Know your Opponent

[GeneCC]

Tom Wolf's PhD Thesis from MIT. It's not easy reading because it's a bunch of terms. Tough to write easy reading, easy to use jargon.

"Ultimately the Thesis suggests that the institutional character of the House (of Representatives) is best explained by the peculiar changes which encouraged that body's national constituency to discard the political norms, the organizational assumptions, and the political expectations which has so marked the American political culture of the late nineteen century, and to adopt those which increasingly after 1908 began to mark those of the twentieth century. The weakening of the political party at the turn of the century, the particularization of the of the national issue agenda, and the transformation of the norms of public participation in political affairs shaped (and were clearly reflected in) the process which took the House from its nineteen century institutional form into its twentieth century institutional norm". (quoted under Fair Use).


http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/37368


Let's see how long it takes for Governor Wolf to have MIT withdraw his thesis, like Hillary took her Wellesley thesis offline and Obama sealed his academic records. Hopefully he leaves it up there so that we who disagree with him can learn how he thinks.

[GeneCC]

Dr. Wolf's adviser was Walter Dean Burnham. He wrote a book about "Critical Elections", that discusses how Legislatures change in "critical elections".

Burnham's 1970 book Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics presents a theory of American political development that focuses on the role of party systems that endure for several decades, only to be disrupted by a critical election. Such elections not only hand presidential and congressional power to the non-incumbent political party, but they do so in a dramatic way that repudiates the worn-out ideas of the old party and initiates a new era whose leaders govern on a new set of assumptions, ideologies, and public policies. The elections of 1860 and 1932 are perhaps the clearest examples of critical elections, and scholars have disagreed about how well Burnham's theories still explain American electoral politics. Others contend that 1968 was a realigning election for Republicans holding the presidency from 1969 to 1977 and again from 1981 to 1993.

Realigning election (often called a critical election or political realignment) are terms from political science and political history describing a dramatic change in the political system. Scholars frequently apply the term to American elections and occasionally to other countries. Usually it means the coming to power for several decades of a new coalition, replacing an old dominant coalition of the other party as in 1896 when the Republican Party (GOP) became dominant, or 1932 when the Democratic Party became dominant. More specifically, it refers to American national elections in which there are sharp changes in issues, party leaders, the regional and demographic bases of power of the two parties, and structure or rules of the political system (such as voter eligibility or financing), resulting in a new political power structure that lasts for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Dean_Burnham

n the U.S. Walter Dean Burnham argued for a 30–36 year "cycle" of realignments. Many of the elections often included in the Burnham 36-year cycle are considered "realigning" for different reasons. Some political scientists, such as Mayhew (2004), are skeptical of the realignment theory altogether, saying there are no long-term patterns: "Electoral politics," he writes, "is to an important degree just one thing after another.... Elections and their underlying causes are not usefully sortable into generation-long spans.... It is a Rip Van Winkle view of democracy that voters come awake only once in a generation.... It is too slippery, too binary, too apocalyptic, and it has come to be too much of a dead end."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realigning_election

[GeneCC]

The Governor has flat out vetoed various budgets submitted by the Republicans while making childish excuses. He also has had piss contests about Marcus Brown. We don't know what other antics he's been pulling.

Is Governor Wolf trying to create a "Critical Election" so that he can impose his batshit ideas onto us, including more Gun Control? Kind of like Harry Truman's "Do Nothing Congress"?