Posted on 11/01/2006 6:21:31 AM PST by ruffedgrouse
No young person who has ever followed politics with the ferocity of a sports fan, no citizen who has been an idealist for at least a few hours, hasn't daydreamed about a third party or independent candidate – a third party winner, actually. At some point everyone with a civic soul, no matter what their ideological flavor, has yearned for an independent spirit to break through the homogenized, cuisinarted horse manure that is modern American politics.
Yet we are stuck with the same two parties, ad nauseam. It's like a world where there are two baseball teams, the Yankees and the Dodgers. Every year since the 1800s they have played 162 games against each other, and then played each other in the playoffs, and then the World Series. The players change, but never the teams.
The Constitution says nothing about parties. The great and wise founding elders detested political parties, and promptly formed them and divided up. Thanks so much.
The Civil War gave birth to the current two-party setup of Democrats and Republicans. That should have been a warning.
In 1942, an early and eminent political scientist named E.E. Schattschneider declared flatly that the two parties had a "monopoly on power" in America. Nothing has changed since then. Absolutely nothing.
Third parties do not exist because the two big parties don't want them to. It's bad for business and it's that simple.
There are three kinds of barriers to third parties, two of them created by the monopoly parties. The Constitution, however, is a problem. The American system is winner take all: you win a plurality of votes; you win the whole state or congressional district. Most other democracies have various forms of proportional representation where parties are represented in proportion to the percentage of the vote. So in Italy, for a rough example with fake parties, if in a national election got the Conservatives got 60 percent, the Socialists 30 percent and the Liberals got 10 percent, the seats in the parliament would by divvied up almost in that exact proportion. In America, it's win or lose.
Still, that doesn't mean third parties candidates are prevented from winning elections at any level. So here's where the monopoly parties come in. First, they set up rules where Democrats and Republicans automatically get on ballots, but third parties have to jump through petitioning hoops. There are 51 different sets of laws to get on the ballot in this country, one for every state, plus Washington, D.C. Next they make it hard for third parties to raise money. Then they sleep well at night.
It's "Groundhog Day" meets Sartre. No wonder people tune out.
"Third parties do not exist because the two big parties don't want them to. It's bad for business and it's that simple."
You have to get up pretty early in the morning to be that wrong. The Republican party would love there to be a third party to split the D vote, and vise versa. The reason third parties do not exist is because whoever divides their vote will lose.
"The American system is winner take all: you win a plurality of votes; you win the whole state or congressional district. "
Congratulations- you've started on a journey where you will figure out the meaning of the word "Republic". There's value in actually being able to choose who you want to represent your interests, rather than just voting for a party.
This guy's whine is rather poorly conceived. The reality of the two party system is that anybody who is serious about winning joins one of the two major parties. Neither party is particularly discriminating on who they let in. People who can't win, but want to draw a lot of attention to themselves, go third party/independent. If you were to introduce a real third party- one that could compete with the DNC or the GOP, then you'd still have the same pool of candidates, just with some of them in a different party.
The reason we don't have "an independent spirit to break through the homogenized, cuisinarted horse manure that is modern American politics." come along and win all to often is because that's not who Americans want to elect. Every once in a while a freak show (like Jesse Ventura) comes along and wins, but their track records once in office tend not to be too swell.
Well done!
Seldom have I seen so many words used to come up with an argument so lacking in imagingation.
The lighter side first: With a last name that's 15 letters long, it's no wonder he goes by "E.E.". I hope his parents didn't saddle him with two long first names like Ebenezer Emmanuel.
On the serious side, I don't understand why this article is an acorn, unless it's an ACORN like that left wing voter fraud advocacy group.
I don't see why advocating independent candidates could possibly benefit Republicans or conservatives.
In my opinion, independent candidates are usually too liberal or whacky to qualify as conservative Republican and only serve as straw men, by drawing votes away from the chosen Republican candidates.
The independents that are too "out there" to run as Democrats are usually so far out there they don't affect the race one way or another.
I'm afraid this is going to be the case in our current MA gubernatorial campaign.
We have Christy Mihos, who decided against competing in the Republican primary and chose to run as an independent. Because he has the money to pay for the ball and rent the court, he's going to have his little game, then take his ball home, and leave us to pay the mortgage on the court.
Then we have a self-described "white lesbian" moonbat who's running under some umbrella called "Rainbow Green" or "Green Rainbow" or "Technicolor Gag Me with a Dildo" or something.
