact of that. This will become the catalyst for further changes and greater responsiveness to the voters’ true concerns.
We have seen other Independent efforts to achieve the Presidency. In 1948, it was Strom Thurmond; in 1968 George Wallace; in 1980 John Anderson; in 1992 and 1996 H. Ross Perot. And, of course, Teddy Roosevelt tried a comeback for the Presidency in 1912 when he was dismayed by his Republican successor, William Howard Taft. He created the Progressive Party, also known as the Bull Moose Party, and actually got 27% of the vote and 88 electoral votes in the 1912 presidential election.
We are now watching the reality of an independent president who has broken party barriers. How far he goes with that strategy remains to be seen.
What we do know is that no new political party has won a presidential; election since 1860 when Abraham Lincoln won as a member of the new Republican Party. Now we must ask ourselves whether Donald Trump might run for reelection under the Independent Party banner.
Let us not forget that in 2000, Trump considered running for the presidency and inquired about running on the Independent Party ticket. Such a decision in his reelection campaign could make an indelible and permanent imprint on American politics that could change the rules of the game dramatically.
#MikeSiegel
