*Candidates need to pander to their party base to some extent merely to get nominated. If you insist on a candidate that will poke a finger in the eye of his own party, that’s almost never going to happen. So if the mere fact of their party affiliation turns you off or on, they have no reason to buck that base in the general election and afterward.

*Party incumbents elect the party leadership. So electing Republicans you agree with will help elect a party leadership you agree with.

*If a candidate is not dependent on party support for their election, they can go against the party more often. Candidates in swing districts are often granted latitude by the party leadership to vote their conscience. The more such districts we can create, the less the “party line” matters. Both Reps and Dems have used redestricting to practically eliminate swing districts. But demographics change. If people vote for the individual, “safe” districts become scarcer.

To be clear, party affiliation and attitudes on party leadership are legitimate parts of the voting equation. Sometimes I’ll feel it’s time for a change in which party is in charge, and so I’ll go out of my way to vote for the minority party. And I routinely look for candidates who have minds of their own and aren’t just party robots.

But I think it’s a mistake to become something of a single-issue voter in that regard.

I’ve never voted Republican (in a contested race), but it isn’t because I haven’t liked some Republican candidates. It’s because those candidates, by running as Republicans, are implicitly promising to vote for the Republican leadership once they get into office. Get me a Republican House candidate that promises to oppose the DeLay establishment, and I’ll give them serious consideration.

In a political system where a vote for a Republican for Representative is implicitly a vote for Tom DeLay as Majority Leader, how can I, in good conscience, cast that ballot?

1 : Instead of districts in each state there will be a unified party ballot.
2 : A voter will vote for his party of choice.
3 : Based on the total vote for each party that party will send in so
many from the top of the party list to congress.
4 : In this way Libertarians, Greens and so forth will get elected to
congress and the two party hold on our election system would be
destroyed.

Dan

I don’t think anything I’ve suggested would reduce the need for coalition building or broad support to get things done.

And speaking of building blocks of the republic, the founders envisioned a weaker president and a stronger Congress. Parties are largely responsible, IMO, for the inversion of that relationship.

I agree that the country is no more unified or divided than it was back then; all you’ve got to do is read some of the rhetoric that swirled around the administrations of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, for example. Not coincidentally, that was the dawningof political parties. But also the questions were more serious and fundamental, with the first Republican party and the Federalists battling to sort out fundamental questions of just what sort of country they had created.

I see the current Rep/Dem polarization as being less about fundamental underlying values and more about political advantage. It’s just as polarized, but the polarization is built around small issues. The motivation is job security and fundraising as opposed to what’s truly best for the country.

This is a huge issue, not one that can easily be addressed in a post, much less a comment. The issue of “frontloading” alone has inspired book-length treatment.

At a miminum, it seems to me that “first-in-nation” etc. status ought to rotate. Or perhaps we should have more super-primary days, or regional primaries. Or … well, there are a lot of ideas out there.

I (nerdy, as always) watched on C-Span the proceedings of the Democratic Party’s Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing And Scheduling during which this issue, among others, was addressed. You can read about this here (where you can download the report),
here and/or
here. (There is probably material on C-span somewhere; I a superficial-quickie Google.)

What the news articles don’t reflect (the report might, but I haven’t read it since I caught most of the televised proceedings) is how vehement the opposition is to IA’s and NH’s assertion of some kind of historical “right” to go first and wield disproportionate power. It take a long time–and specifically a lot of lead time–to set, much less change, primary schedules, so I think you won’t see as much change before 2012, but I’m betting the changes will come. There will already be some in ’08.

It’s important to keep in mind that individual states’ caucuses and primaries are governed by individual states, not the national party leadership. State law comes into play, in some cases.

Also, the national parties/state parties have to work together in setting the schedule … unless we want to see Dem and Repub caucuses/primaries on separate days.

Anyway, just a few cents’ worth, on a superficial basis … .

And also to reiterate another point I’ve made in the past, another deleterious side effect of the two-party system is that, since each party’s moonbats tend to set the tone for their respective campaigns, which set of moonbats one finds least distasteful often becomes a big part of the voting decision, even if neither candidate has anything other than party loyalty in common with the moonbats.

Just because the two current players have forgotten how to play the game doesn’t mean we should rewrite the [r]ules to suit them.

It’s not difficult to make the case that they the two parties, have de facto rewritten the rules to suit themselves. And a fairly natural result of this duopoly is the eventual treatment of politics as completely zero-sum. Which, I think we can agree, sucks for the governed.

We aren’t going to make it if fifty percent of the population lives with the belief that, unless their Party regains power during the next election cycle, their way of life is doomed. The politics of division may win elections but the price is steep. There is great irony in hearing some say that “exporting Democracy is a good thing…freedom is on the march.� I worry that in our zeal to export this thing we call Democracy, we may soon wake up to find that our own supply has vanished.

Given that the middle is the largest single segment, it would seem logical that politicians’ should first court this segment of the voting public. Save for a two party system, they might. The obstacles to this approach are the caucus and the primary systems where participation is typically skewed to the extremes. In essence, those individuals at opposite ends of the spectrum that are seeking to be accommodated make the most demands. By their nature, they actively pursue and participate in the struggle to obtain the promises or concessions they desire. This pushes the candidates of both party’s away from the center as they each battle to win their respective nominations.

I think this goes a long way towards explaining the typically low American voter turnout. The middle is seemingly neglected (or at best taken for granted) until the general election and by that time they likely feel neither candidate represents their moderate positions. In many ways, this is the predictable outcome. Independent and moderate voters are under represented in the process which means the candidates they might prefer probably won’t even make it to the ballot.

It is time for the middle to take its rightful position in politics. So long as we allow the extremes to dictate the dialogue, rhetoric will prevail. As with a pendulum, in order to find the center, conflict tends to first reach the extremes. History is the virtual seesaw of this process. Groups who see the resolution of conflict as simply a matter of power are destined to see their own power wane because they fail to persuade those over which they exert power. Over time, it is only persuasion that prevails. Until society rethinks its methods to resolve differences, tomorrow will merely look like today…the only difference will be whose in charge. I’m suggesting that its time for the middle to lead.

read more observations here:

http://www.thoughttheater.com