lydy | Why Party Matters

Ralph Nader has announced that he'd going to run for president, again. *sigh* At least this year, he looks to be mostly harmless. I'm still upset with the people who argued four years ago that there was no real difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, and voted for Nader. Surely even blind, paralytic monkeys on heroin could see the difference between the Democrats and Republicans. I'm not singing the praises of the Dems. I'm not totally dissing the Reps, either. I am saying that you can tell the difference, that it's a difference that matters, and that when you vote, you are making a choice between those two parties. Never mind your bloody conscience. I'm interested in the real world and the consequences of actions here and now.

In Civics, first in eighth grade and then as a senior in high school, I was led to believe that the "right" thing to do was vote for the candidate, despite party. I was told that it was important to vote my conscience, that real change was most likely if people stopped being awed by the two party system, and voted for the best candidate. I was led to believe that political parties were primarily engines of corruption, such as Tammany Hall. This would have been late Seventies, in case it matters.

I think that my Civics teachers were good people, and that they taught me what they thought was true. I also think that what they taught me is pravda which serves to divide people from each other so that they are less powerful. The fundamental truth of politics (as well as life, but let that go) is that things get done by organizing groups of people. (And not very bloody organized, if one extrapolates from my experience with the Democratic caucus last night! Lords, could those people organize themselves out of a paper bag? I'm unclear.) Americans think highly of individuality, and I would never argue that individuals are powerless, but no single person has the power that one hundred organized people do.

What the founders intended, and what is the best possible structure, are interesting considerations, and might be useful for forming goals. I'm willing to concede that the two party system is badly flawed. However, neither of those has anything to do with the facts on the ground. Here and now, politics are dominated by the Republicans and Democrats, and that matters. Personally, I think that it is a horrible infringement of my rights as a person, as well as a political disaster, for marijuana to be illegal, but facts on the ground dictate that I not walk down the street smoking a joint, no matter how much I'd like to, and no matter how much in the right I think that I am. I'm clear on where the power balance is on that issue. I think that the issue of political parties is much the same. You may not like it, but the way power works in this country right now is that the major political parties have more of it than all the minor parties put together.

The reason that parties matter is the same reason why the Ds and Rs are so powerful in the first place: they are large organizations of people. Well, really the Democrats are a semi-organized hodgepodge of other organizations, but you know what I mean. :-) Parties exist to conserve and generate wealth, to extend their influence, and support their members. They raise money, they target the spending of money strategically, they work to get candidates elected. They make deals on the behalf of many elected officials, giving those officials more weight than each would have alone. Parties command greater resources than individual politicians, and so they have more power than any one of their own.

When a politician runs as a party member, he's making an implicit deal with his party. He's agreeing to support his party's policies and goals, to some extent. Oh, he may well have other convictions, and vote against his own party some of the time. This has, in fact, come to be a measure of whether or not a politician is a "good" politician. However, if he refuses his party too often, they'll refuse to support him, too. The party doesn't just help with fundraising, canvassing, and polling. It helps by providing connections and resources, good staffers and good information.

Here's the truth: any candidate that runs on a party ticket is beholden to that party. Here's another truth: that's not necessarily a bad thing. Third and very important truth (I like things that come in threes): you can get involved with a political party.

So, here's my point: When you vote for a candidate, you are implicitly supporting his party. You are giving his party a position, a vote, influence that they can use for various goals. Even if your representative won't vote for the things you most hate, his mere presence as an elected official strengthens the party he belongs to. Look at how often they count up the number of Democratic and Republican governors, for instance. Let's not even talk about balance of power within a legislature. The number of legislators of a particular party will influence how much money the party is able to raise.

You won't ever find a party that fits you to a T. People being people, you're unlikely to find a candidate that does, either, of course. However, don't just look at the candidate. Look at the party. Look at the type of people they've been supporting for election, lately, even if those people haven't won. Look at their platform. Look at the planks that everybody knows are extremist nonsense that will go by the board and think about what constituency those planks are there to pacify. Look at the people currently serving that belong to that party, and their patterns of behavior. There's plenty to hate in both parties, but it matters. "The difference between bad and worse is often more important than the difference between good and better," to approximately quote Heinlein. (My copy of SIASL is at home.)

Situations vary. I am emphatically not arguing that one should become a life-long party ticket voter. There are times when voting for a good candidate in a bad party is a smart thing to do. However, the claim that it is only the candidate that matters is just plain not true.

I'll finish on a personal note. When the House was considering impeaching President Clinton, I listened to the Committee Hearings compulsively. All day, every day, for days and days. I was asked repeatedly why I bothered. After all, they weren't saying anything new. That is more amazingly true than I can express. For all that, I found it enlightening. The process and the rhetoric frightened me in a way that the daily news reports did not. After several days, I vowed that I would never vote for another Republican again for as long as I live. It became clear to me that the Republicans were making an attempt to unseat a duly elected president by unfair means, and that they had absolutely no respect for the government or the rule of law. I've seen nothing since then to disabuse me of that judgment.