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Opinion: The Era of Parties Is Over.

A contrary opinion on where political parties are going:

The era of parties is over.
By Pat Jones

Even if you don’t know it yet – believe me now or believe me later

There’s tons of evidence that the era of parties is over. Most people identify as independent now and the percentage keeps growing . All parties, major and minor , have an increasingly bad reputation. Fewer and fewer states have straight ticket voting and more and more people split tickets.

Campaign finance limits , report requirements, bcra and many other legal changes in recent decades make political parties less and less advantageous versus other legal formats for handling various specific tasks the parties used to, while changes in communication technology make it a lot easier to do others outside of party formats. Government as a whole has expanded over the decades to fill many functions that parties used to fill, e.g. Tamany Hall, Chicago ward bosses, Daleys, Nancy Pelosi’s dad, and parties of that general long term era.

While still few in number, top X primary states and pushes for them are slowly growing, as are states that take control of party label use on the ballot from party organizers. These state render the labels as meaningless as corporate logos would be, if there were no trademark protections.

The Supreme Court has not taken an appeal by a minor party in over 30 years. Trends in ballot access barriers have turned against minor parties in recent years as well.

Post Nader 2000 anti “spoiler” sentiment has risen while motor voter insures more and more people register independent. Not only that, but parties in multiple states that have nothing else in common except independent or independence as all or part of their names do much better in percentage of registering voters than do other minor parties. Candidates with an “independent” ballot label (not no label) do better, other things being equal, than do minor party candidates.

We can go on …

Yes, parties still choose candidates who appeal to their base, because most states still have party segregated primaries, although as mentioned earlier that too is slowly recessing. Who the party base is changes.

Trump has been registered with multiple parties and no party over the years and actually ran in a minor party primary in 2000, although his rhetoric now is aimed more at supporters of his then primary opponent Pat Buchanan – again, in a minor party. We were disaffected enough with the GOP to back minor party candidates then – Ron Paul in 88, Ross Perot twice, Pat Buchanan, Bob Barr, Virgil Goode – but now we’re GOP base, although we (I and family and friends) consider ourselves independent.

So are we GOP base or independent? Depends on who gains control of the GOP when. I owe them zero loyalty and would ditch them again any time they nominate someone I can’t stand, e.g., Bushes, McCains, Cheneys, Romneys, Doles and their like. I certainly wouldn’t send them money, register to vote with them, attend their meetings, etc. Most folks I know feel the exact same way.

Long long ago our folks were all yellow dog Democrats for a century but it’s been over a half century since then and we sure ain’t now.

And having past involvement with American/ American Independent, Libertarian, Constitution and Reform parties I can attest with certain surety I have no higher regard of any of their ilk – the problems are systemic and universal among them – and other folks I know feel likewise. Not just me and folks I know, but my research on popular opinion trends keeps confirming the same conclusions ever more firmly.

Just because y’all don’t recognize these trends yet does not mean they aren’t happening.

They’re happening.

Believe me now or believe me later.

Have you heard of being independent? The era of parties is over, but some have not quite caught on yet.

 

12 Comments

  1. Alan Alan October 22, 2024

    Parties have become less important; money more important in elections. Any possible connection?

    • Pat Pat October 25, 2024

      Yes, that’s definitely possible.

  2. Pat Pat October 22, 2024

    Jim,

    Please identify which points you think are personal opinions or not relevant. I disagree that any part is not relevant. Some personal details illustrated my points and if you thought anything else was either an opinion or irrelevant I did not explain it sufficiently, so i can fill in the gaps here/revised version/follow up , or for the matter i can tell you exactly which parts i agree are opinions, why i included them, and help connect dots if you want and if the editor deems it worthy of discussion here. But I have a feeling you think a lot more of it is mere opinion than I would agree is only because I didn’t go into sufficiently enough details. I’m not sure how to best get to the bottom of that question or if we should bother trying.

    I can provide whatever missing data if you ask. So could you. It’s public and available. You could approach it from the standpoint that I need to prove the thesis or I could that you should disprove it. I’ve looked at the data many times over years and decades but I wasn’t trying to write an academic report. I disagree strongly that the voter registration trends are the only thing that matters here. I think every single other thing I said illustrated my overall point, and I could have expounded on each sentence I wrote at much greater length, provided data and sources, etc.

    The question is 1) is it worth my time to do that 2) is it worth your time to read it 3) will the editor publish something that long 4) will you argue that anything I said is irrelevant or insufficiently proven regardless of length or detail? Please bear in mind that I did not know if this would even be published prior to submitting so how much effort id put in to something which could go somewhere or not was an open question.

