{"id":2361,"date":"2004-10-21T15:32:42","date_gmt":"2004-10-21T19:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/10\/21\/2361.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:46:45","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:46:45","slug":"party-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/10\/21\/party-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Party time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s probably not the ideal time to write about it, but this Op-Ed<\/a> by Phil Keisling and Sam Reed in this morning’s<\/s> yesterday’s Times<\/I> and this segment<\/a> on Morning Edition<\/I> piqued me into talking about political parties.\n

You see, I’m a Democrat. I think it means something to be a Democrat. And I hate open primaries; when we Democrats get together to decide our candidate, I don’t see why we should give a damn what anybody else thinks. I think people are Democrats because they believe in the same basic idea: that it is a good thing to use the might of the federal government to help those people who could use help, particularly against the power of the powerful. As I understand it, in general, Republicans believe that the might of the federal government is what people should be shielded against<\/I>. Neither party is particularly extreme about it, not in this generation, although we each welcome those who are along with their more centrist neighbors.\n

I think the Democratic Party has a reason for being. I think that individuals, when left to their own politics, don’t achieve as much as groups, and besides I think groups are on the whole Good Things. I have my own policy opinions. They’re good ones, I think, but they’re not worth much. They’re worth more if I find people who share them, and they are worth even more if I can talk about them and throw them the hell out when I see better ones. They’re worth even more if I don’t let them blind me to getting something tangible that people can live with. I’ll say it again: without a party, my policy opinions, good as they are, aren’t worth much.\n

Now, I think that the Party would be better with more people in it, and I think it would be better if the discussion were wider-ranging, and focused less on who would win the next election and more on how to govern well. But I also think it would be better if the Giants were up against the Sox next week. I don’t get what I want; I’m OK with that.\n

The real question, I think, is whether the two parties dominate the political landscape because between them they really do comprise eighty percent of the electorate, or whether they use their previous dominance to maintain future dominance. That is, are there so few Libertarians because lots of people who might be persuaded to join and vote Libertarian never get the opportunity, or because Libertarianism just hasn’t been very convincing? After the bizarre success of H. Ross Perot, the idea that it just isn’t possible to get non-third-party candidates heard is hard to believe, but then did H. Ross Perot have any ideas? His platform was, if I recall correctly, a combination of protectionism, deficit hawkishness, and personality. None of those ideas was outside the mainstream of the two parties, although neither of the policy aspects was persuasive enough to win primary battles. Still, the genuinely out-of-the-mainstream ideas, such as those of the Libertarian and Socialist parties, remain out of the mainstream.\n

I think, on the whole, it’s because those ideas aren’t persuasive, and aren’t presented persuasively. The other explanation has merit as well. Note, though, that I’m talking about persuasion, the most important thing in a democracy, not correctness, which is incidental at best. I am a socialist, myself, if we’re talking economics; I don’t want to impose a socialist system on a culture that so clearly doesn’t want it, but it seems more sensible to me than the Market. But on just that point, if socialists can’t make the country want socialism, then socialism would be bad for it. If the Socialists can’t get votes, then why should anybody be bothered by their inability to get votes?\n

And then, on yet another hand, when I’ve watched debates that include Socialist and Libertarian candidates, it seems clear that anybody with any political talent or skill steers clear of third parties, whatever their policies. So they get no chance to have the most persuasive people argue their positions, and in debates generally look like the amateurs they are. Those restraints are almost demanded by the constitutional set-up of the country. A parliamentary system, with coalitions of parties and proportional representation, could in some ways lead to better and more wide-ranging deliberation (and be as well-governed as, say, Israel?), but that isn’t what we have or will ever have in our current borders.\n

Look, you can do what you like, of course. Perhaps the fundamental issue is not really one of governance or deliberation, but one of social networks. I think it’s a good idea to be part of a party, even if and especially if there are disagreements within it. I think that the more those parties develop and maintain some sort of coherence, the better it is for the people in them and the people outside them. I think that the more we view voting as something we do together<\/I>, an ultimately co-operative effort by the people voting with and against you, the more we succeed at democracy. I’m not, here, talking about a path to good government, which would certainly be nice; I’m talking about being Better Together. Really, I think open primaries and inclusion of third-party candidates with minimal support in debates and such detract<\/I> from the norms of politics, and that those norms are good for us as a democracy in ways that are more important than the implementation of policies.\n

Which is one of the reasons I didn’t vote today. I’m going on the 2nd, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Republicans (and, yes, the Libertarians, the Socialists, the Greens, and the Reforms, and whatever Nader’s electors will call themselves) and say I<\/I> am voting for a candidate, but we<\/I> are voting for democracy.\n

                           ,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s probably not the ideal time to write about it, but this Op-Ed by Phil Keisling and Sam Reed in this morning\u2019s yesterday\u2019s Times and this segment on Morning Edition piqued me into talking about political parties. You see, I\u2019m…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nytimes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17166,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions\/17166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}