Is the U.S. on the cusp of a Sixth, or Seventh, political party system?

Great Debates
21

Yes, but why go to the trouble of forming the third party in the first place?

Note that the Bull Moose party was a “Connecticut for Lieberman” scenario. Under our system the parties don’t choose the candidates, the candidates choose parties. Then the primary voters chose the party representative. So the only time your white knight needs to form a third party is if they have lost the primary. But the thing is, if you’ve already lost the primary you’re in big trouble, and the most likely result of your third-party is to guarantee the election of the other major party candidate.

The only reason this didn’t happen to Lieberman is that in his case the Republican candidate was just a placeholder. That’s never going to happen in the presidential election, even if the incumbent is overwhelmingly popular the opposition party is still going to do its best, even if it’s pretty clear they’re going to lose hard (cf Reagan vs Mondale).

A similar situation occurred in Alaska, where Wally Hickel won the governorship on the Alaska Independence Party (note the -ence, not -ent, this is the secessionist party that Sarah Palin’s husband was involved with) ticket, against weak Republican and Democratic candidates. But he quickly rejoined the Republicans, and everyone knew he was just using the AIP for ballot access.

The point is that if you’re a center-right White Knight, you can just run as a Republican, and if there’s really a groundswell of pent-up demand for a moderate against the populist moonbats, you’ll win. And then you’re the leader of the party, and you dictate the party platform. Or rather, the party platform is irrelevant, what matters is your personal platform. And once you’re the nominee, the congressional candidates fall in line, or you kick their asses.

And this is how party realignments happen.

22

It is, in fact, pretty much what happened with the Pubs in 1964, and the Dems in 1972, and the Pubs again in 1980 (though the congressional candidates did not necessarily fall in line with the presidential nominee in any instance except perhaps the last).

23

It looks like you just said that what happened in the 1912 presidential election could never happen in a presidential election. If it happened then, why couldn’t it happen now?

I phrased it as a could-happen, not as a will-happen. We might get such a third party from the centrist elements of the Republicans, or from the far right, or from some hybrid position that’s left on some issues and right on others (libertarians, maybe?). Or the splinter party might break off from the Democrats-- After all, in the 1912 election, Roosevelt’s former party-mate Taft was the incumbent. Or it might not happen at all. I don’t know; my crystal ball’s in the shop with a faulty flux capacitor.

24

But the Bull Moose party was a failure. Roosevelt might have come in second over Taft in third, but the progressives who left the Republican party didn’t take back the party. The conservatives consolidated their hold on the Republicans through the 20s and 30s, and the progressives mostly wandered in the wilderness or joined the Democrats.

25

Does anyone disagree with my thesis that there was (or is) a Sixth (Pub-dominated) Party System that had its foreshadowings in 1972 (with the Dems’ left-liberal, identity-politics realignment) and crystallized in 1980?

26

This is a good topic, and I don’t have any counterarguments. However the GOP has shown itself to be very fanatical and single minded, whereas the democratic party can be wimpy and centrist. So even with super majorities the dems will see their influence be less than the influence the GOP has with smaller majorities. So dems will control the government, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to achieve much.

There are certain factors going into why we are entering a democratic sun phase.

Youth voters and the professional class are disgusted by the religious right, anti-science, anti-common sense, pro-violence attitudes of the GOP.

Youth voters make up about 18% of the electorate, but by around 2016 people born after 1979 will make up nearly 1/3 of the electorate. Young people voted dem by 10% margins in 2004, 22% in 2006 and 34% in 2008. I don’t see this trend reversing as the GOP becomes the party of obstructionism, religious fundamentalism, protofascism and know nothingness.

At the same time the average fox news and talk radio listener is a man in his 60s and 70s. So as the decade goes on, half the talk radio/fox news audience will die and be replaced by liberal youth.
Another issue is the breakdown of traditional families. Single people vote democratic and as of now about 25% of hte electorate is unmarried women, who vote democratic nearly 2-1. There have been some arguments that these single women, if they can be mobilized and activated to participate, could be to the democratic party what the religious right (who also make up 25% of the electorate and go GOP 2-1) are to the republicans.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_22_59/ai_n27453117/

Everything is going against the GOP. The % who rarely/never attend church is growing and we are becoming more secular. The % who are non-white is growing from about 13% in 1992 to 25% in 2008.

We are becoming more urban.
However I think the GOP will gain seats in 2010 because GOP voters (religious people, white people) supposedly have higher turnout than democratic voters (young people, non-whites, single women) during midterm elections.

Plus the democratic base is pissed off and will not be volunteering as hard, and if we do much will be put into primaries from the left rather than general elections against GOP candidates.

So I think the GOP will gain seats in 2010, but they will still be a minority party. Nonetheless, they will be a minority party for decades.

