The party is ending

Future is dim for the two major political organizations

WITH control of Congress, the White House and a majority of state governments, the Republican Party can claim to be stronger than at any time since 1928. On the other hand, many Democrats believe that their party’s edge among younger voters and growing nonwhite demographic groups has them on the brink of a new reign of power.

The truth is, both parties are in crisis — and may be headed for worse.

The Republican ascendancy is riddled with asterisks. The party’s control of Congress has only exposed deep and bitter divisions, as the pirates of Breitbart and talk radio turn their guns on House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Too riven to redeem its oft-sworn pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare, the fractured majority is now struggling to unite around tax cuts, the golden calf of the GOP. As the saying goes, power is what power does — in this case, not much.

At the White House, Republicans rule in name only. The man in the Oval Office owes zilch to the party, having mowed down more than a dozen GOP leaders representing every band of the party’s ideological spectrum in his 2016 coup. In office, he continues to train his Twitter flamethrower on Republicans much of the time. Meanwhile, the state-level GOP is waging civil war from Alabama to Arizona.

The internal bloodletting is at least as fierce, though perhaps less public, among Democrats. They, too, nearly lost control of their presidential nomination last year. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., showed scant desire to be a Democrat through his long political career in Vermont, but he has decided late in life to pursue an ideological takeover. The septuagenarian revolutionary continues to galvanize the left wing against leading Democrats, and neither he nor his people are interested in making nice.

In California, for example, veteran Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s announcement that she would seek a fifth full term provoked howls from the Sanders set. The former mayor of San Francisco is too centrist for them. Emboldened, the top-ranking Democrat in the state Senate, Kevin de León, has jumped into the primary. Although he may not be as progressive as the left would prefer, the mere fact of his challenge in the heart of Democratic America will cast a klieg light on party disunity. What makes today’s conflicts inside the major parties different from intramural elbow-throwing in the past? The rapid rise of unmediated democracy, enabled by the digital revolution.

For generations, the major parties have served as rival department stores anchoring opposite ends of America’s political shopping mall. They chose which products to offer and favored certain ones with their most prominent displays. They marshaled big budgets for advertising and thus loomed over the boutiques and specialty stores — the greens, the libertarians and so on —

chains are networks of contractors, spread over long distances including between countries, making components for the same product. Supply chains need dependable trade, which

would be threatened if NAFTA could be ended every five years.

Under NAFTA, any country can withdraw with six months’ notice. Whether Trump could unilaterally withdraw — without the concurrence of Congress — under U.S. law is unclear.

A move to abandon NAFTA would almost certainly be challenged in court. That is all that can be said with confidence.

Still, Trump seems determined to vilify Mexico and Canada. The facts say otherwise.

Tim Brinton