Two Minority Parties (Brands)
“Injustice is a bad manager, it does not even accomplish its own ends.”
— Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, 1734.
US' politics putrefies in an era of two minority political parties, more accurate to contemporarily label them political brands. Today, in regards to control of Washington, both parties have difficulty gaining majorities. With the presidency, the unfortunate touchstone of today’s established politics, the last eight elections saw half elected with less than 50% of the vote, two others decided by the barest majorities, and the remaining two managed only a couple points above 50%.
For much of the 20th century, starting in the 1930s, the Democratic party was the majority party. Looking at the House, from 1932 to 1994, they controlled all but one House majority. From 1932-1940, Democrats held majorities of 70% and over!
For the next five decades, outside of 1946, the one term they lost the majority, Democrats continually held majorities in the mid to high-fifties, several times reaching above 60% — in 1958, then after the Kennedy assassination in 1964, and in the two elections immediately following Watergate.
Since losing the House majority in 1994, any new Democratic majority failed to crack 55%, except in 2008 hitting 58%, which in an act of sheer political brilliance, they immediately lost with the next election. Over the same 30 years, anytime Republicans controlled the House, including what now appears this newest bare majority, they never reached 55%.
Most interesting, in the last three elections – 2018, 2020, and now 2022 – after five decades of decline, there's been a historically massive increase in voter participation, reaching turnout levels not seen in over a century. Yet, neither party benefited, a most ahistorical and intriguing fact.
After this most recent election, there’s already endless talk about why this and why that, with an infinite number of knuckleheads taking credit for this and that, but it's meaningless. Real political perspective requires stepping back and acknowledging a broken politics. Ironically enough, everything is broken but the voting and counting processes, which probably are about as good as they’ve ever been.
In 1908, on a trip to New York and Boston, the great Italian historian of Ancient Roman republicanism, Guglielmo Ferrero, shrewdly commented on the American politics he encountered writing,
“In recent years, the citizens of the United States have waged a bitter campaign against the trusts, the great banks, the railroads, and insurance companies; in fact, against all the vast powers of money. In newspaper articles, in public speeches, and in whole volumes filled with accusations, these trusts have been charged with being centers of corruption, instruments of a new despotism not less odious than the political despotism of old. They are decried as scandalous conspiracies to despoil honest men of the legitimate fruits of their labor. The campaign has penetrated to the heart of the nation; but in the face of the enormous indignation of the masses, there has been exhibited both in America and Europe the Olympian calm of economists and men of great affairs, who have denounced this movement of protest as a return to Medieval ideas, and who in the face of a vast outcry have paid enthusiastic homage to modern finance, its enormous enterprises, and its tremendous organization.”
Thus the present era was born and still rules, a triumvirate of corporations, finance, and militarism, sanctified by a secular priesthood of economists and men, a few women, it’s how we define progress, of great affairs. Unlike the “tremendous organization” of corporations, today, political organization exists not at all. In regards to anything that could be conceived of as democracy, there is no place where citizens come together to educate, communicate, discuss with each other, and act on the challenges they collectively confront on a daily basis.
Instead, poll manufactured slogans spew from comically flawed personalities, supposedly representing some side or other. With billions of dollars provided by corporate sponsors, campaign businesses, which didn't exist fifty-years ago, create mindless, mostly negative ads – rinse and repeat. The processes of business dominate politics. It's not surprising they've created two brands no one really likes.
With his astute observations on the birth of this era, Ferrero provided an insightful thought, a foundational principle, for what it would take to move beyond it. He wrote,
“It would be absolutely essential to create a movement of public opinion through religious, political, or moral means, which should impose upon the world a reasonable limit to its desires. To the age in which we live, it seems impossible to express an idea seemingly more absurd than this.”
An idea even more absurd today.
So, onto the business of the next election, as for me, in the immortal words of Michael Vick, “I got no dog in this fight.”