The Benefits of a Working Two-Party System

It should be noted that the only place where the Republican Party retained power on the federal level was where they could manipulate the vote by redrawing legislative districts - the House of Representatives.

In votes for the President, for Senators, for statewide ballot initiatives - everywhere they had no authority following the 2010 census to redraw the boundaries in their favor, they lost.

Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner has said that the fact that the voters returned Republicans to the House means there is no mandate in support of the President's budget policies. Yet, the reason people returned Republicans to the house is that the Republicans redrew the legislative districts in 2010 for that purpose. Even here, the Republicans lost seats.

Boehner, I believe, is well aware of this. He stands on an island of Republican construction - and even that island is sinking.

There are any members of the Democratic Tribe who are seeking the coup-de-gras for the Republican Tribe. They are plotting their moves in the next elections to take over enough seats to control the House.

This may not be the best option.

Another option would be a revised and reformed Republican Party that is actually capable of earning their seats rather than holding them through political manipulations. It would be one in which the Republican Party puts up quality candidates who can do a good job in the legislature - candidates who can toss aside the garbage that now contaminates the party and can come to the table with good ideas addressing real-world problems.

This clip offers the best message for the Republicans that can come out of the election.



In this clip, Rachel Maddow is not calling for the demise of the Republican Party - or even its removal from power. She argues that America is served best when different people bring their best ideas to the table to work out a product that has the best of everything.

Bill Clinton delivered the same message at the Democratic Convention. None of us are right all the time. We - each of us - benefit from inviting other people to bring their different knowledge and understanding with them so that, together, we can build something better than that which any one of us - or any group of us locked in a mutual admiration society - can build separately.

Maddow was able to provide a long list of things where the Republican echo chamber had become disconnected from reality - from the birther movement to the denial of global warming and evolution to the belief that if a woman got pregnant than she was not really raped.

These are not matters of policy - they are matters of fact.

There's real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation.

Democrat tribalists are engineering more power for themselves.

However, this is not necessarily the best outcome. It invites the Democrats to build their own bubble which, itself, will become disconnected from reality. They will tend to consider only those options mentioned in their own echo chamber, and find themselves incapable of thinking outside the bubble - to the detriment of all of us.

We do not need a take-over by the Democratic Party. We need the Republicans to start coming to the table with real-world solutions to real-world problems that they have approached from a different perspective - because sometimes they are going to have the better solution.

The real change - the positive change - that can come out of this will not emerge in the next election. It will emerge in the next Republican primaries. This is where we will see if the Republicans can put forward candidates who are capable of grasping reality.