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January 30, 2006
Some Realignment Necessary
There is a deep flaw in US politics at present. It goes beyond the near-universal substitution of vicious ad hominem attacks for studied policy debate. It goes beyond the corruption that taints both parties, from vote buying via special interest money to vote buying via earmarks (pork). It goes beyond the unwillingness to offer ideas from the Democrats, who would rather snipe at the Republicans than have responsibility themselves; and beyond the unwillingness of Republicans in the House, apparently, to even allow the Democrats in on the process of drafting laws. It goes to the very heart of what it is to be American: the policy-making cores of the two parties fundamentally disagree on what America is.
Let me explain what I mean by "policy-making cores". Let's say that you or I, people of modest means and without the ability to marshall millions of dollars of special interest money, dedicate all of our time and effort to getting the party of our choice elected, and are successful. Now, let's say that we decide to write a letter, or make a phone call, or visit the office of our representatives, the ones we worked so hard and spent so much to elect. Would that contact make a policy difference, ever? If you answered "no", you are on to something: even if our representative himself has much influence on making policy (perhaps especially if he does), our opinion will have the exact weight of a tally mark in a column that, if it favors our representative's interests, would be disclosed of evidence of how much support our representative's policy has among his constituents. That's it.
Who does have influence? It's a small club, consisting of the leadership of the party in the House, some key committee chairmen from the House, key Senators (particularly those who head an important committee, or who represent a large state, or who have some particular gift of eloquence or fundraising or outreach to a critical consituency), key unelected party leaders (like Howard Dean and Ken Mehlman) and lobbyists representing large voter blocs and with vast sums at their disposal (the term "lobbyist" includes here activist organizations for each party, which at least represent votes and fundraising influence; this is why Kos gets the time of day from Democrats: he has the eyes and influences the votes and actions of hundreds of thousands of activist Democrats). And this club is possible, but difficult, to get into; in practical terms it won't happen unless that is your overriding goal and you are willing to sell your soul and children to do it.
The policy making cores of the two major parties are so far apart right now that civil dialogue seems impossible to find. Worse yet, the way in which the cores differ feeds the vitriol, because the Democrat core believes the Republicans are evil and the Republican core believes the Democrats are traitors or "useful idiots". And since they cannot have any discussion, and since ordinary people cannot have any influence, the reality is that our cohesion as a nation is deeply threatened. This despite the clear fact that, exluding the parties' policy making cores and the activists, most ordinary Americans believe more or less the same things: that America should aggressively defend itself from foreign threats, but only when we have to and then overwhelmingly and competently; that the government should have some role in providing a social safety net, but should not simply transfer wealth from one group to another without condition; that education is important, and our government has a role to play in making sure that a quality education is available to everyone; that legal immigration is good, and illegal immigration is bad; that jobs are important, and the economy is important, and that the government has some role in ensuring that the economy stays good and we all have jobs, but not at the price of taking over private companies; that abortion is wrong, but should be legal at least early in pregnancy or if the mother's life is endangered. We may disagree about how those ends should be achieved, but there is pretty broad agreement on those principles. Now, which party represents them in their policy-making cores?
The Republicans by and large mirror the public consensus on defense and welfare. The Democrats by and large mirror the public consensus on education and jobs. Neither represents the consensus opinions on anything else, really. Indeed, it is not surprising that almost 2 in 5 of the voters (me included) associates itself with neither of the major parties. I would suspect much, much larger numbers of the 45% of eligible voters that do not vote would similarly not associate with either party. Here's the thing: we've seen all this before.
In the late 1840s, the Whigs began to fall apart. The major issue over which there was internal dissent was slavery, but a bevy of other issues were pulling the party in different directions, including a number of minor parties that were forming as groups split away from the Whigs, including what would eventually become the Republican Party. The Compromise of 1850 so battered the Whigs that their candidate for President in 1852 did not even win his home state! Then in 1854, the crisis came: the Kansas-Nebraska act so inflamed northern, anti-slavery Whigs that they left the party en masse, mostly to the infant Republican Party, and some to the Know-Nothings or other truly radical parties. The Whigs rapidly declined, and by the end of the Civil War were effectively not a force in American politics.
With our current situation, the environment is slightly different. There are several groups that are essentially permanent minorities within both the Democratic and Republican parties. These include the strong foreign policy/socially liberal groups best exemplified by Lieberman and McCain in their respective parties, the libertarian caucus primarily in the Republican Party, the DLC (more or less Truman Democrats) in the Democratic Party, conservative Democrats like Zell Miller, and groups like the Log Cabin Republicans. In policy terms, which drives electoral success to a large degree, the Democrats are in the hands of radical progressives, and the Republicans in the hands of an odd coalition of business-over-everything groups (whence the lobbying problem, to a large extent) and foreign policy hawks with a sprinkling of social conservatives (who have less policy influence outside a small number of issues, but bring a lot of votes). The Republicans can probably sustain themselves on their internal structure, but the Democrats cannot: either the Democrats must move to the center — isolating the radical activists, the abortion-is-everything zealots, and the transnational progressives — or they will be unable to present realistic candidates for offices that are not, via districting or overall state proclivities, essentially sinecures.
If the Democrats fall apart, it would most likely be because of people like Lieberman, Zell Miller, and possibly even Hilary Clinton uniting with people like McCain, Olympia Snowe and Jim Jeffords. There is actually ample ground for a party there, in policy terms, that would resonate with large numbers of voters who currently feel left out, or forced to vote for someone they profoundly dislike to avoid electing someone they despise. Without such a high-profile effort, though, similar to what recently happened in Israel with Sharon and Peres forming a new party, the Democrats may be doomed to a slide into irrelevance, ceding a virtually one-party state (for a while) to the Republicans.
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