The Self-Destruction of the Two-Party System in America
Former President Barack Obama, in an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg following the defeat of former President Donald Trump by Obama’s former Vice President and now President, Joe Biden, said, “if we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work.”
The marketplace of ideas is a proverbial forum of public discourse. An ethereal place where ideas about the future of the country and our role in the world can be debated and discussed in an open and cordial manner. The marketplace of ideas has shaped the dynamic of our two-party system since the founding of the republic.
The former community organizer from Chicago is right, but what he doesn’t reveal is the impact that its destruction will have on our democracy and political systems.
Digital Identities and Political Movements
The barrier to amplifying your voice and individual views has never been lower. The peddlers of false information, driven by opportunities to monetize audiences on digital platforms and partisan cable TV, have made fact fiction and fiction fact. Any hack with a keyboard or smartphone and an internet connection can become a new prophet or scholar overnight. The airwaves are overrun by falsehoods and every idea is marketed as the truth.
This dynamic, where right and wrong is no longer dictated by gatekeepers and institutions of information (newspapers, radio, public TV), has created a world where everyone feels entitled to their own truth and their own facts: “you have your facts and I have mine.”
The internet allows ideas to manifest themselves into identities. We no longer have to live in predetermined or geographically defined social bubbles or buckets. More and more we see online communities turn into political movements. Movements such as the occupy movement, tea party movement, and sunrise movement were largely developed and organized online. Ideas around social order, economic freedom and equality, states rights and civil liberties, or climate change manifested themselves into identities that spurred new, viral communities that quickly wielded tremendous political power.
Most recently, Q-Anon, the gamified, viral conspiracy theory scavenger hunt posing as a truth-seeking movement, appeared on the fringes of the Republican party. The group quickly spread from the dark corners of internet message boards to the mainstream after former President Trump and Republican party leaders declined to disavow the group. Q-Anon had developed political power and its followers were becoming more vocal; Q-flags began appearing at crowded MAGA rallies and believers started running for congress. Despite everything Republican leaders knew about the group, no matter how crazy and disassociated with reality, they felt that they needed this group in their coalition.
The two party political system in the United States has not adapted to the new paradigm of digital identities and communities. Single issue voters, socialists, nationalists, moderates, conservatives, progressive and bat-shit crazy conspiracy theorists alike are packed into an identity of either Democrat or Republican. And when a group suddenly gains political power, through the metamorphosis of an idea into a movement, party leaders are confronted with a choice: principles or power.
Checks and Balances
One of the most interesting elements of the Q-Anon movement is the sense of community followers evangelize. Individuals seek validation of their fringe ideas and feelings. Through the internet and social media platforms, individuals are able to discover others that share their perception of truth and reality. A version of truth and reality that might be ridiculed by friends or family through their native social community, but accepted by strangers and anonymous profiles.
Fringe identities constantly seek validation. They are driven by the thrill of proving their truth to be right. The larger the community, the greater the validation that what they believe is right. When Trump declined to disavow Q-Anon or when he called white supremacists “very fine people,” he lent these movements credibility, he validated their truth. And as Q-Anon and the Alt-Right further breached the walls of the Republican party, they found greater and greater validation of their truth through the Grand Old Party (GOP).
The concern exists that the two-party system can too easily be overtaken by fanatics. The power of viral ideas, turned into viral movements that can hijack the political process can lead quickly to anti-democratic or violent ends. The reality is that the two-party system of the modern era lacks the controls and checks and balances that is used to have. Political narratives that can sweep the information spectrum in a matter of minutes and news cycles that last just hours have forced party leaders to act more quickly and sometimes with less political deftness.
Party leaders are now apprentice shamans yearning to interpret the will of the masses. They make decisions based on keeping up with their base rather than good policy. Party leaders are choked by perceived oracles of the masses, mass information personalities that control and manipulate identity bound voters. Keywords and hot button topics are wielded as weapons to whip up political storms.
Political Voice
As Trump continued to amplify lies that the election was rigged and that the Democrats stole the presidency, a number of Republican congressional members supported these claims. They did so under the pretense that they were, “giving the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump a voice.”
Representation in congress and in the political process is a key tenet of the political party. Americans, to voice their opinion about issues or ideas, have to go through the party to be heard. On both the left and the right, subgroups in the parties always feel like their voices are being forgotten by the larger party.
The defeat of President Trump in the 2020 presidential election marked a decisive moment for the political leadership of both parties. The coup attempt by Trump forced Republican leadership to disavow the president, a decision over impeachment conviction still hangs in the air. Meanwhile, Trump is considering launching a Patriots Party to carry on the MAGA legacy.
President Joe Biden, a long-time moderate, has declared to govern from the middle. However, the political forces of the left in the Democratic party, elements that will be crucial to maintaining political power in the House and Senate (and in the 2024 presidential election), want progressive change to be the priority.
If we want a marketplace of ideas to function again, we have to lower the barrier to having a voice in it. We need to make it easier for ideas and movements to leverage their political power in the form of a political party. We must stop letting the few (political leaders) dictate what can be discussed by the many (marketplace of ideas). Most importantly, we must stop allowing fringe ideas to dictate the path of our country by hijacking or holding hostage the two-party system.
We need to open the door for ideas to compete against one another, instead of bucketing all ideas into two ideologies. If a movement believes their truth to be the truth, make them prove it in the electorate. Don’t let them validate themselves through power hungry politicians. If a movement believes the political parties in-charge are not doing enough on, for example, a topic like climate change, let them have an avenue to formalize their voice through a political party.
The creation of more political parties, and even single-issue political parties, could open the door to a greater concentration of power. Single-issue voters on topics like guns, abortion, and taxes are always likely to support Republican candidates and are unlikely to ever break free of the GOP. However, for Democrats, progressive movements for climate change, health care, immigration are less bound by the party as a voting bloc and would be more likely to establish their own party. A splintered Democratic party could allow a Republican party, glued together by guns, abortion, and taxes, to quickly amass control of power, eventually forcing the Democrats to come back together as a voting bloc.
Creating the space for new political parties is not just about the fringe or single-issue groups. Moderates and independents have long been forced to concede control of their policy preferences to one or the other party depending on the candidate or overall party platform. There exists an opportunity from the middle to develop a new vehicle for practical, moderate ideas to have an established voice in our political process. For example, since Biden’s election, the bi-partisan Problems Solvers Caucus added sixteen new members, united by the principle of the “power of working together to break [political] gridlock.”
Prescription for Change
An opportunity for change is here. But the rules of the establishment will not be easy to break. The two-party system is so entrenched in our political operations. Electoral primaries, campaign finance, campaign infrastructure, and electoral data are all elements over which Democrats and Republicans maintain political monopolies. The system is structured to deter new political parties, the legal and physical elements of political parties are dominated by the blue and red duality. We need to embrace new forms of democratic participation such as quadratic and ranked choice voting. We need to reform campaign finance laws to make it cheaper for voices to be heard in our political process.
If we don’t make changes to the system to keep up with the digital society we live in then we are leading the republic down a dark path where destruction of the marketplace of ideas is not the only thing that will be destroyed.