Party Time
With Ralph Naders entry into the race the topic of third parties and the role they play has been raised. Does it require a change in the voting system to make their role significant or are there reasons for valuing such parties simply as a way to broaden the discussion? Is the two-party system broken? Here is a little history and commentary from Charles for those interested in the topic. You can use this post as a starting point for a discussion. What follows was contributed by Charles Lemos
The Origin of Political Parties
The world’s oldest political parties are the British parties, one of which is no longer in existence. Though these parties have their origins arising from the events surrounding the Glorious Revolution of 1688, these did not become political parties in the modern sense until the late mid-seventeenth century. The Conservative and Unionist (commonly called the Conservative Party or Tory) Party dates from the 1780s from a faction that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger. The Whig Party in turn coalesced around Charles Fox. By the 1830s these two parties began waging electoral campaigns especially after the Reform Act of 1832 that brought about universal male suffrage.
The British Liberal Party would form when a faction of free trade Tories joined with the Whigs. The Tories and the Liberals would dominate British politics until the 1920s. In the second half of the 19th century, socialist parties of various stripes formed. In the UK the British Trade Union movement and the smaller Socialist Party would join to form the British Labour Party in 1899-1900. These three parties continue to dominate British political debate however Britain’s electoral system is a first past the post system that has regulated the British Liberal-Democrats (the Liberal Party merged in 1988 with the Social Democratic Party) to a third-tiered status. Each district of the 646 districts elects its representative on a plurality. He with the most votes wins. That is identical to the US. If Britain were proportional then their governments would likely be coalition governments because the Liberal-Democrats generally poll in the upper teens and lower twentieth percentile. Naturally, electoral reform is key component of the Liberal-Democrats agenda.
The Rise of Political Parties in the United States
Political parties in the United States date from the 1820s though national elections in the period from 1792 through 1820 did have loose coalitions evolve over the approach to a centralized government. Alexander Hamilton founded the Federalist Party in 1790 though it was not a true political party in the modern sense. In 1788, George Washington was elected President without any formal or informal party backing. By 1792 that had changed. Hamilton’s Federalists generally held for a strong federal government and for an economic free trade platform that included a national bank, Hamilton’s Bank of the United States. Opposed to this agenda was Thomas Jefferson. The coalition that morphed around him came to be known as the Democratic-Republican Party, again not a true party in the modern sense but nonetheless the forerunner of the Democratic Party today. The Jeffersonian vision was limited government, state’s rights and a more agrarian model than a free trade commerce one though Jefferson certainly read and admired both Adam Smith and Ricardo.
The elections of 1824 and 1828 are perhaps the most bitter elections ever waged in the United States. The 1824 election saw no candidate win a majority in the Electoral College thus throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Andrew Jackson won 43% of the popular vote and 99 Electoral College votes to John Quincy Adams’ 31% of the popular vote with 81 Electoral College votes. Two other candidates, William Crawford of Georgia and Henry Clay of Kentucky, received the balance. Each candidate was technically a Democratic-Republican. When an election is thrown into the House, voting is done by states’ Congressional delegations. Each Representative casts his vote and whoever wins that state block wins one vote. In 1824, the only time so far that an election was thrown to the House, Adams carried 13 states to Jackson’s 7 states and Crawford’s 4 states. On February 9, 1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as the sixth President of the United States.
Andrew Jackson have received a plurality of both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, quite naturally, felt robbed. Indeed, Adams and Clay conspired against Jackson. He then spent the next four years organizing his forces. The 1828 election was even more bitter. The slurs against Jackson are perhaps the most heinous in US political history though James Buchanan (presumed to be a homosexual), Samuel J. Tilden (a confirmed bachelor, he died a virgin and was called Slippery Sam), Thomas Jefferson (called an atheist), and Grover Cleveland (labeled a philander who fathered a child out of wedlock) all suffered atrocious comments. The charges against Jackson centered on his marriage and they ended up killing Rachel Jackson just before Christmas 1828 (Rachel Jackson had been married before but left her abusive husband to marry Jackson in 1790, Jackson killed at least one man in a duel over her honor and maimed several others, he was accused of killing seven men in duels not to mention of performing extra-judicial military executions). Out of Andrew Jackson’s organizing was born the Democratic Party of the United States.
Out of Henry Clay’s contempt for Jackson was born the Whig Party of the United States in 1832 though that party only survived through the mid-1850s. The 1820s and the 1830s in the United States were a very vibrant period in American political life. These are the years of Alexander de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the expansion to the far shore of the Mississippi, and the second Great Awakening, the religious revival that gave us everything from the Shakers to Mormonism.
Third Parties during this period came and went and largely revolved around single issues. The Abolitionist Movement created several parties the Liberty Party in 1844, the Free Soil Party in 1848 through 1856, and the Constitutional Union Party in 1860. In 1832, the Anti-Masonic Party won 5% of the popular vote and carried the six Electoral College votes from Vermont. In 1848, Martin Van Buren running on the Free Soil ticket won 10% of the popular vote but failed to carry a single state. The anti-Catholic and anti-Irish immigration Know-Nothing Party was the largest third party of this era. In 1856, former President Millard Fillmore was the standard bearer winning 22% of the popular vote but only winning one state, ironically Maryland, a colony that had been founded by English Catholics in search of religious freedom. The ironies of American history simply astound at times.
The Modern Era Since 1856 As the Whig Party broke into factions over slavery during the 1850s, the northern faction of the Whig Party formed the modern Republican Party. In 1856, the Republican Party nominated John C. Fremont born in Georgia but running from California. The Republicans placed second in 1856 to the Democratic James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, arguably the most ineffectual President ever to serve a full-term.
Then comes 1860. The Democratic Party splits into two and a small faction of the Whigs now called the Constitutional Union Party plus the Republicans all run candidates. The results are as follows:
| Candidates | Party | Popular | Electoral |
| Lincoln/Hamlin | Republican | 39.8% | 180 |
| Breckinridge/Lane | Southern Democratic | 18.1% | 72 |
| Bell/Everett | Constitutional-Union | 12.6% | 39 |
| Douglas/Johnson | Northern Democratic | 29.5% | 12 |
Lincoln carried everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line plus California and Oregon; Breckinridge swept the deep South plus Maryland and Delaware (all slave states). Bell carried the border states of Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Douglas won just Missouri and three unfaithful electors from New Jersey despite polling almost as many votes as Breckinridge and Bell combined. 1860 is the apex of multiple parties in the United States and the zenith of regionalism in American politics.
After the Civil War, the American political system would be characterized by one dominant party, the GOP, and one more of an interloper to keep things interesting but largely non-competitive with a vibrant third parties. Though only in 1872 and in 1912 did a third party come close to challenging the established political order, they were always generating new ideas and policy proposals. However, the salient characterization is a deep regional and social cleavage and one that still persists to this day.
Third parties in the post Civil War period were plentiful however short-lived because often their ideas were absorbed by one of the two more dominant parties. This too has been a salient characteristic of the American political system and remains one of the compelling reasons for third parties. To float trial balloons on the margin that might find more currency in the mainstream.
In 1872, four years of corruption under “Useless Grant” had embittered the GOP and a wing called the Liberal Republicans arose to challenge the hero of Appomattox. This wing nominated Horace Greeley as their candidate. The Democrats were so lost that they too settled for Greeley, even though he wasn’t a Democrat and in his newspaper, the New York Tribune, was their harshest critic. Grant’s reign of corruption was however swept back into office with 55% of the popular vote. One side note, this was the first election were the suffrage of women was an issue.
The 1870s saw the rise of mass social movements that led to the formation of political parties. In short order they include the Greenback Party (1874-1884) an agrarian party that opposed paper money; the Prohibition Party founded in 1869 and perhaps you are not aware but it still exists today with a platform based on temperance and fiscal/social conservatism; the even more amazing candidacy of Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for the Presidency in 1872 even though she was a woman not allowed to vote and only 32 at the time, under the banner of the Equal Rights Party; the Independent Reform Party that opposed the big trusts and monopolies; the Anti-Monopoly Party from Iowa and the People’s Independent Party in California. The Granger movement played a role in all of the aforementioned parties save the Equal Rights Party and the Prohibition Party. Other small parties of this era include the American National Party, another anti-Masonic party, the Workingman’s Party, the first Marxist party in the United States, and the Socialist Labor Party, a trade unionist party. Notice how third parties in the United States have mostly had a leftist bent.