    Maybe we could meet each other halfway? If so, please point out for half the article what I got wrong or why it was irrelevant. For the second half I’ll do the additional work. For the first I’ll fix/adjust/provide supporting evidence according to what you reply. Would that work perhaps?

    I don’t think what you say is the most relevant metric is actually most relevant. Here’s why:

    I will start by asking first what is a political party and why does it matter? A political party is much more than a ballot label affixed to candidates on the ballot and many articles here which are not by me prove that in great detail as do all the things you deemed irrelevant. If that’s insufficiently detailed, I can provide much more details upon request, but I think if you reread the parts you dismissed as irrelevant and or look at what questions or subjects various other articles here address that point should be obvious.

    To answer your question, however, I don’t know of any evidence that technically no party candidates are getting elected more often. I can discuss why I think that’s a misleading lagging indicator separately if you wish.

    I could of course be pedantic and ask why you decided I’m male, or if you were just guessing, but that would truly be irrelevant. While Pat was the subject of a running Saturday night skit theme as to someone of indeterminate sexual identity, that was after my parents named me. I purposely did not say whether that’s Patricia or Patrick, but not because I’m actually an individual of indeterminate identity in real life – I’d just prefer not to tell you.

    Sorry if that is too long and I certainly hope it’s not rude – it is definitely not meant to be either one. I just think Jim and I are blindly trying to describe the same elephant but approach it from two very different angles. Eventually we’ll have a sufficiently adequate description but at this point I’m uncertain how to arrive at the meeting place.

    • Jim Jim October 23, 2024

      Unsupported claim but might be relevant: Most people identify as independent now and the percentage keeps growing .

      Unsupported opinion: All parties, major and minor , have an increasingly bad reputation.

      Irrelevant to the public turning away from parties: Fewer and fewer states have straight ticket voting and more and more people split tickets.

      Irrelevant to the public turning away from parties, and also incorrect as parties support campaigns with these things: Campaign finance limits , report requirements, bcra and many other legal changes in recent decades make political parties less and less advantageous versus other legal formats for handling various specific tasks the parties used to, while changes in communication technology make it a lot easier to do others outside of party formats.

      Unsupported claim (what functions? What does Pelosi’s dad have to do with anything?) and irrelevant to the public turning away from parties: Government as a whole has expanded over the decades to fill many functions that parties used to fill, e.g. Tamany Hall, Chicago ward bosses, Daleys, Nancy Pelosi’s dad, and parties of that general long term era.

      Irrelevant. This is not evidence of people turning away from parties: While still few in number, top X primary states and pushes for them are slowly growing, as are states that take control of party label use on the ballot from party organizers.

      This is not evidence of people turning away from the party system, and the claim that party labels are meaningless because some people in the party might not tow the party line is irrelevant. There have always been people who went against their party: These state render the labels as meaningless as corporate logos would be, if there were no trademark protections.

      Irrelevant to whether the public is turning away from the party system: The Supreme Court has not taken an appeal by a minor party in over 30 years. Trends in ballot access barriers have turned against minor parties in recent years as well.

      Unsupported claim and even if supported, would only support opposition to 3rd parties, not the party system in general: Post Nader 2000 anti “spoiler” sentiment has risen

      Already discussed – potentially these people were unaffiliated by being not registered, now they are registered and unaffiliated. This is not evidence of any turn against the party system: while motor voter insures more and more people register independent.

      Irrelevant to whether the public is turning against the party system. This is fooling the pubic who want to be unaffiliated, not evidence that more people want to be unaffiliated. parties in multiple states that have nothing else in common except independent or independence as all or part of their names do much better in percentage of registering voters than do other minor parties. Candidates with an “independent” ballot label (not no label) do better, other things being equal, than do minor party candidates.

      Irrelevant to whether the public is turning against the party system. Parties have a very long history of changing their base (ex: gold democrats and silver republicans): Who the party base is changes.

      Irrelevant to whether the public is turning against the party system. Also not a precedent. Teddy Roosevelt ran separately as a Republican and a Progressive: Trump has been registered with multiple parties and no party over the years and actually ran in a minor party primary in 2000, although his rhetoric now is aimed more at supporters of his then primary opponent Pat Buchanan – again, in a minor party.

      This and everything that follows is irrelevant personal anecdotes: We were disaffected enough with the GOP to back minor party candidates then …

      And for your reply…

      “I can provide whatever missing data if you ask. …. To answer your question, however, I don’t know of any evidence that technically no party candidates are getting elected more often. I can discuss why I think that’s a misleading lagging indicator separately if you wish.”

      Agree that getting elected while unaffiliated with a party would be lagging. Which is why I also pointed to trends in the percentages unaffiliated candidates receive. That is the missing data. I am asking for it. I could spend hours getting it myself but, you are the one who made the unsubstantiated claim. It is your job to substantiate it with data.

