Expanding on my earlier piece, The New Southern Populism, one sign of a realignment is that one party starts winning elections in places where it is not supposed to win elections. Another sign is that candidates emerge that don’t fit neatly in the traditional mold of the party…and they begin winning primaries and elections. Yet another sign is that the same thing happens to the shrinking party, where new types of candidates emerge and start winning primaries. We are seeing all of these things happen in this election cycle.
In the South, Democrats are running to the left of the Blue Dogs on the war, on civil liberties, on the economy, and on federal spending. But they’re running to the right of the GOP on immigration. Meanwhile, out in Montana we are seeing Republican primary voters do strange things like ditching the establishment candidate for senate and opting for an 85 year old former Green Party candidate who supports universal health care and wants to abolish Congress and replace it with a parliament. Meanwhile, Ron Paul is launching a Campaign for Liberty to support candidates (mostly Republican) that share his isolationist and libertarian views. On the presidential level, we see former Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr running as a Libertarian focusing strongly on an anti-war, pro-civil liberties platform.
More than anything specifically that the Democrats have down right, what we’re seeing is the direct result of the unraveling of the Republican coalition of big business and social conservatism. Social conservatives are not naturally pro-corporate free-traders and they are not automatically pro-war. They have little to nothing in common with John McCain, and they agree with Barack Obama and the Democrats enough on economic issues to warrent giving them a long, hard look.
It will take a little time for the two parties to resettle into new brands after this election. But I expect that when a new Republican Party emerges it will be on the backs of some renegade candidates that have found a new way to win in areas where Republicans traditionally do not win. In other words, they will be a mirror image of the New Southern Populists in the Democratic Party.
And the beat goes on.
Hmmm, any chance of a third party emerging, for real? And a fourth? I can fantasize….
No. And this is something I have talked about forever. Third parties can only exist in our system if they are actually part of a larger process of replacing one of the two main parties. This is dictated by the winner-take-all elections that we have. Third parties that do not replace one of the majors actually wind up hurting the party they are more ideologically aligned with.
Occasionally you see a third party emerge, like Ross Perot’s Reform Party, that will throw an election to the party least aligned with it, but then they will fade away.
Even regional parties (which are increasingly unlikely in our homogenized country) have limited staying power. They can only work if the major party most ideologically aligned with them doesn’t field a candidate (as the Dems did for Bernie Sanders in Vermont).
Third parties are for parliamentary systems and for pushing and pulling at the majors in our system.
On the state and local level, where proportional representation is possible without amendments to the U.S. Constitution, it is possible to pass laws that would encourage the growth of third parties. On the federal level it will never, ever, happen.
the rat’s have just given up…ceded as it were…the two open senate seats in virginia and new mexico.
l expect them to bail in colorado as well. they don’t have much going for them with schaffer v udall…which according to coloradopols…this coud get ugly.
heh, heh.
My all-time favorite headline–
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080612/ZONE11/806130302/-1/NLETTER07
I wouldn’t make too much of the Montana Republican primary. The GOP here has always been a bunch of lunatics noted for their irrational behavior.