The above were all relatively narrow few issues parties with limited electoral appeal though a few of them did win local and state elections as well as Congressional seats. However there were three other political parties with a more lasting impact and that received broader popular support. The first of these is the People’s Party, better known as the Populist Party, that was founded after the Panic of 1873. The Populists campaigned against the gold standard and had major successes in the Plains states. In the election of 1892, James Weaver garnered 1,041,028 votes or 8.5% of the popular vote. He carried 4 states (KS, CO, NV, ID) and won 22 electoral votes including one each from unfaithful electors in North Dakota and Oregon. There is one lasting legacy from the Populist Party: the direct election of United States Senators with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Previously Senators were appointed by state legislatures. They were also instrumental in extending women’s suffrage especially in the Mountain West. The Populist Party faded from the scene with the passage of these issues and the rise of the next two parties.
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was founded in 1901 and remains in existence to this day. The SPA currently holds one Senate seat, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. Its greatest electoral success was in 1912 when Eugene Debs won 6.0% of the Popular Vote. It should also be noted that in 1920 Debs ran for the Presidency while imprisoned. He received over 900,000 votes or 3.4% of the popular. The Socialist Party have advocated for labor reform, improved working conditions, greater social welfare safety net and opposed American militarism. Their legacy includes the 40 hour work week, the Department of Labor, and a fierce advocacy of civil liberties born from the unyielding hatred of things “socialist” in the United States. The other party with long-lasting effects on the American political psyche is the Progressive Party, technically three separate parties created for three separate elections: 1912, 1924, and 1948. Today there are a few state parties that call themselves “Progressive” but there is no national Progressive Party. Theodore Roosevelt’s insurgent campaign nicknamed Bull Moose in 1912 against his hand-picked successor, the corpulent William Howard Taft, fared the best. Roosevelt finished far behind the Democratic Woodrow Wilson but ahead of Taft. This is the only second place finish ever for a third party in the United States. Roosevelt won 27.4% of the popular vote carrying six states (PA, MI, MN, CA, WA, SD in descending electoral importance) with 88 electoral votes.
In 1924 Robert La Follette too abandoned the GOP to form a third party run under the Progressive banner. Though he only carried his native Wisconsin, La Follette received 4.8 million votes winning 16.6% of the popular vote. Both the Roosevelt and La Follette campaigns have left an important legacy: industrial regulation and labor standards, banking reforms and most importantly the right of collective bargaining agreements.
The 1948 election is of course memorable for Truman’s upset win over Dewey. Forgotten in that saga is there were two third parties running. Strom Thurmond and his Dixiecrat Party of disaffected Democrats and Henry Wallace under the Progressive banner again composed of disaffected Democrats of a far different leaning. Both ironically each won 2.4% of the popular vote, however Thurmond did win four states with 39 electoral votes. While defections from the Democratic Party made the race close, Truman still captured 49.6% of the popular vote and 303 electoral votes. Such was the dominance of the Democratic Party then.
In 1968 another disaffected Democrat, George Wallace, would have a far different impact. Wallace garnered 9.9 million votes or 13.5% of the popular vote winning five states with 45 electoral votes plus another from an unfaithful elector in North Carolina. However, his votes in states like Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina swung those states to Nixon. Had Humphrey carried those states, the election would have been thrown to the House of Representatives for neither candidate thus had the required votes to win. It is fair to say that Wallace’s run and the GOP “Southern” strategy changed the American political landscape.
Flaws of the American Two Party System The two party system as it exists today in the United States has several flaws. Campaigns are prohibitively expensive even for Congressional races. The cost of campaigns has led to an insidious and pernicious relationship with those who have deep pockets: corporations, industry associations, labor groups and a random few billionaires. The interests of those generally come first. The parties are also “big tent” parties that assemble electoral coalitions of varied disparate groups. Interests of several groups can get sacrificed for the greater good. Gay rights is the prime example. The Democrats keep on pushing us to the back of the bus if not off the bus. That’s at least better than the GOP who push us under the bus. The other problem is very uniquely American. The two parties stand for vastly different programs because they represent not just a deep regional divide but more importantly a social divide based on class, religion and urban versus rural. The urban versus rural divide is something to behold. Here is the US electoral map by county in 2000: HYPERLINK
Remember Gore got more votes and notice how little blue there really is. It is a sea of rural red, the purplish suburbs and city blues. That is one of your problems. The Democratic core are islands, an blue archipelago scattered across a red sea.
The other problem is that since Roe v Wade in 1973, social conservatives have become more active at the grass-roots levels and at the state level. The state legislatures, of course, determine Congressional districts after each US Census every decade. In 1974, the Democrats controlled 37 state legislatures, the GOP held 11 and 4 were split. By 1994 the landscape was much different. The Democrats held 18, the GOP controlled 19 and 12 were split. That shift led to increasingly conservative districts being gerrymandered across many states especially in the South as the South gained population and hence more electoral clout. The creation of safe conservative districts led to the career of Tom Delay, the testy pesty pest killer of Sugarland, Texas. Luckily, today the pendulum has swung back to the Democratic Party who control 23 state legislatures versus just 15 for the GOP and 12 split.
Other problems with two party systems are the reversalist syndrome and the playing to the center syndrome. The reversalist problem is that parties simply undo what the other has done once they retake power. For example, the GOP since 1968 has waged an unrelenting war on the New Deal and the Great Society. Multi-party systems since they tend to be more consensus-based do not have reversalist problems as much. That is why in Norway when a Conservative coalition replaces a Social Democratic one, the welfare state is not disassembled. The playing to the center problem is that far-reaching solutions to vexing problems receive band-aid fixes because that is what the political myth of bipartisanship and compromise allows. That is why on serious matters of national discourse I prefer partisanship. Some fights are worth having. I would like to have that fight for universal health care. I would like to win that fight because not only can we win that fight right now but also because it is a moral imperative. Either we are one nation or we are not. Mrs. Clinton understands that and she is willing to fight for it. That is why I support Mrs. Clinton and failing that why I will support Ralph Nader come the Fall. And also because the Green Party does hail from a fine American tradition of third parties providing new ideas.
Perhaps another discussion worth having are the merits and deficiencies of various electoral schemes such as STV, first the past post, list systems etc. You may also want to discuss the logic of the Electoral College.
Comments
tldr, Zombie Debs for President.
To Norm and Charles both: This is a fantastic topic, which I am excited to discuss and hear what other people think. So thanks for creating this discussion.
To Charles: While I do not agree with all of your conclusions, I think this is on the whole very helpful way of getting the topic going. I also think your diagnosis of some prominent failures of the two party system, namely, money and "reversalism" are spot on (although see my one caveat below). Right now I mostly have questions, rather than any specific criticisms, one historical, the other more practical.
(1.) The historical question is this. You offer an admirable history of the influence of 3rd parties in American history. However, 1860 being an exception, it sounds to me, based on what you've said, that there being two major contenders with suitably comprehensive political programs has pretty much always been the case. Now, you do offer some caveats about the differences between what you dub the 'modern system' and early, nascently post-colonial ones, which for reasons of brevity, perhaps, I assume, you did not spell out. But: What are the historical causes, in your mind, that have made the two party system in the U.S. such a sustainable and dominant model? I ask because addressing and acknowledging some of these causes may be important to assessing alternatives.
(2.) The practical issues is about what you dub "reversalism," which as remarked, I think is in part a correct diagnosis, particularly given your (good) example of the appalling bigotry in this country toward homosexuality. However, I want to underscore that not all major advances are subject to "reversalism": the abolition of slavery, civil rights, and much else, are, I take it, much more stable, although of course improvements in civil rights have been and continue to be incremental. Now, I don't take it you deny this, you only emphasize the role of 3rd parties in such changes. The reason I mention this is because I think there is another perspective from which to see the issue, one in which playing 'to the center' has, in some cases, advantages, and need not always mean appealing to the lowest common denominator. Some times, particularly in the case of civil rights, this requires bringing the majority over to your side by, in effect, creating a new moral sensibility which takes for granted the moral wrong embedded in some institution or practice (such as discrimination). By 'moral sensibility,' I mean a reasonably coherent and stable set of responses to a given situation or practice, one that shared by a community and typically operating by its central premises being taken for granted as 'obvious'. Some examples would be: 'slavery is wrong and inhuman', 'it is unjust to discriminate against someone on the basis of gender or race, which is irrelevent to their qualifications...'.
