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A historical example with a different spin on your thesis: Alaska and Hawaii were together admitted into the union in 1959 as a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. With a large military base on its soil, Hawaii was supposed to be a Republican bastion (although it was moving left starting around the mid-1950s). Indeed, its only ever Republican senator, Hiram Fong, was elected the year that statehood was granted. Alaska, meanwhile, elected exclusively Democrat senators and representatives for a decade.

Nowadays, of course, Alaska is seen as solid red (despite a confusing ranked-choice poll in 2022 that resulted in the election of a Democrat representative); and Hawaii as virtually uncontested blue.

I have heard it said that the reason DC and Puerto Rico have not yet been made states is because there is no compromise to be achieved: it is assumed both would heavily favor Democrats during national elections. And indeed I have trouble seeing the city of civil servants swinging Republican in remotely near future (although if, as David points out, the Republicans were to take control of the federal government for an extended period of time, I suppose that's possible). But I believe Puerto Rico is quite open to being contested if Republicans were to give it a try.

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Thank you for not writing "an historical..." :-)

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I fear that what we are seeing is the demise of limited government power and a focus on markets instead of government intervention. It seems that the argument has gone from whether there should be someone wielding a lash to merely who that should be.

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"The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on" (from a short poem by William Butler Yeats).

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Full poem :)

The Great Day

HURRAH for revolution and more cannon-shot!

A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.

Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!

The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

W. B. Yeats

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Wonderful, thank you! I don't recall reading that, but I think I have a book of Yeats on the shelf around here... I wonder if I read it once years ago and forgot. It nails the point quite well in any case!

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I quote that poem in _The Machinery of Freedom_, so you might have seen it there.

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That seems likely as well. Come to think of it, it would be strange if one studied public choice theory and didn't come across that poem a half dozen times :D

By the way, how was Pennsic this year? Has attendance gotten back to pre-COVID levels? I know attendance at events was really low in 2021 and 2022 over here on the other end of the state, but I haven't had a lot of time to make it out the past year and a half so I am hoping it is getting better. I worry that lockdowns and the subsequent obnoxious rules (like having to wear a mask under your helmet while fighting outdoors) killed a lot of interest in the SCA, and volunteer driven events in general; my father tells me a lot of shooting matches stopped happening and still haven't picked back up.

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I think pre-covid attendance was running about ten thousand for several years and this year was about nine thousand, so a little down but not much. Not many people were wearing masks. There was some very heavy rain, including at one point hail, but other than that things were pretty normal.

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Aug 21·edited Aug 21

There's a book by Verlan and Hyrum Lewis called `The Myth of the Left and Right` I read recently.

They make the claim that in there is more than one issue in politcs(Left vs Right) for example Israel vs Palestine, Tariffs vs Free Trade, Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life and so it would be very surprising if you had people following different ideologies that they would align so strongly on 1 axis rather than be very multidimensional. To them, the expectation of a two-party system necessitates that and creates a myth that a Right and Left are coherent ideologies. Given the history of the american Left and Right there have been different periods of time where either the Left or Right have supported any given position. Bill Clinton has been `tough on crime`, against gay marriage and had a balanced budget. Trump is pro-tariffs and isolationist. Bush has been very supportive of aid to developing countries and also post 9/11 very regulationist. Free speech used to be a left-wing cause, etc etc. The further back one goes the more drastic the changes become and they claim if you go back far enough and a lot of times they swap back more than once.

It seems that the current positions of party X are some sort of markov chain transition of their positions in the previous elections based on some factors like their success at the previous election, the other party's positions, hot topics and some kind of search on what narrative they want to say about themselves.

This I think explains why neither of the two parties have any sort of more permanent document that one could use to derive their positions on any issue, because that would make them inflexible at time t+1.

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If Vance did become Trump's successor and successfully ideologically reshape the entire GOP in his image, I think it would reflect a shift towards populism that is broadly in line with the rest of the Western world. The recent legislative election in France is a good model for this hypothetical American political future. The populist right and left in France are both big government parties that made major gains while the pro-market center once again barely hung on. However, that is a system where more than two major coalitions can co-exist.

I don't think wokeism is going to die since that ideology is entrenched within both Gen Z and Millenial demographics that are now coming of age and becoming politically essential to Democrats. So, if Trump wins this election, and his ideology continues to dominate the Republican Party, the future will probably be two populist parties that are each closer to the fringe of the political spectrum. The center-right and center-left will still exist, they will just be mostly relegated to Congress as minority factions of their respective parties.

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Whether Trump wins or not, I fear the result is as you suggest - two populist parties with mildly different policy prescriptions but both in favor of heavy economic intervention by the state. Just look at the UK, where the Tory government that just lost is so indistinguishable from its Labour successor that the new Labour government is mostly just making minor changes to the things the Tories were doing (allegedly also being more competent, which is not hard to do). We will see who wins the Tory leadership race but for the moment the party is pretty much just a milder version of Labour and neither could be described as believing in free markets.

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That sounds all pretty sad, but honestly it's just the median voter theorem at work.

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Well, for now the Dems are embracing price controls.

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There has been a bit of back and forth between Prof. Alan Blinder and Prof. David Neumark on the minimum wage in the WSJ these days. Neumark has the evidence on his side.

This reminds me not of a policy reversal, but a theory reversal on the part of proponents of the minimum wage. When instituted by the Progressives just after 1900 the minimum wage was thought to be a cudgel against poor workers -- black and yellow, perhaps Irish. "They can't outproduce us [whites], but they can underlive us." The minimum wage was seen to make them unemployed, thus removing competition on the labor market.

Starting God knows when the minimum wage was seen by the Progressives, now called Liberals or Democrats, as having no effect on employment but rather as a mechanism to reduce poverty.

Pick your theory to suit your target audience and the facts be damned!

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