Citizen Smash, a.k.a. "The Indepundit," reveals that he is a registered Democrat. But he's just exactly the kind of Democrat that I am: a split-ticket voter. The parties are there to serve us, after all, not the other way around.
I particularly liked this line: I’m turned off by nanny-state liberalism, social conservatism, evangelical environmentalism, and dogmatic libertarianism.
I think I'll have that tattooed on my arm. Although I'm a smidge easier on the social conservatives than he is, as I think they sometimes have good arguments (there's not a thing wrong with abstinence education, for example). On other issues, though, the social conservatives scare the willies out of me as much as the shrieking race-baiters and religio-phobes of the left.
I think the thing that most voters need to understand is that the two-party system in America is not merely a habit, and is not optional. Though political parties are not even mentioned in the Constitution, the very way our system is structured makes it impossible for three major political parties to ever exist for more than a few years. It's because we have a first-past-the-post election system, one in which most voters are always forced to choose who they despise least rather than who they love most.
The funny thing is, I'm increasingly convinced that the two parties wind up giving us a government that is far more representative of the people as a whole than we tend to think.
Let's say you have a system like the UK's, or Israel's. There are lots of political parties, and a government is often formed by building a coalition of two or more parties, unless one manages to achieve a majority by itself. New elections may change the dynamic, but you inevitably wind up with political parties who are frozen out of the government--but they're still in the legislature, still able to argue and maneuver and make deals, still exert some influence.
America's Democratic and Republican parties really are no different. What happens with our system is that you get coalitions within the parties instead. Among Democrats you will find union activists, diehard socialists, social libertines, and so on. Among Republicans, you will find fiscal libertarians, social conservatives, small business owners, gun owners, and pro-life advocates. Within such huge coalitions, you get disagreements and bickering, but the parties almost always wind up electing someone who can successfully straddle enough issues that a majority of people will support him.
Sometimes you will also get issues that straddle both parties. You will find free-traders and anti-free-traders in both parties, for example. You will also, because of the nature of the size of this country, find regional differences within the parties. Senator Lincoln Chafee, for example, might well be comfortable if he were to become a Democrat, and Senator John Breaux might well be comfortable if he were to become a Republican. But there is no need for either of them to switch parties; they are representative enough of the way Republicans and Democrats generally think in their respective states, and are respected enough by their constituents to draw significant crossover votes.
The long and short of it is this: the trick to understanding the American system is to realize that we always have a coalition government. Our system merely puts the coalitions within the parties, not within the formal structure of the government.
Which is why Democrats who rant about how the Republicans are "dominated by the far right" (boo, hiss, evil evil evil) or Republicans who point fingers at the "Super liberals who control the Democratic party" (tree huggers! commies!) are both usually full of it.
I will say that I find hard-core, paint-by-numbers Republicans and Democrats annoying. Allthough I try to be more amused by them than annoyed, they really tick me off sometimes. Probably because I used to be a hard-core Republican-hating Democrat, and for a very short while (probably two years back in the '90s) was a Democrat-hating Republican. But, I now see that all as something I had to grow out of.
I am not a Republican. I am not a Democrat. I am not a conservative. I am a liberal who believes in free trade, market economies, human rights, equal opportunity, a strong national security, an unapologetic foreign policy, and who generally believes in American exceptionalism and political incrementalism. No one owns me, no one owns my vote, and people who need to stick their own little labels on me are saying more about themselves than anyone else.
This year, I was going to register as a Democrat so I could, like Smash, help choose a Democratic candidate I find appealing--and to help stop Howard "The Democratic Pat Buchanan" Dean from winning the nomination and control of the Democratic Party. However, I have no such option here in Michigan, and I find that utterly infuriating.
Get this: voters are not allowed to vote in Democratic primaries here. Well, actually, we are, but the party can and does ignore the results. In fact--I kid you not--in 2000, voters in the Democratic Primary nominated Lyndon LaRouche for President. Know why? Because Al Gore and Bill Bradley were not even on the Democratic ballot. They didn't bother to put anyone important on the ballot, you see, because they already knew they were giving the nomination to Gore, and they didn't care what voters thought at all.
I swear to God I am not making this up. Al Gore won the primary here anyway, without a single vote being cast for him.
There is no point, at all, in being a registered Democrat in Michigan.
This change was made only a few years ago, but Democrats in Michigan deserve to get a radioactive-glow ass-whupping for it. Although come to think of it, they did, since in our last elections, while they managed to elect a fairly conservative Democrat named Jennifer Granholm to the Governorship, they lost every single other statewide office, as well as bouth houses of the legislature.