My claim is not that such 'sensibilities' are necessarily universal, but that they are widely-shared, and that it is just their scope or general acceptance which accounts for the relative stability of some central liberal reforms, and is a partial justification of a political system that requires strong majorities of electoral winners, and consensus formation. (Rather than say, 5 or 6 or 20 parties, each of whom earns only a small percentage). Although, as you point out, some issues are excluded by this system, it also enables the kind of serious consensus formation required for stable reforms. To give one contemporary example of how a moral sensibility can be created, I think HRC, Obama, and Edwards have all done a terrific job on the rhetorical end of the health care issue by speaking of it as a 'right', not a government 'benefit'. I would suggest that it is crucial that the topic becomes framed in those terms in public discussion and becomes widely accepted in them, if we are to expect any stability for serious reforms.
My paternal ancestor, Emerson Etheridge, was a Whig in Congress from Tn. He later served another term as a member of the American Party.
Not sure that the individual particularities of any given person running for office should be discounted. In my red, red state of Arizona our Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano is lauded for her great ability in office. She keeps getting re-elected despite party majorities.
This is why, when talking about Nader, people are somewhat skeptical. He has not accomplished anything in office. While he may have the most progressive platform, the same 'meme' used about Barack Obama is valid here. Is it just words? Do words have any power?
Obama has more legislative accomplishments on relevant issues (Walter Reed, government transparency,nuclear proliferation) than either Clinton or Nader.
While it would be nice to think a pure progressive agenda would garner more support in America, if you are in a swing state or a red state, trying to take an ideological stand aganst the two party system by voting for Nader is simply supporting the Republicans. Nader should come out and say as much.
For those in safely blue state, sure, go ahead and make your point by voting for the progressive Nader.
When you factor in the 1% of the vote given by progressives to Nader with the 2-3% of votes spoiled either by Republican caging lists or other nefarious tactics, Obama will have to win by 4 or 5%. Otherwise we get Mr. 100 Year War McCain.
As for Nader.....:You don't make third parties viable by announcing a run for president on Meet the Press four years after you got 0.1 percent last time. They should be gradually increasing the influence of those "outside the system" and then one day a third party presidential candidate could actually be viable. Nader will run and get 0.1 percent and barely anyone will pay attention to his message, except to hate him a bit more. It's useless.
A system like Instant-runoff voting would be a fantastic improvement to our government. The two-party system we happened upon is not by intent, it's an unfortunate and unavoidable result of the pluralist voting system we use (see: Duverger's Law). Far from good, the two party system has created a war-like mentality in government. In this war, politicians must remain silent when another member of their party is doing things that are illegal or unethical (see Tom Delay and the House Ethics Committee).
Just like a marketplace ... if you only have two choices, you're market is probably not very productive or creative. Not just because of the natural tendency toward mutual complacency, but because in a marketplace with only two competitors, each competitor is as likely to gain advantage over the other by hindering the other from being able to deliver a good product as they are by improving their own product offerings.
This dynamic is seen not only in the activities of the officeholders, but during the elections themselves. The fewer the candidates, the more likely the campaigns are to go negative. When a candidate runs against multiple opponents, for practical reasons they're forced to focus their campaign on their own merits (i.e. product offerings). The cost/benefit of trying to win by damaging the other candidates is not there when the field is large because there's too many competitors to attack, and the attack detracts from your own ability to promote yourself.
There's no denying that the political environment of the United States has more often resembled a war of two parties trying to undermine the other than of a system of people with a common interest working to offer the best possible solutions. There's no particular reason it need be the former. It remains, and I think will inescapably remain the latter, while the two-party system persists.
Adam, this column is a response to your request from the Nader thread. It is your doing. So thanks for your suggestion
I have to admit a few things. I wrote this piece last night quickly and largely from memory so if I had had more time I might have dwelt more on the flaws and merits of the two party system in the US and more generally elsewhere.
In speaking to Norm this morning by phone, we covered a few other problems. The electoral system favors entrenched interests. I also think that the US for a hundred year period from 1856 to 1952 was effectively a one party system with a token opposition. Between 1856 and 1932, a seventy-six period, the Democrats won but six elections and one of those the 1876 election between Hayes and Tilden was stolen in the Electoral College. From 1860 through 1932, the GOP dominated the White House and Congress and thus the Judiciary as well. Cleveland was able to eke a win because of GOP corruption while Wilson won in 1912 only because the GOP split in two. Splits are dangerous things but also provide openings and opportunities and we are sort of witnessing one if not two now. Certainly the GOP coalition is in the process of redefining itself and it appears that the rift between Obama and Clinton may have an impact on the viability of the Democrats to win in November. Too early to tell.
This is another problem of two party systems that I didn't mention. They are often monolithic ones. One party dominates for long stretches and that leads to nepotism, corruption, abuses of power, a lack of new ideas etc. Sweden, Colombia, and Uruguay all have had competitive two party systems where one party dominated for long periods. Generally it takes a intra-party split or a serious economic crisis to unseat the dominant party.
I am sure that the readership will add both other merits and flaws that I may have missed. That is the point to engage your thoughts. I do apologize there are a few typos here and there in the piece.
If there are any Canadians, Kiwis and Aussies among us, I'd love to hear their thoughts on their political party systems and their electoral systems.
Charles
I agree with Theowne above. I voted for Nader in 1996 & 2000 because I wanted the Green Party to get enough votes to attain major party status & federal matching funds. If Nader's current candidacy were a continuation of that effort then I would vote for him happily. As it stands, I'll probably vote for him unhappily simply to protest our single party system.
Sometiems I wonder if the overcomplication of the American electoral system, was actually designed with the purpose of confusing the electorate and make it less obvious how undemocratic the whole thing is.
It could be so simple, in Spain we count one person, one vote. We have a parliamentary system that allows seats to the different parties according to the percentage of votes they receive. So, we don't have a third party, we have 3 dozen parties (or more). Surely, there are 2 main parties, but beyond them are multitude of options for people to vote as they feel better represented, whether you want to vote for the Greens, communists, nationalists or whatever. Then, those parties that actually garner enough votes to qualify for parliament seats get their seat and their voice/opinion is added to the legislative discussion.
Seems to me, that overall, that's a lot more representative of the wide spectrum of people that compose a nation. Otherwise, you would be fooled into believing there are just 2 types, us vs. them. Did anyone say recipe for civil war?
Not mentioned in Charles' otherwise admirable post is that Woodrow Wilson began the trend of Democrats as the "liberal" party, forcing Republicans rightward. This is an important detail to remember anytime someone like Sean Hannity calls Republicans the party of Lincoln. Here in Minnesota, the Farmer-Labor party achieved notable success by capturing the governor's mansion four times & by sending at least four senators to Washington. They merged with the Democrats after WW2, which is why our Dems are referred to as the DFL. But now they are different from national Dems in name only.
How has america, with it's 150+ years of 2 party rule not fallen into these problems?
That is why I support Mrs. Clinton and failing that why I will support Ralph Nader come the Fall. And also because the Green Party does hail from a fine American tradition of third parties providing new ideas.
Is Nader running as a Green Party candidate?
Hey, at least you guys have two.
Here in Japan there's only one and it's called the LDP.
Wow, excellent discussion guys. Thanks!
btw: for those that have not read Charles' bio, I recommend it.
Re: Adam
"playing 'to the center' has, in some cases, advantages, and need not always mean appealing to the lowest common denominator. Some times, particularly in the case of civil rights, this requires bringing the majority over to your side by, in effect, creating a new moral sensibility which takes for granted the moral wrong embedded in some institution or practice (such as discrimination)."
