The title of this blog is pretty straightforward. My feelings of disdain towards the current political system we have here in the U.S. have steadily increased over the last couple of decades. This is primarily due to the feeling of being trapped in a system by which the only two major political parties in control have very little incentive to act in the best interests of the poor and working class majority of the country. There are many instances of the federal government’s fecklessness that I can point towards:

• Failure to enact a federal minimum wage of $15/hr

• Failure to pass the Build Back Better bill with an annual budget of $300B-$400B

• Failure to completely cancel all of the $1.6T in student debt

• Failure to provide single-payer healthcare 

• Failure to nationalize America’s oil reserve

• Failure to prevent major pharmaceutical companies to price gouging American consumers with products whose research and development were largely funded by taxpayer dollars

• Failure to enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up detrimental monopolies or likely potential monopolies

• Etc…

The list could go on and on, but I hope you get the point. Make no mistake about it. The current is completely dependent on the populace feeling that the only “responsible” choice is to vote either red or blue, Republican or Democrat (aka the lesser of two evils).  But my question is this: at what point do we, as the American people, break ourselves free of this toxic two-party system? We surely cannot rely on the system to reform itself nor should we.  Any type of revolutionary changes would have to grow organically at the grassroots level and be carefully cultivated over an extended period of time. There are multiple ideas of how to achieve such an undertaking, and I’d like to explore a few of them in this blog.

According to many political pundits, the most practical approach to combating the two-party system is to change it from within at the federal level.  Although there have been varying degrees of success in voting for progressive candidates to many influential positions at the federal level, there have also been massive disappointments.  From my observation, the biggest success with this route is that it has helped shift the Overton window more to the left. In doing so this has enabled it to be acceptable for national discussion to at least include issues like single payer healthcare, universal basic income, more telecommuting options for employees, cancellation of student debt, and so forth. However, at the same time the most glaring shortcoming of this approach to changing the political system is a failure by many of these progressive politicians to withstand the group think mentality once they have gotten accustomed to working within that D.C. bubble. They have succumbed to the pressures they face on a regular basis not only from their peers in the government but also from the media.  In doing so, many of them, so far, have fallen short of what they were elected to accomplish. Perhaps it is simply a matter of learning the necessary hard lessons from this current wave of progressive politicians’ failures and better preparing future waves to deal with the foreseeable obstacles. 

A similar approach would be to focus on changing the government from within at the state and local levels. Going this route is assuming that a bottom-up approach within the system would create a stronger basis for a counter movement to the current two-party system.  This approach seems more plausible for several reasons. 

First, the government at those levels aren’t as slow to change as the federal government. The impact of the policies implemented or not implemented at these lower levels of government are more directly felt by the constituents. Typically, that gives people more motivation to want change in how they are governed. If more potential candidates can seize upon the mass’s desire for change they could find a lot of support in their efforts to buck the current system and try alternative approaches to addressing many of society’s problems.

Second, the state and local levels of government tend to be more open to allowing direct ballot initiatives which let the people vote on policies. I understand that such features are not present within all states, but they are present within many.  Some examples of this are the legalization of marijuana (medicinal and recreational), campaign finance, and gun control policies. The largest hurdle in these cases is properly educating the public on such initiatives. This is such a big hurdle because it takes a ton of effort, money, and resources to get the message out far enough in advance before a given election. But there is also the factor of opposing entities who will use their efforts, money, and resources to put out opposing information in their efforts to “muddy the waters” in the minds of potential voters. 

Third, there is much more opportunity for state and local government officials to be in direct contact with their constituents. With that larger pool of opportunity for direct public engagement comes a stronger ability to resist the groupthink that is often present within government at all levels. This is true for the simple fact that the lower levels of government are much more accessible to the average concerned citizen. To have such access to voice one’s concerns can help keep public pressure on politicians to address issues that impact the people the most.  At that point, it is a matter of the government officials having the political courage to impose the will of their constituents in the political process. This is where having political outsiders in positions of government can go a long way to breaking out of the “business as usual” paradigm that most most despise about the two-party system.

Another route that has gained some traction is the support of so-called third parties. There are a few such political parties that have gained some national prominence such as the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Constitution Party. However, even those parties have a long way to go to break up the stranglehold that the two major parties have on the entire political process. 

The main obstacle those parties face are the inherent biases that the mainstream media has in favor of the two major parties. Typically, the media neglects to give the third party candidates adequate coverage because they do not consider them serious contenders. However, if the media simply gave them the same quantity and quality of coverage than those from the two major parties, those third party candidates would then become serious contenders for whichever positions they were running. The mainstream media purposefully chooses to deny third party candidates the coverage they need to state their cases to the American people because it does serve their interests as corporate-owned entities. They happen to prefer the current system since it allows them to thrive largely unchecked. Sure, there are plenty of alternative news sources to mainstream media, but by and large, most Americans still choose to take their cues from mainstream media sources particularly when it comes to election coverage.

Another big obstacle that third parties have is that the two major parties control all the levers of power within the government. They have no intention of releasing that control any time soon.  In order to address that problem it is imperative that any approach by third parties to gain any control within the government involves making Allie’s with progressive or libertarian minded politicians within each of the two major parties.  Such an approach will likely take years or even decades to yield positive results. Regardless of how long such endeavors will take, it would be worth starting sooner rather than later in hopes of setting up future generations for better chances at breaking up the monopoly that the two major parties have on America’s current political system and discourse.