American Democracy and Partisan Politics
Yesterday's New York Times included an article that suggested that it might be strategically more beneficial for the Democrats not to win a Congressional majority in the 2006 elections. According to this argument, it actually benefits the Democrats not to be a position of sharing power, because the Republican monopoly on power will allow them to continue to hang themselves and further damage their popularity on up to the 2008 Presidential elections.
There is an amazing core of cynical truth that lies behind that proposition. Hope springs eternal, but a hard dose of reality can always shatter that hope. What we see in our current political system is that, as long as a party is out of power, it can rely on the "grass is always greener" sentiment that begins to blossom among many voters with respect to the party that governs. The longer that a party stays out of power, the better it starts to look. By contrast, the longer a party stays in power, the worse it starts to look. The reality of a party being in power has a way of making a party lose its luster; this in part why no single party maintains a monopoly on power in Western parliamentary democracies, and that is why this process is often described as a kind of pendulum swing.
Given this process, the Democrats know that the moment they begin to share or attain power, the clock on their pendulum starts ticking. The longer they stay out of power, the more rose colored the glasses that some voters start to see them through. This phenomenon exists despite the continued inability of the Democrats to offer a real opposition to the Republicans on a host of issues. In fact, it is really the tweedledee and tweedledum nature of our two-party system that contributes to this pendulum process. Many swing and independent voters keep hoping that they will see a real difference when they change the parties in power; but because it is business as usual, they then become disillusioned, and over time they turn their sights back to the party they had voted out of power. Eventually, this other party switches roles from opposition to governing party, and the cycle of disillusionment begins all over again.
The hope of some Democrats that they will need to time very carefully the pendulum swing says much of the cynical nature of politics as being more about a contest for power between two opportunistic factions of the ruling class and less about the battle of ideas. And herein lies a fundamental problem with our political system, which is all about the trappings of democracy rather than the reality.
There are some interesting corollaries to the pendulum understanding of elections in the quasi-democracy of American politics. For example, although Democratic Party apologists in 2004 argued for the ABB philosophy to justify supporting Kerry that year, the loss of the Democrats in that election actually helped them in 2006 or 2008 by giving more momentum to a reversal of the pendulum swing. Bush's poll numbers are, unlike in 2004, at rock bottom, and, his legislative agenda has faltered as his "political capital" withered to nothing. The Democrats are probably better poised to win back Congress in 2006 than they otherwise would have been. The worse Bush looks, the greener the Democratic grass looks to some voters--and Bush just keeps looking worse, the longer he and his party maintain a monopoly on power. A Kerry presidency would have introduced a cold splash of reality to the whole process. This is something that some Democratic Party strategists seem to realize at some level even if they would never articulate it, which is why they want to delay the pendulum swing another two years.
Another interesting consequence that emerges from this pendulum understanding is that even if Gore had won in 2000, or Kerry would have won in 2004, eventually, at some point in the future, a Republican would win the Presidency. If we don't have Bush in 2004, we simply have a Bush clone from his party at some point in the future. Without any real alternative movement from the Left to challenge the Bush and Democratic agendas and thus push the political center leftward, without countervailing pressure from the Left against both parties of the duopoly, and without a vision of how to challenge the lack of genuine democracy in our electoral, political, and economic system, the political agenda of the Bushites is simply bound to win back the White House--if not in 2004, then at some future election. The ABB strategy was a failure because it focused on this election--at all costs--rather than proposing a long term strategy of looking beyond the narrow swings of the duopoly pendulum. The ABB strategy was caught up in the pendulum paradigm and never looked beyond it.
The political pendulum of American politics is dependent on the realities of a political system that is only a shadow of the democracy that it claims to be. Until we introduce real democracy into the American political system--radical democracy that is founded on the self-organized people taking power from the corporate ruling class--we will never have real political change. This means creating new political institutions from the bottom up. Until that happens, tweedledee and tweedledum will do their tango on the dance floor of American politics, back and forth, back and forth--with all the attendant voter disillusionment and apathy, as well as desperate hopes for real and meaningful change that never come to fruition.