Playing to the center has the disadvantage of being anti-democratic (in my view). But assuming that voters are actually comfortable with their representatives diverging from their stated positions, then there is certainly the possibility of affecting some kind of temporary ‘sensibility’. Civil rights, however, are unlikely to be the kind of issues that would be applicable to such a phenomena, given that human rights are typically all-or-nothing kind of demands. It’s more probable, in this case, that grassroots organizations and popular struggles were able to advance a moral sensibility that was already present. Political parties rarely make such advances on their own, and if they do so readily, it’s usually irrelevant to their hold on power (e.g., women’s rights in the workplace). We’re talking about group identities here, not economic norms.
The reason why universal health care is such a dominant issue (even though the US citizens have supported it since Truman) is because a number of powerful industries (concentrations of economic power) have been facing extremely high costs for health care. The manufacturing industry comes to mind. I seriously doubt "Sicko" had that huge an impact.
Two more quick issues I wanted to mention, which now strike me as interrelated.
First, I have been researching this instant runoff voting (IRV) topic, and I'm a little shocked we don't presently use it. (For a funny and informative cartoon, see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqblOq8BmgM )
Second, another major obstacle for presidential elections, as Canaria and others have pointed out, is plainly the electoral college, which seems to me (and probably most of us) an anachronistic and long outmoded institution. What does this have to do with 3rd parties? If presidential elections were won by popular majority, with no regard to the state boundaries in which a vote was cast, the wasting-a-vote issue becomes less relevant, because your vote for Nader or whomever is not "wasted" when the votes of your geographical peers are translated into the winner-takes-all electoral votes of your state. A vote for Nader in NY, and one in CA are just that, one vote each, regardless of the location in which they were cast. Under the current system, a candidate can get a few million votes, and depending on the geographic distribution of the votes cast, can end up with few or no "electoral votes." Hence, all this (to my mind, good) advice about whether or not to vote for Nader based on whether your own state will inevitably go democratic or be borderline.
Melponmenh:
I'm aware that moral sensibilities often express all-or-nothing demands (as in both of the examples that I gave). As for grassroots and popular movements, I did not deny their relevance, but surely it matters whether or not they remain merely part of a "movement" or whether they are publicly debated and explicitly codified into law, and so become relevant to everyone and no longer optional. It matters, I would say, that we didn't, in the end, just create a popular consensus that discrimination is wrong but created specific legal norms sanctioning discriminatory behavior.
As for health care, there are many forces at work. Supposing I don't accept a Marxist idea of the relation of ideological superstructure to economic base as axiomatic--and I don't--I see no reason to privilege only economic relations, without denying their relevance. The moral discourse and public representation of the issue has changed, from being presented as a "government entitlement program," to being a matter of "right" and "obligation." Surely this is not a trivial change.
Adam,
I didn't mean to not attempt to answer your questions. The first one is a good one and a hard one. I am not sure I can think of an answer.
In searching for one, my thoughts lead me to the regionalism extant at the time of independence and to the very different qualities of each of the 13 colonies. Pennsylvania, New York and Rhode Island were pluralistic and full of religious dissenters and that of course required the ability to get along. Religious tolerance begat political tolerance and diversity of ideas.
And from the beginning there was a serious debate on how strong a central government to have. Hamilton and Adams led the Federalist cause. Jefferson led the anti-Federalist cause. Madison and Jay sought to bridge the differences. The nature of a central government is clearly evident today. Even the health care debate has those tones, mandates or not? These are long-held philosophical debates. The Greeks had them. Maybe it is part of being human.
The South is of course a case apart. It is a hard land that exhibits still so much pain. Perhaps that is from the character of its people. The South was largely settled by the Scot-Irish, hard-line Protestants who conquered Ireland for Britain. Their "conquistador" mentality is still plainly evident in someone like Trent Lott or Mike Huckabee, the take no prisoners sort of thing.
Regionalism seems a factor. The experience of the Civil War also seems a factor. That of course led to the dominance of the GOP everywhere but the South. And of course there has been a juxtaposition of that since 1968. The urban versus rural troubles me. Does it trouble anyone else?
One criticism that I have of Barack Obama is that when he went to Boise, he told them that he wasn't going to take their guns away. Fair enough. Fine. But I wish he had told that guns are a problem in urban America and that something needs to be done. Tell them the problem. They are reasonable people. They are capable of seeing other people's problems. To me this was a failure of leadership and a squandering of opportunity. He is wasting himself, his own ability to extend his magic. He needs to explain Chicago to Boise, instead he chose to link southern Illinois to Boise. Those two are the same thing. The rural versus urban worries me. Anyone else? Norm?
I think that two party system survives to factor of systemic stability. It is hard to move inmovable objects. Also from the very nature of third parties that focus on very narrow aggrievements that then get taken up by the larger parties. So their raison d'etre is cut out from under them. As BigDaddy notes they get co-opted. The DFL is a fine party. It was its roots in the Granger Movement as well.
Perhaps a third party needs to be more broad based to be successful long-term. Of course the SPA is and they are hardly successful apart from Vermont.
I didn't include John Anderson, Ross Perot nor Ralph Nader mostly because frankly the above took a few hours and I tired but I also sort want to hear what you think about those experiences since we largely lived them. So Norm and I really want to hear your thoughts on those.
I'd also ask our Canadian friends to opine on their three party system, their Federalist system, why the Maritimes and Atlantic always get screwed, perhaps let us know when we might expect Stephen Harper's departure.
A good question I think to ask given the rather frequent current of populism is American political life, why do solutions from the left not gain more ground?
And lastly on your second point, I think you are spot on correct. That's both cogent and brilliant.
OldMan writes the Liberal-Democratic Party in Japan. That's a fascinating party. Their dominance is due to the overweight given to rural districts in the Diet, a strict agricultural protectionist scheme that keeps farmers well off at the expense of urban food consumers. Try importing rice into Japan and see what happens to you. You may get a grain in after ten years if you smuggle on board with you. It is bureaucratic nightmare. Japan is an excellent case study on electoral schemes.
And Nader is running on the Green Party ticket, I believe Cynthia McKinney is the likely VP choice.
Adam: I agree with most of what you said.
Moral facts as represented in law can certainly have a legitimizing force that popular sensibilities might not achieve on their own. My concern is with the practice of orienting towards the center for political consensus when it comes to human rights issues.
My understanding is that many 3rd parties are formed because they are concerned with violations to ideals and rights.
The language of 'rights,' I think, insists on intransigence. The charge that some institution or practice violates rights is probably the most serious political accusation one can make.
If a group with a certain identity believes their rights are being violated, then political discourse, in whatever form, can only alert others that this is the case and that the practice it is perhaps unjust. Embodying this moral sensibility, however, seems to be entirely the responsibility of individuals. It just cannot be 'created.'
Heath care an obligation? Frankly, I think it has been for decades.
(Rereading your comments, I get the feeling that our disagreements aren't very substantive)
Charles. You said many intriguing things. Here is my effort to build a little on what you said, and formulate some further questions.
(1.) You mentioned in your original post that most the 3rd parties in the late 19thC were "single issue," and raise this point about more recent history in your last comment:
This is insightful, and raises two central questions, it seems to me.
(A.) If many of the central "single-issues" emphasized by third parties typically get taken up by the main parties, what becomes of the central criticism against the two party system, that crucial issues and voices get suppressed? It seems to me the criticism is still valid, but that we need to distinguish frustrations that concerns are not being taken up in a timely fashion, because third-parties don't have enough voice, and the frustrations that some very important issues never come up, because third-parties don't have any voice on some issues. To make this timely, are there issues that Nader gets right that could not conceivably be incorporated into the democratic platform?
(B.) On a closely related issue, the Vermont remark touches on a practical problem many have thoughtfully raised, and disagreed over. Some complain that Nader has not "built up" the Green Party and should begin with lower level offices than that of the President to do so, such as Congressperson. Others have claimed that his appearances on the national level for a Presidential campaigns represent an important reminder of and voice for issues that are being ignored. So, taking it for granted that these are not mutually exclusive options, still, what, in practical terms, is the best focus for a 3rd party trying to gain recognition and viability?