Republicans still have the stones to hold open primaries. Mind you, the establishment Republicans were embarassed in 2000, because they badly wanted Bush to win the state, but McCain took it instead, in part due to crossover support from union voters. But even still, Republicans were not so craven, arrogant, cowardly, and stupid as to tell voters to go to hell. They still kept their primaries open.
Some people may think that this is good for Democrats, because registered Democrats can go "mess up" the Republican primaries. But that's not what'll happen at all. Instead it means the Republicans will tend to nominate people that moderate voters are more likely to support. That can only weaken Democrats and strengthen Republicans.
(Man, I hope Democrats get what they deserve in November's election. Not just in this state, but nationwide. They've been behaving very badly in general the last few years, and constantly whining and blaming other people for problems that are entirely--entirely--of their own making. That's not a sign of a healthy political party. Maybe another spanking is just what they need to snap them the hell out of it.)
Stop whining about not being able to vote in the primaries!
The job of the Michigan Democratic party is to choose a presidential candidate that Michiganers will vote for. Gore was a logical choice, no? They have no obligation to do a field test of candidates by having a primary election. Primaries are meant to serve the party, not the country.
I am not whining, I am ranting. Let's get that straight. ;-)
It is the job of parties to represent us as citizens. Running and hiding from the voters is absolutely ridiculous behavior--although it probably only hurts them, and I don't dispute that they have a right to behave this way if they want to.
It's their party, after all, not ours. Indeed, they've made that loud and clear, haven't they?
It won't stop me from observing what craven, cowardly, hypocritical, and foolish behavior it is, however.
"Give us your money, give us your support, but don't think we'll be doing anything crazy like actually listening to what you think. We party insiders control everything. So you just shut up and vote for our guy when we tell you who he is."
Nuh-uh. That is pathetic behavior for any political party, but especially one that calls itself "the party of the people" and "Democratic." It's utterly ridiculous, it really is.
Dean,
To add to your final point...one of the most egregious cases of behaving badly in recent memory was the 2002 Senate race in New Jersey--the Torricelli/Lautenberg switcheroo. Despite the fact that state law was crystal-clear that the deadline had passed for changing out candidates, the New Jersey State Supreme Court decided that the voters had a Constitutional right to a competitive election (!!!) and allowed former Senator Lautenberg to replace Torricelli on the ballot, since Torricelli was obviously going to lose. If this phantom right actually existed, we'd have to shred almost every Congressional districting scheme in the country, since the vast majority of them are "safe," i.e. antithetical to the goal of a "competitive" election.
Yeah, well, I couldn't get too worked up over the Lautenberg/Toricelli thing, and have no real opinion on the matter.
I will note that there is indeed something funny about the courts deciding that "a competitive election" is a "right." If so, you're absolutely correct, the courts would have to order a new round of redistricting practically nationwide.
Not that that would be a bad thing. I think it's horrid the way we've got most of our congressional districts gerrymanded as we have. "One man one vote" is a big cause of that, as is modern computer technology, and both political parties have played games with it. Sad behavior and unhealthy choices.
Dean,
I think you're right about a two party system. I would like to suggest that it doesn't have to be these parties. If the Democrats insist on committing suicide another part will replace them. Same with the GOP. Hasn't happened since the 1850's but it can again. The Whigs refusal to address slavery cost them their existance and basically created the Republicans. Both current parties face issues they don't want to address. Another realignment is not out of the question.
I would quite agree, Ken. Although I think both parties have learned well enough that it's unlikely either of them will implode. Democrats will selectively steal Libertarian and Green ideas, Republicans will selectively steal Libertarian and Reform Party ideas, and balance will be restored.
I have also mentioned before, the Democratic Party has long had more collections of smaller groups within its coalition. This has always been true, and I mean all the way back to President Andrew Jackson (our first Democratic President.
However, Democrats are definitely facing a crisis. They have yet to manage to put together a responsible or coherent national security agenda--they merely claim we are "not spending enough because the President cut taxes for the rich" (which I think probably requires smoking lots and lots of pot to grasp). Their coalition is increasingly strained because it's harder to make the disparate groups continue to cohere; we aren't the nation we were 30 years ago.
But these things do go in cycles. Republicans will eventually lose their way and start to falter. Democrats will find an issue or set of issues that put Republicans on the defensive, and the Dems will come back.
I just increasingly think it might take 20 years. Or some major shakeup that really rattles their teeth.
First of all, they did not "hide" from the voters. They just said that Gore would be the most likely to win, and how many people would dispute that? You can make good decisions based on polls, without an "official" referendum.
Secondly, "safe" districts allow competitve elections. You can have awfully competitive elections between members of the same party or members of different parties who share similar ideologies.
