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I was in 4th Grade in 1992. It was my very first Presidential election and it was exciting. I understood pretty much none of it, but in the spirit of fighting the apathy infecting the American electorate, the school I was attending at the time decided it was going to participate in KidsVote! And I was a super enthusiastic participant. The choices were, as all the world knows: Clinton, Bush or Perot. Bush seemed really, really old to me. Everyone around me seemed to want Clinton, so naturally, I decided that I was going to poke everyone in the eye and proudly cast my fake ballot for Ross Perot. I dimly understood in my 4th Grade way what happened with Gennifer Flowers and when Perot dropped out, I was pissed beyond belief. My guy had quit. He was a quitter. He gave up and the old guy and the super popular guy that everyone wanted were going to fight to the finish for it. It didn't seem right to me, even then. This country was so big, it just seemed like there should be more than two choices.
Flash forward nearly two decades later and a recent poll indicates that 31% of Americans think there should be a third party in this country. Looking at the news these days, it's a wonder that number isn't a lot higher- especially given the moment in history we're coming too. This may sound like a grand theorem of political science worthy of such notables as Huntington or Fukayama, but I'm gonna put it out there for y'all, see if that cat licks it up: right now, we're at the start of the terminal crisis of the 20th Century Liberal Welfare State. Unfortunately for the true Socialist believers out there, it's not the terminal crisis of global capitalism- at least not yet, but one thing is for sure: the concept of the state, the government and what those two august bodies should do needs to be subjected to vigorous debate as we enter the 21st Century, because unless we radically change the way we do business, the services and the benefits our government provides us- indeed, large portions of our government itself will no longer be affordable.
Are our two parties up to the task ahead? Forgive my cynicism, but the answer seems to be 'no.' Democrats are still married to the dessicated remnants of the Great Society and the New Deal and Republicans, well, they're a bunch of useless sellouts in my book. In 1994 we were promised smaller government, we were promised lower taxes and OK, so they got welfare reform done, but under Republicans, our surplus vanished, our government expanded, we're fighting two very expensive wars and our deficit has never been bigger. They have precisely zero credibility in my book. No, instead, we seem to be hell bent on choking the life out of our democracy at every turn. Politicians do the bidding of the corporations and uber-rich that bankroll their re-election campaigns. And their allegiance, not to their constituents, but to their donor base is evident in policies of bailout, refusal to break up the big banks that almost crashed our economy and insistence on limiting a proposed audit of the Federal Reserve. Because transparency, well, that can't be a good thing. Letting people find out just how corrupt the government is? No, no, we can't be having that. Evidence seems to suggest that our political system is broken, perhaps irretrievably.
So what are we going to do about it? Well, 31% of the people in this poll seemed to think that a 3rd Party is the answer. I'm not going to argue that's a silver bullet, but a real, mainstream political party advocating a real, clearly delineated agenda that differs from the other parties is something that America has never had before. If offered a real, genuine choice it'd be interesting indeed to see how many people would take that choice. Due respect to the MoveOn.org, Tea Party crowds, but change from the inside? Primary every candidate you want too- run all the ads you want too, but the elite superstructure that governs this country can't be undermined from within. It needs to be drowned from without- a rising tide sinks all ships, so they say.
And an actual Third Party? Never been done. Ever. Oh, there are 3rd Parties out there- but the current crop is so far removed from the mainstream as to be completely unpalatable or unelectable and if we're going to have a Third Party, it should win something now and again. But even historically speaking, there's never been a third party that's had a place in the mainstream political spectrum. Free Soilers, Bull Moosers, Farmer-Laborers were either regionally based parties that were absorbed into other parties or parties centered around one candidate that didn't last without the candidate in question. No one has given independents a voice ever before. No one has kept the ball rolling before. No one has tried to tilt at that ultimate windmill and get something going, harnass some outrage and bring down the system that's intent on driving this country right over the edge of the cliff.
(Interesting aside: the Progressive Movement was actually an offshot of the Republican Party originally. No one tell DailyKos.com.)
Now, political scientists everywhere are already shaking their heads. 'Can't be done, Tom. We sat through American politics- we know all about it.' The two parties want to keep themselves in charge- they make the rules of the game and they don't want to play with others. DuVerger has his law that states that plurality election systems like ours tend to favor two parties. The former is most definately true, which again underlines why we need another party: someone needs to stand up and call bullshit on the control of our democracy by the two incompetent parties that try and run this place. But DuVerger? As a political scientist, I have to admit that he's not entirely wrong. It's not a hard and fast 100% rule, but an electoral system like ours is guaranteed to keep the number of parties low, even without the bullshit controls imposed on us by the two parties. Yet both Britain and Canada stand as examples of 3, even 4 party systems. OK, so in most places it's some combination of those 3 parties fighting for the top two spots instead of a truly 3 party race across these respective countries, but it's something. It's more open, it's more fair than what we have know. So, Monsieur DuVerger, I blow a raspberry at you and your law, I fart in its general direction. Education in this country teaches us to conform, conform, conform, whatever the cost may be- and there's a dangerous lack of independent thought that blinds a lot of people to just how corrupt the government is or what the possibilities of a third party actually are.
Let's be clear: the only wasted vote is the one you don't take and its our vote. It's not their vote, its ours. And if you and your neighbors all vote for someone else and get all their neighbors to vote for someone else and so on and so forth, then we've got the numbers to do whatever the hardwork of a lifetime can get us. And make no mistake- the job of forming and building a political party up so it's big enough to make a breakthrough nationally and really change things? That could well take a lifetime. Taking on every elite powerstructure in this country- it's scary as shit. Hell, is it even worth doing at all?
I'd like to think so. I'm not going to say that the American government speaks for me or even represents what I believe at all, but I do have, much to my surprise, a deep and abiding faith in the possibility of America, in the ideal of America. I believe we can do better and however you choose to do it, everyone should roll up their sleeves get out there and find ways to make American better, be they big or big they small. The very notion of founding and organizing another political party designed to make a serious run at the center of power probably seems completely insane to everyone that really stops to think about it a little bit. But not to me- like in 1992, I believe there's joy in non-conformity and trying to be yourself and holding out hope that someone will stand up and speak to what you believe.
America was founded by a group of people who decided they were going to breakaway from the most powerful empire on the face of the planet at the time and form their own, independent country. If that's not an insane notion when you stop and think about it, I don't know what is- but they went ahead and did it anyway. So when people present me with logical, well-reasoned arguments about why third parties won't work in the United States, I shake my head. It's not about logic- it's about the rest of us. It's about a country that has forgotten ambition, forgotten craziness, forgotten that this, much more than Spain really is the land of Don Quixote. Tilting at windmills is a fundamental part of the American national character- and the fight for a better, more open, more representative democracy (which should begin now, by the way) is perhaps the biggest windmill left to tilt at. It may seem crazy, it may seem like complete madness, but that doesn't mean it won't work.
The fight for a better democracy... a third party... they may be dreams, they may be windmills, they may be crazy notions from a sleep-deprived brain that haven't a hope in hell of success, but even if they turn out to be dreams or windmills even, to me, it's worth trying. Because if by chance, you happen to hit something when you're tilting at that windmill, well, wouldn't that be a helluva thing?
After all, 31% of the people can't be wrong, can they?
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