Finally, (2.) I think you are right that the two-party system begins with Federalism and Anti-Federalism, and in a sense, this makes sense: what needed to be agreed to was the scope of the constitution, our founding document, and the federal government, the kind of national polity we would create together. These are issues about which, in general terms, people still fight today, as you mentioned. But this also made me consider that in fact constitutional consensus--a basic set of agreements--has in sense more often created something deeper, articles of faith, if you will, what Lincoln called 'a civil religion'. This is not to say the Constitution has never been violated, but that it is at least typically expected in American political argument to claim the Constitution's authority, its ideals, and extensions thereof for one's own proposals, not rail against it. This may have spared us many of the deep seated ideological battles over "fundamentals" we could expect if, say, Communists and Fascists, who would not agree with much of our constitution, or might want to change it fundamentally, were prominent and public alternative parties also on the national scene.
My claim is not that this made any 3rd party non-viable. The claim is that it drastically limits the scope of those considered as players, and the players considered as viable will naturally have basic disagreements over the scope of the founding document and the federal government: those who (avowedly, at any rate) want to limit its scope by, say, cutting government spending, and those who want to extend it and see federal government as having a more central role to play in every day life, in the way of guaranteeing basic goods.
If this is at least a half-way decent historical explanation, the question then becomes what of those 3rd parties (such as the Green party) who are clearly committed to the constitution and yet excluded?
Melponmenh:
I agree. You are right that rights are in some sense basic, and our attitudes must in some sense be intransigent about them. I guess I was just taking that any such intransigent attitude was symptomatic of a moral sensibility having acheived prominence and success. (If it helps understand my perspective, I'm currently reading Lynn Hunt's marevelous The Invention of Human Rights, which gives a brief but luminous account of when "human rights" claims first became prominent in Western discourse, and enabled a moral sensibility with precisely the kind of intransigence you mention. But before that consensus, people actually argued, publicly, in the mid-late 18C, about such things as whether or not judicial torture (torture to extract a confession of guilt) was a legitimate procedure.
A symptom of the success of a moral sensibility is that we take its claims to be obvious and irrefutable.
You're offering book suggestions at this point in the semester? lol. "I'll add it to the list." You can add "In The Beginning Was The Deed" by Bernard Williams to your's if you like.
To be perfectly honest, I haven't tackled human rights since third-year philosophy. Thanks for the exercise. Now, back to Wittgenstein.
"You don't make third parties viable by announcing a run for president on Meet the Press four years after you got 0.1 percent last time."
I'm with Theowne on this. Where has Nader's visibility been for the last four - make that close to eight years - besides the elections. I realize it is hard to get heard with this media but, if he were so concerned about change and the health of the nation, he would've been fighting to be heard all along while this country has been drowning under Bush.
I think Nader wants anarchy -- thinking he can break the system completely and then we can start again. He says there is no difference in the parties but these last eight years have shown how untrue that is. Sure, they both are corporate stooges, but the Republican party has learned a blatant and fearless disregard for accountability, truth, the Constitution --- crossing lines no one thought they could get away with ---- and they did. And Ralph did NO shouting about it.
Now he is coming back at this critical time which is an opportunity for him to gum up the works again (and that went so well last time.) If he can get another Republican in, I do believe EVERYONE will end up revolting which is what it looks like he wants? Ralph is ready to break the system and then work on changing it but he isn't living on the low income level....the people that are being taken down by what is going on in politics. I'm sure breaking the system is much easier when things are going to h@ll in a handbasket but I would rather see it happen when not so many of our fellow citizens are in the process of losing their homes, being unable to afford health care, when the higher rates in gas alone has been so drastically affecting their bottom line. When the war is killing us, when important changes have to be made in our energy sources and when we can't get any more conservative judges in or the US is going back to the dark ages.
Nader is not the answer to Edwards. He does not have a chance in h@ll of getting elected - he is just taking advantage of the easiest time to have the strongest impact with the least amount of effort without anything helpful or positive coming out of it.
I used to love and respect Ralph Nader. That has been over for a long time....
ugh.
I'm canadian, but if I could have voted in 2000, it would still have been Green. I guess that means I rejoice when I hear the number of American and Iraqi casualties. Maybe I'm a terrorist, laughing at all the people that died during Hurricane Katrina. In fact, torture doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
Treating Nader like a scapegoat is insulting to his voters. I know this isn’t the place for such comments; I just got a little ticked off and needed to vent.
Adam,
I was thinking about this line in your first comment
However, I want to underscore that not all major advances are subject to "reversalism": the abolition of slavery, civil rights, . . .
Well actually there have been reversals of those. Take slavery. In that disputed election of 1876, the compromise settlement that sent Rutherford B. Hayes to the White House was that the South would be allowed to manage its own affairs. That led to the Jim Crow laws, segregation and second class citizenship for blacks for the next 90 years. Isn't that a reversal of sorts?
Now let's look at the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and successive laws. While they remain on the books, the GOP has sought to disenfranchise voters in other perhaps more subtle ways. For example, Senator Kit Bond of Missouri attached a rider to a military appropriations bill in 2003 or 2004. The rider allows for voter registration drives on military bases but prohibits them within 300 feet of public housing projects.
And then this Administration, as nefarious as they come, has undone laws on the books since the 1870s. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 comes to mind. The whole Habeas Corpus debate. That puts us back to 1215.
Honestly at times, I think there are people who really want to live in the year 4800 BC or whatever year those nut cases think the world was formed.
One of the things that is unique about the United States is a powerful cabal, for lack a better word, of extreme right-wing views that operates behind the scenes in think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute as well as in the bizarre conspiracy laden groups such as the John Birch Society and the Eagle Forum or even the more "mainstream" Federalist Society (3 members on the SCOTUS). Perhaps alliance is a better word than cabal. But to ignore their power and influence is I think perilous to ourselves and the well-being of humanity.
So I do think we have a fight on our hands. Good thing Norm is on our side.
Charles
I'll think more about your last comment overnight.
Do we need a new method of selecting the President, rather than through the electoral college? Yes, that's kind of obvious. The current system violates just about every major criteria for a sound election. The three that come to mind are:
1) A majority of the popular vote won't always win (winning states by large margins and losing states by small margins).
2) Getting more votes from people that would have supported another candidate can sometimes cost an election -- if doing so ends up pitting you in an unfavorable match-up in a run-off, which can theoretically happen if Congress has to decide due to no candidate getting a majority of electoral votes (but this would require a third party be viable enough to win some electoral votes).
3) Being able to win against anyone head-to-head won't necessarily grant a win overall (a centrist candidate may get squeezed by a Democrat and a Republican).
There are not many systems that meet all three, but at the very least an election probably ought to meet at least one.
Will Americans finally decide that it's now time to change the way that we vote? I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.
There are some excellent posts here on the Fair Vote site which clarifies everything quite well Note, however how there are hardly any responses. Do Americans only care about this every four years? ... sigh..
Hmmm. Well, I granted that change is incremental, subject to initial backsliding, and sometimes frustratingly slow. Obvious blacks did not gain full civil rights after the abolition of slavery--and some might argue--still do not have the full rights and recognition as citizens to which they are entitled. At any rate, my point was that however incremental, there are some reforms that have become so much a part of our national sensibility, so much a part of what it means to be American now, that we find it incomprehensible that things could be otherwise--that we could re-institute slavery, that we could go back to full-blown discriminatory practices. And my claim was: often, but not always, the creation of that kind of sensibility requires moving the center to your end of political spectrum, in a way the 2-party system, with it's often stark dichotomies, enables. I was trying to say, against people who took the fact of there being a political center as an unqualified bad, that it has advantages, and can create stability.
That said, this was not intended as a full-blown defense of the 2-party system as it stands. I think many of us favor instant runoff voting and abolishing the electoral college. Of course, neither of these is a sufficient mechanism for fully enabling the voices of 3rd parties, but I think they would go a long way toward doing so. Also, once you abolish the electoral college, there is no longer any need for state-by-state primary campaigns for delegates because state electoral votes, and the very idea of "winning a state," would then no longer make sense. This would cut a lot of money out of the process, because campaigns would no longer be a long, drawn out affair of almost a year of going from state to state. It would also make it impossible for the people in Iowa and NH to determine which candidates people in WA, or TX, or wherever get to vote on. If everyone votes at once, in a "national" primary, then we would all have the same choices.