They are even losing the south due to urbanization, the youth vote and higher rates of non-whites who are voting. North Carolina and Virginia went democratic in 2008. Texas is expected to be a swing state in 2012 or 2016. Georgia could become a swing state due to growth in the Atlanta area.

However if the democratic base (liberals and union members) can find a way to intimidate the democratic politicians via advertisements against incumbents, withholding donations or withholding volunteer efforts and putting all those efforts into primaries from the left, combined with things like a strong unified movement within congress (like the CPC is showing on health care) then I think by 2013 the democratic party might actually be a party willing to stand up for democratic values.

27

Come to think of it, maybe the Sixth Party System really began in 1972. It seems counterintuitive to treat an election as a “realigning” one if the incumbent is re-elected, but, consider: That was the year, not only when the Democratic Party changed its fundamental character as described above and in the OP, but when the Wallace voters of 1968, mostly former Democrats, swung over to Nixon and the GOP – and stayed there. And from then to 2008, only two Dems, Carter and Clinton, won presidential elections, and they were the most conservative Dems to hold the White House since Grover Cleveland. It also seems to fit in better with the historic pattern of an American party system lasting approximately 40 years (although that is a very rough guide and there’s no obvious law of nature why it should be so – unless you buy into generational-cycle theories, like that of Strauss and Howe). 1932-1972 (Fifth Party System), 40 years. 1972-2008 (Sixth Party System), 36 years.

28

Here’s my take on it:
1932-1952: Democrats usually hold both houses of Congress and the Presidency
1952-1980: A moderate Republican is probably President, and Congress has lots of factional strife between conservative Southerners (of both parties) and more liberal non-Southerners (again, of both parties)
1980-2006: A conservative is President, and Congress is mostly dominated by conservatives of both parties.
2006-?: Liberals hold majorities in Congress, and the White House, though they’re mostly too fractious to get anything done.
(Note that while I more or less hand-wave away Kennedy and Johnson’s elections, the current system does the same thing for Eisenhower’s; moreover, Kennedy won very narrowly, and Johnson had multiple factors that fade quickly, such as martyrdom – Eisenhower, however, simply beat the pants off Stevenson both times.)

29

I agree with the suggestion that the Democratic Party will turn into the majority party of governance that corporations have made their peace with, with Republicans playing the perpetual opposition.

Right now we’re in a state of rapid transition toward fixing some things that have had a long time coming, and I would not be surprised if Republicans controlled one or both houses of Congress at some point between now and 2016. But that is essentially in reaction to these rapid changes; they really can’t hope to undue healthcare reform (which will likely pass, 90% chance, with a solid possibility of a strong public option) and cap and trade (less likely to pass, but still possible). Soon afterwards changing demographics will cement the Democratic Party’s place during this period, in significant part due to the historic immigration reform of 2010. All important legislation will originate from within the Democratic Party; the only debates will be between the Bayh-and-Nelson wing of the Party and the more lefty members, with Senators Snowe, Crist, and Castle regularly exacting their ton of flesh for their vital filibuster-breaking votes. Big business celebrates this state of affairs, as it’s much easier to deal with and bribe a single permanent majority party than to have to pay off two parties.

Republicanism will become something between an identity statement and a punchline. People will grouse and complain about how the Daily Show can’t compare to the halycon years of Bush. And this new equilibrium makes everyone happy, as the Republican base is much more interested in finding and being victimized by a permanent enemy and having their daily half-hour of hate on Fox News; the party has no incentive to change, as it suits the consumers of a particular market niche perfectly.

Its hard to say how long this continues, but given the previous lifespans of party systems I would make a guess of until at least 2032. Guessing as to the cause of the future rupture is a fun game; in previous eras it seems possible to have guessed the driver of the end. Most obviously, slavery was the issue that would break the Jackson-era party system. Later, the nexus of big business and the Republican monopolization of political power made 1932 inevitable.

My guess for this one is the steady decline of America’s relative political, economic, and military power in the world, coupled with domestic stagnation because of corporate capture of the Democratic Party. Until the 20th century, America had unparalleled (except in Russia) access to natural resources and land, and a political system (unlike in Russia) that allowed its exploitation. During the 20th century, she was protected by two large oceans that separated her from two wars that devastated any potential competing rival, and afterwards was the undisputed leader of the free-er and more productive of two competing politico-economic systems. This gifted large resources to the USA that would provide the basis for it being the temporary world capital of finance, which has lately become a farcical capitalist Gosplan that provides no ultimate basis for economic prosperity.

No matter how much Obama and the Democrats might wish it, green jobs and pink unicorn stable hands can’t even begin to make up for the tectonic shift in the world’s political economy that has occurred since the fall of the USSR. The Democratic ascent with the corporate assist won’t and can’t fundamentally change the situation we’re in, and we’ll end up not just with a finite Lost Decade but a crisis that perpetually challenges and undermines American exceptionalism and our concept of national identity. Once that process is complete, a new realignment can occur.

