There is a conventional wisdom that suggests that a healthy democracy benefits, nay demands at least a two party system. In one sense this is true, it being the logical position that for the electorate to be able to elect a government, then they need a choice.
If the choice is one party, then that is no choice at all and democracy is a meaningless term.
Throughout modern history the American people have always had such a choice to make, and make it they have. At various times they have given some, or all of government to either the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party. In truth they have given the country to the Republicans more frequently, but one wonders where we go from here.
A straight choice .... On the one hand the Grand Old Party, an organization that does seem to bear little relationship with that moniker of late, but with a reputation for conservatism, financial responsibility and personal responsibility. A party that values the entrepreneurial spirit of the American business ethic, a party that rewards the personal work ethic. A party that is close to the family, and close to God.
Sitting just across the aisle, waiting their turn for when the Republicans have made an utter shambles of the economy has always been the Democratic Party. Long painted as reckless with public spending, in bed with Trades Unions and fond of higher taxation. A party undoubtedly of Christians, but one with an uneasy relationship with God. They did bring us strong Public Schools and many social advances which Americans feel good about, especially when the economy is strong. Not really trusted with defense or security though ... at least that is the wisdom.
So it went for fifty or sixty years. The Republicans gently resisting much in the way of social change, or social justice, and the Democrats achieving some, incrementally, excruciatingly slowly, but progress nonetheless.
So it might have gone on, but something happened. For generations the wealthy had always sought to increase their wealth, but a strong paternalism, and strong Trades Unions had kept the worst excesses of Capitalism in check. The rich did get richer, but everyone, in the main, saw an increase in living standards that generally stifled much in the way of debate. A series of Republican governments lead first by Nixon, exacerbated by Reagan by which time the neocons had entrenched themselves has seen a paradigm shift in the political landscape.
Doubtless the GOP operatives felt that they were making substantial progress by shifting the "overton window" to the Right. Slice by slice, policy by policy and war by war they have gradually moved the Democratic Party into the broad center, center-left, center-right of American political debate. There is, for example, little doubt that the Democrats mainstream policies on such matters of healthcare, etc, are broadly the same as the GOP policies on those same matters just a decade or two ago. In a world where the industrial nations have moved towards social democracy, America has shifted right, and taken the Democrats with it.
What must have seemed a great cause for high-fives, and generally back-slapping, among the Republican hierarchy, appears now to have left them with nowhere to go. Few ideas other than ever desperate efforts to shore up an elderly, white and rapidly diminishing base. When your core vote is a group of religious fundamentalists, whose own extremism is a direct product of the policies you have espoused, and your financial backing comes from plutocrats who don't trust the base, and the opposition sits firm and square in the middle ground you owned, then what do you do? You can't end your war on women, blacks and hispanics, teh gay ... because if you do you might keep your money, but you lose your core vote and their activism. The oligarchs may pay the bills, but their actual votes don't count because there are simply not enough of them.
When you have tried the politics of fear and division, but the only segment of the population that remains afraid and divided is your core vote, it might be time to retreat from that extremism. It would be, but where do you go when that territory is held by Democrats? When the only semi-sane national figures you have are called traitors (just ask Chris Christie), and Ted Cruz, and the adolescent Ryan are your leadership, and Reince Priebus, a man clearly promoted to his own level of incompetence, is your spokesperson it is time to suggest that the last one to leave please turn out the lights.
The only reason that the GOP is not dead, buried, a piece of flotsam to be washed up on the shores of history is simply that in adopting many of your failed policies, the Democrats have offered a lifeline. Those policies didn't work when the GOP tried them, why do we think they would work with a "D" after their name? The failure to prosecute war criminals. The failure to hold bankers to account for clear and obvious felonies, the sheer crass stupidity of demonstrating a willingness to negotiate Social Security, Medicare and MedicAid .... These are the only reasons we even have a Republican Party left in any kind of viable form.
If the Democratic Party has lost anything, it is the messaging. When all of the polls, and the actual vote demonstrates that a campaign based upon social justice, the social contract, the very policies that the Republicans label "socialist"; when that campaign produces large majorities for Democrats in the House, Senate and Presidency, then the people are speaking very loud, and very clear. They like those ideas and they will vote for those who promote them. Why then do the DNC insist on a "Third Way"? Why does the President insist on a "Grand Bargain", which is nothing of the sort. It is giving in to a failed ideology. It is accepting the premise that the GOP has any kind of leadership role to play, despite the simple fact that a clear majority of the American people just told them that they have no such role. And that despite the fact that the mainstream media continues to give equivalence to ideas, where none exists.
Last Saturday morning I found myself having breakfast at McDonalds in Hereford, TX. Hereford is a small town buried deep in the Texas panhandle. Everyone in the building was wearing boots, every truck in the parking lot had a gun rack .... and most had NRA stickers and other such emblems.
This really is the country where people cling to their guns, and cling to religion. It is the Texas that we think of when we consider that great state to be dyed deep red. The music in the restaurant was wall-to-wall Toby Keith, or someone similar singing about "momma", or "don't take the girl". It is the Texas that is trying to be Oklahoma, but it is also an illusion. Texas is not the panhandle. However thick the rhetoric, however deeply held the convictions in that place, Texas is not that. Texas is Houston, and Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth. Texas is where the people, not the longhorns live. Where urban life thrives, not where corn and wheat grow. Important as those crops might be, they do not vote and in the urban centers they are voting Democrat in increasing numbers. The contrast of emotions I felt as I considered that added something interesting to my Egg McMuffin.
Those parts of the country will not listen to us, and we do not need them to, yet increasingly they are all the Republicans have left. The Republicans are caught between a rock, and a very hard place. If they moderate their current extremism, they become Democrats. If they lurch even further into the weeds they will become an endangered species.
There is room in American politics for a two party system, but the space does not exist to the right of the Democrats, it exists to the left. That vast, gaping hole of social democracy and justice that the current party does little more than pay lip-service to from an apparent fear of the people ... the same people who just voted in their millions for ideas right at the heart of social democracy and, if I dare say it .... Socialism!
There are those in the party who clearly and loudly embody these very ideas, so when will the DNC begin to listen to them, and stop pretending that they can be better Republicans than the Republicans?
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