Oh, and Charles: I agree with your cabal remarks. And the effectiveness of the Bush administration should at least give us pause about my "benefits of the center argument." I don't think Bush has moved the center--he's rendered it irrelevant by doing what he damn well pleases, and covering it up behind a veil of secrecy and blatant misstatement. So: even if it is beneficial to have a center, they are not always causally effective in preventing backsliding. My claim was only that they are one bulwark against it.
JoAnn:
This is a tremendously important consideration, one that is in a sense at the very core of the worries underlying our discussion on this thread, I take it. How do we create the political will to enable visible prominence and to engender serious reform on so many of these issues.
Obviously, both Democrats and Republicans benefit hugely from the 2 party system. And pretty obviously, I'd say, they are not going to institute reforms that potentially undercut their own power. Perhaps this is a prima facie consideration for thinking 3rd parties should begin at the state and national legislative levels, rather than national elections for presidency?
Adam, I will write more later but the question I have for you is:
Where is the center in the United States on the ideological scale?
If 1 is a leftist nirvana and 10 is right wing heaven, my guess is that the center in the US is a somewhere between a 6.5 and 7.5.
In Europe, the center is closer to 3 or 3.5. In Latin America, the center is also under 5 and closer to 4.
Obama is playing to the center. Witness both his healthcare and energy proposals. Those would be right-wing proposals elsewhere.
For god's sake, we have a national health care programme in Colombia, not a great one but it does attempt to cover everyone. In Brazil, they have health care and a national prescription service. Brazil. This is doable.
Special thanks to JoAnn who didn't attack me. Norm and I both love your comments. We enjoy your zeal and hope it continues. And I do have a thick skin so don't worry about it.
Charles
Charles: Good question.
I'll give a qualified agreement to your assessment of the political center in the U.S. (and Europe, although I don't know much about Latin America). And much of it will be qualified by what I said above about the U.S. Constitution being treated as a 'civil religion' that typically but not always makes options 1 (radical leftist heaven) and option 10 (radical rightist heaven) unlikely (but not impossible: witness the Bush administration).
Where we disagree is what impact Barak Obama is having on American politics, and why. I think he is moving the center to the left, rather than playing to the center by moving to the right, but in a tremendously clever and sophisticated way. This is so in two big ways. First, he made a strong normative (de jure) claim in the debate last night that the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are not propriety or terribly revealing, instancing the fact that government transparency, ethics reform, and the ban on torture are not strictu dictu "liberal". Now de facto, this is obviously false: McCain's trying to establish basic continuities with the Bush administration's policies demonstrates that "Republican" now does indeed mean repudiating these commitments in favor of strong claims of centralized, secret, authoritarian rule that is above the law. But by disavowing the label "liberal" Obama tries to make these simply "American" commitments and values, which prior to the Bush administration they (mostly) were. But simply because he disavows the rhetoric of "left-right" does not mean he is not tacitly drawing on what are, strictly speaking, de facto leftist commitments. Second, and conversely, he cleverly uses right-wing buzz words for left wing policies, using the language of "responsibility" and "accountability" to talk about why the private health care industry should be subject to strict government regulation (a standard left wing outlook in the U.S.), transparent negotiations, and government sponsorship. In my view, the differences between this and Clinton's plan in terms of policy are evanescent, other than Clinton's bare appeal to "mandates", which does not distinguish her plan from Obama's because "they are a mandate for you to buy insurance, not for the government to provide it." What that appeal does is exploit a left-wing rhetoric of "universality" to no purpose other than alienating opposition who might otherwise be sympathetic.
Let me try to make an honest acknowledgment of a difference we have on this issue, one that is open to rational arguments on both sides and does not attempt simply to dismiss the values that clearly are important to us both, and, I take it, largely shared and acknowledge to be so. Call it a difference in political sensibility. I think many HRC supporters think that a lot needs to change from the Bush administration, that it needs to change fast, and that we gotta be tough-minded and "realist" about it, digging in our heels for a big fight. I am sympathetic to this line of thinking, and it's a perfectly rational and fair response to the outrages of the last 7 years. But I don't think publicly using that rhetoric, as HRC does, necessarily helps: Obama wants to go behind the back of right-wing politicians by packaging left wing proposals in sympathetic language. His success in the polls with independents and more conservative leaning voters may have something to do with "Hillary hate" (which is a real and genuine phenomenon). But part of it can also be read as a vindication of this basic strategy: not the ritual repetition of left wing buzz words, but an effort to acknowledge commitments we all ought to share (from which, in his mind, left wing policies follow). It's more subtle, less overt, less in your face, but the goal is the same and the felt need for profound change every bit as serious. Maybe you think this is not enough to respond to the right-wing smear machine. But I think he offered a wonderful exhibition just last night of how he responds to absurd attacks: with patience, level-headedness, poise, and sometimes, a good joke that exposes its outright absurdity.
Ehem (ooops!) We don't believe in heaven. "Nirvana," as good ol' John Lennon taught us.
Adam, Your point on the mandates is well-taken. I do admit that even with Clinton I am settling on a secondary choice not opting for my ideal choice.
On your second point, if Obama is going behind the back of the right wing why do I feel like he has run over my back on his way there? If his message is so subtle why do large numbers of the progressive left like they have been bludgeoned? Of course, I don't mind a good fight. I do however hate losing them. And I do feel that I lost in 2008.
It is hard for me to get enthused about his policies. They seem like a sell out. I feel he is surrendering the battle before even the first shot is fired on both health care and energy (which is really the critical issue in my view).
I can't argue with his success but I am not sure that it will translate into long-term gains and benefits for the Democratic Party. I have been told that his campaign is the same strategy used by Harold Washington in his runs for Mayor in Chicago. I don't know anything about Harold Washington so if any one does, please share your thoughts on his campaign and his tenure as mayor.
I have also been that Deval Patrick used the same tactics and the same strategy consultants. I am hearing and reading that he is not so highly regarded in Massachusetts but it has only been a year.
The American electoral system, the first past the post, heavily gerrymandered districts, more indirect democracy than direct, biased in favour of smaller and more rural states, plus a Constitution that puts the brakes on change by only electing one-third of the Senate in any given cycle are all constraints on new entrants and on change. The Constitution, like the country it serves, is a conservative document in its approach to government. It is the Bill of Rights that makes the Constitution a thing of beauty. I also agree with Thomas Paine that the Constitution has to evolve with each new generation. It is not a static document like Scalia and Thomas seem to believe.
Different electoral systems provide different policy outcomes. Down the line perhaps a post on different electoral systems might make sense.
John Edwards for President in 2012.
Charles, Quick summation on our basic agreements and disagreements. Obviously we disagree about the extent to which Obama's policies are "leftist" enough. Frankly, on energy and the economy, I feel a bit unexcited by both HRC and Obama, and it is a pity, I think, that the debate last night was wasted on petty BS rather than the fact that gas prices hit $3.14/gallon today and are projected to hit between $3.75 - $4.00 by summer. This is not a temporary problem but indicative of greater energy use (demand) by China and other developing nations and decreased availability, supply. See here. A lot of sloganeering about biodiesels won't help; the half measures our pathetic Congress is "negotiating" with the Bush Administration to "stimulate" the economy won't help.
As to why people on the left who don't support Obama feel bludgeoned, I would say, after the Bush Administration, many want a candidate talking about a "big fight," which Edwards did and Clinton does, rather than what sounds to their ears like meliorist talk about us getting "together" and having a little national pow-wow where we pat each other on the back and rejoice in our fine sentiments. But it's just talk--no one has really pushed for impeachment, and I fail, searching through history, to see an instance where it was more deserved. At any rate, one might remind the country of its basic commitments, how the Bush Administration has failed them. Whether, as a practical strategy, that is the best way to motivated the country toward leftist policies--assuming for a moment that they are that--only time will tell.
On the core issue of this thread, I think your remarks about the U.S. Constitution as "an essentially conservative document" are spot on, and are a good way of spelling out what I meant when I said it's part of a 'civil religion' or basic set of commitments that typically but not always excludes more radical ideologies from taking control and instituting radical changes. But let me distinguish two sense of "conservative." The first characterizes a set of policy, for which the appropriate contrasting term is "liberal." The second refers not to types of policies but to an outlook on how policy is implemented, the business of politics in the practical sense, and for which the appropriate contrasting term is not "liberal" but "radical." I am a bleeding heart "liberal" on policy. I am perfectly comfortably being called "moderately conservative" in the sense of politics rather than policy, against any radical and abrupt changes in social customs, laws, and norms--or the Constitution.
