I read with interest Chuck Slocum’s Community Voices commentary, “The two-party system has a hole in the middle.”
Since Minnesota actually once elected an independent governor, people of that state do have an independent streak, which once in a while manifests itself in Minnesota politics. As a lifelong independent voter, I would like to point out a few facts that most people who register independent or vote for an independent candidate are never even aware. The fact is, which Slocum alludes to in his commentary, that independent voters were created by the writing and adoption of the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the states that held the elections. There were no organized political parties in the United States before the election of 1800 because the Tory Party of England had made political parties unpopular in the United States by starting the Revolutionary War through high taxation of the American colonies to pay for political party excesses in England.
Both of the first two presidents of the United States, Washington and Adams, spoke out against the formation of political parties, and Adams blamed Hamilton’s Federalist Party for causing him to lose the election of 1800 by tying him to a vice presidential candidate he did not like, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.
We see from this that independent voters have a Constitutional basis for their existence, which political parties do not. George Washington referred to political parties as “self-created societies,” which he said would have a bad effect on governments that hold elections. But most Americans came from Europe, where political parties were a way of life, so it did not take long before political parties took over the United States government. The two-party system that Federalists and Republican-Democrats started in 1800 took an unfortunate turn in 1803 with a Supreme Court decision in which the Supreme Court declared itself to be more powerful with regard to legislation than Congress by declaring that the Supreme Court was “striking down” an act of Congress. This gave the Republican-Democrat Party started by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison control of the judicial branch of government, which they used to enforce slavery in the United States for the next 60 years, starting a Civil War because of the inability of the United States government to abolish slavery. Contrast this to English abolishment of slavery in 1834 because the English government had adopted a Declaration of Rights when William and Mary deposed James II that prohibited English courts from “striking down” acts of Parliament. When Parliament passed abolition of slavery in 1834, neither the monarchy nor English courts could change it because of the Declaration of Rights.
The tireless efforts of political parties to eliminate independent voters from American politics have only increased the number of independent voters in recent years. Starting with a single digit percentage of independent voters when John F. Kennedy was president, independent voters have increased in numbers since that time to 49% of registered voters today, according to the latest published figures. That means that political party members will soon become a minority in American politics, most likely before the next presidential election. As already noted, the best efforts of political parties to stop independent voter registration always seem to increase, rather than decrease, the number of independent voters. Where political parties have been successful is in eliminating independent candidates for public office. They do this by making it impossible for independent voters to become candidates, usually by unconstitutional state election laws that make it too difficult for independent candidates to gain ballot access.
This appears to be a vain effort to me because independent voters are eventually going to say, George Washington and John Adams were right about political parties. The controlling two parties are incapable of providing good government. Then all independent voters have to do is agree among themselves. We will choose an ordinary American from among ourselves and elect that person as a write-in candidate because political parties come up with worse candidates every election, and there is no reason to pretend that these candidates can provide good government.
Or if independent voters decide to keep supporting political party candidates, we can start discussing the things that political parties have given us, a Civil War, two World Wars, numerous lesser undeclared wars, economic recessions and depressions, corruption in government and political candidates that are unbelievably unqualified to hold office. The higher the political office, the more ridiculous their candidates seem to be. I go back to what George Washington said about political parties in his Farewell Address, and I cannot see anything he was wrong about. In any event, it is good to see some discussion starting to take place about independent voters. I hope that this trend will continue.
Robert B. Winn is a regular reader of MinnPost.
Do away with whatever you want, just so it doesn’t mean electing Joe Manchin.
Right. Can’t have any leftists riding off the reservation just when the real nut case bills hit the floor.
“political parties have been successful is in eliminating independent candidates for public office. They do this by making it impossible for independent voters to become candidates, usually by unconstitutional state election laws”
Can you be more specific? As I understand it, the constitution delegates to the states the power to conduct elections. While there are protections for individual voters’ rights, there is nothing I’m aware of protecting ballot access as a candidate.
More to the point, while the two major parties we have today are too powerful & serve limited interests, the notion of political parties is eminently sensible. Why wouldn’t / shouldn’t voters of like minds combine efforts to promote their political views?
I live in Arizona. Here are the nomination petition signature requirements for independent voters seeking statewide office in this state, along with the requirements for Democrats and Republicans for the same offices.
independent voters 43,000 signatures
Democrats and Republicans 7,000 signatures
To show the trend in signature requirements, here are the signature requirements for the same offices in 1988.
independent voters 10,000 signatures
Democrats and Republicans 3,500 signatures
As you can see, the signature requirement for independent voters quadrupled, while the signature requirement for the major party candidates only doubled. This seems to be the only bi-partisan agreement remaining between Democrats and Republicans.
“independent voters 43,000 signatures
Democrats and Republicans 7,000 signatures”
I agree it’s bogus & an impediment to 3rd party / independent candidates. But it’s the AZ law. How is it unconstitutional?
It takes away the right of independent voters to be candidates for public office. Once again, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not the only inalienable rights. The right to vote and to run for public office are also inalienable rights which have been taken away from independent voters by political parties. As I said before, denial of rights does not cause the rights to cease to exist. It just means that people cannot exercise their rights because the rights have been denied by political party oppression. Slaves in the United States had the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those rights were guaranteed to all Americans. The fact that there were conflicting state laws and even conflicting parts of the Constitution was something that needed to be corrected, but could not be because the Supreme Court could prevent it, and the Supreme Court was controlled by the Democratic Party.
Doest the AZ law distinguish between (Rs & Ds) vs (all other parties), or is it really a distinction of candidates under any political party (via primary process) vs non-affiliated “independent” candidates that skip a primary process and therefore should meet a higher standard to get on to a general ballot?
Is 7000 signatures enough to prevent vanity candidates from making a allot too long?
How are independent voters more vain than these political party candidates? Democrats and Republicans are to the point now where they do not even pretend to be providing government. They just tell us that they are elites or aristocracy of some sort who are more intelligent than the slave class that they collect taxes from and on whose credit they borrow trillions of dollars every year.
Party candidates can appear on the ballot. Major party candidates have signature requirements that are well within the means of political parties to obtain, and minor party candidates are given a much smaller requirement according to the size of the party. Independent candidates have to get more than six times as many signatures as Democrats or Republicans. This means that there are no independent candidates at the present time in Arizona, which, of course, was the reason for these signature requirements. Kirsten Sinema was elected as a Democrat. Whether she will attempt to get 43,000 signatures to run again as an independent remains to be seen.
I’m not sure why 3rd party nonsense is being pushed on Minnpost. Beyond the pointlessness of the topic itself, this is one of the worst written articles I’ve read on this site.
Independent voters are not a third party. They are United States citizens registered to vote. Independent voters were created when the Constitution of the United States was written and adopted. As George Washington noted, political parties are “self-created societies” that have the potential to destroy the freedom of the people.
Well, go ahead and write a better one, Bill. I am certainly in favor of discussing political matters.
Conventional political science predicts less stability in electoral systems with multiple parties.
Parliamentary systems accommodate multiple parties, giving outsized leverage to smaller coalitions when their support is required to form a government.
