I find it very interesting that both of the parties faced powerful insurgencies by outsiders this time around. Bernie Sanders was not a Democrat, a fact that many of his supporters seem to forget when they whine about the party’s treatment of him. And many of his supporters were at best nominal Democrats, if they were at all. It reminded me of the McGovern insurgency in 1972, and superdelegates, whether rightly or wrongly, were put in place partly to prevent this sort of thing. Donald Trump was no sort of Republican until he decided to run for the nomination. He had always presented himself as a liberal Democrat. And a good many of his supporters certainly weren’t enthusiastic Republicans, if they were at all.
The Republicans lost against the insurgency and the Democrats won. And then…. It seems not at all implausible that really deep disaffection from the two parties that dominate our electoral process tells us a lot about the election and about our political culture. Lots of people are really, really sick of the GOP and the Democrats. But no one knows quite what to do, so the Presidency is tossed back and forth, Congress remains dysfunctional, and corporate stoogery is the order of the day.
This kind of radical disaffection is dangerous, of course, as the historians keep telling us. In the short term, we all need to be really careful, I think. But from a longer perspective, it seems clear that we have to change the way we do elections. And it won’t do simply to replace the current two dysfunctional parties with two new ones. There is no reason to think that the forces which have rendered the two dominant parties dysfunctional will not also cause any new pair to become so. We need more parties, lots more parties, and that means a new way of doing elections.
A pipe dream, I know. I expect that four years from now, we will just be four years further down the path we’ve been on since Reagan. But hey, the time between the election and the inauguration is like the calm before the storm; it’s a good time for a pipe dream.
Hopefully not a pipe dream. If Sanders remembers he wasn't really a democrat and organizes something new, and if Romney and other Republicans who repudiated Trump resist the urge to work with their new found access and instead rally together to form something that looks more like a centrist party, we could start in a direction like that. But it will also take a media that can expand beyond a two party narrative, and most importantly people taking to the streets in undeniable protests and demanding electoral reform. Just hoping the people in power will change the system that got them there will never work.
ReplyDeleteI think this is largely how history will look back on this election.
ReplyDeleteMaine has adopted choice voting. Do you think that may help resolve our crippled dichotomy or will it just confuse matters a bit more?
ReplyDeleteI meant to say 'ranked choice voting." My subconscious often gets in the way of my typing.
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