Hillary graciously absolving herself of any responsibility

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Alternatively, a conservative party will coalesce around the rebalanced political spectrum, and will have an easier time attracting urban moderates and Hispanics, blacks, and other minorities.

It would take a systemic and cultural change that begat at least three viable parties, then conservatism, mugwumps, and liberals could truly each have a home. Urban moderates are mostly moved out to the ruburbs and suburbs, as you are aware. I would DEARLY love to see race drop into the dustbin of history though.

Much of the country has gone into the diamond-hard right in recent history, and between them and liberals you don't get USSRA. It's only like that if you are ruthlessly protective of the legacy GOP institution, which demands ever-increasing polarization to shore up the philosophical and political deficiencies of the party.

The 'big tent' has made for some odd curlicues that do NOT meet anyone's needs readily. And parties seem to think of party first and state second -- even, as Russia shows us, when the party IS the state. Our Constitution is written absent party, (however unrealistic that Washingtonian hope), and it's flaws are plainest when party clashes with government convention. Both parties tend to act extra-constitutionally and by agreement not attack the edifice they create. Some of this is practical and needful (the Constitution was NOT the laws enacted, but their ultimate source of mutually accepted authority), some are nothing but bureaucratic empire-building or party protection tools. Far too much of the later persists.

Personally, I blame that fornicating bastard¹ Hamilton. Wrote beautiful prose in service of a limited federal government that was needful to coordinate the efforts of the separate states. Within ten years, he'd completely suborned the system to enhance federal power as embodied in a political party rather than a government. We'd have been better served as a nation if his argument with Burr had concluded about 8 years earlier.

Over many threads on the Org haven't we come to the conclusion that no act of politics can maintain the customary lifestyle in the long-term? It's a historical aberration and it's unsustainable.

I have never fully agreed with that theme, though I acknowledge that it is considered by many (most?) to be accurate and inevitable. I even agree, if you are referring to our standard of living in terms of comparison to the rest of the planet's societies. The idea that it is doomed to diminishment is too reflective of zero-sum economic thinking (and tends to presume that our standard of living success was only an act of exploitation, which is simplistic).

I wonder if you would be willing to exchange the EC for another arrangement, one equally undemocratic but less fixated on state-level demarcations. Or are you only in favor of limited democracy when it's more damaging to the opposition?

I am enough of a traditionalist to prefer the "several states" but I admit that is not the only way to arrange things to limit the power of an electorate to demolish its future to feel good about themselves in the present. Certainly other arrangements could be conceived to meet these ends, and a proper education/cultural emphasis on participating in the system are part of that. Currently, we have the latter without the former in all too many cases.

My fear is that someone will convoke another Constitutional convention -- the only real means of effecting a shift from states and the EC to different arrangements -- and that that new Constitution will attempt to be a "Homeowner's Association Covenant" version of government. God save us from that.

¹While I use these terms with a snarky tone, it should be noted that they are in Hamilton's case, simple description.