30

I gather you don’t live in the South or Midwest.

The insanity marches on, here.

31

From your keyboarding-fingers!

32

But many of the factors that caused “American Exceptionalism” aren’t likely to change that much. We’re still going to be the third most populous country in the world, and we’re still going to be a lot more wealthy per capita than China or India for a long time. We have 300 million citizens, and we have a continent spanning country. We have open space and natural resources that European countries just don’t have.

I agree that as more and more of the world turns into “normal countries” rather than totalitarian dystopias or feudal anachronisms that the relative importance of the United States will continue to decline. But that’s no exactly so important, because the world economy isn’t a zero sum game. The United Kingdom is relatively much less important on the world stage in 2009 than they were in 1909, but Britain is a much nicer place to live today. George Orwell thought that the loss of the empire would mean a permanent reduction in the standard of living for Britain, because he thought the empire was about profit. But it turns out that maintaining the empire cost more than it generated, it’s just that the people who got the benefits didn’t have to pay the full costs.

33

Actually, I don’t think Orwell was entirely off the mark there. The economy of the British Empire was an industrialized version of 18th-Century mercantilism: The colonies (those like India, that is; not so much white-majority “settler states” like Canada) provided cheap raw materials for British manufacturers and a captive market for British manufactured goods; this provided some benefits to working-class Brits by creating jobs, in manufacturing, and in the service sector catering to the wants of the prosperous upper and upper-middle classes. The UK’s standard of living did fall somewhat when the Empire was dismantled, though it has since made adjustments and recovered.

But insofar as the U.S. has an empire today, it provides no such economic benefits to ordinary Americans; quite the reverse. We provide a market for the manufactures of our military protectorates, Germany and Japan, and American corporations outsource manufacturing jobs to the Third World whenever they can. The only benefit most of us get out of the system is that U.S. control of the sea lanes, etc., prevents the supply of imported oil from being threatened with interruption.

34

True, but I didn’t necessarily mean an absolute drop in the standard of living. Using the Britain example, as its grasp on Empire weakened, something distinctive did happen to its political ethos. It moved toward a more egalitarian, more Laboury state of affairs. And its economy continued to grow throughout that period.

A lot of capitalist consumerism is positional. Even now, China and India both have middle classes that are bigger than our own, though of course as proportion of population theirs is still smaller. Eventually though, and sooner rather than later, their top 300 million will top our top 300 million. With that comes bigger and better guns. And what then? Americans will have to re-evaluate what makes them great as a country; our current brand of chauvinism would have a hard time taking up the slogan “we have more equality and solidarity!”

That’s getting a bit far afield from the original question, but that change, I am postulating, is what will finally undermine the business-Democratic party system we’re entering into. It could lead us toward a society of the “last man,” where America gives up is Messianic pretensions and works toward simply maximizing the wellbeing of the average citizen with good policy (gasp), or it could end up with Americans lashing out at their insecurity in the world. You can even see inklings of that conflict now on the evening news.

35

The US Constitution makes a two party system very workable and therefore that is what developed.

When a third party comes along with a strong issue, they are simply absorbed by the Democratic or Republicans. But this doesn’t mean, we don’t have more than two parties. We have factions within parties.

Some Republicans are very right wing others are moderate. Some Democrats are very left wing some are moderate.

This is why Mr Obama with majority of his party is having issues, because it isn’t really just the Dems and the Reps. It’s many types of Democrats and many types of Republicans.

The only way to really get an actual third party in power would be to directly elect the President and directly elect ALL Representatives from each state by everyone in the state, not by districts that can be gerrymandered. For instance in California all their Representatives would be elected by EVERYONE in the state as a whole.

This would dilute the major powers and possibly allow a third party to creep in.

Not that it’s impossible for a third party to take over, for example in Minnesota the Farm Labor party became a main party, so much so that it displaced the Democrats who united with them to form the Democratic-Farm Labor Party and then once again it was back to two parties

36

N.B.: It just happened to work out that way, the naturally bipartisan winner-take-all single-member-district system for electing legislatures being uncritically copied from Britain, as no proportional-representation models had ever yet been tried or even conceived. (The most advanced political theorists at the time, such as Montesquieu, were more concerned with such questions as the proper balance of power between king, nobles and well-off commoners.) Judging by The Federalist Papers, the Framers never intended or even imagined anything having to do with party politics as it later (and not very much later) developed in the U.S. The party system then being still in its infancy in Britain, it might never have occurred to the Framers to think of political parties as indispensable elements of modern republican government (which they are, the Progressives’ illusions to the contrary notwithstanding).