While claiming to "love Massachusetts", the self centered, delusional, egomaniacal Mihos is going inflict a moonbat of Howard Dean proportions upon Massachusetts, in the person of Deval Patrick, by sucking votes away from our admittedly weak Republican Candidate, Kerry Healey. Massachusetts will effectively become a SINGLE party state.
The "white lesbian" candidate...well, I don't even want to go there...but she's something akin to a bug on the windshield and about as visually appealing.
This whole fiasco almost perfectly mirrors the 1992 debacle that was perpetrated by Perot (and the non-candidate Nader) and resulted in F-ing Clinton...and...I can't go any further without taking my blood pressure meds.
"Seldom have I seen so many words used to come up with an argument so lacking in imagingation."
Ah yes, "imagingation". I guess that's what you go for when logic is beyond your grasp.
--Ah yes, "imagingation". I guess that's what you go for when logic is beyond your grasp.--
The "logic" is that the current "two"[sic] party system is so sclerotic and ossified that it really doesn't represent most Americans at all. This is one reason (not the only one, but a good reason) that voter participation tends to be so low. Why should voters vote for some "demopublican" who sings a good tune, but, after they are elected, suck the teat of whatever lobby or special interest they are beholden to? The USA is beset with numerous problems that neither "party" (i.e. wing) has any motivation to remedy. I have never in my life used the phrase "stuck on stupid" but that is the condition of the "two" party system at present.
--This whole fiasco almost perfectly mirrors the 1992 debacle that was perpetrated by Perot (and the non-candidate Nader) and resulted in F-ing Clinton...and...I can't go any further without taking my blood pressure meds.--
1. What makes people so sure Bush 41 would have won but for Perot. A one-eyed monkey would have run a more inspring campaign than Bush 41 did in 1992. Clinton's "war room" cleaned Bush 41's clock.
2. Assuming that Perot did take votes mostly from Bush41, blame that on a winner-take-all electoral college.
--If you want to win, you join one of the two major parties so that you will have access to their resources. If you've got any shot at winning anyway, at least one of them, probably both, would let you in. The independent vote is what the parties are usually fighting over anyway, so either of them would be more than happy to adopt a popular independent candidate--
Sure, and one the "independent" wins, then he is submerged into the bland banalities of the "demopublican" party, and loses the independent attributes that got him elected in the first place.
I meant "once" not one!
Thanks for reminding me Brilliant, in my distress, I almost forgot.
What sane person would ever use Italy as an role model of good government?
Like enough freaks don't get elected to government already, we need XXX stars making our laws?
"Sure, and one the "independent" wins, then he is submerged into the bland banalities of the "demopublican" party, and loses the independent attributes that got him elected in the first place."
That's called "politics". It'll happen with a third party too, or even independents once they start having to polarize and make deals with each other to get anything accomplished.
"That's called "politics". It'll happen with a third party too, or even independents once they start having to polarize and make deals with each other to get anything accomplished."
So what you are saying is that there is noplace in politics for the person with principles. If that is true, then what hope is there?
"So what you are saying is that there is noplace in politics for the person with principles. If that is true, then what hope is there?"
The hope is that we can manage to survive with an imperfect system. The perfect government is a fairytale. Welcome to reality.
"The hope is that we can manage to survive with an imperfect system. The perfect government is a fairytale. Welcome to reality."
The reality is that there is plenty of room for improvement. Welcome to hope.
"The reality is that there is plenty of room for improvement."
Yes, but only if one understands what he is doing and what the effect of any given change will be. Utopian thinking doesn't lead to improvement; it leads to people breaking things because they aren't perfect and then finding out that they can't fix them when it comes time to put them back together.
Neither did Japan after WWII. The difference between Japan and Germany after BOTH wars was that in Japan the USA (MacArthur) ran the whole show and gave them a government framed more on an Anglo-Saxon model.
Today Germany is doing pretty well. Her economic headaches are due mostly to getting the old DDR back in shape--a tough job.
Germans don't think so. They are very frustrated with their country's political system. So are the French. Their economies are in awful shape compared to the USA or even Ireland. The splinter parties make reform very difficult. The CDU-SDP coalition is a disaster and has only happened because of the small parties.
LePen is basically a Gallic Tom Tancredo. He has tapped in to the understandable anger Frenchmen have with obnoxious behavior of the Arab Muslims in their midst; just as Americans are incensed with illegal immigration primarily from Mexico. Chirac is a scumbucket, no argument there.
