The current chaos in the Republican Party provides a teachable moment for all democracies. Robin Sears writes:
No sustainable democracy is possible with one dominant party and one crippled or divided opponent. That is the prospect facing American democracy after five years of Trump devastation. It is a perilous moment. The GOP faces a fork in the road: do they pursue a Trumpian strategy in the 2022 mid-terms, or do they risk Trump’s wrath and his threat to create a new political party by openly rejecting him? One choice is unpleasant, the other is unacceptable. There are no others.
How did things get to this point?
Susan Delacourt’s book “Shopping for Votes,” a penetrating analysis of the takeover of parties by marketers and fundraising pros, is part of the answer. Allowing the local party organization to wither — creating shells ripe for seizure — is another.
Delacourt’s thesis was an accurate description of the core reality of modern political party management: your activists are a network of ATMs that you need to kick regularly to make them spew the dollars required for the party’s further fundraising and marketing. Why would any intelligent voter volunteer to be one of these battered ATMs?
When you can market your message by automated dialing, then fax, and then multiple digital tentacles, why would you bother with the time and resource-consuming management of a deep and broad network of local party organizations? So what if the Regina Centre NDP riding association had helped to win municipal support for a new community centre? How will that help the party leader’s popularity?
What has happened to the Republican Party happened to the Progressive Conservative Party twenty-five years ago:
When our own conservatives split over similar populist, culture war issues, they enabled nearly 15 years of often arrogant decision-making by unchallenged Liberal prime ministers. The Conservative majority ended in disaster in 1993, and it was only in 2008 that a reunited Conservative party won a majority. History demonstrates that one enfeebled opponent and one dominant governing party are never good for a democracy. At least in Canada, the NDP, the Bloc and the Greens offered some voter choice during those years.
The unvarnished truth is this: Unless democracy is alive and well on the ground, it isn't alive at all.
Image: Wikipedia
7 comments:
"At least in Canada, the NDP, the Bloc and the Greens offered some voter choice during those years".
I don't know about the bloc but I wouldn't call any of the aforementioned a choice other than being a protest vote due to. the "real" lack of choice in the past Libs and Cons. A real choice would be the chance your vote would bring results
The stumbling block is First Past The Post, zoombats. We need proportional representation.
When it comes to democracy, party politics combined with neoliberal globalism are kryptonite. The corporate sector, domestic and foreign, acquire too much influence that weakens the democratic bond between the voting public and those they elect to high office.
The US now has a "bought and paid for" Congress, a deeply corrupted regulatory establishment, and an ideologically compromised judicial branch. So much for their vaunted system of checks and balances. That model was designed so that if one co-equal branch went rogue the other two could rein it in. It was never in the founders' imagination that two, even all three branches could stray.
Russ Feingold and John McCain tried to break the chokehold of Big Money on Congress and, while their bill passed the House, it was seriously diluted in the Senate. The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United did the rest. Democracy, tenuous as it ever was, has been displaced by oligarchy and that cannot be rectified by the executive branch.
Canada's problem, as you point out, is the electoral flaw that enables one party with 38 to 39% of the vote to obtain a powerful majority enabling it to rule, not govern but rule, over the 60+% that did not back it. This is an inevitable result of multi-party politics, to be sure, but a democratic restoration demands electoral reform. Nothing else will do. Justin betrayed his promise and he betrayed us.
The United States illustrates how democracy can be sidelined by big money and a ruling elite that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing, Mound. We are fools if we ignore what has happened there.
perhaps we can take a lesson?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Germany
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland#:~:text=Switzerland's%20voting%20system%20is,as%20a%20semi%2Ddirect%20democracy. This would seem less successful!
I have to wonder if the voters in other countries are more or less informed and aware than we are?
Do we wave the word 'democracy' around to chimpanzees?
We all took a test of knowledge to drive ; perhaps voting needs to require a similar standard?
We cannot reduce the vote to who offers the most beer for a vote!
TB
@ Owen,
Un educated democracy is of little use.
It is just a passing word ,amongst many others.
Democracy has to be much more than the freedom to vote.
TB
Unless citizens are educated, democracy will fail, TB. That's not my idea. It's Thomas Jefferson's idea. And he put his money where his mouth was. He founded the University of Virginia in his hometown.
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