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Here we are at the end of silly season, and it’s obvious we’ve got to do something about our two pointless political parties.
American democracy fully deserves an 1856 moment. You all remember that in 1856 the Whig Party collapsed, and split into two parties — the Know-Nothing Party, which disintegrated with the Civil War, and the Republican Party, which became the new second party. Here’s how I see it playing out.
The Republican coalition collapses. The libertarians are recruited by the Democrats, maybe after some time in the Libertarian Party; the fundies form their own, regional party, limited mostly to the Great Plains, the Deep South, and Appalachia.
A portion of the Democratic Party splits off and becomes the new second party.
I don’t think that second party will be the Green Party. What do you think?
33 Comments
Excellent question, cassiodorus. But the first pre-condition is the collapse of the Republican coalition of corporations, extreme libertarians, anachronistic anti-socialist, religious theocrats, and the remnants of white citizens councils. That either happens in 2014 or it’s the Democratic Party that collapses.
Here are the elements left outside the current duopoly — environmental activists, civil libertarians, antiwar activists, good government progressives, socialists, anarchists, social democrats. What part of the Republican coalition does the new second party pick up, and where does it make inroads into the Democratic Party? Where does an honest-to-goodness populist movement end up in this scenario?
Please add labor, without which no viable third party will be relevant, imo.
Sadly, the Democratic Party is far more likely to collapse than the GOP. The much abused base will walk away, as early as tomorrow, from what the Professional Democrats have turned the party into. Where they go is not clear, but the GOP may be ascendent for a very long time.
I kept trying to figure out how to add labor without it being the established union leadership but the rank-and-file plus non-union labor that isn’t buffaloed by fear of standing up.
I rather suspect that the Republicans will collapse because the Democratic Party is hard at work today depriving the Republican Party of a reason to exist now. Why vote Republican when the Democrats will do everything the Republicans want?
I was thinking along the same lines, particularly since tomorrow’s entertainment will be the contest of the billionaire (Kochs, Pete Peterson, Sheldon Adelson) R’s vs. the bank (Citi, BoA, JPMChase) D’s.
Do you consider the structurally unemployed also outside of the duopoly or are they already dispersed within the groups you mention? They would certainly seem to be outside the influence of the established union leadership. Thanks.
Eleven-dimensional chess, now I get it.
The Democratic Party is not going to collapse now. They’re completely united for Obama and everything he wants. Now, maybe later…
there won’t be any collapse of either party, as long as they have billions propping them up.
a few years ago it was predicted that the democrats would collapse, then it was predicted that the Republicans would collapse.
They need each other, and neither party will let that happen.
Good point. And the houseless as well. Not having a permanent address makes it hard to be enfranchised.
The big question in creating that sort of coalition is what platform stictches all of the pieces of the coalition together and how do they operate so as to have a presence in all 3080 counties of the US.
If they’re occupying the same political space, one or the other will have to go. The key to another party is redefining that political space so that Republicans can’t use the socialist foil to keep the corporatist Democratic Party at bay and Democrats can’t pretend to be more progressive than they are willing to act. That requires a strong coalition to the left of the Democrats.
I don’t think anything will change for the better; if anything, it will get worse.
The increasing inertia of disenfranchisement and graft is the trend that will eventually win out. The decline of either party is merely a symptom of this overall issue.
Rational self-deterministic voters, in a fair system, would vote more and more for alternatives. Our voters, specifically the 5-10% swing voters (esp. in swing states) who decide the elections, are not rational, and our system is not fair. So they will not vote for 3rd parties. The status quo will remain.
The result is that fewer Democrats and Republicans will vote at all; I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next 10 years voter participation drops into the 40% range. And the remaining smaller electorate will be constituted of the most shrill, well-financed, and fundamentalist fringe elements of each party. They will get worse, and like spouses in a bad marriage, they will make each other worse & bring out the worst in each other.