      To make it easier for you, and because I actually have already put in a stupid number of hours researching election results, I’ll help you along: Just use federal elections and use the FEC reported election results. It only does even numbered years back to 1982. Record the data for unaffiliated candidates in different categories depending on who their opponents were (ex: both an R and a D, just an R, an R a D and a Green, etc.)

      I have actually done that for Libertarian elections for US House back to 1972 and state legislature back to 1998, so I know what kind of work goes into it. But, if I make a claim about trends in Libertarian election results, I can actually prove it.

  3. Chris Powell Chris Powell October 22, 2024

    The fact of a voter choosing to be unaffiliated only means a rejection of a label on themselves, it does not mean a rejection of a particular party or parties in general. In fact, it is well known that the vast majority of unaffiliated voters have a ‘lean’ towards one or the other of the two establishment parties.

    Congress, the Supreme Court, government in general, all of these have an increasingly bad reputation just like political parties. They are all also legally entrenched and thus very difficult to get rid of. When voters are sufficiently fed up enough to significantly change how they mark their ballots then we may see something different, but not before. Somebody will have to show me proof of this happening as I don’t see it.

    There is movement to change some election processes, but Top-X jungle primary systems further entrench the establishment parties rather than work against them, meaning to the extent that there is an general anti-party movement it’s main thrust of action has been thoroughly co-opted(although it appears they’ve saved the establishment parties the trouble and just did it to themselves). Increasing ballot access barriers, of course, only work to preserve the status quo. Partisan labels without fixed meaning are not a bug, they’re a feature, with the divisiveness of Trump providing considerably more definition than most long-term political insiders want.

    Candidates drive the bus. and have for generations. Unaffiliated candidates can win in certain circumstances, but invariably they caucus with the Blue team or the Red team. Millions of voters cry out for another choice until they are presented with that Libertarian or Green or Reform choice and then slink back to the Democrats or the Republicans. The right candidate with the right message at the right time can catch lightning in a bottle, but that will only lead to another realignment.

    Parties will always exist, but can only become effective as organizations in a more free election marketplace. A quick look at our country prior to the advent of the printed ballot and it’s accompanying stifling regulation shows a much more fluid political environment. Removing all legal status for political parties is the direction we should go, with the counterintuitive result of increasing meaningful party activity. Unfortunately, there’s no movement in this direction and no reason to expect any in the near future.

  4. Walter Ziobro Walter Ziobro October 22, 2024

    Is it the end of parties, or the transition period from the sixth to the seventh party system?

    • Pat Pat October 22, 2024

      The former, not the latter. The number is not relevant.

      • Walter Ziobro Walter Ziobro October 23, 2024

        The current partisan alignment appears to have made conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans politically homeless. These may be the folks who are registering unaffiliated. A new, yet to be realized, partisan alignment maybe more appealing to

        • Pat Pat October 25, 2024

          That’s a vast oversimplification of feelings people with wide varieties of political options, not only located along a shaky one dimension line which keeps shifting, have towards parties. I tried to explain some of what that oversimplification is missing and am considering the best approach on how to explain the rest.

  5. Jim Jim October 22, 2024

    The author discusses his personal view and some irrelevant points. The only point that comes close to being relevant would be an increase in the percentage of voters registered without affiliating with a party (no data is provided), but the author undermines that point by pointing to the motor voter law. That law could just be moving people who were never registered to vote (and therefore not affiliated with a party) to the registered-to-vote category (while still not being affiliated with a party). The percentage of people who chose not to be affiliated with a party might not have changed, just the percentage of people who were registered to vote. Maybe. We don’t actually know because no data is provided.

    The most relevant metric is entirely missing: are a greater share of candidates unaffiliated with a party being elected or, at least, is the typical percentage of the vote received by unaffiliated candidates increasing?

  6. Richard Winger Richard Winger October 21, 2024

    Was the author only discussing the USA, or did he intend to include the rest of the world?

    • Pat Pat October 22, 2024

      Only the USA. Thank you for asking, sir. If I had compost the article more carefully I’d have credited you as source for many things I said there in and perhaps provided specific quotes and references. Maybe next longer version or certainly by the time it is expanded to book lengths if my pathological need to keep proving what will prove itself to those least apt to believe me reaches such level.

      I welcome specific questions and contraindications to anything and everything there in. I’m not wedded to any claims and if I was it wouldn’t be my first divorce. That is, I’m open to being wrong in whole or in part, but there’s much more to each of my claims than I took time to explain, since otherwise it could grow not only to book lengths but to exceed the space of entire libraries, or these days more realistically since no printing out is required, the time I have left on Earth.

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