I am not a fan of Tom Tancredo, but I wasn't aware Tom was making jokes about the holocaust in public. LePen is even worse than Pat Buchanan, and yet he's one of the two candidates for President of the Fifth Republic?
France actually has supporters of Leon Trotsky that pull higher percentages of the vote for President than Buchanan did in 2000! Germany has former DDR Communists in the Bundestag alongside Greens and the Left Party -- all of whom think that Germany needs more socialism! These are examples for the USA?
Americans are too sane to EVER have a third party that last longer than one election. We're a two-party country. Deal with it, because it is not going to change.
"Utopian thinking doesn't lead to improvement; it leads to people breaking things because they aren't perfect and then finding out that they can't fix them when it comes time to put them back together."
I'm not saying that robust third-parties will turn the USA into a big rock candy mountain. Rather they will increase public participation and inject new, imaginative ideas, into a system that has grown unresponsive, hidebound and sclerotic. Really, what good is the system we have now if it is not doing its job. The transmission belt between the public and its representatives (the basic concept of what makes a republic) is broken. The system we have now has become detached from the people. Parties which truly represent large segments of the American people and are not part of the current monopoly are far more likely to listen to their constitutents and less likely (not NEVER, but less likely) to be corrupted by lobbies and special interests. No one is talking about "breaking" anything. The current framework (3 branches) of the government stays firmly in place, so does the Constitution. The Constitution says NOTHING about parties, it doesn't care if there is 1, 2 or a dozen parties. Get off the sofa and don't be so timid.
--Neither did Japan after WWII. The difference between Japan and Germany after BOTH wars was that in Japan the USA (MacArthur) ran the whole show and gave them a government framed more on an Anglo-Saxon model.--
Japan had a cohesive civil society and homogeneous population following WW2 (something Iraq lacks but that's a whole 'nother topic!) and, unlike post-WW1 Germany, was bouyed by lots of American investment. And yes being occupied by the Americans helped (and the Japanese by and large liked the American occupation as it kept away those nasty Soviets).
Germans may be ticked off with their political system (who isn't these days) but IRRC Germany is the world's second largest economy, bigger than Japan or China, so economically it's OK; it's not a tiger like Ireland, true.
There are former DDR communists in the Bundestag because the eastern Germans are disappointed with the pace of economic development in the old DDR--I guess they thought Bonn would wave a magic wand and there'd be a car in every garage (a Benz, not some POS Trabant, either).
--[LePen] was making jokes about the holocaust in public.--
France has always been a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Rember Dreyfuss? Remember collaborators during WW2. Just the nature of the beast.
--France actually has supporters of Leon Trotsky that pull higher percentages of the vote for President than Buchanan did in 2000!--
That's not saying much. Continental Europe has always been a breeding ground for scary political philosophies. Third parties with any signficance in the USA would--to hazard a guess--be the following.
1. Right of center parties like the Constitution Pary, maybe remants of 90s "militia" movement.
2. Libertarianism (but Libertarianism has run out of gas, Michael Lind wrote an essay in the UK Financial times illustrating the rejection worldwide of that philosophy)
3. Evangelical christian
4. African-American (chiefly in urban areas and the old south)
5. Agricultural
6. Hispanic (mostly in CA and the southwest)
7. Green (way left-of-center, deep enviro, poplular mostly in college towns and parts of the Pacific Northwest).
These groups would predictably caucus with the GOP or dems.
So it's not like there'd be hoards of European communists and brownshirts storming the barricades! There is no fertile ground in this country for such movements.
"Rather they will increase public participation and inject new, imaginative ideas, into a system that has grown unresponsive, hidebound and sclerotic."
No, they won't. There's no logical basis for thinking that a third party will behave in a fundamentally different manner in that respect than either of the two current ones. I suspect it comes from having an unrestrained "imagingation".
"Really, what good is the system we have now if it is not doing its job."
Our system's job is to provide political order while not oppressing the population. By that metric, it's doing, by historical standards, a fantastic job.
"Parties which truly represent large segments of the American people and are not part of the current monopoly are far more likely to listen to their constitutents and less likely (not NEVER, but less likely) to be corrupted by lobbies and special interests."
A party that represents a large segment of the population, but not the majority, is a special interest, If you think that more third parties would be good, but that special interests are bad, then you haven't thought about this nearly as deeply as you need to before trying to argue on it's behalf.
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