Commentary
The one-party state: A modest proposal
By Michael J. Smith
Online Journal Contributing Writer



Dec 31, 2005, 00:59

It's not just Lefties like me who are unhappy with the party they're supposed to be part of. I have friends and kinfolk who regularly vote Republican, and they're just as contemptuous of the Republicans as I am of the Democrats.

Some of them are really religious people, and they recognize that the Republican Party, as an institution, is a lot more Mammonite than Christian. Some others are really irreligious, much given to Internet porn and beer, and they resent the smarmy Parson Thwackum self-righteousness with which the party in recent years has spackled itself. Others are real libertarians, people who truly want to be left alone and want a government small enough to drown in the bathtub; and they see the Republican Party pushing the USAPATRIOT Act.

But these folks, when they bother to vote, still mostly vote for the Republicans, and they give pretty much the same reason as my friends who vote for Democrats do: they're going for what they see as the lesser evil. Since I personally have never been able to figure out which party is in fact the lesser evil, who am I to tell them they're wrong? I won't try to convince my churchgoing cousins, or my Bud-swilling ones, or the Grizzly Adams rugged individualist I used to work with, that John Kerry or Al Gore or Hillary Clinton would really be in any sense better for them than the Republicans would be -- because I don't believe they would.

The ferocious mutual vituperation of the parties, in fact, conceals a strong fraternal resemblance between them. This is not news, nor is the reason far to seek: regardless of the convictions or policy preferences of individual Republican or Democratic officeholders, both are far more beholden, at the end of the day, to their wealthy donors than to the people who voted for them. The actual agenda of Republican governance and Democratic governance alike is the maintenance and expansion of corporate wealth and power. The main structural function of the parties is to serve as containment vessels, or padded cells, for the political energies of their most committed, energetic, and motivated constituents: poor schnookered souls like the Kosniks and Moveonskis on the Democratic side, and fetus fanciers and rapturists and lock-n-load he-men on the Republican side.

Since the Progressive movement brought in direct party primaries in the early years of the 20th century, the parties have become institutionalized appendages of government -- not really parties at all, in any sense that would be recognized elsewhere in the world. As historian George Mayer observed, "parties lost their private, voluntary character and became public institutions." Sociologist G. William Domhoff is more blunt: "the 'party' is no longer really a party in the usual sense of the term, but a government controlled pathway into government. . . . a structural shell."

In effect, the primary-plus-general-election system is a runoff system. In the American context, this means that any candidate who wants to depart from business as usual has to beat the money power in two successive elections, not just one. Privilege has a defense in depth, and the strategic advantage lies with it.

Third parties, on the other hand, face well-known obstacles. Ballot access laws are stacked against them, and many voters are afraid to vote for a third-party candidate lest they aid the election of the supposedly greater evil.

Well, we've all known about this quandary for a long time. But I've finally figured out what to do about it.

The solution is brilliantly simple: a one-party state. Let one of the parties atrophy. Ensure that the general election is a mere formality and that all the real action happens in the primary. Get the Bible-thumpers and the flag-burners into the same process and let them duke it out in four- and five-cornered, winner-take-all primaries, with no further hurdle to jump at the general election. Would that be fun, or what?

The difficult question, of course, is, which party withers away? Somebody needs to be generous and self-sacrificing for the greater good here, and so I, as a Lefty, would like to volunteer "my" party, the Democrats, for euthanasia.

They're already halfway there -- in fact, you could say they've been halfway there since the Civil War. In the intervening 140 years, the Democrats have elected eight men to the White House, to the Republicans' 17. To be sure, Democrats have often constituted a majority in one or both houses of Congress, but have seldom used that advantage to oppose in any serious way the initiatives of Republican administrations -- except occasionally in defense of white supremacy.

In the last century, Democrats have only governed the nation after acts of Republican self-destruction; such were the Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt administrations, such the Kennedy-Johnson years, the Carter administration, and the brief period of Democratic hegemony during Clinton's first two years in office. The Democratic Party has evolved into a specialist in second-bananaism, a scavenger to the Republicans' top carnivore. So really, it's long past time to call in the vet and have the dear old donkey put down.

The beauty of this strategy, for us Lefties, is that we don't have to win any elections, or pass any laws, to accomplish it. We can just walk away, and the Democratic house of cards will collapse. For example, if you're anti-war, and your Democratic candidate is oh, say, Hillary Clinton or, horrors, Joe Lieberman, then vote for a third party candidate in the general election, or write somebody in. Kick your local rascal out. You have very little to lose, if your Democrat is going to vote with the Republicans anyway on the issues that matter to you. But the Democratic Party has a lot to lose if we refuse to enable their misbehavior any more. They never do anything for us, but they depend on our votes, and they wouldn't be able to elect a dogcatcher without us.

If we start taking this approach in any numbers, then the Democratic Party as we know and loathe it will soon be like the memory of a disagreeable dream, fading in the light of day. And what happens then?

Well, of course, those of us who are antiwar, or anti-NAFTA and CAFTA, or anti-police state, will have to start running candidates in Republican primaries. This is not as improbable as it may sound; indeed, my guess is we'll find the electorate a lot more approachable without the malodorous albatross of the Democratic Party hung around our necks. And just think of the look on all those Rotarian faces when we newly-minted Bolshepublicans start stirring up the mutinous impulses of their hitherto captive base. I envision black-hearted, hardened Stalinists getting the Pauline epistles at their fingers' ends, and going forth to sow the seeds of insurrection in every tabernacle in the land. Trotskyists will learn to shoot and stoke the fires of class fury in gun clubs and pistol ranges. Liberals will -- well, liberals will probably keep doing pretty much what they're doing now.

Since the parties have no real ideological core -- no "politics," in any substantial meaning of the term -- it's quite easy for them, when the time is ripe, to assimilate the formerly indigestible. Several such transformations have taken place over the years. Populism and Progressivism were always Republican movements -- until the Democrats expropriated them in the Bryan years. Segregation and lynching were always the palladia of the Democrats -- until the Republicans took over the race franchise in 1968. The Republican Party used to have a strong isolationist component -- and look at them now. Similarly, the Democrats were always the war party, and now, though they're not exactly a peace party, they're at least a sort of "war-but" party. The Democratic Party was once the vehicle par excellence for the influence of the Israel lobby -- and now the Republicans seem at least equally mesmerized by the incantations of the Likudnik kapelle.

They were colorful in their heyday, the Democrats, and I'll shed a sentimental tear when they've gone the way of the dodo. But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Up the one-party state!