I’m not convinced Americans would find an improvement. For sure we’d find even more cults of personality and opportunist demands.
The solution to America’s political problems lies in the effectiveness (or mitigation) of propaganda outlets and unlimited spending by the few.
In 1796 President George Washington advised Americans not to start or support political parties. The full context of his ideas about political parties can be found in his Farewell Address. If Washington was addressing his remarks to Americans who did not have political parties, what would you call those Americans to whom Washington was addressing his remarks? I would call them independent voters.
I’m all for getting more candidates to choose from. Term/age limits for all 3 branches seems logical to me too. Neither will ever happen since current politicians and judges are the people who would have make the changes.
Well, no, the voters would have to make the change. All political offices and judicial offices are at present controlled by political parties. Voters would have to withdraw their support from these corrupt individuals.
Good lord. Say what one will about the rise of political parties and the Wisdom of the Framers, parties surely didn’t “cause” every incident in American (and world?) history, most especially the vissitudes of unregulated Robber Baron capitalism.
The idea that American democracy would somehow evolve without the development of a party system was rather naive on the part of the Framers, and was permanently disposed of by the first decade of the republic, as the author notes. The party model of the British Parliament was too strong to ignore or resist, whichever word one prefers.
Whether one wants more than two parties to choose from is a different matter entirely.
Theoretically every voter is a party of 1, having been married for over 40 years I find little chance that, 2 voters would hold aligning views on all issues, especially with little or no nuance.
Egads. “vicissitudes”!
Well, what I am discussing are inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but inalienable rights are not limited to these three things. Secondly, denial of inalienable rights by political parties does not cause the rights to disappear. For example, the people being herded into gas chambers at Auschwitz had the right to live. They were just being denied their right by a political party. So I would apply the same reasoning to the right of independent voters to vote and to be candidates for office. The fact that the Democrats and Republicans who control the government agree with each other that independent voters should not be allowed to vote in elections they pay for or to be candidates for office does not mean independent voters do not have these rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It just means that two corrupt political parties are denying the inalienable rights of independent voters.
Well, I can see that you are feeling very oppressed by American democracy, but I think comparing the suffering of political independents to the gas chambers at Auschwitz is a bit much! Democracies have parties. Dictatorships have a single party or no party.
Again, it seems your beef is really with the entrenched two party system, not political parties per se. And I also note that in your vehemence against the evil parties you seem to say nothing at all about any preferred policies, other than worry about the national debt and dislike of judicial review.
So exactly what kind of candidates do you want to vote for, what do you think they would do differently than those endorsed by the current parties you abhor? When you vote, what party do you tend to vote for? And you do know that we already have actual “independents” in the senate, including from your state of AZ. Should they caucus with no one?
I voted for Evan McMillan in 2016 and Kanye West in 2020, not because I thought they were particularly good candidates, but because they were running as independent candidates. In any event, I thought that the major party candidates were worse. With regard to lower offices, the only choices were party candidates, so I just voted according to individual statements of party propaganda.
Well, thanks for your honesty. You admit that you vote, you just throw your vote away on unqualified cranks like Kanye West, whom you regard as qualified simply because he ran as an “independent”.
The idea that “independent” West was clearly the better choice in 2020 than the most experienced and qualified candidate ever to run for the office, running against an ignorant madman, tells me all I need to know here. Ditto whoever this other character was in 2016.
Evan McMullan was a former CIA operative who was running as in independent, so Kanye West was probably more qualified to be President than McMullan was. If Joe Biden was the most qualified Democratic Party candidate ever, the rest had to have been really bad. I cannot personally think of a worse Democratic Party candidate than Biden. James Buchanan was pretty bad, but not as bad as Biden. Andrew Jackson had some problems, but he was the only American President to have the United States out of debt, so I count that in his favor. When I vote for these independent candidates you do not like, I am really voting for a form of government, not for personalities the way party members vote. Without any votes for independent candidates, party politicians would soon make it impossible for even billionaires to be candidates in independent candidacies, as we see from candidates like Michael Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders, who abandon independent candidacy to run as Democratic Party candidates.
You would vote for an anti-Semitic ego maniac for no better reason than he was not a member of a political party?
Isn’t that just as bad as voting for someone solely because of their partisan affiliation?
PS Before you talk about Shoah as something done by a “political party,” you really should learn something about the history of the persecution of Jews in Europe.
The Nazis were a political party. That is just a fact. I do not regard American political parties as being much better with regard to individual rights than Nazis were.
I don’t think that comparing the right to vote or to participate in elections as candidates for office to right to life is a wrong comparison. Jews were first denied the right to participate in German government before being sent to concentration camps to be exterminated.
The fact that Americans ignored President Washington and started political parties does not mean that they could not have had good government. It just means that they chose to have bad government, so American government became a weak copy of the extremes of European political contention. Since 1800 there has been little that took place in American government that could be attributed to anything but European political philosophy. The idea of government of the people became government of the parties, by the parties, and for the parties. The only fly in the ointment for political parties was their inability to stop independent voter registration, which brings us to our present situation. With 49% of the voters now registered as independent voters, can these two little major parties continue to subjugate the American people?
The United States and the various constitutional and absolute monarchies[!] of Europe actually had quite different systems of government and ideologies, although of course America quickly took up some degree of Anglophilia (at least after the War of 1812.) I’d say that having a “reactionary” political party and a “progressive” one is pretty much baked into the democractic cake, whatever Washington imagined in his Farewell Address.
Further, the various 19th Century nations involved had quite different political issues, controversies and dangers to deal with, from creating and defending overseas empires to overthrowing monarchs and emperors to unifying nation states. So your characterization attributing every ill of the nation (and world!) to the existence of political parties (of all things) is beyond overbroad.
But when all one has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Anyway, thanks for the discussion and have a good day, Robert.
Independent voters have existed since the Constitution was adopted. There were no organized political parties in the United States until the election of 1800. The first two Presidents, Washington and Adams, were both opposed to political parties in the government. If Washington and Adams did not support party domination, what should we call the people they were advising not to start political parties. I would call them independent voters. Independent voters are citizens of the United State who are registered to vote just as American citizens, not as members of what Washington called self-created societies.
Conduct of elections would seem to me to be the issue of the day, not the extremes of human behavior that political parties discuss. Democrats accused Trump of stealing the election of 2016 through Russian collusion. Republicans accused the Democrats of stealing the 2020 election through weaponization of government agencies and the media. I have said for a long time that these party controlled elections are not really elections because half of American citizens are prohibited from voting in elections they pay for and from being candidates for political office by unconstitutional state election laws.
The idea that you are “prohibited from voting” because you are an independent is hyperbole, since you admit that you vote. You just vote for candidates that cannot win.
As for anyone being prohibited from running, every state has different laws for filing for office, so I don’t know what you are talking about there, but somehow I suspect it is also hyperbolic.
