[Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that I am getting most of information in the next paragraph from an interview of Jon Stewart by Larry King. I am well aware that my source is not a great one.]
Right now, Bush has a, what, 30-something percent rating? Cheney is in the teens? The loyal base is starting to disolve away from the white house, it appears. OTOH, the democrats are doing… um, I don’t know. Boycotting the Dubai control of half a dozen ports? Controlling 3% of the power with 40-something percent of the manpower? Reguardless of what they are actually doing, I hear more about Sen McCain than the Dems, and when I do hear about the Dems, it tends to be Hillary, whom, I fear, can only further divide the nation. I believe that the second party in our two-party system is not to last.
(You are, of course, free to disagree with any and all of the above. If you do, tho, take it as hypothetical that this is what’s happening. I.e. pretend that the Democratic Party is losing enough political pull to fall by the wayside.)
OK, parties come and go. Fine. But who is poised to come if the democrats go? Should the party dissolve into political obscurity, is there a viable political group that you feel would be able to take the reins as “the other big party” in the US? Which one and why?
I will hazard a guess as to who it will not be. I don’t think it would be the Libertarians. (And, believe you me, I want them in power.) Reason: The Libertarians are seen as “Liberal Republicans” more than they are seen as “Conservative Democrats.” Should the Rep’s fail, in some bizarre future, I think that the Libertarians would have a perfect shot at being the “next big party.”
So, who do you think would “take over” for the democrats? Green Party? Independant? Libertarians? Some as-of-yet-unnamed party? What position do you think would garner the respect and votes of a large chunk of the US population?
Go to http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm. Scroll down to the “Third Parties” section. There are thumbnail descriptions (with links), of 37 minor parties, of which 18 might be characterized as left-of-center, but most of them are completely marginal. I don’t think any of them is really poised to take over the Dems’ base. Just possibly the Labor Party, if it could get its act together; and maybe, just maybe, the Greens.
If the Democratic Party went away, I suspect its replacement would be a new party, not an existing third party. Since the Democrats aren’t going away, I think it’s a non-issue. The Democrats aren’t in a position to accomplish much - they can neither vote down bills on their own nor set the agenda, since they don’t control the Legislative or Executive Branch. Bush has achieved much less than he set out to do in the last 13 months, so perhaps you could say they’ve managed to slow him down.
Ok. I said you don’t have to agree with me that the democratic party is going to die.
But, for the sake of argument, if they did, which party do you think has a mainstream enough agenda to take control?
If the Democratic party dies, the replacement will be a new party with a new platform, coincidentally named “The Democratic Party”. The husk of the Democratic party will be too valuable to just throw away, new people with new ideas will take it over. If the Greens or Labor or Libertarians take over the second major party slot they’ll do it taking over the Democratic (or Republican) party rather than replacing it.
And by definition, no other party has an agenda mainstream enough to take control, if they did, THEY’D be the major party, not the Democrats.
Of third parties currently existing, I expect only the Labor Party (http://www.thelaborparty.org/) has a “mainstream enough agenda” to appeal to the bulk of the Democratic Party’s existing base. But at present it’s really just a proto-party which has never, AFAIK, run any candidates for office. Certainly the Labor Party cannot claim to be the institutional political voice of American labor unions, the way the Labour Party is in the UK. Neither can the Democratic Party, for that matter.
The Democrats look very incompetent, but look at how they did in 2004. Yeah, they lost, but hardly a landslide. (Which is part of the problem, really, they keep losing by such slim margins that they’re scared to try something new a bold, hoping that the coin flip will come up heads this time instead)
Anyway, hypothetically speaking, should they crumble entirely, the Republicans would turn on themselves. It’s inevitable, any major party has too many people that want to be President, Speaker of the House, or Senate Majority leader. Eventually, some of them would bolt the party, and form a coalition with the remnants of the Democrats and assimilate some independent/3rd Party folks. If the split were to happen today, I’d say it would be between social liberals/moderartes and conservatives (abortion, gay rights, etc) and/or civil libertarians and security hardliners. But don’t ask me which group gets to keep the name “Republican”.
The alternative is that people looking for alternatives to the Republicans start supporting smaller 3rd parties. In time, these parties (when vaguely like-minded)may start coordinating with one another, supporting each other’s presidential/bubenatorial candidates, forming voting blocs in Congress and state legislatures. This cooperation may or may not lead to these parties coalescing into a smaller number of larger parties (perhaps one to the left of the Republicans and one to the right). It’d be a long time before they could unseat the Republicans outright, but they’d be a significant check to their power in the meantime.
