POLITICS - Argument for a New Party System

"America Needs A New Party System" by Cliff Wilson, Cliff's Notes 5/13/2012

Many pundits say what this country needs is a third political party, one that mixes social issue liberalism with economic issue conservatism - we have that in the Libertarian Party but it hasn’t taken off. That’s because the American political system has been structured, by the state constitutions and election laws, to create and maintain a two party system. We use single districts with majority winner in a general election after party primaries to select legislators. We make it difficult for anyone but the candidates of the major parties, usually defined as parties that received a large threshold percentage of the vote in the previous state or national election, to get on the general election ballot...

What we need as the twenty first century unfolds is not another political party but another party system. We need major revisions in our election processes and election laws. California is pioneering a concept of holding a primary in which all can vote and all can run and the two major vote getters (regardless of party) are then on the November ballot. This has the advantage of giving voters whose party cannot win a gerrymandered district a voice in the general election. It also further reduces the value of party labels - and in many ways that is what parties have become now just labels.

From 1792 to 1818 we had our first party system. Two parties emerged, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, with sharp contrasts on governmental philosophy. That system ended when one party, the Federalists, became a regional party and was no longer a factor nationwide. After a few years of a no-party system a second party system emerged from 1828 to 1860 with two major parties Democratic and Whig. Although some third parties, e.g. the Liberty party, tried to break into the system it was only at the end of the system as the Whigs disintegrated (the first political victims of the slavery issue) that the American and Republican parties emerged with the latter quickly becoming the alternative to the Democrats. After the Civil War those two party labels continued as the denominators of the two parties in the third party system which lasted until around 1892. Then there was an interregnum as the Populists and the Socialists and the Progressives tired to break into the system but ultimately by 1914 we were back to the two parties: the GOP (which stands for Grand Old Party although the Democrats are older) and the Democrats. While the bases and philosophies have changed the two parties that emerged in the post progressive era descending from the two prior continue to this day. Whether we are in a fourth party system since WWII or still in the third I will leave to historians to debate.

It is time we had a new party system. Today the two parties have become both rigid in their ideology and exclusive in their activist membership. The party structures, usually limiting the role that average citizens can play and emphasizing areas of geographical turf that local leaders can easily control, are now ingrained in the various state election laws with most of those structures having been adopted in the first two decades of the last century - that’s right -- one hundred years ago. The party structures pick the candidates although if one has enough money one can enter a primary and win it. The voters are presented with two choices in November - if any since most districts in the country, both Congressional and state legislative, are so tilted toward one party that the other party often doesn’t even field a candidate. And, in many states there are methods by which a candidate can be on the ballot under the label of both of the national parties.

The current system has broken the government. The ideological chasm between the two parties has morphed into an endless state of campaigning with no willingness to compromise in order to govern because that would mean someone has to alienate their base (bad in a primary) or their donors (worse yet). There is no more moderate center in the Republican Party which is now right wing and tea party ultra right wing and radical religious right. And the Democrats now consist of New Deal liberals, labor union supporters, and social issue liberals (LGBT and Pro-Choice advocates). There are very few in either party who hold positions on the spectrum that differ with the bases of their party.

We need a system that recognizes the irrelevancy today of party structures and accepts the reality that voters are choosing candidates; and, activists are gravitating to campaigns and short term commitments to political involvement. We need a system that encourages compromise to find solutions to issues. That might come about if elected officials did not feel married to a party label and a majority of the members of a legislative body needed to work together to even organize the body not to mention pass legislation. We need a system that takes the best of the past two hundred years and tries new ideas to replace the worst.

I have been a lifelong Democrat. Not just one who votes for my party’s candidates but one who has been both elected as a Democrat to public office and served many years in party office. It is time to judge the willingness of candidates to be open minded on the issues and civil in their discourse and intelligent in their mode of governing. It is time to reject blind allegiance to the party label (JFK once said that party loyalty can sometimes demand too much; and we should remember that some of our greatest Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan left their original party to join another - though TR returned. The greatest party switcher of all time was Winston Churchill who I think belonged to three parties in his illustrious British parliamentary career.)

Let Americans divide if they wish on the matter of the role of government a matter they have always been divided on. Let them argue over the merits of a national government doing what states can’t or won’t do. Let them argue over whether we should impose particular religious beliefs on the entire population or embody the compassion and neighborly love that all major religions claim obeisance to.

I believe that the American democratic way of governing is the best yet devised. It needs to be modernized - we need to adopt ideas that work in other countries like direct election by popular vote of the President. And we need to make our party system work again - that is able to govern for all. We need a new party system one that is based not on the number or names of the parties but one that offers the voters choices and a path to functional governing.