Response to Another Winnowing

(See: Just Above Sunset: Another Winnowing)

There's political metaphor and there's political metaphor:

Yes, the Republican Party may blow away in the breeze. It was only straw anyway, and everyone knows the only thing that straw is good for – soaking up hot steaming bullshit.

Okay, that explains fairly well how the party got this way, but the question remains what they -- and, for that matter, we Democrats -- are prepared to do about it. 

I'm betting that, by election day, Hillary's "indictment" problem will have been clarified, and am assuming we find out all of those "classified" items were classified after they were sent, and were so minor that they shouldn't have been classified in the first place. But I am wondering if that will even make any difference to those who say they can't trust her because of her so-called "email problem".

Unless something radically new pops up by then in the Vince Foster case, it's just possible that most voters will find they have essentially nothing more to keep them from voting for Hillary than the rest of us have -- that is, that she's a somewhat boring and predictable centrist drudge who will just keep things going pretty much they way they've been going -- as long as she's able to get past the fact that she's a woman, that is. (It's easy to overlook that, while there are probably millions of Americans who refuse to admit they don't like the idea of black American presidents, we may discover there are just as many secret bigots who don't like female ones.)

So the calculations will have come down to whether we can trust that all those Republicans who have been saying that if Trump is the candidate, they'll vote for Hillary -- or even the 30% of Ohio Republicans last night who said they will not vote for Trump under any circumstance -- will actually do what they say. Would they be more likely to vote for Cruz instead of Hillary? Would they vote for Ryan as a last-minute convention compromise?

I'm wondering if Donald will even bother doing the third-party route if the convention goes for someone else, despite him have a plurality of delegates. And I keep wondering when the cut-off point is for third-parties to get on ballots in all those states. Can it even be done?

But as hilarious as it all is, I once again hesitate to take too much enjoyment in the chaos amongst the Republicans since, in the long run, it never seems to do any of us any good. Assuming the country even survives the implosion of one of its two major political parties, will the election of 2020 be threatened by some new Trump-like "disruptor", or will we, by then, find some way back to normal government?

In fact, all this recent business of Trump shouting "little Marco" and "Go home to your mommy!" -- and that so many Americans treat that stuff as acceptable -- may be signs that the two-hundred-plus-year "Great American Experiment" may be coming to an end.