Party Lights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zncsJKtEd_M

OK, there's the soundtrack.   (Emma Goldman's statement that "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" is one of the permanent mottos of whatever movement this blog is part of)

Shooting from the hip this week.   It seems to me that the two-party system is an inhibition to genuine democracy.    If it were simply a natural result of prevailing opinions, that would be one thing, but my understanding is that campaign finance regulations and other factors (such as the electoral college) really do close out parties other than the Democrats and Republicans.

Intuitively, it feels like having only two parties (at least only two that have a genuine shot at winning the presidency) makes the game much easier for anyone who wants bring their money's influence to bear.   If you have to lobby 3 to 7 parties, that seems like something that would be more difficult to manage than lobbying just 2.   And it likewise feels intuitively right that it is in the interests of real democracy to make lobbying more difficult, because that amounts to reducing the role anybody's money has in influencing the outcome of elections.

Letting more parties into the game also allows more voices and perspectives to come to bear on the various challenges confronting our society, and in my experience diversity of opinion is what allows us to collectively think outside the box.

I approach this with some caution, because I do see the unpredictable outcomes that can come to pass in parliamentary systems where coalition governments between strange bedfellows make it difficult to get things done, or where extremist parties right or left suddenly have more power than you'd expect a fringe party to end up with.

Nonetheless, I feel that the current situation in the US is really a one-party system, the real governing party being the "Corporatist party", no matter whether Democrats or Republicans have the presidency or majorities in Congress.  And that stands to reason, since corporations have more power to influence elections and reward candidates than anyone else.   The Citizens United decision has only made the truth of that sentence more emphatic, and other action needs to be taken to reduce corporate influence on elections, but re-thinking the way we do party politics definitely has to be part of the fix.

I will return to this topic again, and in the meantime I'll do a bit more homework, see what others think, what the laws actually are, and what real prospects for change might be out there.