I do not vote in Presidential Primary elections. The voters of Arizona passed an Open Primary initiative in 1998. Political party politicians in the state legislature immediately moved the Presidential Primary to February, leaving the primary for state offices in August, giving independent voters the opportunity to pay for two primary elections instead of just one. Then a legal opinion was obtained from State Attorney General Janet Napolitano that since the Open Primary had not specified the Presidential Primary by name, independent voters would not be allowed to vote in the Presidential Primary.
Government of the parties, by the parties, and for the parties. Independent voters still have the right to vote in the Presidential Primary. They are just unable to exercise that right because of Democrats and Republicans.
I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your constitutional or historical analyses, there, Robert.
The US Constitution, despite the oft-quoted warnings of (some of) the Founders, is neutral on the subject of political parties. It does not “create” independent voters. No, political parties are not mandated constitutionally, nor are they explicitly recognized, but to say that this silence is somehow indicative of any stance towards independent voters is unsound.
Elections in the early years of the American Republic more closely resembled something conceived of by William Hogarth, rather than by Walter Lippmann. The parties warned about by some of the Founders were likely viewed as advancing particular economic or regional interests, rather than some ideology. They would not have resembled a contemporary political party.
Frankly, this whole piece is rife with historical errors that do nothing to strengthen the argument. Judicial review was not a partisan creation that sprung out of nowhere in 1803, but was an accepted practice before and after the Revolution. Marbury v. Madison was a win for Jefferson, handed to him by a member of the opposing party. Since Great Britain has no written constitution, judicial review necessarily takes on a different form (even after Lord Mansfield ruled, some 60 years before Parliament finished with the issue, that slavery had no legal status in Britain). Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was not especially unpopular (at a time when Vice Presidents were elected separately from the President), and Adams trusted him enough to appoint him as a special envoy to France.
Etc.
Independent voters are nothing more than United States citizens registered to vote. The fact that they do not register as members of self-created societies does not mean that they are giving up their right to vote or to be candidates for office. But political parties have had two hundred years to entrench their corrupt power, meaning that they have passed election laws at state level to deprive independent voters of their Constitutional rights.
John Adams blamed his election loss in 1800 to Hamilton’s political party, which had linked him to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a candidate for President who was promoted to voters as a Vice-President in an Adams administration. Jefferson and Madison’s political party was first called the Republican Party, then the Republican-Democrat Party, and the name was later changed to the Democratic Party by Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren. When I was in school, the party was always referred to as Republican-Democrat Party in textbooks. Modern Democrats seem to take offense at their party being called that in its early history.
The party warned about by the founding fathers was the Tory Party of England, which had started the Revolutionary War by high taxation of the American colonies to pay for party excesses in England. Washington and other early leaders hoped to avoid the formation of anything similar in the United States.
With regard to judicial review, it started with James I of England who did not like Parliament and began appointing judges to whom he gave the task of “striking down” acts of Parliament that James did not like. This caused a Civil War during the reign of Charles I. When James II was deposed by William and Mary, the new king and queen were presented a Declaration of Rights, to which they had to agree before being accepted as sovereigns. Two of the provisions of the Declaration of Rights were 1. The monarchy could not act as judges. 2. The courts of England could not “strike down” acts of Parliament.
So you are correct. What is called judicial review did exist in England before Marbury v. Madison 1803. It caused a Civil War there, just as it caused a Civil War in the United States. The fact that we were fed party propaganda in grade school about judicial review being the greatest asset to justice that ever existed does not make it so. It just means that judicial review gave a political party control of the United States judiciary, which that party used to enforce slavery in the United States for the next sixty years.
“The party warned about by the founding fathers was the Tory Party of England, which had started the Revolutionary War by high taxation of the American colonies to pay for party excesses in England.”
Political parties in England at the time of American independence were not as organized as they are now. While the ideas of some who called themselves “Whigs” influenced American political thinking, neither the Whigs nor the Tories were subject to the same kind of monolithic ideologies we now associate with political parties.
The taxes levied by the Tories were to pay for the costs of the colonial wars in the Americas. It wasn’t that the taxes were too high, it’s that they were imposed at all.
“What is called judicial review did exist in England before Marbury v. Madison 1803. It caused a Civil War there, just as it caused a Civil War in the United States.”
Again, judicial review also existed in the United States before Marbury. Again, the real significance of Marbury is taht an act of Congress was struck down for the first time.
“The fact that we were fed party propaganda in grade school about judicial review being the greatest asset to justice that ever existed does not make it so.”
I don’t remember the topic coming up in grade school. You must have had an interesting primary education.
“It just means that judicial review gave a political party control of the United States judiciary, which that party used to enforce slavery in the United States for the next sixty years.”
The courts were pretty much minus quantities in the US between Marbury and Dred Scott. Both parties “enforced” slavery in the United States – abolitionists were regarded as dangerous radicals, akin to how many regard BLM today. Judicial intervention was not necessary (in fact, many enslaved people sued in the courts for their freedom and won. Dred Scott stands out only because the person who claimed to own him fought the lawsuit). If you read Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott, you will see that a lot of his reasoning is based on the popular sentiment towards slavery and black citizenship.
We studied American history in grade school when I attended. I decided in grade school that I did not like the Democratic Party because they were the party that enforced slavery. I decided I did not like the Republican Party when I registered as an independent voter because the Republican Party seemed highly opposed to participation of independent voters in government.
All sorts of things existed in 1803. The significant thing that existed was a part of the Declaration of Rights in England that prohibited English courts from striking down acts of Parliament. This enabled England to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 and to abolish slavery in the British empire in 1834 by acts of Parliament. Judicial review in the United States insured that Congress could not abolish slavery because if it had happened, the Supreme Court would have declared it unconstitutional.
“Judicial review in the United States insured that Congress could not abolish slavery because if it had happened, the Supreme Court would have declared it unconstitutional.”
First, the idea that Congress before the Civil War would have outlawed slavery is alternative history that doesn’t merit a second look.
Second, yes, you are correct that the Dred Scott decision, which declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, meant slavery was a national institution. However, it can hardly be said that it was the threat of judicial review that restrained Congress from acting.
Third, Congress could have chosen to outlaw slavery and then take the morally-repugnant-but-probably-constitutionally-necessary step of paying compensation to slaveholders.
Nothing new to you no doubt, but I like to remind people that the Dred Scott decision was about a slave owned by a military officer, for time spent at Fort Snelling, now in St. Paul Minnesota but then in the free Wisconsin territory.
Marbury v. Madison 1803 reduced Congress to the meaningless assemblage that it remains today because members of Congress were the greatest admirers of judicial review in existence. It absolved them of all responsibility in government, meaning that if Congress did something wrong, as long as Congress did not regulate the courts, as the Constitution provides, it became the duty of the Supreme Court to correct Congress, making the Supreme Court a super legislature. So political party members of Congress could concentrate on raising taxes, borrowing money on public credit, taking bribes from the wealthy, and paying voters to keep them in office.
You need to understand that slavery was specifically protected in the Constitution. Of course the Supreme Court could not abolish it in the original slave states. We needed the 13th Amendment to do that. The Antebellum battle was over the expansion of slavery westward, as well as the escape of slaves to free states .
