Guest columnist Dan Ordorica, the chair of the Amherst Democratic Town Committee, writes in the Aug. 26 Gazette [“The case for partisanship“] that the declining share of voters enrolled and engaged in political parties reflects a detrimental embrace of an “individualistic conception of politics.” He argues that a more partisan American would be good for democracy.
Let me offer a different view.
It’s not individual voters who are anti-socially undermining the parties; it’s the parties themselves. They have stoked the flames of hostility, focused disproportionately on cultural molehills, and curbed the legislative compromise needed to deal with the true mountains of national problems. An increase in this version of partisanship cannot be good for democracy.
My sense is that the big political middle — a majority in most if not all electoral districts for years — has to be getting even bigger. How could it not? Republican incumbents who want to fend off a primary challenge and stay in office have to become Trump loyalists, even when that means checking their brain, conscience, and self-respect at the door. Many Democratic incumbents who likewise want to stay in office have to embrace positions that they believe are neither sensible nor realistic, or they must yield the next primary to a more progressive candidate who will scream about their ideological impurity.
This dynamic tugs both of the legacy party tents towards their edges and thus the crowd in the disaffected and unrepresented middle has to grow.
And yes, I understand that those in the big centrist middle are less politically engaged and less likely to vote than those who remain among the traditional party faithful. But there are also those in the middle who, like me, feel deeply that the national path is unsustainable, inconsistent with American values, and maybe just flat out immoral. They see the congressional dysfunction, and they’ve given up on their old legacy parties and yet have even less attraction to the alternative legacy party. These aren’t people who take an unreasonable “individualistic conception of politics.” They just want the middle path, and they see that neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will give them that choice.
They see Republicans in Congress who are beholden to a president who should have been impeached a thousand times, and who won’t even hold hearings or show the slightest horror at Trump’s lack of planning for the war in Iran, his threats to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, or his recent bullying of Canada to yield its sovereignty as the price for low tariff American trade.
They see a $40 trillion national debt, and yet they also see Republicans wanting to add $500 billion to the base military budget (plus another $200 billion for ongoing Iran operations), and Democrats wanting to make every earlier temporary subsidy permanent, add a new entitlement for child care, and at least two Democrats who fancy themselves as presidential contenders (Senators Chris Van Hollen and Cory Booker) who want to make huge federal income tax cuts for the broad middle class.
“Ask what you can do for your country?” Ha! Let’s instead just vote everybody rich! Sure it’s unsustainable, unfair to younger Americans, and undermining a basic sense of common goals and shared sacrifice. But so what? It’ll be great for our party in the midterms!
Let these tainted parties go the way of the Whigs and the Anti-Masons. My hope is that a new political movement aimed at good sense and fair, responsible, and passable, legislation will flourish. The Forward Party has a chance to be that movement, and last year I renounced my Democratic registration and became a member. I expect that the Forward Party will in the coming years have more of a known presence, and more resources to help more candidates collect signatures and get on the ballot. I’m sorry that hasn’t happened sooner.
So yeah, Dan Ordorica is right to recognize that political parties can still be a positive force for democracy. His idea of partisanship and that of Republicans, however, have become so extreme and uncompromising, that they’ve lost the ability to legislate responsibly for the broad public good. Their big tents are collapsing; a widened opportunity for a more sensible, less strident party should be no surprise.
Marc Warner lives in Northampton and is on the executive committee of the Massachusetts Forward Party.