This is where I think we disagree. So I would say, the Constitution needs to be re-interpreted every generation but it's central text should go untouched, unless major, intransigent, and fundamental problems emerge. It is the spirit of the law, not its letter, that must be infused with new meaning. I sense you want bolder changes: new amendments added with more frequency, repeal of certain electoral conventions, etc. Is that a fair statement of the issue?
Likewise, I think any major social reform like health care requires an in-depth transformation of the status quo, which is what I think Obama and Clinton offer in their slightly different ways, a transitional program the ultimate goal of which should be true universal health care, something like full and guaranteed government coverage for all. I take it you want a bolder program with bigger reforms, something like medicare for all, as soon as we can do it. Is that a fair parsing of the issue?
If so, hopefully that helps clarify our disagreements (and the underlying thread of agreement that's made this an interesting conversation for me). But that political rather than policy "conservatism" was the initiate source of insistence, for all it's problems, on the idea of a "center," and of my resistance to the idea of, say, full blown 20 party elections. But all those worries go away with instant run off voting, because then you have a mechanism to unify democratic participation with majoritarian outcomes.
Your right that gerrymandered districts are another huge problem, and controlled by state legislatures. I don't know how to fix that problem.
How to fix gerrymandered districts is actually pretty easy. Pay attention to your state legislature and make sure you vote in state elections after a US Census. I do have faith in the Democratic Party to balance the districts.
Basically we have to match the grassroots efforts of the religious right. It was Jerry Fawell, Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed who really deserve credit (or blame depending on your point of view) for the drift to the right in Congress. They understood the Constitution and that the power was in the state legislatures and they set out to win those. They were largely successful and of course aided by demographic trends.
You are right on my views of the health care debate. It is going to difficult, it will be a huge fight. Better to go all out and get the victory and be done with it. The incremental strategy is a disaster waiting to happen. If any problems arise, it will be used against it. That argument is also valid in the go for it all and now strategy but I think or perhaps hope that once people don't see it as the state determining whether you live or die and as cheaper that UHC will come to be accepted as it is everywhere else in the developed world. A right of citizenship. If that's you mean by bolder, then yes. I don't think it bold at all. But I do believe in the social welfare state model. I like the Dutch, Swiss and Norwegian models. Are those replicative here is a fair question however.
The checks and balances, the legal framework of the Constitution all that is as you say untouchable. What Paine refers to clearly an expansion of rights. The end of slavery, gender equality etc. The human relations aspects of life.
Interesting comments you made on conservative versus liberal. I am actually quite conservative on many things but I am very liberal in outlook. Iceland is the perfect example of the distinction I am trying to make here. Iceland is very conservative society and yet its policies are quite liberal. How is that possible? It is because the Icelanders are open to experimenting but they take a go slow approach. In part that is due to the fact that they live in the middle of north Atlantic on an island that is very environmentally fragile and when they first arrived back around the 900 AD, they tried to live as they had lived back in Norway and Denmark. That was a disaster. They almost starved to death. So Iceland took a very cautious approach to societal experiments but accept the basic premise of any decent society, we are all in this together. WE, not I. That is a problem in the US, it is more I than us. I think I societies are doomed to extinction or failure. My gut tells me the US will fail because of its adherence to individualism. Interesting to have this discussion on the day that William Buckley died. I respect his intellect, I disagree vehemently with his conclusions.
I agree with you on impeachment. I may vote against Nancy Pelosi as a protest vote just because of that here in SF. The standard for impeachment is now what, a coup d'etat?
Your link didn't work so I couldn't see what you are saying but I am a member for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. I am not a geologist so I have to take their word on when oil does peak (the consensus seems to be November 2005). That means that we are now on the downward slope of the parabolic curve of production. That spells trouble. It took a 145 years to reach the peak. It will take I don't know 50-75 years or so years to reach zero. It's grim. Because our way of life isn't possible about oil. We can replace bits and pieces of it but not the whole kit and caboodle. We will have cars as long as they are electric. Ethanol from sugar can work but not from corn. Not enough of an ROI. Coal will heat our homes for centuries but there is a high environmental price to pay. The biggest problem is food production. It will have to be very local because we won't be able to ship it across the globe as we do now. But it is the amount that we will be able to produce that worries me. Without industrial fertilizers, we cannot feed 9 billion people (est for 2050). 3 billion is the figure I hear most but that assumes that going from 9 to 3 billion will carried off without a hitch. We may end up going as low as 1 billion. Who knows?
I haven't laid the peak oil argument very well here, at some point I will flush it out better. Dick Cheney is a peak oiler, so is Prince Charles, T. Boone Pickens, Matt Simmons, George Soros.
Iraq as a peak oil argument is plausible. I don't believe that the ends justify the means but Cheney does. Iraq, Darfur, Burma, Iran all have clear peak oil explanations. Iran peaked oil production in 1978. Its production has been declining yearly ever since. That tells you why they want nuclear. Britain will become a net importer of oil by 2015. Norway by 2030. Mexico by 2012. Indonesia is already importing oil. There may be oil out there but it is increasingly hard to find. 50% of the world's oil comes from just 7 fields. That recent discovery off the coast of Brazil represents a two week world supply, some 5-8 billion BOE. We will find more but in harder to reach places and thus more expensive. If the Saudi field of Ghawar shows signs of aging we are in serious trouble.
If you live in a suburb more than 30 miles from your job, sell your home asap or at least before 2020. After 2025 they are worthless. It will be too expensive to commute by car. You will have to live in a city or in the country. Not in between. Suburbs in the US will prove the worst infrastructure investment ever made. We really don't have much time. Some countries are taking this very seriously. Cuba, Norway, Iceland, Iran, Australia.
Others like the US, Russia and China seem to playing a game of grab it before it's gone. We have plenty of coal but coal won't fly a 747. Solar is expensive but clean and plentiful. It works well for heating and cooling. Wind and tidal are also perfect in many areas. Geo-thermal is great in around the Pacific Rim, Italy, Iceland, and Africa. There are solutions. We just need to provide incentives. Paul to his credit had a great plan. Edwards was good too. Obama touts nuclear. That's fine but it does have its problems. The not in my backyard for starters and waste disposal. And we have peaked uranium but a little does go a long way. Peaking platinum is a bigger problem. I could go on but a) I don't want to scare people b) I don't want to come off as an alarmist loon and c) I am not doing the argument justice by being so off the top of my head. Suffice it to say many are aware of the problem they just don't talk about it. Panic is not a good thing. The best place to start for a serious analysis of peak oil:
http://www.theoildrum.com http://www.peakoil.net (ASPO site) http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
The first one is somewhat technical at times but it provides the most balanced coverage. It has great urban studies and reader-friendly transport studies. The second is the APSO official site. It requires membership that starts at $200/year. It is quite technical. The last link is rather alarmist but very succinct. It is an easy read.
The best book is The Story of Oil Crude by Sonia Shah. Other good sources are Matt Simmons (the economics of oil) and Ken Deffeyes (a geologist turned economist at Princeton but very accessible). The National Petroleum Council put out a great study in July 2007 called Hard Truths About Energy. It is available online as a pdf. The CFR also has one. It makes for chilling reading. The counter argument is made by Cambridge Energy Research Associates and Daniel Yergin. They think oil supply is not a problem. He is not as chilling. Rather rosy in fact.
Don't sweat the details because that's not what is important, it is the premise that oil is a non-renewable resource on human time scale and that oil is essential to our way of life and it is the only way we can do certain things (fly, drive far, fast and cheaply, make computer chips, most plastics, grow as much food as we need etc) and given current consumption trends we are likely to run out of oil sometime between 2050 and 2100. Either you buy the above premise or you don't.
I buy the premise. Now you know why energy is a passion. It wasn't until 2005 when I started to note an odd behaviour in the price of liquid oils. I'm weird I play close attention to world financial markets, ten years on Wall Street had an impact on my life.
