General Discussion

Last edited Mon Jul 6, 2026, 11:12 AM - Edit history (2)

party, I think it may be less extreme than in some earlier times.

Back in the 1950s until at least 1970, on almost any issue, there was not the sharp divide that exists now between the two parties. The Democratic party at least into the mid 1960s included both Dixiecrats and liberals. The Republican party also had liberals, such as Jacob Javits as well as extreme small government conservatives such as Barry Goldwater.

In recent times each party became more homogeneous and a wide difference between them developed.. Then you could say the Republicans had at least two game changing periods. The first was the sudden wave of the freedom caucus. This left many of the old money, small government Republicans very uncomfortable. The second was the wave of Trump Republicans. My guess is if you could have shown 1950s Republican Congressmen the 2024 Republican convention (like Dickens Christmas carol), they would not believe this was the Republican party future.

Ignoring the issue of Israel, I wonder if we can think of FDR as a midpoint, where there are people, once called the DLC or new Democrats to the right and Bernie and the DS to the left. It might be that the sweet spot is similar to FDR. To the DS, it is not all they think needed and to more centrist it could be as far as they can go.

Given the time, we need to push the debate on the economic issues. We need to more clearly explain how increasing economic inequality drives many of the problems. Our country worked better in the times when the top tier of income had less of the total assets. We are moving toward the profile of a third world nation, where a few have a lot and the majority have very little. The Trump taxes should be argued to have made that worse, the debt worse and is intended to starve the federal government, preventing programs to help people.