Hmm, interesting thought exercise. As for myself, I plan on going tomorrow to change my party affiliation from Dem to Green. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Jill in this election, largely because there are no structural support/power systems at the federal level that would allow her to get any of the changes we so desperately need done. Changing the 2 party system is a loooong game, and the only way to accomplish it is from the bottom up. It took the european green party more than 20 years to reach real power, and that was in a system that was already parliamentary. It will take longer for us. We need to seriously start running 3rd Party candidates in every local and state election, and work our way up. I’m going to help with that starting tomorrow.
The GOP is much closer to collapsing, as has been apparent since the rise of Tea Parties. Or if not collapsing, they have retreated into a more conservative more white male dominated party that must re-orient demographically or continue spiraling downward.
No amount of wishful thinking can obscure the fact that this diary is yet another attempt to remake wishful thinking into substance without offering anything substantive (see Stoller, Matt for further explication of this phenomenon).
Like most all of the progressive third party echo chambering of the prior two years at least, you advance arguments that are not even arguable, at best. Hypotheses, or in this case a straining for a historical comparison with an agrarian young nation that doesn’t exist in present terms. Yes, there are similarities, but in practical political terms even these point to opposite conclusions than you draw.
Demographically, the US in 2012 is vastly different from the US of 1856.
Women can now vote and represent head of household in 20% of families. They are poorer than average. African Americans are now free in all 50 states, except where they are incarcerated in heinous numbers out of proportion to their share of the population. People of Latino descent are now the largest growing immigration bloc and the second generation will soon overwhelm the aging white majority. The fact is, latinos along with Asians and African Americans, are solidly within the Democratic Party.
Any intelligent response by progressives would be to take these givens (AKA “facts)” and work with them to grow and reform the Democratic Party, which in turn will help push the more conservative trending GOP closer to extinction, or its own re-birth relatively to the left of where it is today, which means back towards the center-right.
Progressives should be seeking to form coalitions also with the young and the libertarian minded disaffected white voters who fall roughly into the “socially liberal, fiscal conservative” category.
While there is certainly disagreement between what progressives believe and what libertarians believe,there is also a wide amount of agreement on many issues, especially wrt social policy and foreign policy.
In fact, the libertarian ethos seems ascendant on the conservative side, replacing the paleocons of an earlier time, who are also dying out along with their neocon cousins.
The green party, or whatever banner third party progressive are huddling under today is less organised and still leaderless. The so-called “thought leaders” like Greenwald (who also advocates a libertarian-progressive coalition and is himself broadly libertarian in outlook) or Matt Stoller, a smart man who has unfortunately also succumbed the third party echo chambering, don’t count as leaders. They are commentators, pundits filling a need to a defined audience.
Coalitions. Growing the mass into an influential progressive bloc. Expanding the tent to include those with whom we dont agree 100% but do agree on certain vital issues.
This is what truly accompanied the implosion of the Whigs and the birth of the GOP.
These are real lessons of US political history to study, not merely conflating “the Whigs collapsed” with wishing and hoping that is backed by nothing in the present except echo chamber….or accounts at all for the future trend of the US, which is increasingly non-white and has more immediate concerns that a coalition within the Democratic Party represents. This coalition needs to be expanded in time it has a chance to undo the DLC, especially if events dictate more economic decline and increasing levels of poverty. Further splintering into < 1% accomplishes nothing for progressives.
And yet, you are not alone. Others are dreaming exactly as you are dreaming.
Have a great day, people!
Talk about wishful thinking …
The only way to “reform” the Democratic Party is to kick them in the fucking balls by letting them know that disregard for what the left stands for (that is, what used to be mainstream Democratic Party principles) will cost them elections. That means not voting for them. Anything less than that will be co-opted by the Wall St./MIC wing, including Obama, which actively suppresses and works against progressive principles.
And no, we don’t need “coalitions” with the socially liberal but fiscally conservative. That stance is a perfect description of the current Democratic Party leadership. Let the Libertarians form their own third party around their delusional ideology.
