According to a recent nation-wide Gallup poll identification with both the Republican and Democratic political parties continues to decline. Republican identification has declined from 30% to 25 % since 2008 while, during the same time, Democratic identification has declined from 36% to 31%. However since 2008, Independent identification has surged to 42% and reached as high as 46% during the third quarter of 2013.
There are arguments questioning the benefits of political parties, in fact George Washington didn’t like them at all – predicting they would create unnecessary divisions. However, I tend to believe political parties are useful in organizing and focusing political strategies, actions and programs. Organized political parties over time have been important, if not essential, in allowing our government and society to move progressively into the future.
The declines in both our two major parties have significantly contributed to a very unproductive stalemate in our nation’s governance and thus in society in general. In the past, older parties have declined and newer ones have emerged which better reflect the tenor and needs of the times. The Whigs morphing into the Republican Party and producing an Abraham Lincoln just when we needed one is a prime example. Today may be just such a time.
So what might the overall general profile of a new political party look like? One that would more effectively unite and move our society forward than our presently declining two major political parties. What’s the sweet spot in today’s American socio-political dynamic? I sense it lies in a combination of social liberalness combined with fiscal prudence and responsibility.
Republican’s often decry undue and careless fiscal governmental spending, and the taxes increases that come with it, while tending to promote conservative social policies such as those around immigration, voting rights, and woman’s rights. This is not where the average American resides politically. The Democrats tend to practice a governance of throwing money at large complicated and nearly unmanageable public programs while tending to support liberal social policies. This also is not where the average American resides politically.
I suspect the growing number of Independents, as well as many Republicans and Democrats, would be attracted to a political party that offered liberal social policies – consistent with the deep American value of personal liberty – combined with efficient, transparent and effective management of public programs and responsible fiscal policies. In other words, do govern but stop throwing large gobs of money into poorly planned, unmanageable public programs and then walk away thinking you have done a great job of governing.
It is often observed that Republican’s like smaller government and Democrats like bigger government. I don’t believe either is true. Actually, I believe both Democrats and Republicans generally like government and don’t object to the government playing an active role in our American System as long as it does so with reason, restraint and transparency. This means government can play a productive and active role by leading and guiding other institutions, private and public, toward our shared traditions of fairness, equality and liberty. Teddy Roosevelt’s Bully Pulpit is a good example I suspect most Democrats, Republicans and Independents can agree upon. But alas the art and spirit of good governance is lacking in today’s America – being presently supplanted by a distinct lack of political vision and courage.
However, I am confident that we will emerge from our present state of political paralysis. Our Constitution, as well as our collective commitment to a free and open society, remains well intact. These things go in cycles and this may well be a calm, if not lethargic, pause before the storm of change once again wells up – as is our historic tradition. American has a unique way of meandering about in an apparently inchoate fashion only to suddenly arise like a Phoenix revealing a seemingly subliminal force of strength, reason and focused resolve. As Winston Churchill once said: You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else”.
Well, no. Only cartoon Democrats are for “throwing money” at stuff. Republicans are pretty explicit about wanting small government. No liberals regard big government as a goal in itself — except maybe, maybe, maybe when they point to the need for fiscal stimulus during downturns.
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We don’t appear at all to be at the point where, say, the Whig Party disappeared and its remnants largely absorbed into the Republican Party in the 1850s. Instead, we’ve achieved an odd juncture where epistemic closure on the right seems to have unmoored one side of the political spectrum from seeing things as they are. It will take a major paradigm shift on right, and there doesn’t seem to be enough churn or conflict over there to generate a paradigm shift this decade.
In some agreement with kbusch. You say:
“I suspect the growing number of Independents, as well as many Republicans and Democrats, would be attracted to a political party that offered liberal social policies – consistent with the deep American value of personal liberty – combined with efficient, transparent and effective management of public programs and responsible fiscal policies.”
We call that the Democratic Party. You’re contrasting some outmoded ideas of the two parties — the only party that has passed a balanced budget in recent times is the Democratic Party. The only one that contributes to positive growth in employment rates is the Democratic Party.
With the decline of civic involvement in almost any form, why would political parties be the exception? I don’t know if it’s a matter of the big two not offering “what people want” (which is always some mythic middle that neither party is apparently bright enough to chase) but rather the fact that people just aren’t joining anymore. The combination of overwork and easy entertainment is fracturing that civil society.
What this all also puts into focus is the success that the Republicans have had in defining what the Democrats are, so much so that you just can’t have a reasonable conversation with certain people because they believe that message 100%.
Maybe the biggest problem with Dems is that they act way too timidly most of the time, in either combating the image defined by the Republicans or in enacting their policies when they are in power (see first two years of Obama presidency).
I was going to quote that and have the same line. The OP, while presumably far better intentioned and reasonable man than the Great Stache at the Times, reminds me of a particularly terrible piece where the Great Stache wanted a ‘centrist, Bloomberg style, leader who did x,y, and z’ and proceeded to list pretty much everything Obama did in his first term and stood for. I think a lot of centrists and independents are attracted to the idea of having no party or a third party somewhere in the middle where ‘everyone is’.
These are mostly Rockefeller Republicans or soft libertarians from the Wall Street and Silicon Valley set who are tired and terrified with the religious right but still believe the ghost of McGovern controls the Democrats. These are the people who gave McCain 2000 so much money, and who tried and failed to get Bloomberg to run in 2008, the same crowd behind the failed Unity 08/Americans Elect experiments, and the same crowd backing McCormack in the upcoming Governor’s race.
