The United States is a two-party country; it does not operate as a European-style multi-party system. Since the end of World War II in 1945, the Democratic and the Republican Parties have worked together to solve the nation’s problems. At the end of the Cold War in 1990, the parties had grown so similar that voters could have flipped a coin to decide their vote without great anxiety if the other party prevailed.
Twenty-five years later, by the 2016 presidential election, many voters judged that both political parties had failed to adjust their policies to meet the massive changes needed. Both parties had left too many American citizens behind in their rush to implement new ‘globalization, welfare, and cultural’ policies.
Donald Trump, an outsider, began redefining the Republican Party with his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. With an abundance of brashness and braggadocio, he remade the Republican Party with a non-ideological, common-sense approach to governance. He completed remaking the party by winning a second term in 2024, but he lost the support of many mainstream Republicans. Trump’s Republican opponents became ‘Never-Trumpers’, but a new Republican Party emerged, led by Trump.
His victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election interrupted President Obama’s objective when, before taking office in 2009, he stated, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America”. By interrupting that transformation, and from that point on, Trump became subject to unabated Democratic opposition and animosity. Democrats joined in attributing all the planet’s evils – past, present, and future – to the evil persona of Donald J. Trump. This became known as the ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’.
During the Biden Administration (2020-2025), new Progressive Democrats had become the energetic face of the Democratic Party, and as a result, the moderate Democrats lost control of their party. Unlike the Trump Republican transition, though, the Democrats failed to develop new policies for a changing world. Instead, after losing the 2024 presidential election, the unifying policy of both the progressives and the moderates was one of ‘Resistance’ to anything President Trump proposed or accomplished.
As a result, the Legislative Branch stalemated and abdicated its Constitutional mandates, leaving governance decisions to presidential Executive Orders. These became subject to Judicial challenge and review and supplemented by an unelected Administrative State. The net effect of the governmental dysfunction is that the public is unhappy with the political chaos, and significant policy decisions are being postponed.
The U.S. Constitution did not mandate the economic system for the new nation, but it was assumed to be a free-enterprise, capitalistic system chosen by the People. Therefore, if most Democrats want to recreate America into a European-style welfare state or some other economically aggressive socialist/communist state, they are free to enter their ideas into the political process for evaluation. Any major changes must not otherwise conflict with the Constitution; however, a lawless revolution by force, as proposed by some radical groups in the 1960s and 1970s, should be resisted by federal force, and its leaders ostracized. We are a nation of laws, not emotional, unprincipled protests!
Our government was created by and for We the People. To be perpetuated for another 250 years, the great American experiment created by our Founders needs two responsible political parties. Before civil unrest causes irreversible damage to our society or outside forces force unwise decisions upon us, the Democratic Party needs to redefine what the Party represents and help restore responsible operations in the legislature to perform its proper constitutional role.
Stand up for your country!
A house divided against itself cannot stand! Abraham Lincoln
TW3
October 9, 2025
John Whitmore Jenkins
