Third Party & Independents: Archives

My observation is that many candidates say similar things, but do different things. Given what Gore and Bush said in the 2000 elections, you would have never guessed how radical Bush’s foreign and domestic policy would get, even accounting for 9/11.

Rhetorically speaking, to be blunt, this is a lousy argument. To say that the major parties are just alike is to both avoid the crucial question of why they should vote for your party, and to encourage a greater sense of apathy in voters. That doesn’t benefit the third parties, which need activism from voters to gain ground on their much more entrenched competitors.

Your task, you true task, is to present an intuitive case for your party’s agenda, and draw people into agreement with you. Claiming the parties are exactly the same is pretty difficult given the contrast between Clinton’s internationalist approach, and Bush’s unilateral, aggressive style of foreign policy. Everything depends on the details.

As in the 2000 election diminishing partisan differences reach minimum during the debates. Then Bush can be expected to be for love & peace in Iraq, the Kyoto Treaty, universal health care, closed borders, reigning in white collar crime, full employment, green forests, and blue skies. Kerry wants to keep up the good work in Iraq, but failed to identify home front evil because he needs money from the same bums that fund Bush. But, they might have abortion, homosexual marriage and arm gestures to differentiate with. These grand choices can shape our futures and our childrens childrens future. That’s why we love freedom and Democracy and that’s why “they” hate us so!

Differences diminish partly because each candidate wants to scoop up the wavering element of the voting bloc on the other side. Here you see the ridiculous dance of Bush boosting Medicare and opening up immigration, and Kerry talking about fighting Al Qaeda rather than appeasing it. Bush goes left and Kerry goes right, and sometimes they end up in each other’s ideological seat.

Another reason behind the diminished differences, though, is that so-called-“left” and so-called-“right” these days are both wings of One Corporate Party. The One Corporate Party, when you get down to it, is split only in the sense of whether they’ll be selling their goods and services with oil energy (Bush) or with hydrogen energy (Kerry). It’s probable the hydrogen faction of it will win out, but they’ll need nuclear power as a supplement to make it fully work.

Another problem with the two party system is structural. Two parties only allow one dimension of political measurement—like a simplistic number line in math. There should be, as a minimum, FOUR parties to at least get two-dimensional in our perspective (with an economic axis and a social axis), but ideally go to three dimensions by way of EIGHT parties (introducing a foreign policy axis).

Eight parties would require single-issue coalitions to get most anything done, but the formation of coalitions won’t be so difficult as many think. For example, probably six of the eight ideological party “idea zones” (all except those who combine social restriction with hawkishness, of either economic leaning), would join forces to amend the Patriot Act and disassemble its more constitutionally dangerous line items. Rather than bog down the political process, more precision in the party system would tend to make things more dynamic. Instead of predictable 51/49 splits in Senate votes (yawn), you’d see it swing from 81/19 or 92/8 or back to 60/40 some of the time in the most evenly-divided of issues. Vetoes would be more likely to achieve override. Legislation would be less likely to need insipid sellout riders to pass their way through the pork-grabbing committees. In general, American politics would work *BETTER*.

How best to articulate this to the trailer parks and the ghettoes and the lawn-mowing suburbs, I have no idea at this point. It’s difficult to present it in the form of the immediate need and “kitchen table” nature of issues that would otherwise mobilize them. So it might never happen at all, unless some future set of Ben Franklins get to experiment in yet some new country somewhere.

steven: “this is a lousy argument. To say that the major parties are just alike …”

Actually, I do not make the argument that the two parties are just alike, though I do support the claim by Republicans that Democrats are insane and the argument by Democrats that Republicans are insane. They’re both right. Personally, I would rather people note vote than vote either Republican or Democrat. By the way, just because 1 out of every 2 eligible voters generally refuse to vote either Republican or Democrat in presidential elections does not imply that they are apathetic. It could equally well signal that they would be unhappy with either candidate.

My overall, but implicit, point was not that there are no differences between the two parties, but rather that that the duopoly parties are driven to such rabid partisanship because the differences between them are so small.