It's January of 2010 and Lake Michigan is frozen over. February is imminent and primaries are coming up. The year-long blitz of political ads and punch-counterpunch between political rivals has begun. There was a time when I thought that maybe politics could be for me, but with the wisdom that comes with age I decided that it's way too ugly, combative, and fraught with lies, half-truths, and innuendo for those such as I. I can still encourage others, though. It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it.
I've done a lot of thinking about 3rd parties in the U.S. lately. In a parliamentary system like Britain's the majority party, or coalition of parties gets to choose the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has the backing of the majority of the legislative body, and the system lends itself to multi-party democracy. Green Party, Social Democrats, Rightist Ultra-Conservative parties, and Lunatic Fringe are all welcome and usually manage a few members of Parliament. Not having anywhere near a majority, however, they have no effect on who gets to be the Prime Minister, except as a member of a coalition of parties.
In the U.S. our President is elected exclusive of any input from Congress, so it's entirely possible and quite often the case that a sitting President is of the opposite party from the one that controls the legislature. The party that controls Congress may lobby and campaign for a candidate, but they really have no effect. The people elect the person who is , arguably, the most powerful man on the planet. Party politics and ugliness have a great deal to do with who the person is who prevails.
The nature of the beast in America is that 2 party politics prevail. The 2 major parties swallow up most smaller groups, that in Europe would be separate political parties. The Democrats encompass everything from the center and just left of center on the political spectrum, to positions that are roughly where you would find Social Democrats in Europe. The Republicans encompass everything from roughly the center and just right of center to positions that are just shy of anarchy. Democrats are, on the whole, socially and economically liberal, and represent the working classes. The Republicans tend to be socially and economically conservative, and represent the monied interests and religious conservatives.
There has never been much room in American politics for 3rd parties and they tend to be short-lived. When they appear they take votes away from one of the two mega-parties and alter the shape of an election. We're talking Presidential politics here. Doesn't matter if the odd 3rd party candidate ends up in Congress. Has no sizable impact. Mind you there have been times in American history when 3rd parties have displaced one of the two major parties, as when the Republicans displaced the Whigs, but for the most part Democrats and Republicans have been slugging it out here since 1860.
What concerns me is the impact of a sizable number of dissenters who tend to vote say Green Party or Libertarian. These are people who are, for the most part, socially liberal, and who would normally fall into the Democratic camp, but differ in just enough respects to cause them to bolt. In the case of the Green Partyites, Democrats are not quite liberal enough on certain issues. In the case of Libertarians, they agree with Democrats on social issues, but agree with Republicans in that they are suspicious of big government and believe "that government that governs best is that which governs least." There are any number of parties from Communist to Nazi that populate ballots, but are so far out at the fringes that they have no impact and have no real standing in the mainstream.
Then there are those 3rd parties that emerge on temporary bases and represent such a rebellion in a major sector of society that they sway the election. They don't ever succeed in getting their candidate elected, but they take enough votes away from major party candidates that they change the outcome of elections. I am reminded of Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party and their progressive platform. They enabled Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats to prevail because he took moderate Republican votes.
George Wallace and his American Independent Party took away enough votes from the Democrats with his pro-segregationist stance that Richard Nixon and the Republican Party prevailed. H. Ross Perot and his Reform Party candidacy took away so many votes from the Republican Party that they enabled Bill Clinton to defeat incumbent George Bush for the Presidency in 1992. In the 2000 Presidential election, Ralph Nader of the Green Party took just enough votes from Al Gore to enable George W. Bush to take the Presidency via the Florida contested votes and consequent Supreme Court fiasco.
Third parties do not win the Presidency in America, or at least they haven't since the Whigs went out of business, the Democrats split between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, and the country went to war against itself. What third parties do is to keep other parties from winning by denying votes to a possible winner, Democratic or Republican. Sometimes the third party votes are over issues, more usually over a particular issue. Sometimes third party votes are in protest against a perceived slight or misstep by a party. In my humble opinion, they are almost always misguided (except for those votes for that Abe Lincoln guy.)
The bottom line here is that the Barack Obama hasn't totally transformed the world in one short year drumbeat is already audible. An awful lot of the people dancing to that drumbeat are not Republicans. They are people who helped to elect him. They are pissed off because change is not fast enough. Get over it people. Real change is incremental and we have had 8 years of devastation to our economy, our foreign policy, our social policy, and our nation as a whole, because of the Bush Presidency. It takes time and much thoughtful consideration to reverse all of this. To those who would bolt and vote Green, or Libertarian, or any other such protest vote, I have one really scary thought for you, a Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee Republican ticket.
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