Democracy is Too Important to be Left to Democrats and Republicans
The political duopoly is not serving voters well
The political duopoly - the ironclad control the Democratic and Republican parties have on our political system - is undermining democracy. Instead of people who inspire our country to greatness, Americans likely will choose between two very flawed candidates for president of the United States.
The Minneapolis StarTribune published my article on the ways in which the two-party system is failing voters. You can read it here (“Two-party dogma serves itself, fails America,” Jan. 29, https://www.startribune.com/two-party-dogma-serves-itself-fails-america/600339473/?refresh=true)
In the article, I make the case that 2024 is not the year for a third-party presidential campaign. The environment is too polarized for a third-party candidate to even get much of a public hearing for critical issues and possible solutions - the kind of vision not being offered by most Democrats and Republicans - much less win the electoral college.
But that doesn’t mean there should be no challenges to today’s political system. Too often, third parties are built around a single candidate, a top office or a controversial issue. In that regard, I am part of the problem. I ran for governor of Minnesota as a member of the Independence Party; after my campaign, rather than trying to build the party, I gradually moved on to other political candidates and reforms.
My experience, too often, is the norm. Third parties haven’t made long-term investments in creating real party organizations a priority. Rather than recruiting candidates for local offices and winning enough races to build a farm team and create a network of party people who will work in the trenches, third parties are energized by individual candidates and campaigns.
This year is a case in point. Several credible people and organizations are doing the heavy lifting of seeking ballot access in enough states to have at least a mathematical chance of winning the electoral college. What they haven’t done so far is establish a philosophical base for their potential parties. No Labels, one of the most effective of these organizations, isn’t defined by a bold agenda for America’s future as much as it is by its clever opposition to Donald Trump. That may help defeat a candidate. It doesn’t create a mandate for governance or even a platform to promote state and local candidates.
Third parties need to shift gears. Let 2024 play out as an unsatisfactory choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But use voters’ angst to build a credible and creative party platform, identify and support candidates at the local level - be they Democrats, Republicans, independents or members of another party - who are committed to the kind of reforms that will invigorate democracy. Ranked choice voting, campaign finance reform and citizen-led redistricting commissions are among the changes that would help restore the trust of voters in their electoral system.
In the long-run, a grassroots campaign to develop new policy ideas and promote the kind of candidates willing to work for change and not just for re-election will do far more to reinvigorate democracy than a third-party presidential candidate.
Cogent and insightful analysis as always. I agree this is not the year for a third-party candidate but if I pull back to the 30,000-fout level it kind of looks like we already have one...and he's a toss-up to win the general at this point.
I am, of course, talking about Trump and the MAGA movement. While it has no policy core but rather a personality cult, MAGA is, in fact, a third-party movement that has consumed the Republican party from within. The remains of the GOP - short-handed as "never-Trumpers" - are standing around wringing their hands for a solution to their problem but they don't seem to realize they're looking in the rearview mirror at an event that has already happened and is irreversible: we now have a liberal party (Dems), a conservative party (GOP) and a populist party (MAGA).
I don't see any way to knit the MAGA and GOP parties back together. Even after the passing of their odious leader, lots of would-be inheritors of his mantle are waiting in the wings and they've learned the playbook for connecting with their supporters. It won't happen in 2024 but I'm reasonably confident that there'll either be three conventions or that will be the year when the Republican national committee votes to formally change its name.
That means the remains of the GOP are in a power position. Neither the Dems nor MAGA have enough core supporters to win. If the GOP stalwarts truly view Trump as a threat to conservatism - which he is unless you want to define "conservativism" as "anything Donald Trump wants in any instant" - they should make their peace with center-left Biden and tilt that way. If, on the other hand, they still see opportunities to get policy wins under Trump and are willing to tolerate the awfulness of a second Tump term to get it, then they should hold their nose and go that way. Worked pretty well in the first term; as long as Trump got credit or praise for it, they could do pretty much whatever they wanted.
A word of caution to my conservative friends trying to figure out which way to fall on that question: if the reports are to be believed, Trump's fellow travelers - the Stephen Millers, the Heritage Foundation, etc. - are planning a much more organized and deliberate takeover of government this time and - unlike Trump - have their own policy objectives that include isolationism, extremely limited immigration and taking an indiscriminate weedwhacker to America's regulatory framework. As we're seeing now with the border bill/Ukraine/Israel kerfuffle playing out, there's not a lot of common ground there between the conservatives and the MAGAnauts.