I have writer’s block tonight. As someone that blogs on a left-wing site I have a lot of interaction with people on the left, especially people that feel totally let down or alienated by the American two-party system. The two party system is dictated by the winner-take-all method of electing federal officials and it is never going to be changed. There are things that can be done on the local and state level, but we are going to continue to elect representatives, senators, and presidents in the same way that we always have. And that is very frustrating to people that would like to see some representation for positions that are a little out of the mainstream. I understand and share that frustration, but I’ve learned not to spit into the wind. We have to deal with the electoral system that we have, not the one we wish we had.
The two-party system is inherently conservative in the good sense. It’s almost impossible for a radical to get elected to any state-wide office, let alone to the presidency, and so America is very predictable and reliable. We aren’t about to privatize whole sectors of the economy and welch on good-faith investments, as often happens in Latin America, for example. In fact, most of America’s foreign interventions in Latin America have been to prevent people from tearing up previously agreed to investment opportunities.
There is a strong force within American politics that punishes political outliers and rewards politicians that hew to the middle. In our current election, Obama has done his best to reassure everyone that he won’t come into Washington and start upsetting apple carts and tossing out the money changers. But the media and the Establishment clearly feels more comfortable with a Clinton-McCain election. The point is to get two candidates that agree on the fundamentals. And for the Establishment, you can disagree about almost everything, but you cannot question American Exceptionalism or threaten the military-industrial complex.
We can all parse Clinton’s statements to guess how far she is willing to go in dismantling our Central Asian empire, but the Establishment is betting that she will make it safe to expand the empire again. And that is how this two-party system is supposed to work. The county is supposed to agree on the major foreign policy challenges we face. But a simple look at the Republicans debate on CNN tonight shows that there is no longer any such consensus. John McCain is actually bragging that he was the only man alive wise enough to advocate a surge of troops into Iraq. The Establishment desperately wants to agree with him because they still hope that Iraq was not a lethal error than undermined the foreign policy assumptions and unquestioned hegemony of the post-Cold War Pax Americana.
Clinton wants to agree with him, too, for the same reason. But reality has intruded and Clinton knows she has no hope of being nominated unless she promises (a la Nixon) to bring our troops home. The bottom line is that we have a two-party system where the two parties have actually diverged on the fundamentals. And that is not supposed to happen. There are not supposed to be any real differences between the two parties on the fundamentals.
So, the Establishment is working overtime to give us two candidates (McCain-Clinton) that do agree on the fundamentals. And they are about to succeed.
Some people say that Obama is no different, but I disagree. He knows and understands the game and what is expected, but he comes from a radically different place and has a radically different background. I don’t think we’ve had a candidate, ever, with more potential to think outside of the standard strictures of the American Imperial framework. We shall see.
