US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

(god, my grammmar's awful today)

lol "I would think someone like Greenwald would be perceptive enough to agree with me"

not exactly...? there are serious, huge, massive institutional barriers propping the two parties up. they are pretty obvious (winner take-all electoral college setup, existing party apparatuses, majority rule in both houses of congress, etc.) and a significant portion of them are WRITTEN INTO THE CONSTITUTION. This is not an ideological position I'm espousing, these are facts.

which is separate from Greenwald seeing hope in tactics that have been pursued and routinely failed over the last, oh, 150 years.

I say this as someone who does not regret voting twice for Nader, btw.

so when is hope confused with "This is what will happen"?

whatever the parties are, and whatever they advocate in contrast to each other (or not!! importantly!!) there are always going to be two of them.

a turn towards libertarianism or, lord help us, personal wealth, isn't going to crack the thing open.

the problems he describes day in and day out are sort of pre-political, whatever can be cobbled together by sourced quotes from the nyt or statements from the hill are only the aftereffects of it. i don't think the solutions he is gravitating towards match the scale of the problem.

Shakey, if you have any interest in serving as my secretary of defense, I need more moxie from you.

the biggest reason we have a two party system is not institutional, it's numerical (Duverger's law)

I think the movement of world history suggests that every structure thought permanent (owing to torts or contracts or founding documents or whatever) turned out in the long view to be extremely malleable

by all means, go ahead and love Russ Feingold (and I do!) and support him in whatever he does, but pretending like his or Ross Perot's or Bloomberg's or Trump's or Anderson's or Millard Filmore's or James Weaver's or Teddy Roosevelt's third party candidacies ever had or will have even the remotest prayer of undoing the essential two-party split of our system - that's just straight-up delusional

xp

like, first things first: amend the constitution

Joking aside, I don't care about GG's political remedies so much as his influence: I often use him as an example to students on how one can hold fast to political convictions, write well and rapidly, and still espouse the best kind of contrarianism. If he's getting his readers to parse a pol's statements, even if he or she's one of your own, then I don't mind his occasional rhetorical excesses.

convince large swathes of the country to just give up their power + privelege voluntarily. This happens all the time in history, right aerosmith?

xp

Shakey, Teddy Roosevelt's third party move DID have an incalculable influence on the acceptance of progressivism (although having been president once already helped).

wanna make a pledge to my politics thread bros: I am not about to go into what I perceive as the merits of third-party candidacies again

not here, not next year, everybody knows my position & it doesn't really need repeated

I just do like to point out to (say) Shakey that his position really is the basest sort of orthodoxy & as great an enemy of progressive thought as any perceived threat from the left

http://dev.out.com/images/204/GlennGreenwald2.jpg

*head explodes*

leftright

Greenwald's about the last political writer I'd accuse of believing in utopias.

Shakey, Teddy Roosevelt's third party move DID have an incalculable influence on the acceptance of progressivism (although having been president once already helped).

this is true, but Greenwald wasn't referring to just shifting the debate (which is indeed possible, as Eisbaer noted re: Perot) he was referring to to “disrupt[ing] the two-party stranglehold". I guess he could mean their stranglehold on setting the terms of debate, but it strikes me more as a reference to political monopoly.

I just do like to point out to (say) Shakey that his position really is the basest sort of orthodoxy & as great an enemy of progressive thought as any perceived threat from the left

http://addictionjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/SerenityPrayer2.gif

Yay! Things had been SO dull around here lately.

yeah honestly i think the only 'way forward' for a guy like GG is just to keep being GG.

really seems like retreating into the full pessimism of a morbz, or just (dis)contentedly plugging away day in and day out on your uphill struggles, like, i dunno, radly balko, just is not a possibility for him. it's not that he's so irascible and dogged that surprises me, it's that he's always got this wounded hope. after obama, sure. "ok, HE crapped out on this stuff... maybe... GARY JOHNSON will do it..."

I would think someone like the abolitionists would be perceptive enough to see the institutional impediments to breaking slavery but eh, maybe not

When was the last time the US had more than 2 viable, powerful political parties? Isn't the big problem that whenever another party rises enough in prominence to become considered a mainstream party, it accompanies the death of a previous party, thereby holding up the 2-party status quo?

(serious question, this is where I am weak in US history)

I just do like to point out to (say) Shakey that his position really is the basest sort of orthodoxy & as great an enemy of progressive thought as any perceived threat from the leftright

yeah Shakes has been real good at that lately

djp: it's been some time but see comment upthread about Teddy Roosevelt. Also, various Civil War-era parties, I'm thinking...?

I would think someone like the abolitionists would be perceptive enough to see the institutional impediments to breaking slavery but eh, maybe not

war fought, constitution amended fyi

greenwald has morbz's political instincts and gabbneb's fashion sense ... ermmmmmm

Admit it: you want it to reverse these.

