Sep 17, 2026 10:22 PM
(This post was last modified: Yesterday 06:22 PM by C C.)
PETER ZEIHAN (geopolitics)
https://youtu.be/IMRHLq6hiiI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: And as promised, we’re now going to take the whip to the Democrats. Now that we’ve already dealt with Trump. Okay, so there are two strategies that political parties can use in the United States.
[...] The Republican strategy is to not necessarily get the most voters possible, but to get the most reliable coalition possible. So, you know, your business voters don’t care about what happens with national defense. Your military voters don’t care about what happens with abortion. Your abortion voters don’t care what happens with fiscal issues. Everybody has the issue that they care about. They show up and they tend to win because it’s very, very reliable, even though they don’t have more voters than the Democrats.
Now, this strategy is now failing under Trump, because he has gone out of his way to eviscerate four of the main factions. And it’s not clear that there’s enough left to vote for him to win anything ever again.
But the Democrats, not to be shown up when it comes to dysfunction, have their own problems. See, their strategy is the full big tent strategy. You throw as wide of a net for potential voters as possible so you can get every possible vote. The problem with that is you’re going to include factions that are opposed to other factions in the coalition.
]...] So getting all these people to show up to vote means you can’t talk about policy. And if you do, you’re going to fracture the coalition and people won’t show up. So any candidate that tries to run ... on the issue ... they're probably going to lose. But a candidate who can ignore the policy issues and run on charisma can paper over the difference. Then you get everybody showing up in numbers, and that’s a Barack Obama or a Bill Clinton.
Well, the Democrats this round have two real problems. Number one, they don’t have anyone with charisma at all. And it’s a by-election. [...] ever since Joe Biden became president, and especially since he left, the Democrats have been leaderless, rudderless, and policyless. And it’s just really hard to generate an electoral program that is more sophisticated than "we hate Trump". ... that might not be enough because it wasn’t enough the last couple times they tried that.
[...] Piece two is that the coalition -- the big tent -- has failed. While Trump has imploded the Republican coalition, he has succeeded in drawing a lot of voters away from the Democratic coalition. So if you look at how people actually voted the last time around, under 30 split almost right down the middle, so did Hispanics, so did organized labor. And these have been three vote banks for the Democrats going back 50, 60 years.
[...] About the only real hope that I see for a meaningful shift is if ... old school Republicans who don’t like MAGA, stay home or start acting like swing voters, which honestly is what they are now.
[...] But even in that specific scenario, which I think has an even chance of happening, you’re still not going to get two thirds of the Senate to be blue. And without that, we’re in a situation where Congress is hung, the president cannot be impeached, and we just have another two years of what we’ve had this last year...
The Democrats are screwed, too ... https://youtu.be/IMRHLq6hiiI
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/IMRHLq6hiiI
https://youtu.be/IMRHLq6hiiI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: And as promised, we’re now going to take the whip to the Democrats. Now that we’ve already dealt with Trump. Okay, so there are two strategies that political parties can use in the United States.
[...] The Republican strategy is to not necessarily get the most voters possible, but to get the most reliable coalition possible. So, you know, your business voters don’t care about what happens with national defense. Your military voters don’t care about what happens with abortion. Your abortion voters don’t care what happens with fiscal issues. Everybody has the issue that they care about. They show up and they tend to win because it’s very, very reliable, even though they don’t have more voters than the Democrats.
Now, this strategy is now failing under Trump, because he has gone out of his way to eviscerate four of the main factions. And it’s not clear that there’s enough left to vote for him to win anything ever again.
But the Democrats, not to be shown up when it comes to dysfunction, have their own problems. See, their strategy is the full big tent strategy. You throw as wide of a net for potential voters as possible so you can get every possible vote. The problem with that is you’re going to include factions that are opposed to other factions in the coalition.
]...] So getting all these people to show up to vote means you can’t talk about policy. And if you do, you’re going to fracture the coalition and people won’t show up. So any candidate that tries to run ... on the issue ... they're probably going to lose. But a candidate who can ignore the policy issues and run on charisma can paper over the difference. Then you get everybody showing up in numbers, and that’s a Barack Obama or a Bill Clinton.
Well, the Democrats this round have two real problems. Number one, they don’t have anyone with charisma at all. And it’s a by-election. [...] ever since Joe Biden became president, and especially since he left, the Democrats have been leaderless, rudderless, and policyless. And it’s just really hard to generate an electoral program that is more sophisticated than "we hate Trump". ... that might not be enough because it wasn’t enough the last couple times they tried that.
[...] Piece two is that the coalition -- the big tent -- has failed. While Trump has imploded the Republican coalition, he has succeeded in drawing a lot of voters away from the Democratic coalition. So if you look at how people actually voted the last time around, under 30 split almost right down the middle, so did Hispanics, so did organized labor. And these have been three vote banks for the Democrats going back 50, 60 years.
[...] About the only real hope that I see for a meaningful shift is if ... old school Republicans who don’t like MAGA, stay home or start acting like swing voters, which honestly is what they are now.
[...] But even in that specific scenario, which I think has an even chance of happening, you’re still not going to get two thirds of the Senate to be blue. And without that, we’re in a situation where Congress is hung, the president cannot be impeached, and we just have another two years of what we’ve had this last year...
The Democrats are screwed, too ... https://youtu.be/IMRHLq6hiiI