What if, when Obama leaves the stage, the Democrat that follows doesn't revert back to some Clintonian-like moderation and bipartisanship but instead builds on the model Obama has fashioned - which essentially amounts to taking Democrats' core constituencies of minorities, women, youth and the media and squeezing every last bit of advantage and electoral gain out of them? It pits one half of the country against the other half, it breeds anger and bitterness and distrust, and it perforce corrupts the media, thereby effectively hollowing out the first amendment - but if it wins elections, increasingly marginalises and demonises conservative thinking and thus slowly but surely pushes the country left, who cares, right?
So, if the Obama playbook of maximizing potential from core constituencies while not even bothering to appeal to conservative concerns becomes the go to approach of Democrats, what happens to the country? Well, the scheme could fail - but my guess is that only happens if the GOP substantially improves its game by doing much better at messaging, much better at mitigating toxic effects of biased press and media, much better at nominating candidates with broader appeal - problem with that is two fold: even if they manage that, demographics may undermine their efforts regardless; but more immediate problem I think is that it's much harder for conservatives to nominate people who can make the broader appeal while not completely pissing off the extremes of the base than it is for liberals and that's because, with the media's help of course, it's much easier to paper over the idiocy of the far left than it is to drown out the idiocy of the far right as far as moderates are concerned. The far left hates Hillary, but if she sounds like she'll be, at least in some vague ideological sense, Obama part two, they'll vote for her - but how do you get the far right to vote for someone like Christie?
So, assuming the GOP fails or proves incapable of effectively countering the Obama way, what happens? I'd say, because the Obama way is entirely dependent on the media and press playing along even when they apparently don't realise they're playing along [see press' glowing reviews of Obama's wholly disingenuous and beside the point Trayvon Martin performance], I'd say conservatives and many moderates who lean right will start to view the political process, at least as far as Washington is concerned, as illegitimate - they'll start to think of the country as having fallen to a quiet coup enabled by the media. What happens then is anybody's guess - could the country actually split apart? Seems unlikely but who knows. My guess is you get probably sort of what you have now, ie if GOP can keep control of the house that'll mean continuing gridlock in Washington which inevitably results in more and more power and initiative shifting to the states. Right now the only good governance you're seeing in the country is happening at the state level and not surprisingly most of those well run states are conservative. If things play out that way it may force Democrats into rethinking the wisdom of the Obama way.
Or the country could break apart.
