it really is a dramatic party reversal.

20 years ago, you would have expected republicans to think this was the beginning of an end times prophesy and jesus was coming back any day, now. democrats would have laughed at them and told them the data doesn't justify much of any response at all, and been right.

nowadays, democrats seem to be the more pliable, more controllable population - the group that does what the media tells them, and perhaps even lacks the ability to think critically for themselves. we've apparently replaced evangelical christianity with alarmism from msnbc. and, while republicans as a whole may not be following the science very well, either, they are at least demonstrating a tendency towards skepticism, which is a prerequisite towards the embrace of rationalism and the acceptance of the primacy of empiricalism.

i would have never identified as a democrat in the first place, but, like most people several rungs to the left of the political spectrum, i've long seen the democrats as a kind of lesser evil - sometimes. ok, not really; when challenged, i've generally had difficulty making the point. were the democrats actually better than the republicans in the 1990-2020 period? we all say "yes", right away. it's a lot more difficult to make the argument using actual evidence.

and, i'm hardly about to endorse donald trump.

so, i'm not "switching parties". i was always a left-leaning independent that tended to pick between the democrats and greens, and i'm still going to lean towards preferring a third party option.

but, the democrats are increasingly becoming the stupid party, culturally - they're the party of pliable idiots that just repeat what the media tells them. they're the sheeple. they're the herd....

and, the republicans have a long way to go before they're an acceptable option. but they're at least moving in the right direction.

for now, biden v trump is like obama v romney - they're both so unacceptable, and in a lot of ways so similar, that who cares who wins, really?

but, i'm increasingly of the view that the republican candidate in 2024 is going to be well to the left of the democratic candidate, and we're going to see big shifts in voter preference.

it's just the trendlines - the republicans are still way too right-wing to even consider as an option, but they are trending hard to the left as they increasingly become the party of workers; the democrats have been hugging the centre for decades, and are now beginning to move decisively to the right, as they are increasingly defined as the party of evangelical blacks.

if those trajectories hold, it won't be long before the republicans really are the lesser evil.

right now, they're both unacceptable.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/816501871/poll-as-coronavirus-spreads-fewer-americans-see-pandemic-as-a-real-threat