The way the judicial system was originally set up, any judge could have ruled against slavery, including the Supreme Court. It would not have changed the Constitution, but it would have affected the lives of any slaves who were given the justice they deserved. As you mentioned, it took an Amendment to the Constitution to free all slaves in the United States.
The problem that developed was that when the Supreme Court said it was striking down an act of Congress, that gave Jefferson’s political party control of the judicial branch of the United States, which they used to enforce slavery for the next sixty years. Hamilton’s Federalist Party went defunct in 1816, meaning that pro-slavery Presidents appointed federal judges until John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824, but he only served one term, and Democrats dominated until Lincoln was elected in 1860. Lincoln turned the Supreme Court on its head with an executive order, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Dred Scott decision remains the last Supreme Court decision on slavery, proving that the Executive branch of government is stronger than the judicial branch.
Well, I suppose a judge could “do” anything. But no, no federal judge before the Civil War could have legitimately ruled that slavery was abolished in a slave state. Not if the words of the 1789 Constitution were to mean anything.
Judges in Missouri – a slave state – routinely issued orders finding that enslaved people could be freed. I believe a lot of slaveholders colluded in these suits as a way of giving their favorites their freedom. Dred Scott lost because Sanford decided to fight the suit.
Whether or not slavery was abolished, any court had the right and power in the United States to uphold individual inalienable rights, including, but not limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Courts have the power to uphold individual rights over any unconstitutional laws. Courts could not abolish slavery, but they could uphold individual rights.
The “right” for a slave to be free (“inalienable” or otherwise) did not exist under any clause of the 1789 Constitution. Indeed Art IV, sec 2 of the Constitution gave a slaver the constitutional right to have his escaped slave returned! So whatever these judges were ruling on, it wasn’t the 1789 Constitution. And you certainly aren’t granted any legal “rights” under the preamble to the Declaration of Independence! That argument is gibberish.
But to return to the main matter, if Congress had somehow enacted a bill to abolish slavery in the original slave states, then yes, the Supreme Court, using judicial review, would have been entirely within its rights under our constitutional system to declare such a law (plainly) unconstitutional. As Lincoln always understood. Hence the need for the 13th Amendment.
The existence of political party nonsense does not change rights. People have the right to live. People have the right be free. People have the right to seek happiness. They also have other rights. Political party members do not believe in rights. They believe in privileges that are controlled and granted by political parties. Denial of rights by political parties does not cause the rights to no longer exist. It just means that a political party has denied rights that belonged to individual people.
Well, you obviously adhere to the letter of the law rather than to individual rights. I prefer the individual rights, myself. Saying that the Declaration of Independence is not a basis for law seems a little exclusionary to me. Just because political party interpretation of rights results in inhuman acts does not mean that I should join a political party. For example, prisoners, especially those from foreign countries who were considered terrorists by bureaucracies like the CIA, were routinely tortured by political party operatives under political party interpretation of United States law. My belief is that all prisoners have the right not to be tortured. So I will remain an independent voter because as such I can still have my belief that torture of prisoners should not happen.
Both parties enforced slavery? I don’t think so. The Whig Party went defunct in 1856. The Republican Party was started in 1856 as an anti-slavery party and nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for President in 1860. Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862.
The Whig Party did not call for the abolition of slavery. The Republican platform of 1860 opposed the expansion of slavery and the revival of the slave trade, but did not call for abolition.
The Emancipation Proclamation freed the enslaved people in the Confederacy, but the Proclamation had no practical effect unless those areas were occupied by the Union Army. Slavery was not abolished by the Proclamation, but remained legal until the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
So how was the Republican Party enforcing slavery? The Republicans wanted to end slavery. That was the reason for their party. The Democrats wanted to keep it going. I had a black friend who talked me into going to see the movie Lincoln. As we were leaving the movie he remarked, All the Democrats were voting against the Thirteenth Amendment. I did not realize the significance of his remark until later. The Democrats who were voting against the Thirteenth Amendment were all Northern Democrats. The Southern Democrats were still fighting the Civil War when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed.
“So how was the Republican Party enforcing slavery?”
By acquiescing in its existence.
The Republican Party was not around very long before the Civil War started.
The Republican Party was not enforcing slavery. The Democratic Party controlled courts were, most especially the Supreme Court. The Republican Party was a weak party in 1860, just as it is a weak party today. The Republican Party was not enforcing much of anything. When Lincoln was elected, the Democratic Party did something similar to what they did when Trump was elected. Nine southern states seceded from the Union, a military coup. When Trump was elected, the FBI was used by the Democrats to investigate the entire Trump administration for “collusion” with the Russians. Democrats controlled the courts and the military in 1860. They controlled courts and government bureaucracies in 2016. Same tactic, same reason. They objected to the election of a Republican candidate.
It could end up with a similar result. Unless they can convict Trump on one of these endless criminal indictments, Trump could end up being the modern Lincoln of the Republican Party, the man who withstood Democratic Party injustice. Convicting someone is not as easy as accusing them. It seems to me that Democrats are going to have the kind of argument you had in favor of judicial review, something no juror who can still think is going to buy. If Democrats had not been hounding Trump through illegal use of government agencies from the time he was elected, his actions as President would obviously have been different than they were. You can say that the 2020 election was a perfect election in which nothing illegal was done by Democrats, but I think it will come out different in court. So we will see what happens. I do not think Trump is going to be convicted of anything more than the sexual allegations in civil court where he has already lost and forced to pay a plaintiff. In order to win in criminal court, Democrats are going to have to convince Republican jurors that the election of 2020 was an honest election. Maybe it will happen. Ron DeSantis just proclaimed that the Democrats won without cheating in 2020.
“When Lincoln was elected, the Democratic Party did something similar to what they did when Trump was elected.”
I think I’m done here.
Yes, the actual motivations have all been pretty much revealed.
Well, good talking to you, RB.
Can’t wait to contact my professor for Europe history in college and tell him that well actually both world wars were caused by the existence of the two party system in America instead of the complex and wide ranging web of political and socioeconomic reasons in Europe that he spent several class sessions discussing. That’ll probably save future history teachers a bunch of time, particularly is the study of US history where they can just blame political parties for the civil war instead of you know, the slaveowners who wanted to keep human beings as property.
This essay is beyond absurd. What’s next? Blaming cancer on the two party system?
This essay is littered with historical inaccuracies. Do the Minnpost editors just allow any opinion full of boloney get published?
Well, go ahead and tell us what the historical inaccuracies are, Bill.
Well, I know that party members would like to get rid of independent voters, but George Washington seemed to want to keep them, so I see the fact that political party members will become a minority of American voters as a good thing. I do not think that two little political parties are going to be able to keep the stranglehold they have had on American citizens since 1800.
Well, since you disagree with George Washington about political parties, you are obviously going to want to promote party dominance. My personal opinion is that American political parties had a lot to do with the rise of European political parties like the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists. The implementation of party primaries in America before World War I inspired political movements like Make Italy Great Again, and Southern Democrats in America have the best way to deal with unwanted minorities after the end of the war, which had a great effect on European politics, since Hitler and Mussolini subjugated most of Europe with these political party ideals.
