Always There Are Two
There are some Brits in the CIA - NAFO’s Canine Intelligence Agency, and during the fall after the war started they were pursuing anti-Ukraine influence op globally. They were VERY concerned that a couple Socialist party members had won seats in Seattle, because of who their online associates were. This set off a round of discussions about the bipolar nature of American politics and the fact that third parties here are all but irrelevant.
Given current conditions in the U.S. and the number of readers I now have from outside the country, I think it’s a good time to revisit how we do things, as it’s terribly confusing for those used to a parliamentary system.
Attention Conservation Notice:
Did you pay attention in that 10th grade U.S. government class? If you’re sure you’re checked out, this is just a skim so you can point others to it as needed.
Explicit Separation Of Powers:
The United States government has three co-equal branches:
Legislative - creates laws, occasionally prosecutes political problems.
Executive - directs almost all government activity.
Judicial - interprets law, de facto legislating via “case law”.
This structure has been under assault by right wing religious forces funded by oligarchs for the last fifty years. During the Trump presidency three of the nine Supreme Court justices died or retired, leading to a 6:3 majority of individuals who are attempting to replace our democracy with Catholic Integralism.
Implicit Separation of Powers:
The formal structure of our government was laid down in the Constitution and its first modification, the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. There are implicit race based balance of power structures created before and after our first civil war in the 1860s. There were free states in the north, slave states in the south, and the west was shaping up to be entirely free states, which was part of the reason for our conflict.
This has been a fundamental feature of our government and our political parties ever since. There was a great deal of conflict here our Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968. Prior to this period the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, and Democratic party had been the bastion of white supremacy. When the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, Republican Richard Nixon adopted a “southern strategy”, and the Democrats and Republicans changed duties in terms of who was responsible for the white supremacists.
Bipolarity:
Part of the reason the United States has done so well is that we never engage in the “forming a government” ritual that parliamentary systems do. We have a chance to replace House members bi-annually, presidents every four years, and one third of all Senators in each two year election cycle. There are no votes of no confidence, no snap elections, it happens every two years. Your party is either in power, or loyal opposition scheming to return to power. The years without presidential elections typically features the president’s party taking a beating, so we meander back and forth.
There are two other demographics that are represented outside the bounds of the two party system - horses and independents. When you see some process in the U.S. that takes weeks to do what your country does overnight, like the three weeks between the new Congress on the first business day of January and the presidential inauguration, Google the distance a horse can travel in a day (25 to 35 miles), stick a pin in the map for Washington D.C. and figure out how long it takes to get to Boston.
The largest party in the U.S. … isn’t actually a party. Democrats and Republicans have been roughly equal in their share but those who count themselves Independent have steadily grown in numbers.
But those independents sort themselves into Democratic and Republican buckets, they just don’t declare a party when they register to vote. When I registered in Nebraska in 2002 I was offered a choice of Democratic or Republican. I scratched them both out, wrote PISSED!!!! and some weeks later I got my registration by mail … showing my party preference as Independent.
Imbalance:
Since we depend on having one ruling party and one loyal opposition, when that is not available things get ugly fast. During the 1850s the Whig party died and we had a civil war. During the Civil Rights Movement the parties changed roles in terms of race and civil war seemed like a possibility. We are now fifteen years into our third round of self-flagellation over race.
When Barack Obama won in 2008, American oligarchs ginned up an opposition movement that was initially called the Tea Party. This morphed into the Freedom (say: Free Dumb) Caucus, and then escalated to the MAGA movement. The general characteristics of this populist movement mirrors the Know Nothings, which were an actual nativist party for the sixteen years prior to our first civil war.
So here we are, sixteen years after Obama was elected, we’ve got the same Know Nothings rebooted as MAGA, and I’m pretty sure We’re Gonna Fight.
Parliamentary Parallels:
While we only have these two parties, and then the independents, who also sort themselves along party lines, the U.S. House actually had something vaguely parliamentary in the way it works. Starting on the left there were Progressives, Democratic Leadership Council aka New Dems, Blue Dogs aka Reagan Democrats, the Republicans, and the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus.
The MAGA movement hunts the “governing Republicans” during primary season and intimidates them when Congress is in session. The specter of potential violence from “the base” colors everything they do. MAGA is Christian Nationalist at its core, and they hold eliminationist ideologies - anyone who opposes them opposes god - so dualism and demonization is the norm.
The Democrats have a similar hunting season on those in office who are seen as out of step with their district, but once primaries are over there’s a bit of grousing, then people settle down and start working for the general election. Displaying even a fraction of the aggression that the Republicans do is a major faux pas - the female friendly Democrats do not lack for den mothers, and you WILL be put in timeout if you act up.
Demographic Winter:
The last time the Republicans won a clean presidential election was back in 1988. Their focus on abortion has been because it was a good wedge issue for the religious, but the deeper truth is that they’re terrified of the 1.6 female fertility rating here in the U.S. The only reason we’re that high is that socially conservative Catholic Hispanics tend to have two or three kids, instead of the Caucasian norm of one or two. I think white fertility is in line with the other industrialized democracies - 1.3 to 1.4.
The GOP has managed to cling to power through chicanery, but now with an adjudicated rapist who’s also a convicted felon as their standard bearer, combined with the ice cold fury American women feel after the end of the Roe v. Wade abortion protections, either they’re done, or we’re getting a theocracy.
Conclusion:
The U.S. will need to sort itself into two roughly equal constituencies to regain stability. The religious right are either going to be illicitly in charge, or permanently marginalized. There isn’t really a Mother Nature demographic yet, but we’re about to see the property market in Florida implode due to the inability to insure against hurricane risk. They can mumble about climate change being a Chinese hoax when it’s just scientists. When the municipalities are begging the state for assistance because their property tax revenues have plunged there isn’t much value in lying on TV, as DeSantis is inclined to do.
The overall fertility decline is driving another positive change - when there aren’t enough people, labor wields power. We’re already seeing signs of a renaissance there. The anti-immigrant foolishness popular with MAGA will be the economic death of them - if you’re not having babies, and you can’t attract new folks to move in, buy a house, and raise some kids, that’s as big a hit as Florida’s endless train of hurricanes.
I wasn’t kidding when I said We’re Gonna Fight. I’m pretty sure historians will mark the start of our second civil war as January 6th, 2021. Unlike our unicorn of a first civil war, there will be no defined nation states or uniformed armies. We’ve got multiple aggrieved ethnic and sectarian groups, facing a weakened and discredited central power. We’ll end up with religious para-states in places like Texas and the Southeast. The thinly populated mountain west will have Caucasian areas that act like the Native American reservations do now - outsiders get out by sundown.
Assuming Harris rides this wave right into the Oval Office, it’s gonna get ugly, but not as ugly as religious fanatics sitting at the controls would have been.