There is an amazing core of cynical truth that lies behind that proposition. Hope springs eternal, but a hard dose of reality can always shatter that hope. What we see in our current political system is that, as long as a party is out of power, it can rely on the "grass is always greener" sentiment that begins to blossom among many voters with respect to the party that governs. The longer that a party stays out of power, the better it starts to look. By contrast, the longer a party stays in power, the worse it starts to look. The reality of a party being in power has a way of making a party lose its luster; this in part why no single party maintains a monopoly on power in Western parliamentary democracies, and that is why this process is often described as a kind of pendulum swing.
Given this process, the Democrats know that the moment they begin to share or attain power, the clock on their pendulum starts ticking. The longer they stay out of power, the more rose colored the glasses that some voters start to see them through. This phenomenon exists despite the continued inability of the Democrats to offer a real opposition to the Republicans on a host of issues. In fact, it is really the tweedledee and tweedledum nature of our two-party system that contributes to this pendulum process. Many swing and independent voters keep hoping that they will see a real difference when they change the parties in power; but because it is business as usual, they then become disillusioned, and over time they turn their sights back to the party they had voted out of power. Eventually, this other party switches roles from opposition to governing party, and the cycle of disillusionment begins all over again.
The hope of some Democrats that they will need to time very carefully the pendulum swing says much of the cynical nature of politics as being more about a contest for power between two opportunistic factions of the ruling class and less about the battle of ideas. And herein lies a fundamental problem with our political system, which is all about the trappings of democracy rather than the reality.
There are some interesting corollaries to the pendulum understanding of elections in the quasi-democracy of American politics. For example, although Democratic Party apologists in 2004 argued for the ABB philosophy to justify supporting Kerry that year, the loss of the Democrats in that election actually helped them in 2006 or 2008 by giving more momentum to a reversal of the pendulum swing. Bush's poll numbers are, unlike in 2004, at rock bottom, and, his legislative agenda has faltered as his "political capital" withered to nothing. The Democrats are probably better poised to win back Congress in 2006 than they otherwise would have been. The worse Bush looks, the greener the Democratic grass looks to some voters--and Bush just keeps looking worse, the longer he and his party maintain a monopoly on power. A Kerry presidency would have introduced a cold splash of reality to the whole process. This is something that some Democratic Party strategists seem to realize at some level even if they would never articulate it, which is why they want to delay the pendulum swing another two years.
Another interesting consequence that emerges from this pendulum understanding is that even if Gore had won in 2000, or Kerry would have won in 2004, eventually, at some point in the future, a Republican would win the Presidency. If we don't have Bush in 2004, we simply have a Bush clone from his party at some point in the future. Without any real alternative movement from the Left to challenge the Bush and Democratic agendas and thus push the political center leftward, without countervailing pressure from the Left against both parties of the duopoly, and without a vision of how to challenge the lack of genuine democracy in our electoral, political, and economic system, the political agenda of the Bushites is simply bound to win back the White House--if not in 2004, then at some future election. The ABB strategy was a failure because it focused on this election--at all costs--rather than proposing a long term strategy of looking beyond the narrow swings of the duopoly pendulum. The ABB strategy was caught up in the pendulum paradigm and never looked beyond it.
The political pendulum of American politics is dependent on the realities of a political system that is only a shadow of the democracy that it claims to be. Until we introduce real democracy into the American political system--radical democracy that is founded on the self-organized people taking power from the corporate ruling class--we will never have real political change. This means creating new political institutions from the bottom up. Until that happens, tweedledee and tweedledum will do their tango on the dance floor of American politics, back and forth, back and forth--with all the attendant voter disillusionment and apathy, as well as desperate hopes for real and meaningful change that never come to fruition.
The Democrats do offer real opposition to Republicans (after several years of cowering). What they don't offer is a real alternative?
Only "third" parties offer alternatives. The Democrat position is "Bush is evil. Vote for us."
Posted by
Brian |
1:11 PM
It's a great example of why we need true multipartyism in this country.
Posted by
Brian |
1:11 PM
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