Thomas Jefferson’s political party was the Democratic-Republican party, not the Republican-Democrat party. The USA is a Democratic-Rebuplic (we vote for representatives), and that is where the name of that old party comes from. There never has been a Democrat party, or a Republican-Democrat party.
Recessions and depressions are economic phenomena that happen all over the world, throughout history, regardless of the existence of political parties. Americans have a weird obsession with thinking that presidents or congress can control the entire worldwide connected economy with the snap of a finger, when in reality policies work on the margins and have long time lags to take effect……….and we don’t control the world economy.
Democrats and Republicans believe that they control the world economy by borrowing money on public credit and handing out that borrowed money to entities that they believe will maintain them in power. At a debt of 32 trillion dollars, I believe they are approaching the end of this particular political philosophy.
In Weimerica, there is only 1 party: The Uniparty
One side brings the crazy, the other side tut tuts, and then votes for it. Then they all go count their money.
What’s hilarious is that you imagine the leftists “bring the crazy”. And that you think that one “crazy” side is apparently in control of the “Uniparty”. Profound analysis! And apparently you have no side to support? Seems somewhat dubious.
All I know is that whenever I see the word “Uniparty”, I know the observation will almost certainly be deeply silly and unserious…
That sounds like something a Uniparty supporter might say.
As to which side brings the crazy, I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure only one side is suggesting men can give birth.
I’m pretty sure it’s only one side that keeps harping on a stray comment like that.
I’m pretty sure it’s only one party advancing the idea that public school teachers are pedophiles grooming children.
Yeah, thats an urban myth, isnt it?
https://nypost.com/2022/10/14/nearly-270-k-12-educators-arrested-on-child-sex-crimes-in-first-9-months-of-this-year/
Send the kids to Catholic school, where they will be safe from predatory . . .
Sorry, I’ll come in again.
One might think his “example” would be among the worst for attempting to prove the existence of a “Uniparty”, but I guess not.
The things that burn up and obsess “conservatives” are beyond comment. This matters to you how exactly, beyond mere semantics?
In the hot, but boring Minnesota nights of late summer I wish I lived in the online republican’s fever dream of “Weimerica” instead of the place where eating donuts on a stick at the State Fair is the largest and most exciting event of the year. There is more ribald nightlife to be found in the conservative muslim monarchies of the Persian gulf than MN, or anywhere in America these days. Maybe if America would be more fun if it was really controlled by a uniparty of louche party animal bankers, instead of who really controls it, a loose federation of regional car dealers, landlords and franchisees, i.e. the squarest people on earth.
Your turns of phrase and wicked humor are delightful. I also love that you didn’t directly engage in rewarding that cow pie of a post.
Always a pleasure to see Marbury v. Madison (1803) come up for discussion. As the author notes, that is the case in which the Great Chief Justice, John Marshall, declared for the courts the power of judicial review over the acts of Congress; the power to strike laws down if the Court deemed them in violation of some clause of the Constitution.
The author sees this as an evil caused by the party system of government, which seems rather an idiosyncratic view to me. I’d say it was a natural development of a country trying to govern by a rule of law regime which actually protected civil rights and minority factions. How else would the Constitution be enforced?
But the power to declare unconstitutional duly enacted laws is rather awesome, and must be treated as a great responsibility. The Great Chief Justice did it quite sparingly, as did the Court in the decades until the disastrous decision of Dred Scott (1857), which did indeed do its part to usher in the Civil War. That alone should give today’s justices pause.
I don’t know if the author is reacting to the wildly lawless and reckless Court of Roberts Repubs or not. But I can say that this “conservative” Court has irresponsibly struck down more federal legislation in the past 25 years than was struck down in all prior decades by the Supreme Court since the dawn of the republic. They have also blithely overruled more existing precedents in a shorter period than any prior Court.
And in doing so, these reckless and power drunk “conservative” judicial activists masquerading as “justices” have quite naturally brought judicial review into extreme discredit. The Great Chief Justice would be appalled by their presumptive arrogance and their placing of the rule of law into question. As well as endangering the very legitimacy of the Supreme Court in the constitutional scheme.
Always a pleasure to discuss Marbury v. Madison with party members. The Constitution gives the President the duty and power of appointing federal judges. The Constitution gives Congress the power to advise the President with regard to anything at all. Maybe you would like to explain why you think that an act of Congress advising the President to appoint some federal judges he had been neglecting to appoint is unconstitutional.
Robert, I’m not going to get into the (very deep) weeds of why the Marshall Court declared that act unconstitutional. You could read the opinion by the Great Chief Justice, but it’s rather difficult and abstruse reading.
If what you are complaining about is that leaders of political parties nominate and confirm federal judges, that’s literally been a feature of the system since the midnight judges act of 1800. So, good luck!
Marshall was trying to appease Jefferson and his party, rather than following the Constiotution. I am sure he did not fully comprehend the disastrous effect his ruling would have, but the fact remains, there was nothing unconstitutional about what Congress had done. They had advised the President to fill some vacant federal judicial offices, which it was the duty of the President to do.
There has never been an independent judge as far as I know since 1800. Jefferson and his party were all upset that John Adams was going to appoint some judges they wanted to appoint. If Adams had been keeping up with his job, the situation would not have arisen. Federalists and Republican-Democrats both saw the judicial branch of government as the key to political party power.
“Maybe you would like to explain why you think that an act of Congress advising the President to appoint some federal judges he had been neglecting to appoint is unconstitutional.”
Maybe you would like to explain what you mean. The law Justice Marshall held unconstitutional in Marbury was section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which (among other things) gave the Supreme Court the authority to issue writs of mandamus ordering an official to do some official act. All well and good, but the Constitution sets out the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. That jurisdiction did not include the power to issue writs of mandamus in original proceedings (i.e. cases not being appealed from some other court).
So how does that make the appointments made by John Adams unconstitutional? Adams had the duty and power to appoint federal judges, regardless of what Congress advised him to do. In any event, Marbury v. Madison introduced into
American government the problem that had caused a Civil War in England and which the English had been careful to prevent in English government when William and Mary agreed to the Declaration of Rights upon being approved as king and queen of England when they deposed James II. Judicial Review did exactly what striking down acts of Parliament had done in England. It caused a Civil War in the United States.
The problem here is you don’t understand Marbury v. Madison. The Act authorizing the Court to issue a writ of mandamus forcing Secretary of State Madison to issue the judicial commission was unconstitutional. That’s what the Great Chief Justice was saying.
I know what the Chief Justice was saying. The Constitution gives Congress the power to advise the President. The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate the courts. It does not give Congress the power to make Supreme Court decisions. So Congress had intruded into judicial matters, something George Washington had warned against. All John Marshall had to do was ignore the mistake of Congress. Instead, he proclaimed that the Supreme Court was striking down an act of Congress which also nullified an appointment made by the President, intruding into the matters of both other branches of government and declaring the Supreme Court to be a legislature more powerful than Congress. If you want to say that was the greatest judicial decision ever made, we have freedom of speech here in the United States. It does not mean that what you say is true.