Dean,
Seventh graf — among Democrats you will find "social libertines"? OK, I suppose you might ;-)
It is not entirely of their making. The worst redistricting plans of the GOP are based on the assumption that the most activist of Anglo-Democrats are secular, the new plans resulting in only secular Democrats being nominated in Anglo areas, with the final conclusion is that there would be no more Stenholms in the South or Holdens in the North to tempt GOP-leaning religous voters to cross over to support at the same time they vote for Bush. The GOP wants a lock on "people of faith". Tim Holden and Charles Stenholm are seen as a greater threat than the Deans and Hillarys. They can stop telling me what God's agenda allegedly is. I sure as hell didn't listen to the R.C. bishops who used to preach that the Dems were God's party, why should I take the shit that the GOP is now trying to feed me? If the GOP wants my support, don't tell me what a 'real' American thinks or a 'real' Catholic or a 'real' Republican. My family had been registered Republican since at least the War of the Rebellion. (I am literally the first I know of to be an independent.) If maybe the GOP would start actually caring about its own members, rather than only a bunch of Dems who thinks their party is not Christian enough (Due in part to GOP efforts), politics would return to a more sane level, and we could have actual discourse. If arguing about what God thinks about Gays is to be the campaign issue or what God thinks about Mexicans, than there are plenty of people who might not care enough to vote. Too bad about Dean. At one point, he sounded as if he had a bit of a libertarian streak in him. Rejecting the notion that God has a political agenda does not make one secular or anti-religious. The two coalitions are still actually in the process of being made. Unfortunately, many shall find themselves at home in either camp, and some will just vote for whoever they hate less. A depressing thought!
Dean you make some outstanding points. I try to stay down the middle but the democrats have been acting childish. Man, who were the two democrats that went to Iraq and Sean Penn. Didn't they realize how low class that was?
I liked Al Gore and they thought he could win. He didn't.
I have to agree with you that it will take a long time for the democrats to clean up their mess. I think the cutting taxes for the rich theme has been played over & over & over too much and they would be wise to quit singing that, Oldie but goody. That song is tiresome.
The party of the people, Democratic? Needs to wake up. I like Joe L. and think he is working to bring back some dignity to the party.
Get a new theme Democrats...sing a new inspiring song because we do need that. Rosemary was right when she said, America wants a man we can get behind that will inspire us. Right now he or she has not appeared.
Bring a Democrat on with purpose. Dean,(Dean's World) is not whining...Democrats are.
My opinions are worth a vote so...
Maor: You're defending the indefensible. Especially because it wasn't just Gore. It's every candidate for every major office now. Only delegates get to choose, and voters are simply ignored and told that the party doesn't want their voice.
They have also made it very clear: there is simply no point in being a registered Democrat in this state. Becoming one is merely an impotent, meaningless political statement, with no meaningful effect on the process.
Libertarian: Railing about Republican redistricting is rather pointless, since whenever and wherever Democrats have controlled the gerrymander they have done exactly the same thing. Republicans are now saying, "Democrats did this to us for years, and now they're whining?" If Democrats get back into control of most states in the next redistricting process (2011 or so), they'll say exactly the same thing.
Redistricting reform needs grass-roots efforts in both parties. We'd be a lot healtheir if we'd divide districts along regional lines, rather than population lines, and turn redistricting over to independent commissions.
I am not railing about it. I am not a Democrat. I am trying to explain the reasoning behind the GOP gerrymandering. I am all for the regionally based districts. The Democrats did their redisticting in 1991 when there was more diversity in the two parties. In places such as Pennsylvania, they had Casey as governor, who did not want to see socially conservative members felt unwanted. Keeping and building his coalition was his goal. This is why the Philly suburbs remained entirely in GOP hands congressionally for several more years. I realize in Texas and Georgia, some have been trying to make conservative Democrats to stop being conservative and accept good liberal Democrats as their representatives. Some of those, such as Frost, are NOT conservative! (Look at his ACU rating!) Democratic gerrymandering I understand has had a greater impact on yourself than on me. This does not change the fact that there is a push by some in the GOP for both a lock on the vote of religious people and a push for ideological purity. It is the gerrymandering to ensure that only the 'correct' type of Republican gets nominated that angers me. I am more upset at the lack of support for Connie Morella, Sherwood Boehlert, and Peter Cianchette in 2002 by the GOP leaders, as well as their willingness to lump Gilman and the neighboring Congresswoman into the same district in a design specifically aimed at getting rid of Gilman. I know how they were planned in Pa. and Michigan, aiming to knock out exactly the type of Dem. I had mentioned. Of course, never having been a Democrat, unlike yourself, I am not familiar with the tactic of those Southern gerrymanders as much as yourself, though what I have said about them I know that Zell Miller would agree. Also, this round of Republican gerrymander guarantees that the next time the Dems do it, they will further act to 'purify' the parties, leaving conservative Dems and more moderate and progressive Republicans no where to turn. The two parties can tell them what party they should belong to, rather us tell them which party we prefer. Now don't tell me that the '94 election and the '01 redisticting weren't two of the biggest pushes to that unpleasant end. The Republican Party is not the Party of Political Conservative People of Faith.
