A Perfect Storm?

I have forever lamented the fact that we have a two-party system in this country. It’s unfortunate not only because of the obvious problem of a lack of choices, but also because it diminishes the quality of the candidates as they are forced to try and cover an impossible amount of ideology to maintain their base. Run as a centrist Republican and the religious right will alienate you; run as a left-wing Democrat and the libertarians and independents will abandon you. I have always thought that if we injected a viable third-party into the mix that it would force candidates to carve out distinct positions rather than simply allowing themselves to be categorized as “left” or “right”. However, the more I’ve thought about it recently the more I’m realizing that there will never be a viable third-party (at least for the foreseeable future in this country). The reason is that whatever ideological side of the center a new party comes up on will just split the votes for that side’s existing party and give victory to the other side (e.g. Nader taking votes from the Democrats and Gore in 2000 and Perot taking votes from Republicans and Bush in 92 and Dole in 96). Hence, if we are ever to expand our current field of parties it is likely that we would need the introduction of 2 new parties (one leftist and one rightist) at once to even things out.

At this point though, the logistics of doing so appear extremely daunting. In general, the commitment of the American people to politics is tenuous at best. Even now, when political involvement is at the peak that it’s been in my lifetime, we’re still not even getting half the voting population out to vote in the primaries. Hence, the prospect of actually being able to get enough will and ambition together to start two new parties while still maintaining our current two seems very unlikely. In fact, it would take a set of circumstances so unlikely that for all statistical purposes it has rightfully been discounted as impossible. However, I believe that the conditions for such a perfect storm actually exist now for this to happen.

Before I get into the details, I want to make it abundantly clear that I do not see this as anything more than a remote possibility. However, it is more likely to happen now than at any other point in my life, and I can’t imagine a confluence of forces such as this ever occurring again.

As it stands today, we have a Republican race that has been unhappily decided and a Democratic race that is happily undecided. What I mean is that there are a lot of Republicans who are still trying to figure out just how the hell John McCain came back from the brink of bankruptcy and complete campaign chaos to “steal” the nomination. They are not excited about him, and the recent “protest” votes for Huckabee (even though the end result is all but certain) are a good indicator of that. This is really not surprising, given the wide gulf in beliefs between traditional conservatives and the religious right. In fact, it’s a minor miracle that these two groups have managed to co-exist in the same party for this long. You would not think that a group who has always believed that government should have an extremely limited role in the lives of citizens would be partnered with a group who wants to model the Constitution after the bible. On the other hand, there is more enthusiasm on the Democratic side than there has been since probably 1960 even though to this point we have a statistical dead heat between the candidates. It would seem that no matter what, the Democrats will be heading into the general election with a full head of steam towards the White House.

That is probably the most likely scenario and may very well be what ends up happening. However, let me propose a not entirely far-fetched scenario for you. Imagine that going into the convention Obama has won the popular vote and holds more pledged delegates but not enough for the nomination. Then, in a series of back-room deals that no one really understands you end up with Clinton as the nominee. Suddenly there’s a whole group of Obama supporters who thought their candidate won the nomination but now they’re seeing him shut out. They’re pissed off and probably aren’t going to be too excited about the prospect of getting behind Hillary. On the other side, as already mentioned McCain has some problems with his base. Let’s assume that the party as a whole is still very lackluster about him. The religious right and hardcore conservatives are desperate to get excited about someone else, if only there was another choice. They say that politics make for strange bedfellows, so how about this possibility? Someone representing the religious right (like Huckabee) calls up Obama and says “I’m not happy with my party right now and I know you’re not happy. I’m thinking of running as an independent but if I do that I might as well give the presidency to Clinton. But what if we both run as independents? That way voters in both parties will have two viable candidates to choose from.”

Again, I want to stress how remote a possibility I consider this, but it is very intriguing all the same especially given some of the results we’ve seen in the primaries. For instance look at Virginia, which has been a red state in every presidential election since 1964. Yesterday McCain carried it over Huckabee 50-41, but Obama carried it over Clinton 64-35. That means that if that split holds, even if 55% vote for some combination of McCain/Huckabee, and only 45% vote for Obama/Clinton, Obama would carry the state. That means that a lot of the traditional “this state is definitely red; this state is definitely blue” would be called into question and would require a completely different campaign strategy. And it would be a relief to for once see at least some candidates fighting to position themselves in the center to please the independents and moderates instead of fighting to go more left or more right to please the fringes. Perhaps more importantly, it might finally force a general election to be about “these are the good things I stand for and vote for me because of them” instead of “this is the bad thing my opponent stands for and vote for me because I’m not him.” Of course, even in my proposed scenario I'm still making the enormous leap in logic that the candidates running as independents would have an earnest desire to start and maintain a separate party instead of just running as a one-off like Perot or Nader (ok, I guess they are both technically two-offs).

Of course, all this will be completely moot if Obama just keeps on winning, and as much as I’d like to see an expansion of the two-party system, I think I’d like to see that more.