BTW, bread prices should nearly double in the next few months. When a loaf of bread runs you $6.00 what else can you say? That seems a non sequitur but it is a reasonable prediction to make given the rise of wheat prices in the past month. They have doubled. Why? Acreage has been taking out of production. Why? To grow corn. Why? To make ethanol. It takes 7 BOE to make 8 barrels of ethanol. It is a sheer waste of energy and resources.
Energy is a tough subject to broach. I don't like to talk about it with non-academics. Though the nature of the problem became evident in the 1950s with the work M. King Hubbert and in the 1970s the Carter Administration actually had a plan to address it, all of that was thrown out the window with Reagan. The argument laid quietly if not dormant for a decade except among OPEC professionals and oil company geologists. Then in the early 1990s Matt Simmons, an energy sector investment banker, began noticing odd behaviour by oil companies and in the price of the commodity. He and Ken Deffeyes basically refocused on Hubbert's work from the 1950s. Basically Hubbert's predictions had come true. Their efforts along with key oil sector officials, ironically the former Iraqi oil minister, began warning governments as to the impending problem.
Cheney met with both Simmons and Deffeyes back in 2001. I don't like Dick Cheney the man but I have to admit he sees the problem. It is his solution I fault. When it comes to peak oil, secrecy is almost a necessity. It is an academic - government problem not one for lay people. I know that sounds elitist. It is but how else can a problem of this magnitude be addressed? It is much larger than global warming though it is tied to it as well.
Two countries have given us a test run of what peak oil looks like. North Korea and Cuba. North Korea failed miserably. Some three million people died between 1991-1997. From famine. They were eating grass. Why do you think North Korea is so keen on nuclear power? Cuba fared much better. No one died. They grew vegetables on their roof tops. The collapse of the USSR led to their loss of oil supply. How they responded is how I as a historian look at the problem. Why did Cuba avoid famine and North Korea didn't? Climate is one factor. Cuba is much warmer so not as much fuel is needed. Two, Cuba is more of a grassroots society and North Korea much more top down. The social networks in Cuba were easily mobilized. Cuba also imported bikes from China and cut out bus transport. In the country side, animal transport made an appearance and they are luckily that they grow sugar. Ethanol from sugar has a much higher ROI than that from corn. So we have had our first glimpses of what like without oil looks like. The Cuban experience spurred Norway to take action. They are better prepared for peak oil than any other country. Hence I am ready to move to Norway unfortunately they won't let me.
Don't forget to write.
Adam said:
Well, this is how the religious fundamentalists wormed their way into having so much power in the Republican party and why they are so influential..
Charles said:
I have no personal reason to attack you and no desire to get personal. I was concerned that my disagreement with what you say and my "zeal" was upsetting Norm. Thanks Charles. Only by freely expressing how we feel do we get anywhere.
Charles said:
I agree 100 percent. Unfortunately, this is not what Ralph Nader is doing.
I do not have the time (at the moment) or the expertise (generally) to respond in-depth to all of your most recent and intriguing comment, Charles.
Suffice to say: Do I accept the premise about peak-oil? Yes, that is what many well respected scientists and experts have reported, so I don't see how I can disagree. And you are right, so far as I know, that the problem is wildly complex, because oil use is so incorporated into our way of life, in many ways.
On health care, you said:
This is fair: the argument does run both ways. I would say, there is a right and a wrong way of doing the 'incrementalist' approach, and two extremes to avoid in doing so: you don't want it's basic principles so closely tied to the current system as to create a kind of inertia that prevents moving forward, and you don't want a disaster that leaves it exposed to criticisms of failings whose source is half-measures. I frankly think Clinton's "mandates" are half-measures that will create these kinds of problems. But overall, I actually think both HRC and Obama have good transitional plans, and that the factors standing in the way of genuine universal care of deeply ingrained and systematic (I have argued for this more in depth on some other threads here, but won't go into that here). The thought is, basically: if you make the private industry compete on a level playing field in the open market against the government, under strict regulation, including price-setting; and if government can really provide insurance just as good but cheaper than private industry, then you have a situation where either private industry plays a more non-profit role just to stay competitive against a non-profit competitor (the government), or they go out of business, leaving only 1 player in the field, government. I've been wondering lately if the former outcome is actually preferable, supposing it could cover everyone, because part of the cost would fall of corporations and big businesses, rather than just the government and individual tax payers. That may actually make more sense in the U.S. context.
Wonderful. So do I. However, most Americans are fully convinced that socialism=communism. The zeitgeist of the majority of Americans will not be changed by attempting to shove these new ideas down people's throats. That's why Bill Clinton started out with "don't ask, don't tell". Most Americans are fully convinced that the free market has this invisible hand which is beyond reproach. I guarantee you that an inconsequential candidate such as Ralph Nader and a small percentage of "protest votes" will do nothing whatsoever to change this mindset. Those votes will be seen as "radical left" mentality, just as the right-wing radio mentality is seen as the "radical right". If you want your voice to be heard today, the way that American politics/zeitgeist is today, you have to present your ideas as being mainstream and not radical. That is the reality of the situation, like it or not.
Take, for example, the way that the U.S. deals with Israel and take note of how Hillary Clinton pushed Barack Obama even further to the right vis à vis Israel in the last debate. She demonstrated with her response to that issue how well she understands that she has to pander to the right.
Adam said:
Precisely. Again, you can't shove new ideas down people's throats. You have to change the system incrementally, as Adam has been attempting to explain with an admirable degree of clarity.
You mean like social security?
Charles
Adam notes in response to my comments on UHC:
Yup. I don't disagree. Wherefore are thou John Edwards?
Charles
This would be almost funny, were it not both true, and a major source of many of our current problems. Deregulating loans, so they could be extended to people who didn't meet standard credit requirements, for example.
I disagree with you both on socialism and a full blown "welfare state." There is indeed, I agree, a pernicious, magical-thinking aspect to the kind of pull-up-your-bootstraps 'individualism' which Charles rightly criticizes. But when held more moderately, I think those paradigmatic "American" values have not been incidental to the U.S. having such things as one of the largest, most powerful economies in the world--even in our current distress, the dollar is still the global standard--and some of the very best institutions of higher education in the world, which attracts talent from around the globe. I do not want a socialist state, and think the U.S. Constitution, which has only been changed 27 times in our history--or 17 if you count the bill of rights as one "change", has been a source of genuine stability. It may be incrementalist, subject to abuse, and much else, but it rules out the kind of radical political fantasies that destroys lives.
I'm for a mix of responsibly regulated markets, genuine competition under strong anti-trust requirements, and full government ownership of commomdities and institutions whose service or products are so essential that they cannot be left to the whims of the market: health care, pharmaceuticals, higher education, and above all--elections.
JoAnn's thoughtful post said this:
I don't believe in fatalism. I fight for my ideals even as a party of one. I've fought my family, my country, my adopted country and now Obama and his supporters.
Read Harvey Kaye's "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America." Maybe Paine can change your view on that. Don't accept the unacceptable. Fight it. You owe it not to your country but to yourself.
Yours,
Charles
PS I really did like your last post. I just don't agree.
Adam notes:
Truer words have never been written on this blog. I believe in a social welfare state because social welfare states have free markets, they are just regulated. And government is a not problem when it staff with competent professionals.
Charles
Aha! We agree on something! jk. To spell out an great remark Joann made earlier on this point. Part of the fantasy in the U.S. is that we actually have something like "free markets." But this is just a fantasy. What does by that name in the U.S. is no-bid contracts--which are obviously anti-competitive--and corporate welfare in the form of "tax cuts" and "incentives," and massive collusion between business interests and the government in the form of federal lobbying. That is a corporatist statism, not "free markets."
Charles:
I know some people who think peak oil has already hit. Is this true? The last time I checked an Olduvai graph it seemed to indicate a 2020 time frame.
It just seems that all political policy advancements, progressive or otherwise, are 'incrementalist.' Taking a giant leap forward in UHC initially has the benifit of impressing upon American culture its legitimacy (we can only do better). Delaying full UHC would unfortunately have the same effect. There is, however, a rather difficult attitude that often accompanies these increments... 'This is what we should expect to have for the next 10+ years.'
If the US is going to be hit with a recession, I would anticipate a number of the social welfare promises getting tabled. In this case, keying this issue alive and demanding for the full UHC deal would probably be prudent.
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