"The funny thing is, I'm increasingly convinced that the two parties wind up giving us a government that is far more representative of the people as a whole than we tend to think."
I totally disagree. The case of Israel is an exception. It has to do with the specifics of Israel's particularly bizarre electoral structure.
Here, you have about 2/3 of registered voters belonging to the Democratic and Republican parties but those two parties getting almost 100% of the seats in Congress and most state legislatures. The 1/3 of independents and smaller party voters are unrepresented. Furthermore, it perpetuates the myth that there are two sides to every issue. On most issues, there are more than two sides.
There is nothing wrong with multipartyism. You cite Britain, but they have first past the post like us. They and Canada are the only two other major western countries I know of which don't have any form of proportional representation.They have first past the post, yet somehow they manage to have a multiparty (not two party) system.
In Britain, for example, the Liberal Democrats control more local governments than either Labour or the Conservatives.
In Canada, they have a strong third party called the New Democrats (progressive) who are weak in Parliament but control several of the country's 10 provinces. The emergence of the upstart Reform Party in the early 1990s ended the effective two-party duopoly that had dominated federal politics since Confederation in 1867. The venerable Tory Party was taken over by the upstarts and a unified, more conservative, party was formed.
All this despite first past the post.
In all of these countries, they have divisions within parties. Tony Blair's delinking of Labour from trade unions made many in his party furious. The Tories are profoundly divided on questions of Europe. Many in Canada's Liberal Party oppose gay marriage and many in the new Conservative Party support it.
All this despite multipartyism.
I think you make legit points but I don't think anything precludes multipartyism. As you point out, the Constitution didn't even recognize parties. The Founders thought Congress would be a non-partisan body where everything was decided on the merits. That would multipartyism to the extreme. 535 (nowadays) parties to be exact.
"Man, I hope Democrats get what they deserve in November's election. Not just in this state, but nationwide. They've been behaving very badly in general the last few years, and constantly whining and blaming other people for problems that are entirely--entirely--of their own making. That's not a sign of a healthy political party. Maybe another spanking is just what they need to snap them the hell out of it."
Remember, before Iraq, Ralph Nader was the root of all evil according to Democrats. What you write above is EXACTLY the argument Greens use to get people to support them. Smaller parties help keep the bigger parties accountable. That's why they're necessary.
My theory is that if Americans are mature enough to be able to choose from 50 different kinds of white bread, then having more than two political parties isn't going to kill anyone.
The solution to gerrymandering is obvious. You take the latest census returns, map them, and make East-West slices through the state to produce as many equal-population slices as there are seats. (Or North-South slices — doesn't matter which, but has to be one or the other.) Can be done automatically; can be verified by anyone with the Census data; cannot be gamed by anyone.
Would it divide up communities of interest? Of course it would. (Insert bug/feature cliche here.) It would, in fact, require Reps to appeal to a [heh, heh] diverse constituency. I would love to see a California politician trying to appeal both to a swath of the Bay Area and to a swath of the Central Valley. Elections might get actually interesting.
I should have added that there's a very good, very short piece in the Jan/Feb Atlantic Monthly about gerrymandering. But I wish it had taken on the "majority-minority district" mess more directly. The authors talk about redistricting plans that amalgamate likely Democratic voters as much as possible into a single district, leaving all the surrounding districts more Republican than they used to be. They don't mention that twenty years ago creating majority-Black districts, which do exactly that, was a Democratic cause, and opposing it a Republican one.
Then the Democrats discovered the electoral effects, and backpedaled furiously. At the same time the Republicans cynically picked up the banner of Black representation and started fighting for the quasi-segregated districts they'd opposed. I can't say either side looks very good.
"I?m turned off by nanny-state liberalism, social conservatism, evangelical environmentalism, and dogmatic libertarianism."
I couldn't agree more.
1) Libertarianism. By the time the Republican Party was as old as the Libertarian Party is now, it had already fought and won the Civil War. Eugene V. Debs got a more Americans, in terms of percentage, to vote for the Socialist Party while he was in prison than have ever voted for the Libertarian Party.
