Tales Of Our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
Los Alamos
In their own writings, our Nation’s founders expressed their fierce distrust of political parties and the extreme power they need to acquire from the people. Critical discourse comes from our Nation’s first forward-thinking president in George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796). TV reports his warnings, President Washington’s farewell words ring true. Thomas Jefferson’s trenchant insight told us: “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”
Fast forward to now. We voters need more efficient pollution controls; we voters also need more industry. We voters need more inventors; we also need more skilled and semi-skilled workers. We need improved infrastructures, such as voting systems that stay ahead of the nastiest scams being planned by the world’s professional hackers.
News-opinion has changed. Nowadays, Americans rely on daily news with a filter that favors one political camp and disfavors the other. Political filters are expected, or at least suspected, in news today, whether the news is about politics or a train wreck or pandemic.
A plurality of op-eds provide other versions of where the two parties differ in their policies, numbers of errors, exaggerations, abuses, and deceits. Trendy op-eds stay focused on which party is harming democracy by its guile in accruing power from the people.
In contrast, the deeds in which the two parties act alike to ignite troubles for our democracy are hid by the major parties and the media aligned with either one.
Remember the Founders. They knew this old story and thoroughly warned us: the nature of the party system requires wresting power from the people, so that parties can survive and thrive. This column does not defend a party. Others do that aplenty. The goal here is to zoom in and see where both parties use the same tactics to wrest power from the people.
Each party informs big media—who report to chosen crowds—that the other party is the enemy that kills free and fair voting. Meanwhile, each party exerts maximum pressure on its members in Congress to vote purely the party line per party bosses. Any party’s designs that override a state’s viewpoint is an evident scar on democracy. These mutual efforts abandon the cherished hallmarks of “free and fair” voting.
Party mailings urge us to “flip” the slim majorities that afford monopolistic powers in the house and in the senate. Both parties claim they need more complete power so they can “give the people” the fixed plate of policies that nearly “all of us” want. The Founders and I would say that’s some weird sort of democracy!
See the data that now plague each party. Democrats (all forms) are only 28 percent of all registered voters. Republicans are the same—just 28 percent of registered voters. Both percentages have been declining. The vast plurality of 44 percent of registered adults are neither “blue” nor “red”. The 44 percent want something else, which both parties routinely blur. The party system counts “left-leaning” Independents as Democrats and “right-leaning” Independents as Republicans. Both parties ignore the rationale that “left-leaning” and “right-leaning” mean “preferring something better than a pure party line”.
Parties have their place, which has expanded woefully. Pray that national parties would copy local parties. Locals recruit good candidates, with no need for monopoly powers nor six-figure party dues paid by newcomers in Congress. Essential details are such as these,
Parties Reap Dark Money from their Own Members in Congress.
By itself, the coming election will not slow the festering that is national politicking. We likely will see the portions in each party shrink further and the plurality grow larger. The constant focus on which party, which voters, and which filters threaten democracy make our democracy less and less healthy. A healthy democracy would spotlight where the creeping steps made by both parties alike have snitched power from the people. Heed the Founders.
Trouble brews for the parties per se. Each party puts a lid on substantive discourse. And each party’s voter share shrinks.
