Political Parties Failed Voters…Again

Reforms are more urgently needed than ever before

The Democratic and Republican parties failed America. Once again in 2024, they gave America candidates who see in the great chasms that divide the country political opportunity instead of the grave threat that it poses to the future. More and more, from school boards to the top offices of the federal government, America is governed by people who have neither the interest nor the ability to actually govern.

Thoughtful governance has given way to policy ignorance. Ideology and short-term patches pass for meaningful solutions. Instead of policy, candidates spew attacks. Research long has shown that both Democrats and Republicans think members of the other party are immoral, dishonest and not very smart. Candidates, the parties and allied interests groups exploit this coming-apart-at-the-seams tribalism for whatever votes they can garner. Who cares if no one talks to each other around Thanksgiving tables?

Certainly, our communities, states and country continue to be well-served by some candidates who reflect the best America has to offer. More and more, though, the powers-that-be in the Republican and Democratic parties give voters a choice of deeply flawed and broadly disliked candidates.

It starts at the top. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Rep. Kevin McCarthy and other Republican leaders knew the truth about the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and Donald Trump’s role. McConnell went as far as to say, “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.” But when it came time for McConnell to exercise his constitutional duty and vote to convict Trump, he washed his hands, reportedly telling aides, “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us.”

But Democrats didn’t because Republicans wouldn’t allow it. One by one, the Republican supplicants fell on bended knee because they saw in Trump a vehicle they could ride to political power.

Democrats certainly can’t claim the high road on candidate selection. The pressure party leaders put on President Joe Biden to abandon his candidacy was a year too late. Biden’s disastrous debate performance revealed more about the political perfidy of Democratic insiders than it did about Biden’s ability to wage a vigorous and effective campaign.

Kamala Harris ran a remarkable campaign under the circumstances. She was able to coalesce Democratic power-brokers, raise an enormous amount of money and introduce herself to voters. But she had no margin for error, and her campaign made too many. Say what you will about America’s protracted political campaigns, and they deserve much criticism, but where large arena rallies, staged and carefully-scripted events and advertising insulate candidates, primary campaigns expose them. Candidates don’t get away with a lot of nonsense when they meet with a handful of voters in an Iowa coffee shop in the dead of winter.

Harris never was able to separate herself from inflation, immigration and Democratic identity politics. She relied too much on what her campaign thought would be the pull of abortion access and the threat of a second Trump presidency. She may have lost under any circumstance. But not having the wisdom and honesty of Main Street voters left her unprepared to counter Trump when he made his grievances the grievances of voters across the country.

Whether you celebrated Tuesday’s results or fear for the future, the 2024 campaign underscored the need for urgent and bipartisan reforms. Two areas are especially critical:

First, we need a system of safeguards to assure that the free flow of information and diverse opinions is not corrupted by propagandists at home and from abroad. Writing in Atlantic earlier this year, historian Anne Applebaum said propaganda could be called “a secret authoritarian ‘plot’ to preserve the ability to spread antidemocratic conspiracy theories, except that it’s not a secret. It’s all visible, right on the surface. Russia, China, and sometimes other state actors—Venezuela, Iran, Hungary—work with Americans to discredit democracy, to undermine the credibility of democratic leaders, to mock the rule of law.”

As much as solutions to control the spread of misinformation and disinformation are urgently needed, any proposal is bound to draw opposition from one interest or another. The optimistic view is that this is an area in which significant progress could be made without government involvement and, in fact, may have more credibility if done without the direct involvement of self-interested politicians.

There are many models of good-if-not-perfect self-regulation by professional groups, including medical, financial services and accounting. Underwriters Laboratories, a private company, continues to be a valued and trusted mark of safety on the products it tests. Small-government Republicans and free-speech Democrats should embrace an information industry group that effectively monitors and labels AI-generated fakes, propaganda and hate speech.

Second, America needs political reform. Ranked choice voting, especially when combined with open primaries, tamps down extremism and diminishes the influence of the two parties in selecting and promoting candidates. Open primaries, in which the top finishers move to the general election without regard to party affiliation, allow voters to determine the best candidates. If voters decide that Democrats or Republicans have done their job in promoting quality candidates, so be it. But, if voters decide that an independent or a third-party candidate should advance to the general election, democracy is the better for competition.

Ranked choice voting often is criticized for being elite and confusing. The latter is simply insulting to voters. Every day we make important decisions by choosing from among our options. Of course, voters can sort out who they prefer as their favorite candidate and who might be an acceptable second choice.

On the charge of elitism, consider this: In 2021, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was among the few members of the GOP willing to convict Trump in the Jan. 6 impeachment trial. She did so knowing she would draw the fury of MAGA Republicans and likely provoke a primary challenge from her right. But Alaska has open primaries (top four finishers advance) and ranked choice in the general election. Murkowski was able to set aside her political interests to vote her conscience on the impeachment charges. In 2022, Alaskans re-elected her to the Senate where she could be a vital voice in moderating Republican extremism.

This year, Republicans in Alaska succeeded in placing a measure to repeal the open primaries and ranked choice voting on the ballot. Republicans argued that open primaries and ranked choice voting opened the door to RINOs - Republicans in Name Only - winning. In other words, Republicans want a system the party, not voters, can dominate. As of this writing, the outcome of the repeal measure is too close to call.

In 2017, Harvard Business School examined the two-party system from a business perspective. Its conclusion was that the political duopoly is the one area in which Democrats and Republicans strongly agree and join to defend and protect. (https://tinyurl.com/5x9u55h2)

It hasn’t always been this way, according to the study’s authors. “America’s political system was long the envy of the world. It advanced public interest and gave rise to a grand history of policy innovations that fostered both economic and social progress. Today, however, our political system has become the major barrier to solving nearly every important challenge our nation needs to address.”

Seven years after that sentence was written, the reality of the political parties’ failures is even more obvious and the need for reform more urgent.