With only a few exceptions, every national election this century has resulted in a form of frustrating stalemate between our two major political parties. Even when one party finally ends up with the White House and each houses of Congress, legislative rules just like the filibuster, in addition to the prospect that the opposite party will win control in only two years, cripple policymaking and quickly send us back into the Everlasting Campaign.
Almost everyone seems to be frustrated and indignant because they need one party to finally achieve a decisive win and pull the country out of a polarization vortex, however it never happens. It didn’t occur again this week: Within the midterm elections, Democrats lost where they almost all the time lose (Florida, Ohio, Texas), Republicans lost where they almost all the time lose (California, Illinois, Recent England) and results were agonizingly close where they’re almost all the time close (Georgia, Wisconsin). There have been only a few upsets, sparse surprises and little incentive for either party to do higher at appealing to voters.
Almost everyone seems to be frustrated because they need one party to finally achieve a decisive win and pull the country out of a polarization vortex — however it never happens.
One conclusion is that our two-party political system doesn’t work. That is, I do know, the thesis of a thousand op-ed columns proposing centrist, elitist third parties (often “conservative on economic issues and liberal on social issues,” the least popular combination in the USA) and countless polls that merely confirm overall discontent with our political system. Nevertheless it is an inescapable truth.
Complain concerning the two-party system and you may prompt eye rolls by a lot of different people. Some have a self-interest in promoting one or each major parties (consulting contracts, fundraising firms, etc.), and others are aggressive “realists” who all the time say that change is inconceivable (and possibly they don’t wish to be related to the naïveté of Andrew Yang or of the Third Way movement).
There’s also nostalgia for the recent period by which our two-party system looked as if it would work: roughly from the Great Depression until the tip of the twentieth century, when each U.S. parties shared broad goals (anti-communism, economic growth, even environmental protection) and when multiparty democracies elsewhere, like Italy, seemed dangerously unstable.
But a two-party system should steer between two rocks that might rip through its hull.
One danger is that the 2 parties change into too ideologically similar, leaving voters with no real alternative at each election. Someone is all the time making this criticism, whether it’s George Wallace within the Sixties saying there isn’t “a dime’s value of difference” between the Democrats and Republicans (each desired to expand the powers of the federal government) or Ralph Nader in 2000 complaining that neither party would tackle corporate interests. But there have been clear differences between the 2 parties within the second half of the twentieth century, with the Democrats consistently arguing for more government services and the Republicans consistently preferring lower taxes, and voters could attempt to calibrate public policy by moving between the 2.
A two-party system should steer between two rocks that might rip through its hull.
Against this, differences between the 2 parties were harder to discern within the late nineteenth century, at the least after the Republicans abandoned any aggressive push for civil rights (tariffs and the gold standard became big campaign issues as an alternative). When each parties in a two-party system fail to reply to popular demands for change, politics can look like a mere battle for patronage jobs and voters can lose interest in elections.
This is clearly not what is occurring in the USA now. As a substitute, we’re scraping the other rock, with two parties which can be so polarized and antagonistic that many citizens feel that neither one can represent their views. In an ideal political world, each the Democratic and Republican parties could be attempting to expand their bases, but as an alternative they’re locked in a battle between two halves of the country, with elections decided by fear of the opposite fairly than by debate and rational argument. The closeness of this battle signifies that control of the White House and Congress steadily goes forwards and backwards between parties with radically different policies and priorities, making it inconceivable for the nation to enact long-term plans to handle climate change, immigration, health care, economic development and other challenges.
As Annie Lowery wrote within the Atlantic on Election Day, “Our coin-toss elections will not be the results of having two parties competing for an engaged and persuadable electorate. They’re at the least partly a product of our political stasis and extreme polarization. They mean that when either party wins, it does so without much of a mandate. In addition they mean that neither party is ever forced to regroup and reform after a humiliating defeat.”
For the past few years, the Democrats have been vainly hoping to inflict a humiliating defeat on the Trump-led Republican Party, accurately mentioning that Mr. Trump has shattered small-d democratic norms, has encouraged cruelty and mendacity in political discourse, and has threatened our system of presidency by telling his supporters not to just accept valid election results. But “you might have no alternative but to vote for us with a purpose to save your right to vote for whoever you would like” is just too contradictory a message to actually work. (Andrew Sullivan recently called it “electoral blackmail” by a celebration that has “made heroic efforts to affront and insult working-class voters.”)
In a multiparty system, an alliance of parties across the ideological spectrum might have the option to win a convincing majority against one party that threatens democratic norms or advocates authoritarianism. But in the USA, there is no such thing as a strategy to oppose one party without lending support to the candidates and policies of the one other party. A broader and more ideologically diverse Democratic Party could theoretically do that, but without delay too many Democrats would favor a narrow win driven by its left wing—even when such a narrow win would also keep Trumpism alive.
There is no such thing as a quick or easy strategy to fix our two-party system, but until we do, we may face more stalemate elections for years, or a long time, to return.