That is most definitely not what Chief Justice Marshall was saying.
Well, go ahead and tell us what you think he was saying.
The shortest way of explaining the decision is that Marshall said the Congress gave the Supreme Court a statutory power it could not possess under the language of Art III, and thus the attempt to do so was unconstitutional. And that the Court had the power to definitively rule the statute unconstitutional.
If Congress gave the Supreme Court a statutory power they did not possess, all John Marshall had to do was not use that statutory power and tell other Supreme Court members not to use it because Congress had exceeded its jurisdiction. Instead he said he was striking down an act of Congress. The Constitution gives the Supreme Court no authority to strike down acts of Congress.
There’s no real difference between the two, so your “distinction” is mere semantics. And Congress hadn’t just “exceeded its jurisdiction”, it had passed a law that was contrary to the actual language of the Constitution. You want to minimize that and absolve the Congress for some reason.
As for what the Constitution says about judicial review, Marbury was decided in 1803 and has never been the subject of any attempt to amend the Constitution to take away the Court’s power. Your position is in a very small minority.
I don’t care if I am in a small minority. People have a tendency to believe political party propaganda. The fact remains that Marbury v. Madison gave Jefferson’s political party control of the United States judiciary, which Jefferson’s party used to enforce slavery for the next sixty years. If the Supreme Court believed that an act of Congress was unconstitutional, they certainly had the right to say so. What was unconstitutional was saying that the Supreme Court had the power to strike down acts of Congress. The Supreme Court has no such power. It is an example of the artificial authority that George Washington said political parties would impose. The Democratic Party has taken it to much greater extremes today. They claim that the courts are the source of laws, not the legislative assemblies.
“So how does that make the appointments made by John Adams unconstitutional?”
It didn’t. The law under which Marbury brought his suit (to direct Secretary James Madison to deliver his judicial commission) was. The Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to issue such a writ.
I’m only repeating this because you ignore it: Marbury v. Madison was not the first instance of judicial review in the United States. Do a quick Google search for “pre Marbury judicial review.” It happened, and the practice was widespread.
The practice of actions contrary to good government does not make them good government. When American colonists were declaring independence from Great Britain, they did many things that were not good government. One of those things was the idea of judicial review. What I said was that the reason that Great Britain was able to abolish slavery and the United States was not able to do it without a Civil War was the Declaration of Rights that William and Mary agreed to when they deposed James II. The Declaration of Rights stopped striking down of acts of Parliament by English courts. This enabled England to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 and to abolish slavery in 1834 by acts of Parliament. English courts could not strike down those acts of Parliament the way the Supreme Court would have struck down abolition of slavery in the United States before the Civil War.
The reason Great Britain was able to abolish slavery was that Parliament was not controlled by a large bloc of members with an economic interest in continuing it. Slavery was important to the economy mostly because of its importance to planters in the West Indies, but since the enslaved people there could be kept in virtual peonage, the formal institution of slavery could be abolished without much pain to the Home Counties.
The reason why England was able to abolish slavery was because English courts could not strike down acts of Parliament. It still took more than a hundred years for it to happen. So let’s talk about modern political slavery. Political parties took away the right of independent voters to vote in elections they pay for. Now they are in the process of taking away the right of independent voters to be candidates for public office. The problem Democrats and Republicans have is that they are incapable of providing good government in the United States. This gives rise to an increase in independent voter registration, which has increased independent voters to 49% of registered voters according to the latest polls. Two little parties in the two-party system are not going to be able to continue their oppression of independent voters forever. I am just pointing out that the two-party system of political slavery is going to go the way of chattel slavery in the United States. All that has to happen is American citizens continuing to register as independent voters.
I know I said I was done, but I cannot let this pass.
Comparing the lock the two major political parties have on the politics of this country to an economic system that allows one person to claim they own another is as disgraceful a piece of amorality as any I have seen
The Democratic Party has claimed that they own the rights of independent voters since the election of 1803. Now an independent voter has said, No, I have rights as an individual United States citizen, and you are all upset about it.
I am upset that you draw some analogy to voting and a system that claimed the right to own human beings.
Have you been beaten or mutilated because you don’t want to vote for a party member?
Were you kidnapped and forced into a voting both?
Does the Democratic Party have the power to sell you to another party, and take you away from your family or home?
Unless and until any of those happens, you should quit talking about slavery.
There was no large block of voters who owned slaves. Slave owners were a small minority even in Southern States.
“Economic interest in slavery” is not necessarily the same as “slaveholder.”
England had the greatest economic interest in slavery. They bought most of the cotton that the South produced. England also abolished slavery in the entire British empire in 1834.
In legal terms, if Congress passed a law saying that The Supreme Court could do this or that with regard to writs of mandamus, it was pretty much meaningless legally. The Supreme Court would still decide what it would do. The judicial branch was a separate branch of government. Congress could have in practical terms told the Supreme Court that it had no authority to strike down an act of Congress, but members of Congress were the greatest supporters of judicial review in existence because it gave Jefferson’s political party control of the judicial system of the United States, and the majority of members of Congress were supporters of Jefferson’s party. For example, today there are immigration laws which the courts completely ignore because they are trying to build up a base of voters to keep Democrats in power, so they keep the border open. The Democrats support world socialism, a political philosophy which promotes socialism as a world political party which would unite all governments under a world socialist dictatorship. We saw the result of this idea in Europe as Muslims from the Middle East and Africa overran European nations through illegal immigration, something the Democrats are trying to emulate on the North American continent with Hispanic people from South and Central American countries.
Oh, boy. Here we go.
Remember when the bêtes noires were the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations? I miss those days.
Well I guess we can now see why this “independent” would never vote for a Dem!
A Fox News devotee…
I have voted for certain Democrats in lower elections. I would be unlikely vote for a Republican if there were independent candidates on the ballot.
I decided early in life that I would never belong to a political party that had enforced slavery. I think you believe you are an expert on slavery because you belong to a political party like that.
And you believe Secretary Mayorkas when he says that the border is under control.
Please don’t tell me what I believe. That is not just rude, but presumptuous.
Well, so you are saying that the Secretary of Homeland Security is wrong when he says that the border is under control?
The only way to really abolish the two party system in the US would be to convert to a parliamentary system, and THAT has far greater implications than simply getting third party candidates on ballots. I think with our system ranked choice basically gets us there without having to create a whole new system of governance.
The concentration of power we see in the two parties is largely a product of campaign finance laws that make the absurd assumption that simply writing a check or giving money to candidates and parties is an act of “speech”. In fact, the free speech component of our legal system creates a whole host of mechanisms that the wealthy elite use to capture and maintain their power over politicians and their Parties. The only way we will ever really break that grip on power will be to find some constitutional ways to limit the money and disproportionate influence the elite wield within the dominate Parties. Simply adding more Parties won’t be a sustainable solution.
One would think that is something our independents would strongly endorse. It is a position of those on the progressive side now and has been for some time. Yet “independents” are now complaining about how “far left” the Dem party has become! I am mystified at what they actually desire. This author hardly spends two sentences on actual policy concerns.
