A thought has been germinating in my mind for some months now and although still not fully crystallized, I want to put it out there for anyone who wants to give me feedback:
Is it possible that we are seeing the demise of the present party system in the US?
There seems to be several factors involved here; one of them is the impact of social media, the other is an inability of the two party system to readily adapt to change.
As evidence, I present Trump & Sanders, both essentially outsiders, neither indoctrinated by their party systems, both speaking in a language that is an anathema to either party.
During one of the Republican primary debates, an on-stage Trump quipped that all his fellow primary candidates would be heading to the Koch Brothers ‘Begathon’ tomorrow for their political donations. For for the span of three seconds, you could have heard a pin drop. Not one of the contestants vehemently objected.
It is what every voting citizen knew, but it had never been so blatantly expressed, so openly uttered within a candidate forum. I believe it to be the seminal moment that Trump became the candidate for the Republican Party.
Why? Because every citizen instinctively knows that if a candidate is being fed at the trough of the rich, the rich eat first and the citizenry get the dregs, if there is any left at all.
In the eyes of that audience and all who watched it televised nationwide, Trump was the only one that didn’t seem to be beholden. It was a moment that spoke volumes.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic primary stage, candidate Hillary Clinton is confronted by Bernie Sanders who in so many words accuses her of being a patsy for the rich.
Cluelessly, Hillary Clinton retorts with a smile, “Everyone is my friend” and at that very moment she loses the Presidency.
It is astonishing to me how little comprehension either party has of the evolving paradigm shift that is going on around them. Do they not realize that the burgeoning social media has shifted how people learn about politics?
Used to be that billionaire-owned corporate media news in all its manifestations, was the undisputed king of opinion forming; everyone sat before the glare of their TV/Cable outlets, or browsed a supposedly informative newspaper in order to understand the complexity of the political system. Which candidate was more likely to coincide with their own needs or belief structure?
Faith in this means of obtaining coherent information is on the verge of becoming irrelevant. The social media forums offer an avenue for friends and family to exchange and discuss articles and ideas. Despite a plethora of misinformation news sources that work their way into social media, many new well informed non-corporate media outlets have sprung up. These sing songs that are not at all in sync with the news giants. And so, a growing number of the citizenry have realized following:
None of their conventional news sources are telling them what is so obvious and has been right before their eyes all this time; that no mention is ever made of the fact that these media outlets, owned by the very rich, have their own special agenda: To deflect any information that points to the perverse, exponentially growing wealth disparity that so many are suffering under - and are starting to realize the dwindling influence of their own ability to protest as a citizenry.
That is why there is Trump and Sanders.
So in this recently concluded election cycle, the Republican and Democratic Parties have essentially been revealed for what they really are; selling platforms of citizen representatives available for purchase to the highest bidder. It was OK before. Now it is not.
Where can the two party systems possibly go from here?
First of all, most of the elite who run these political machines seem completely unaware that anything has changed. They are probably blandly going ahead, setting up Super-PAC’s for their next batch of groomed candidates, clueless to the fact that the citizenry are onto them: “Hey Bud, that guy you want us to vote for — why does his rich pal get to go to the front of the line?”
From where I stand, the Republican Party is in complete disarray. The Republican elite are landed with a President utterly out of their control, so much so they have defections, joining desperate, hysterical Democrats in pandering to the Deep State (un-elected CIA, FBI, Homeland Security officials,) to essentially depose a constitutionally elected President.
On their side of the isle, the elite Democrats are seemingly utterly oblivious to their crushing defeat. They are content to keep on keeping on, preening their next chosen DNC chairman who will be amenable to the money-oriented status quo, thus setting themselves up for a guaranteed failure in the next presidential season. Do they seriously believe that four years of horror issuing from the present President will suffice to glean enough votes to win back the Presidency, no matter what candidate they choose for us to vote for?
And so I find myself back at my origional think: How can these two parties possibly imagine that they can stagger into the next election cycle with any shred of validity? That in the eyes of an ever burgeoning, social-media-clued-in citizenry, all they can ever hope to expect from either party structure is that they’re going to get hosed — again?
How will either party system recover from what has essentially been revealed as decades of citizenry betrayal?
