Once, when asked for directions to his home, Yogi Berra replied, “When you get to the fork in the road, take it.” What is not generally known about his seemingly nonsensical answer is that he lived on a circle, and either choice would lead one to his home.
In the last three presidential elections, voters from both political parties have been telling their elites calling the shots in Washington, “Take a different fork in the road”. Both parties had taken off in new directions since 9/11, but neither party took roads that could reunite their American voters. The result is an America that has not been more divided then immediately before the Civil War in 1860, 184 years ago!
In post-industrial societies, political entities are like consumer products that experience life cycles of Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. These political cycles appear to reach their decline approximately every seventy-five years when founders depart the scene, corruption flourishes, and creative thoughts disappear. For example, following the Russian Revolution against the Czarist king’s rule, the Marxist communist government prevailed from 1917 until 1989 – 72 years. The Chinese communist regime came into power in 1949, and observers say China’s growth peaked 68 years later in 2017, with its rapid decline now processing.
The United States’ first cycle of political growth went from its founding Constitution in 1787 until South Carolina seceded in 1860, 73 years later. Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, the country regressed into the Great Depression of the 1930s which was finally rescued by World War II which ended in 1945, exactly 75 years after the Civil War began.
The 2024 presidential election marked the end of another 75-year political decline. After 9/11, both political parties began losing their connection with American voters. Is it just serendipity that Presidents Reagan and Bush were the last of “The Greatest Generation”? The Democratic and Republican parties that ushered us into the twenty-first century are not the same parties that will successfully carry our nation for the next 75 years. The Washington establishments are at Yogi Berra’s proverbial “fork in the road”!
President George W. Bush began a quarter century of intense U.S. engagement in the Middle East. Not content with avenging the culprits of 9/11, he mistakenly sought to change the diverse cultures into Western-style democracies with modern value systems. Conflicting religious groups competing for power made Bush’s utopian dreams impossible. With Vice President Cheney not one to extend the Republican reign, the Party followed with John McCain, Mitt Romney, and heir-to-be Jeb Bush in the subsequent elections – all weak losing candidates.
Culture is not easily or quickly changed. Moving citizens from merit-based principles to the new diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) shibboleth of the Democratic Party may have been a bridge too far or too fast for many Americans. However, starting with Obama’s pre-election pledge to “transform America”, his party’s cultural revolution has been overshadowed by economic issues that caused significant segments of its identity politics base to become Republican voters in 2024.
The October 7 Hamas war on Israel has brought young Democratic progressives out into the streets supporting the Hamas terrorists against Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian lands. Anti-Semitism/anti-Israelism has scattered within many segments of the Democrat Administration. America was imagined and functioned as the new Jerusalem for Jews looking for a destination to prosper. Jewish voters who have universally voted Democratic found themselves disillusioned, adrift, or estranged in this new anti-Semitic environment, many voting Republican in 2024 for the first time in their political lives.
Lastly, no one in Washington can explain how our government elites have allowed a new Axis of Evil to be formed between Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea. This evil Axis is responsible for both the Israeli and Ukraine wars, and China daily overlies Taiwan territory with a third conflict there now dependent on Xi Jinping, China’s dictator, and which side of the bed he awakes on any given day. A new Cold War is effectively developing while globalization, which is defined and protected by American economic and military power, is slowly being dismantled.
Voters from both the Democratic and Republican ranks suffered from the Washington cabal which molded the aggressive globalization that transferred wealth away from Americans as business elites allowed an increasing number of jobs to move overseas. In 2016 outsider Trump challenged the conventional wisdoms of the Republican Party only to be defeated by never-Trumper Republicans joined by the transforming America Obama cadres who had taken over the Democratic Party and united under 50-year Washington fixture, Joe Biden.
By winning in 2024, Donald Trump has a head start over the Democrats with his makeover of the Republican Party. If he is successful, he has entered the next four years with an “heir and two spares” to follow him in his makeover – Vice-President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. President-elect Trump, however, will be challenged again to break this current cycle of incompetent multi-party governance entrenched in Washington.
As the big loser in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party will be challenged to restore itself as a credible alternative to maintain America’s long-standing successful two-party system for another 75 years. The 2024 election loser, Vice President Kamala Harris, is unlikely to be the interim Democratic Party leader following the retiring 82-year-old Joe Biden. The upper ranks of their Party that has ruled for most of the last twenty years will also be retiring. Their bench is depleted!
More significantly, how will the Democrats find a bridge between their Obama progressives and their previous Moderates, whom they have largely eliminated from the Party? What will be a new unifying theme that will restore the numbers needed to win national elections? After the Democrats lost to Republicans Reagan and Bush in 1980/1984/1988, it took them twelve years before they were able to create a coalition significant to elect moderate Bill Clinton in 1992, and only then with third-party help from Ross Perot.
America needs a strong two-party system to mitigate the corruption and rot that is endemic to any political group in power for too long. The roads taken by both parties should be paths that allow both to find enough common ground to travel together – not a road that has never been taken in American history since our founding in 1789.
TW3
John Whitmore Jenkins
November 14, 2024
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