“independent” just means a republican who is too embarrassed to admit it in public
I am an independent voter, and I have never liked the Republican Party because they are opposed to independent voters participating in the government.
Just a few thoughts:
Shouldn’t free lunch actually be called taxpayer subsidized for school?
Defund the police and to keep blaming and banging on them as crime does not seem to be abating, seems pretty ultra left to me, when do the bad guys get some blame?
Rent control? We have no idea what folks use their $ for, how about tobacco control, beer control, gas price control etc. etc. etc.
Seems to some of us folks because the ultra’s say these poor people we are suppose to believe them 100% at face value, perhaps like above, some idea on how are they spending their $ giving $200 a month to their local religion and then applying for snap because thy need food looks like taxpayer subsidized religion? Education reform, why did the left go right for forgiveness and not modified repayment plans/options? There are quite a few more if you want to get into the trenches.
“Defund the police and to keep blaming and banging on them as crime does not seem to be abating, seems pretty ultra left to me, when do the bad guys get some blame?”
In this context, the “bad guys” are the people pushing the falsehood that “defunding the police” is still a policy option discussed by anyone other than those who continue to raise the specter.
Thanks Dennis, this gives me an indication. But my quibble is that I already consider you a pretty solid Dem supporter and political ally, and not really the sort of free-floating “independent” that Mr. Winn appears to be. He thinks voting for Kanye West for president makes some kind of civic sense as a meaningful “protest” against parties. I personally can’t make head nor tails out of something like that!
All I can say about the list you kindly furnished is that I tend to distinguish between the positions of, say, the Minneapolis/St. Paul DFL, and then the positions of the state DFL, and then again the positions of the national Dem party. The level of positional “moderation” generally increases as one climbs the ladder. For example, “defund the police” never really rose above the municipal level of politics, as far as I saw.
Kanye West ran as an independent candidate. I have voted for a lot of independent candidates I did not particularly think would have made good office holders, also a lot of party politicians who were not qualified because there were no good candidates. Political parties give us worse candidates with each successive election.
Well, I consider myself a right leaning leftist, not to get out of sorts, but I really like the Arnie Carlson model, social liberal, fiscal conservative, and that is why his own party didn’t endorse him, then he goes on to win ~63% of the vote, got to love that type of politics! Could we call Arnie an independent?
You could call him an independent if he ran as an independent candidate. If he ran as a Democrat, he was just another party politician.
He was a sitting Republican Governor that ran for re-election as a Republican, he was not endorsed by the Republican party, and then goes on to get re-elected with ~ 63% of the popular vote. Looks pretty independent to me.
If that is your definition of independent, then you are saying that political parties are independent, which is ridiculous. A true independent is like George Washington, who believed that political parties are incapable of providing good government.
What ever dude, basically ran on his record, no endorsement, pretty independent from this perspective, and then get 60+% of the vote!
Well, that is certainly admirable, all right. Evan Mecham ran a similar campaign for governor in Arizona, defied the Republican Party, and was elected Governor of Arizona. Then he said he was not in favor of a national holiday for Martin Luther King’s birthday, and was impeached and removed from office by a bi-partisan nationwide effort of the two-party system. I did not consider Evan Mecham to be particularly independent, either, although he certainly had the two-party machine in an uproar.
Elections are the policy concern that I focus on, not the nonsense that political parties want to discuss. What is your position with regard to elections? Your political party claims that Trump stole the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton by colluding with Russia. The Republicans claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election from Trump by means of weaponizing government agencies and the news media against Trump. I have never seen an election in my lifetime that I thought was an honest election. But neither Democrats nor Republicans want to discuss elections with an independent voter because the official position of both major parties is that electoral rights belong to political parties. I say that electoral rights belong to the American people, and the latest statistics show that 49% of American voters are registered independent.
If you are so concerned about the conduct of national elections, you might begin by trying to evaluate the actual facts underlying the (supposed) claims of the two parties relating to the last two presidential elections. The facts are of relevance to the claims. (And I do not remotely agree with your characterization of the two “claims” by the hated parties.)
And remember there are thousands of elections in America other than the last two presidential elections.
I have actually run as an independent candidate several times. Here is the problem I encountered. In 1988 I had to get 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot. The Democrat candidate had to get 3200 signatures, and the Republican had to get 3600. I could have done it except for one thing. I was not allowed to get signatures until after the party primaries. I got two thousand signatures in two days, then the deadline for voter registration stopped my campaign because the reason why I was getting signatures was because I was registering people to vote at a college campus. Without the ability to register voters to vote in the upcoming election, I could no longer get enough signatures before the signatures had to be turned in.
If I were to run for statewide office today, I would have to get 43,000 signatures, while Democrats and Republicans would have to get 7,000. As you can see, the signature requirement for independent candidates quadrupled since 1988, while the requirement for major party candidates only doubled.
How is it that you think that independent voters are “our independents”, as you put it? I am not one of your independents.
I do not advocate the abolishment of anything. I just try to convince people not to support political parties because I agree with George Washington that political parties are incapable of providing good government in nations that have elections.
So no known democracy on earth has ever had “good government”. Except maybe ancient Athens.
Got it.
Ancient Athens did not have good government. They probably had better government than some other Greek city states because they were not so autocratic.
Yeah, good governance is like good beer in the eye or the taste buds of the beholder!
Hello Robert, thanks for the article.
This isn’t a new idea or discussion, the problems that emerge from our two-party system have been an ongoing discussion for decades if not longer. It has long since been recognized that “moving away” from a two Party system in the US would require more than an occasional third Party candidate, or multi Party candidates. I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that third Party candidates have emerged with some success now and then, and Democrats and Republican were NOT the original two Parties, and those Parties have flipped ideologically, in Lincoln’s day Republicans were the liberal Party. The two Party system is an emergent property of our Constitutional design, it’s not explicitly designed or dictated. No mater how many candidates or Parties participate in our elections, we end up with two dominate Parties. When third Parties and their candidates do emerge they’re a temporary influence, or they get absorbed into one of the major Parties.
As for independent voters it’s important to note that “independent” does not mean third Party. Since the vast majority of independent voters actually vote for major Party candidates their independence cannot challenge the two party system, it’s just another feature of the dominate system. I’m an independent voter who’s voted for everything from Green Party to Socialists and Lenora Fulani for president, we can’t move away from two Parties by simply voting for some other Party. As for those who “register” as independent, as someone has already pointed out, up until recently most of them were Republican voters who didn’t want to admit they were Republicans for some reason so it was a distinction without a difference.
Third Party voting in the current environment might actually be dangerous since Fascists have actually managed to get into the White House with thin margins. Since the majority of independent voters will vote for one of the major Party candidates, all third Party can do is siphon off votes. When the candidates were Clinton and Dole were the candidates in the 90’s one could actually argue that siphoning off votes made sense… but when Fascists get on the ballot the stakes are much much higher.
