It all started for me when Richard Nixon was running for president against John F. Kennedy. Both men were saying similar words but with a twist. Years later when Nixon became president he imposed a wage and price freeze to control inflation. That was the sort of thing you would have expected from a Democrat. It made my head spin. Was that a god idea? The new car price was frozen (good idea). My next pay raise was limited to 1.5 percent (bad idea).
There really are four political major political parties in the United States. They coalesce to two every two years for congressional and presidential elections only because they can’t see a path to victory without a partner that at the very least holds some similar views. Third political party members of Congress and the Senate have been rare. Today there are two independents in the Senate (Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Angus King from Main) and two independents in the House both from Michigan (Paul Mitchell and Justin Amash a Libertarian). Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ran as an Independent write-in candidate in 2010 but has since joined the G.O.P.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is at odds with the moderate wing to the point that they oppose the currently proposed infrastructure law because they define infrastructure to include help for social services. They dream of the Green New Deal. Moderates define infrastructure as money for roads, bridges, railway and broadband services.
The battle in Ohio to fill the seat vacated by Marcia Fudge when she became the Housing and Urban Development Secretary involved 13 candidates but was seen as a contest mainly between former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Councilwoman Shontel Brown. That 11th District primary became somewhat of a replay in microcosm of the battle between Biden and Sanders to secure the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Turner had been a national cochair for Sanders’ presidential run and often harshly criticized the eventual nominee, Biden. Brown, meanwhile, positioned herself as someone friendly to the Biden administration. Shontel Brown won that race.
Although Donald Trump is currently leading the Republican Party there is another part of the party that cling to the G.O.P.’s traditional values best personified by recent leaders Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and recently deceased Senator John McCain. It was Senator McCain who voted no to repealing Obama Care (Affordable Care Act). In the 2016 platform were the words “International trade is crucial for all sectors of America’s economy. Massive trade deficits are not. We envision a worldwide multilateral agreement among nations committed to the principles of open markets, what has been called a “Reagan Economic Zone,” in which free trade will truly be fair trade for all concerned.”
Today’s Republican party is divided between the Romney/Nixon/Eisenhower wing and the Trump wing that stands for insulating the United State from the rest of the world. Trumpians are the White nationalists who oppose everything as a gain for others thus a loss for them. This is also called Zero-sum game. They see things as If I gain you lose. If you gain I lose. We can’t both gain.
The best example of the Trump wing positions is former Trump White House advisor Stephen Miller who suggested that legal immigration is just as bad for America as illegal immigration, and the country should just shut down immigration altogether at least temporarily. Who will clean hotel rooms, pick the crops or work in meat packing factories when there are fewer of “the other” is never discussed. Those White nationalists do not understand that is has been the immigrants who have made the United States a success. Steve Job a child of Lebanese immigrants, founders of Google, Chobani yogurt founded in 2005 by Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant, who had bought a plant in the town of South Edmeston, New York, that was being closed by Kraft Foods. What are Trumpians in favor of doing is unclear other than blocking every idea to “Make America Great Again.” There was no Republican platform presented at the last Republican convention in August 2020.
I will be holding my nose in November 2022 as I cast my ballot.
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