I suspect that the major issue here in the US over the next four years will be the same as the major issue in Europe — austerity vs. anti-austerity. When the rosiest economic forecast is subpar growth or mild recession and the specter of economic collapse hangs over all of us, any party that champions New Deal-type measures and savages banks and corporations can pick up huge support. That leaves out the current Democratic and Republican Parties, unless as in the ’30s they shift radically leftward.
I am registered Socialist Party USA in Florida. I agree that the Green Party has little chance of expanding beyond an upper-middle-class professional base. I think the best chance for a new party will be by starting in State government and in US House elections on wither coast, as a coalition of working-class movements and left intellectuals.
Either (or both) not wither.
Not a bad idea.
It’s unfortunate about the Green Party, which has had some gains and enjoys some measure of power in other countries like Germany & Australia.
I’m not sure where the problem lays with the Greens, as I feel that they could’ve become a more powerful force even beyond the typical “limosine liberal” demographic.
That said, I’d be happy to see some kind of Labor Party emerge to truly represent (hopefully) those of us in what’s left of the middle & working classes.
It’s a complicated one. There are labor groups (OurWalmart, Walmart Warehouse Workers) that aren’t unionized, and some spin-off unions, and I wish I could remember some of their names. Don’t have time to dig up my posts to search. One is a global workers organization.
But including labor would encompass a lot of people of color, too. But the alliances would need to make clear of what benefit it/they intend to be to all potential affinity groups, of course. ‘Choosing each other’ might describe what’s ahead.
Bingo, Booyah! and purrrfect, fredcdobbs.
There isn’t the same amount of environmental awareness among working class Americans (I come from that place) that there is in Germany (especially) for a variety of reasons, and there isn’t any awareness at all among upper middle class types of how the majority of Americans live. To paraphrase Marx, life is before anything else eating and drinking, clothing one’s self and putting a roof over one’s head, etc. I am over-simplifying of course, but I think that the lack of understanding among both groups is more difficult to transcend here than in Europe.
The one that’s going to go is the Republicans, because their public relations department is markedly inferior to that offered by the Democrats. As for the space opening up to the left of the Democrats, very few people are now currently interested in that space. Maybe later, when they discover what is entailed by corporate Obama worship amidst vows of poverty…
Donkeytale prefers dismissals to argument.
Here’s one way in which Europe (or at least the UK) views politics in the US:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/03/obama-african-americans-paradox
Donkeytale prefers arguments based on facts. He dismisses arguments based on if only.
Donkeytale dismisses arguments based emanating from belief systems that circumvent, modify or dismiss facts that contradict the belief systems of the believers.
donkeytale dismisses the same arguments that have been made every four years for twelve years running, (twenty, if you count H. Ross Perot) expecting a different result.
I will give you credit here, however. In this diary you warily circling reality, if not exactly embracing it.
Says you.
That could be considered an ad hominem. Do you ever qualify your opinions and just that, as in, in my experience, etc.? It’s a put down the way you’ve stated it. And, not appreciated by this FDL commenter.
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Cassiordorus,
Have you voted today? Have your sticker?
I’m just suspicious of folks who seem to see their own words posted on a world wide wide site, one that gets a lot of hits, and who spend a lot of time putting others down, or otherwise acting like their opinion is the only one that counts.
Frankly, I’m surprised you are still here. Maybe not so much after tonight.
May I recommend that you read the bottom portion of the comments of this diary of mine:
http://my.firedoglake.com/cassiodorus/2012/11/03/the-case-against-obama-and-for-liberal-despair/
in which I attempt to instruct donkeytale in the fundamentals of debate while donkeytale continues to “go at it” with a steady stream of dismissals.
The record is clear.
You want to target certain individuals to the point of making that comment to me with a link?
Seems kind of funky to me. I realize that this is election day and emotions are running high, but I’m not going to follow someone’s personal grudges against another commenter. More important things to get done.
Did you vote today, yet? I have.
I don’t know what your beef is with the OP, I voted absentee and didn’t get a sticker, but I have voted in every election since 1984, and voted Socialist Party USA in Florida this time. My dream would be that Obomba loses there by roughly the same amount as the votes cast for left parties.