― My mom is all about capital gains tax butthurtedness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

My sartorial idol is Caddyshack-era Bill Murray.

xxp like I'm thinking there was a pro-Abolition, anti-slavery party, and a pro-slavery, pro-secession party? <--may have been called the Know-Nothings...

didn't the Quakers have a third party at one time?

i had huge huge hopes that there would be a big blast of sunshine on the surveillance & torture state under obama, and it hasn't happened. hindsight and all, but i also knew this was a third-tier concern for a lot of people at an absolute best. the legal procedures for people picked up and tortured in our foreign wars is about the last thing anybody cares about, and the president fairly quickly went with the american people on that one.

xps

When was the last time the US had more than 2 viable, powerful political parties? Isn't the big problem that whenever another party rises enough in prominence to become considered a mainstream party, it accompanies the death of a previous party, thereby holding up the 2-party status quo?

(serious question, this is where I am weak in US history)

― fat fat fat fat Usher (DJP), Tuesday, April 19, 2011 3:00 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

the last thing that was close was george wallace and the dixiecrats in the 60s

When was the last time the US had more than 2 viable, powerful political parties?

never. the two-party split is the inevitable result of several stipulations in the Constitution. as time has gone on, power has predictably concentrated and party-line orthodoxy has calcified.

I would think someone like Gorbachev would be perceptive enough to see the institutional impediments to perestroika but eh, maybe not

― Shakey Mo medvedev, Tuesday, May 29, 1985

plus the Whigs, who got Presidents in office though I can't remember if that was before or after the Republican-Democrat split, so that might have been a second party...

was george wallace and the dixiecrats in the 60s

didn't have their own party btw

I would think someone like Gorbachev would be perceptive enough to see the institutional impediments to perestroika but eh, maybe not

lol worked out really well for Gorby and the Soviets, didn't it.

I mean if you want the country to just collapse and eat itself and devolve into a bunch of separate states that's all well and good and I'm not gonna even necessarily disagree that that wouldn't be preferable. Long live the Great Republic of California etc. but let's be real.

also in case it isn't clear I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF A TWO PARTY SYSTEM IN THIS COUNTRY FYI

Whigs predated the GOP.

Whigs formed to oppose Jacksonian Democrats.

The GOP of 1856 and 1860 comprised of disgruntled Northern Dems, Free Soil people, and Whigs.

yeah but wasn't around that time also like the Federalist party and the Republican-Democratic party as well...?

or was that a little bit earlier...?

Federalist Party was one of the first parties - gone by 1816.

I agree with nearly all of you that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of breaking the duopoly as long as 90% of Americans maintain their indifference to politics (the real shit, not the sport).

I think the last 2 years have convinced many of you that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of reforming the Democratic Party from within, as long as corporations are persons and there's no campaign finance reform.

Join me. Give up.

When was the last time the US had more than 2 viable, powerful political parties? Isn't the big problem that whenever another party rises enough in prominence to become considered a mainstream party, it accompanies the death of a previous party, thereby holding up the 2-party status quo?

look, the "there can only be two" people are probably right for all I know - a third party could probably really only replace one of the major two. this is why some Democrats think "working to change the party from the inside" is a great strategy. (it isn't; the rot is in the wood.) what can happen, conceivably, is for a third party to become competitive enough with one of the other parties: competitive in public appeal fundraising, etc., and then replace the party it resembles ideologically. (why do you think Republicans you thought were more moderate are offering birther sop on camera?) what would have to happen before that would be for a lot of Democrats to start supporting a party which they knew wasn't going to be viable this year, or four years from now, or even eight years from now. over the past fifty years Democrats have gotten pretty good at persuading disenfranchised lefties that it really is This Democratic Party Or Nothing. When enough people say "you know what, I'll take 'nothing,' then," and hold to that position for a few election cycles, change would then be possible. partisan Dems like to point out that a lot of people will have to be afflicted by totally toxic public policy in the interim. they are right when they say this. it will have to get worse before it gets better. but it will not get incrementally better under Democrats. the pace of "worse" will just be, occasionally, slowed.

my co-ideologue speaks the truth (whatever that is)

actually the Soviets being cited is maybe a funnier/better example than Morbz would care to admit - if things get so bad/extreme/desperate that there is a serious, national fight over the institutional changes necessary to switch from a two-party to a multi-party system, the most likely result is probably the complete dissolution of the US as a functioning body. which might not be bad. but on the other hand I don't really look forward to living through/fighting secessionist wars, I dunno about you guys

partisan Dems like to point out that a lot of people will have to be afflicted by totally toxic public policy in the interim. they are right when they say this

great sales pitch btw

might need to work on your marketing angle

we'd been going w/"a hundred years after your grandchildren are dead you'll have to concede we were partially right" but there was dissent among the ranks over that one

Join me. Give up.

I mean this really just is not catchy enough

what are you even talking about, when I see "join me. give up" I start looking for the donation box