You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

You don't just flip a switch and just suddenly turn into Benito Doucholini one day. Trust me.

True, he's been heading down the crazy road for several years now -- think of how Trump was one of the top Obama birthers, he mentioned birther stuff constantly for years. If he was ever friendly at all with the Clintons, I highly doubt that survived past '08... unless you believe the highly entertaining, but unlikely, conspiracy theory that he';s actually working for them as an agent to destroy the Republican Party. :p

To be perfectly honest, I'm not all that sure he means half of what he says or that he intends to do anything along the lines of building a giant wall. Maybe it's because I don't want to take him seriously, but he doesn't make it easy. He scares me a lot less than Ted Cruz, who is a theocrat and an ideologue and the Zodiac Killer.

And this is part of why Trump is so scary -- it's so hard to take him seriously that you can overlook just how terrible he really would be as president, if he somehow won...

I just don't get the assertion that Clinton is electable; it's a common meme but the evidence does not support it. She's never won a contested election in her life,

That's not true, she has won two -- her first election to the Senate, which was competitive even if it is and her race this year for Democratic Presidential nominee. And yes, she's won, Bernie may technically still be in the race but it's over.

and just about every general election poll has her performing significantly worse against Trump than Sanders.

This is only because Sanders has been treated incredibly nicely by the Clinton campaign, and because the Republicans also are saying absolutely nothing negative about him. The Kochs even managed to say something nice about Sanders! That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident, they were just trying to get their favored opponent, so that after he's formally nominated they can open the floodgates and destroy him. And they would, there's plenty in his history that is great grounds for attack ads. And as for Clinton, she's been super-easy on him in order to not alienate his voters. This campaign has had some negativity, mostly from Sanders' supporters with their obnoxious waves of Hillary-hate, but compare this to even '08 and there is no comparison, that primary was much more negative.

The fact that an unknown Senator from Vermont is taking her to the wire, with her universal name recognition and dozens of DNC fingers on the scale, sounds to me like a terrible omen going up against someone who's really going to tear into her soft underbelly.

The upside here is that everyone already knows all the bad things about Hillary, She's been attacked from both left and right constantly for decades now. So far this campaign, Hillary has faced the most negative press, and the least positive press, and yet she's winning anyway. There are no surprises, and the attacks have already been used. She'll do fine.

I think it remains to be seen if the Republican Party ends up fracturing as a result of Trumpmania. If so, I think progressives need to follow suit and break away from the Democratic Party. [/COLOR]

Their party is fracturing, but we'll end up with two parties for sure, whatever those parties are. Most likely they'll be the Republican and Democratic ones, but who knows. Again, this country's political system allows for only two parties, so this really isn't an option. If we could change the political system, getting rid of first-past-the-post, etc, then sure... but that's probably not happening. Remember, you need a majority of the Electoral College to win the presidency. If no candidate has a majority of Electoral College votes, then the House decides, with one vote for each state, and this means Republicans win every time. And beyond that, since you can only have one winner in each district in all lower-level elections, it is very hard for a third party to gain any strength -- voting third party only ends up helping the party you most disagree with.

For one thing which would help here, I'd love to see ranked-choice voting go nationwide! It's a more complex but great system, and we started using it here in Maine for the Portland mayor's race a few years ago. There will be a referendum on this November's ballot over making that the rule for the governor and other major statewide races as well, and that'd be great and a huge improvement. Look up ranked choice, it's a good system.

ABF, I see where you're coming from, but when you ask "what would we replace it with if the current party system went down?" you come across as someone who thinks the entire political system would collapse without these two parties in place. I have a bit more confidence than that. I'm pretty sure our democracy would survive if they both came tumbling down with no other giant parties to fill the void.

I can't imagine how this could ever actually happen, but other parties would form in their place; political parties seem to be a natural result of having a representative democracy.