Surviving Southern Democrats If Landrieu Goes Down

[The Mikado]

In the long run, I think the far more sharp partisan ideological divide between the two parties is a good thing for voter choice. Today more than any time in decades, the R or D actually means something, and that sort of concrete choice produces a far more active political climate and more true voter choice between two substantially different parties. Honestly, I'm not sure that the deeply entrenched GOP majority in the House is even all that much of a problem for the Democrats. I'd much rather take the current political climate over the one of thirty years ago.

[The Mikado]

And i - absolutely no. You had VARIETY then. Conservative Democrats, liberal Republicans, unpredictability of election results, because they were much more candidate-based then party-based.

Why is that desirable? Government by a bunch of individuals unaccountable to party power structures is basically the worst case situation.

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The Big Tent is the worst possible thing for both parties. It clouds the ideological basis of either party and reduces the meaning of the party label to an irrelevancy. The party label is supposed to be useful, it's supposed to allow you to tell "this person probably shares position X, Y, and Z." If it didn't, why even have parties to begin with? Politics is supposed to be the interaction of the political parties' leaders, loose-cannon politicians undermine the authority of figures like Boehner and Pelosi and make  their majorities hollow and false and limit the ability of a majority to actually do anything. More party-line voting is one of the main keys to restoring elections that actually mean something.