The same crowd who reflexively fear unions, reflexively fear ‘bigger’ government, and meekly go with whatever the latest policy fad in the Acela Corridor is, whether it’s the Iraq War or charter schools. Largely the Democratic party is this party, and some would say this is for better as well as for worse.
…First, the ones who, as has been said often, thoroughly despise Republicans yet continue to believe everything the GOP has to say about the Democrats and secondly, those who are thoroughly confused by the entire mess but are adamantly unwilling to admit so to a pollster… The secular equivalent of the well used phrase: “i’m not religious, I’m spiritual’…
There is, actually, a significant amount of social pressure, not to mention media heat and light, sound and fury, and all that, behind the notion of ‘engaged citizen’… and the presumption you have made is that, should someone be willing to identify themselves as either ‘Republican”, “Democrat’ or “independent”, it is because of underlying cogitation upon the terms. But the default position, frankly, is ignorance, sometimes willful, sometimes not, and not full and active engagement… and the ‘growing number of independents’ is, actually, a growing number of people who are alienated and who, when pressed on the question of their engagement by pollsters or polls, are either unwilling or unable to articulate their alienation other than with a rather knee-jerk ‘plague upon both houses’ stance.
For myself, I don’t blame them for their response to alienation. The system as it is designed is pretty simple, but it has been gamed extensively and not for the better. Perhaps this is the fault of the parties themselves… but I don’t think it’s the fault of the existence of parties to begin with… at one point both parties (or any party) recognized that alienation was wholly a detriment to the system. Now they (both) accept alienation as a given, just as long as it stays under the tidy moniker of ‘independent’.
The pundit class largely sees the ‘muddled middle’ as some sacred high priesthood demanding reasonableness and bipartisanship-that these so called soccer moms or nascar dads somehow hold the pulse of the popular zeitgeist justifying the fact that one sparsely populated purple county in suburban Ohio matters more electorally than Cook County, Middlesex County, or any of the NYC boroughs combined.
In reality, the bulk of these ‘undecided voters’ or ‘swing voters’ are actually quite ill informed and have no idea what they want when they vote. I recall a 2012 times article about such a swing voter in Waukesha Wisconsin, one of these perennial battlegrounds we always hear about; who had voted in her lifetime for Humphrey in 68′, Nixon in 72′, Carter in 76′, Reagan in 80′, Mondale in 84′, HW Bush in 88′, Clinton in 92′ Dole in 96′, Bush in 2000, and Kerry and Obama in 2004 and 2008 respectively. She was leaning Romney at the time of the article since she ‘disliked Obamacare’ in spite of stating earlier in the interview she wanted a Canadian system like the kind “her cousin in Ontario had”. Even the Times feted her as some kind of guru or auger for the election, when in reality, she was frankly an uninformed idiot.
Committing to a political party, even a minor one, is a basic act of citizenship and political maturity, and most people who choose unenrolled are the worst kind of voter. The kind that feel they owe it to the country to get registered, but have no idea about government or the faintest interest in finding out.
There are exceptions-our own CentralMassDad and it seems Pericles are a lot closer to being truly centrist and committed to voting for the candidate over party-they are the folks David Broder and now David Brooks pine for in their sleep. Reasonable middle to upper middle class voters like this once decided elections and made up the backbone of the progressive wing of the Republican party, occasionally defecting to Johnson in 64′ or backing Anderson in 1980. They were college educated, not from working class households and immune to populist ideas on the left (labor!) or the right (Archie Bunker style resistance to racial and social change). Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach personifies the ideal candidate for this set, or the fictional Arnold Vinick from the West Wing. But very few voters in the country at large would be willing to vote for such a candidate these days. It’s something the centrists always fail to realize.
He referred to people who say what we need is a centrist party. His response: “We already have that – their called Democrats; what we need is an actual liberal party.”
First — as many posters above have patiently explained — Democrats do not, and never have, “thrown gobs of money” at problems. Democrats have undertaken to address huge problems — world wars, a nuclear arms race, retirement for working people, ending apartheid in the South, universal health care — and huge problems have costs. Republicans consistently argue that these problems cannot be addressed, and that the proper response is to cut taxes on billionaires. Obviously, these two positions are completely equivalent.
One force that kept the nation in balance through much of the 20th century was fear of left-wing insurrection. First in 1896, then in 1932, the very wealthy could survey the nation and experience real fear and true insecurity — and this lent some urgency to solving real problems.
But a third party in American politics is a fairy tale. Roosevelt couldn’t come close in 1912, running as an immensely popular ex-president against an unpopular successor who didn’t campaign and who arguably wanted to lose, and against a southern racist who was president of a second-tier college.
What could happen is that one of the two US parties might disintegrate and be replaced, as the Whigs were replaced. This would have happened to the Dems in 1912 had Wilson lost, or in 1948 had the Dixiecrats gained traction. I think it’s now a possible — perhaps probable — fate of the GOP, a party which has now frittered away its original support amongst physicians, lawyers, and shopkeepers in favor of seizing a narrow regional dominance. Even than development would likely require additional electoral defeats. But if the Dems retake the presidency and senate in 2016 and do well enough in 2018 and 2020 to control the 2020 redistricting in key states, and then hold serve in the 2024 election, perhaps we’ll be ready for a new party.
But that’s a lot of ifs — and a lot of time to wait. A replacement party cannot happen until the GOP fades away, and that will take more time than we have.
By my reading, so much of Europe got healthcare coverage so early in the 20th century precisely because conservative governments wanted to prevent socialist rebellion.