Well, to repeat myself once again, independent voters are not a political party. In 1796 George Washington advised Americans not to start or support political parties. The full context of his remarks can be found in his Farewell Address. So if Washington was advising Americans who did not belong to political parties (because in 1796 there were no organized political parties in the United States), what would you call the voters to whom Washington was addressing his remarks. I would call them independent voters because they were American citizens who were registered to vote. That is what independent voters are today, American citizens registered to vote. Political party members of today, Democrats and Republicans, agree on exactly one thing: That under no circumstances will people who do not register as members of political parties be allowed to participate in government.
But if we believe what George Washington said, political parties are incapable of providing good government in nations that have elections. So we have reached a situation where we can see that the 49% of voters in the United States are registered in a way that can correct the problems that political parties have caused. Of course, Democrats and Republicans will be opposed to this happening, but by now, they might already be a minority of American voters, so we independent voters should just go ahead with what will correct these problems Democrats and Republicans have caused. What I encourage Americans to do at this point is to register as independent voters. There is nothing illegal or treasonous about encouraging Americans to register as independent voters. If Democrats and Republicans cannot persuade them to join their evil self-created societies, why shouldn’t they become independent voters?
Having read this opinion piece and then through this entertaining comment section, I get the feeling that the author is attempting to lay groundwork for supporting Kyrsten Sinema. It isn’t stated explicitly, but between the fairly pointless philosophical argument being made, the specific frustration with running as an independent in AZ, and the fact they the author admitted to voting for Kanye West simply because he ran as an independent, the implication seems fairly obvious.
My personal belief is that there is not an inherent problem with a two-party system, and it can actually work pretty well, but other, bigger problems are to blame for the state of American politics. Focusing on the issues of our two-party system often comes off as a distraction from the bigger issues with our system.
I am not a particular fan of the Arizona Senator. I would much prefer to run against her as an independent candidate, which I may do if I can generate any support for such a candidacy. What party politicians do not seem to realize is that any number of candidates could run for Arizona Senator as independent candidates. The difficulty they would face is obtaining 43,000 nomination petition signatures. 43,000 signatures is a formidable obstacle, which, by the way, Kirsten Sinema would have to overcome to appear on the ballot. I don’t think Kirsten is going to do it, but I could be wrong. If Kirsten appeared on the ballot as an independent candidate, I would certainly seriously consider voting for her if the
Democratic and Republican candidates were of the usual variety.
The final thing to remember on this topic is that political parties are just vehicles, to be “driven” by whoever happens to control them. The mere fact that parties exist hardly drives their actions.
For example, both the Democratic and the Republican parties existed at the time of the Civil War, Lincoln was the first Repub president. But Abraham Lincoln himself would have absolutely nothing to do with today’s nihilist and anti-government Repub party, which is now funded largely by plutocrats and is wholly controlled by today’s “conservative” movement, which took over the party sometime in the 1980s. Today’s Repub party looks, acts and sounds much more like the Democratic party of the 1850s. Similarly, today’s Democratic party bears no resemblance to the demographics and ideologies which controlled it in the Antebellum Era, for example. IT is now the “civil rights” party.
So the factions that have controlled our two major parties have radically changed in the past century; as has the policies those parties advocate. The parties are merely vehicles for advancing certain policies and arguments of the day; the existence of them (in and of itself) does not drive national polic(ies) as Mr. Winn seems to think. People drive parties, not the other way around. You don’t like a party’s positions? Get involved in it. That’s what today’s conservatives did!
Parties are not merely vehicles to advance certain political beliefs. The thing that made American political parties different from what they had been were political party primary elections, which were instituted around the turn of the previous century. My belief is that promoting political parties as national parties whose party primary elections were to be paid for by independent voters made them what certain European parties also became, the Fascists in Italy, the Nazis in Germany, and the Communists in the Soviet Union, state supported parties that were financed from public revenues. This enabled Democrats and Republicans to do what these particularly objectionable political parties did in Europe, to claim that participation in government was limited to party members. So since about 1970 we have seen these huge nomination petition signature requirements for independent candidates passed by state legislatures seeking to eliminate independent candidates from participation in elections.
So your beef devolves into carping about party primaries, which began in the early 1900s? And which allow voters to choose candidates? The existence of the primary system is now what drove world history, not the policies themselves? Well, at least you’re altered your position about the causes of all American and world history in the 19th Century!
Anyway, unlike the Fascist, Nazi and Communist parties, our two major parties did not advocate for anti-democratic, totalitarian policies. Well, at least not until today’s Repub party concluded after the Stolen Election of 2000 that it cannot win under actual democratic procedures…
I do not think it is carping to say that organizations which portray themselves as private clubs which can determine who can be members of their self-created societies should not be supported by public revenues. I have no objection to such organizations existing, but they should be paying for their own private club elections. Once they were not, they were able to say that Democrats and Republicans are the government of the United States. European organizers of political faction were quick to notice what had happened in the United States. Mussolini accomplished a similar nationalization of a political party in Italy by saying that the goal was a return to the glory of the Roman empire, which similarity to Trump’s organization of faction caused Democrats to take up the cry that Trump was a fascist. There is a great similarity, not just because of the national pride issue, but also because Mussolini started out as a socialist journalist, while Trump started out as a Democrat.
In any event, events in Europe are a lesson of what can happen when political parties become nationalized and supported by public revenues.
All I am advocating is a return to independent voters the rights they were once thought of as possessing, the right to vote in elections they pay for and the right to be candidates for public office. As you are continuing to say, as a party member you regard the participation of independent voters in government as the most dangerous threat to “democracy” that exists, even greater than Trump’s fascism.
I’m saying nothing of the sort, and I want all Americans to vote, especially “independents”. You want to throw away your vote on independent third party candidates at every turn because of some theory that you have been “disenfranchised” by the major parties, that’s entirely up to you. Wasting your vote is certainly not the fault of the two major political parties, which are currently providing quite massive “choices” for Americans, including fascism (as you note).
Have a great day.
So why would it upset you so much if an independent voter “throws his vote away” by voting for an independent candidate?
I think I can understand why. Democratic Party members see independent candidates as a greater threat to their position than “fascists” like Donald Trump. What would it mean if you called Kanye West a “fascist”? The best you can do with him is to call him an “anti-Semite” and insane. Kanye West does not lead a political party, although votes for him were thrown out in Arizona because he was registered as a Republican in some other state.
That you are committed to throwing your vote away in election after election doesn’t bother me in the slightest, especially when you have revealed your (actual) far right policy preferences.
Right and left, liberal and conservative, are European political concepts that political parties attempt to impose on Americans through political party oppression. The problem you party members have is that according to the latest statistics, 49% of American voters are now registered independent. When John F. Kennedy was President, it was a single digit percentage. You say you are upset because Americans are registering to vote the correct way. What will be next, independent voters running for political offices?
Maybe your two major parties could try to stop that by making it impossible for independent candidates to appear on the ballot as candidates. Political parties try to do a lot of things. One thing they do not seem to try to do is to provide good government.
Correction: Fiscally responsible, I no longer believe there is such a political value on the “R” side of the equation as fiscal conservative, they are fiscally conservative (to the less fortunate) and when convenient extremely liberal to the wealthy, (fiscally irresponsible) when they can.