I read of some Libertarian Party official who said that his criterion for deciding who was a libertarian was whether or not they favored legalizing selling dope in vending machines in schools. That cracked me up all the more because I had one of my characters, wicked Wanda, advocate that as a joke! I never thought anybody would ever propose such a thing seriously in real life -- much less make that an ideological litmus test! No wonder the Libertarians hardly ever get any votes! Even Nader and Buchanan got more votes in 2000.
2) Environmentalism. I'm for old-fashioned conservation, wise use of our natural resources, preservation of parks and natural beauty. The first conservationists were hunters and sport fishermen. Conservationist, conservative. Today's radical environmentalists hate hunters and fishermen and want to tear down civilization. They preach that we must regard our own species as no more important than any species of trees or bugs. I'm against that.
3) Nanny-state "liberalism". Bans on smoking in restaurants and bars. Bans on guns and self-defense. Bans on fur coats. Bans on perfumes. Bans on "offensive" speech. Political Correctness. Marcusean Totalitarianism. I'm against all of that!
4) Social "conservatism". Borkean Totalitarianism. Radicals like Santorum who want to _change_ the Constitution. Overthrow the Supreme Court. Abolish the right to privacy in our homes. Censor everything sexually arousing. Ban and eradicate homosexuality. Burn every copy of Sappho's poems. Put cameras in our bedrooms to make sure nobody has any "deviant" sex. Ban any sex not purely to reproduce more slaves for church and state. I'm against that!
SMAtL-wg-lsa,
I'm against the things you are against, and yet I'm a social conservative...Maybe the things you ascribe to social conservatives aren't all that accurate?
For instance, I could easily say I'm against Social Liberals who are attempting to remove the right to religious expression from US citizens, who want to replace traditional heterosexuality with rules requiring homosexual experimentation, making sure no one has "normal" sex, who want to force children to be exposed to foul language in kindegarten, who consider mentioning the word "abstinence" to be religious fundementalism on par with the Taliban.
...but that would be an exaggeration, would it not?
First of all, you might try not demonizing Sen. Santorum. Stop reading what people say about him and read what he actually said. Don't forget that the original "quote" that resulted in the backlash against him had a key word inserted into the line by the interviewer, an insertion that wasn't warranted in the least.
Finally, "change" the Constitution is not the bugaboo you seem to think it is. It's happened 27 times thus far, and yet our nation still stands. The point is, people do have a right to change the Constitution through a specific system. Sen. Santorum's attempts to get such an amendment wouldn't pass, I can assure you, but he has the right to speak his mind without being demonized, I think. And his method of changing the Constitution is explicitly described in the Constitution itself, it is far more acceptable than the methods used by the 9th Circuit Court, the Florida Supreme Court, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court! (regardless of whether or not you support their goal).
It's okay to be passionate about your beliefs, but the way you stated them in this entry, it sounds like you are trying to label anyone who holds a different opinion to be oppressively hard-headed and ignorant. And yet, I consider my positions to be carefully considered and based strongly on careful observation of human behavior. We can't both be right, I think...
"First of all, you might try not demonizing Sen. Santorum. Stop reading what people say about him and read what he actually said. Don't forget that the original "quote" that resulted in the backlash against him had a key word inserted into the line by the interviewer, an insertion that wasn't warranted in the least."
I _DID_ read what he said, _all_ of it, the whole interview, in which he condemned "the right to privacy lifestyle" and said that "we" (the state, the government) "absolutely have the right" to "limit individual wants and passions". Those were his exact words. It goes way beyond the issue of homosexuality to a sweeping attack on the very concept of individual privacy and freedom _as such_. That is as naked a statement of totalitarianism as I have yet seen, even surpassing Stanley Fish or Herbert Marcuse. That's what makes him so dangerous.
"Sen. Santorum's attempts to get such an amendment wouldn't pass, I can assure you, but he has the right to speak his mind without being demonized, I think."
And I have the right to speak my mind. If I think what he advocates is demonic, I bloody Hell will demonize him, just as I demonize Michael Parenti, Robert Faurisson, and the like.
"the Florida Supreme Court,"
I support the decision of the United States Supreme Court that George W. Bush is the President of the United States, and I have said so before.
OK, never mind.
Dean, I'll say it again. The party has every moral right to choose a candidate using it's delegates' opinions as opposed to a primary, which is just a glorified opinion poll. Yes, this means people who give money to parties for reasons other than helping the party are screwed. But that's what happens when people give money to other people without any promise of getting anything in return.
And Dean Esmay has every moral right never to vote for any Democrats or to give any money to them when they act like that.