Just to add fuel to this fire, I don’t think we need to regard the Democrats as a left-of-center party. In large measure they have not been one for at least the last decade. The left has not found an alternate banner under which to rally, because they keep thinking the Democrats are “their” party, and will return to them. Ever since the Dems nominated Clinton, I have not registered as a Democrat
Taking the long view of history (over the past century, perhaps more) we see that the only time the Dems have been able to break the stranglehold the Republican party has held on Washington since Lincoln was when they veered hard left under Roosevelt and the New Deal. Before that, when they weren’t hardcore traditional southern racists, they were wishy-washy vaguely conservative non-entities, just like now. After eight years of Bush, a hard turn to the populist left might bring some votes back their way, but it’s hard to say that today’s electorate would respond the same way, or whether, even if they would, that today’s Dem leaders would realize it.
I think we can not discount the great dissatisfaction people are feeling with both parties right now. There’s the slightest possibility that we will see a new, brave breed of politicians, beginning in local races, who denounce all party politics and run as independents. I’d like the current era to be the beginning of the end of political parties, but I wouldn’t put money on it happening in a big way anytime soon.
it seems we come back to this debate, or some form of it all the time here on the boards.
the dems don’t seem to want to help their cause along. it seems they’re more than willing to let the republicans slit their own throats, and, if they’re smart, they won’t do it. you can argue that bush is having a polarizing effect on the republicans now, and that when bush is gone, many people will try their damnedest to distance themselves from bush/delay/abrahmoff.
oddly enough, i think perot was closest to making a third party as we’ve ever had. he was easy to poke fun at, but what he believed could have been taken from some republican beliefs now.
the problem with these third parties, in my opinion, is that they’re just not sexy to the people with money. with two parties, there is a winner and a loser, and that cuts gambling odds down to 50/50. a third party would add confusion to this. that’s why, if there’s going to be a third party to ever form, they’d also have to muddle the campaign contribution laws as well.
back to the original question, if the democrats faded into existence, they would get re-formed back into the democrats. and they’d be a lot more hard nosed, too. i think they’d be championing wesley clark or something like that. they’d go back to the old standard of promoting war heroes (not that kerry wasn’t), but they’d go back to an old-school definition of it. yes, the inclusion of technology into war means that we have a lot less war heroes, as well. when you eliminate the human element from war, you also eliminiate your heroes. the only ones that could fit the bill, at first glance, would be a fighter pilot. long story short, there’s no way the democrats would just disappear. a third party would have to come in and engulf them or take enough votes from the two main ones to become a viable alternative.
I don’t expect it ever to happen, but what I’d like to see is moderate Democrats and Republicans defecting to form their own third party–call it the Constitutionalist Party or whatever. Let the Dems move to the left, the Pubs to the right, and the Cons to the center, and, damn, we’d actually have something like a system representative of the American people.
i see political parties as too big of bullies to just let people leave. they’re like the freaking godfather and very few people ever jump to the other side.
The problem with that scenario is that the winner-take-all, single-member-disctrict system for electing Congress and the state legislatures tends naturally to produce a two-party system by marginalizing any third party. Look at the UK – Labour and the Tories are both discredited to some extent, but the LibDems still can’t get their foot in the door. We won’t have a multiparty system here until the electoral systems are reformed to allow for instant-runoff voting, ballot fusion, and proportional representation. See this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269169
No, they are there to solve problems. Despite the fashionable disdain for government, a casual examination of nations with weak governments will show you just how important it is.
To the OP : My guess is, none, for a long time. Under those circumstances the Republicans will turn America into an effective one-party government, with the Republicans and a bunch of small, weak parties that are never allowed to win.
To the right ? If they go much farther right, they’ll advocate eating the poor and using kids as firewood. Why should they go right ?
If the Dems dissolve, the Labor Party and the Greens will form a coalition with such of the other center-left parties as they can stand (and can stand them) and start making a serious attempt at grabbing power. The only problem I see is that the current Pub leadership is not all that wedded to the electoral process. Oh, they’re all for the FORM of elections, but their interest in the substance – the person with the most votes winning the election – is not all that substantial. They’re more for the person who’s Republican winning the election. Give them a couple more decades to bag things up, and a two-party system will seem as improbably as a three-party system seems now.
I think both parties are royally screwed up, but both have gerrymandered and campaign-financed their way into permanent two-party status. And since they are barely answerable to the voters any more, both are becoming more and more corrupt and more and more wedded to the special interests that keep the gravy train rolling with campaign donations and kickbacks.
Were there to be a successful third party, I think it might be a ‘good governance’ party, made up of disaffected voters from both parties. Its major platform would be governmental reform, honesty, and change.
Then it would get elected, and proceed to do the same things the current bunch of yahoos are engaged in.
