Todd Shaefer for US House FL-04

When will Americans snap out of the Two-Party Daydream?

Our democracy, to the extent that one exists in the United States, has been stolen from us. It is easy to reference the Princeton study that proves that majority of legislation passed does not meet the needs or demands of the vast majority of Americans. It is a much harder task to pin down where it began. In all honesty, pondering over how it began doesn’t help us navigate out of the cycle. It is more constructive to dismantle how it works now to start the process of getting our government back.

Let’s first discuss the duopoly. In today’s government each party has a role to play. That ‘role’ is more akin to professional wrestling than it is governing. Our 24hr news cycle and biased news coverage sets the stage for what role each party must take on in the given moment. Which news you choose to consume helps you determine what team you are going to root for. The secret is that the donors of both parties have shared interests, and they are NOT your interests. Never the less, you cheer for your team and denigrate your neighbors and friends and family who dare to be on the other team. The vast majority of people want the same things. They want to be able to have opportunity to work and thrive, perhaps to raise a family, have a roof over their head, put food on the table, and to be taken care of when they are hurting. Our core desires as humans are pretty similar. I guarantee you have more in common with your neighbors than you do with the millionaires and billionaires on TV trying to divide you from your neighbors. By keeping us divided they can keep their grip on power.

What about the balance of that power? Doesn’t it matter who has the majority in the House or Senate or who is in the White House? Sadly, that doesn’t really matter. For example, in 2008 President Obama was elected on a platform of ‘Hope and Change’. He ran on single payer healthcare and codifying Roe, just as two examples. Americans gave him a super majority. We got the ACA, which was lifted directly from the Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank. It wasn’t single payer. It was a giveaway to insurance companies and rates are quite a bit higher today. As for Roe, shortly after entering office, President Obama said it “wasn’t a major legislative priority” and then dropped it entirely. The margins are maintained in the House and Senate to keep legislation that Americans demand just out of reach. The filibuster in the Senate ensures that anything popular just isn’t quite popular enough. In the House there is enough wiggle room to allow some ‘dissenters’ in contested districts to keep power. I’m sure you’ve noticed it is always the same holdouts on certain votes. Another idea lifted directly from professional wrestling.

The pinnacle of professional wrestling is the stars of the show. The government has these, too. They call them Party Leadership. You’d think that rising in the ranks would be from some innate ability to lead, some superior negotiating skills, or god forbid championing popular policies. Party Leaders are instead ‘selected’ by their fundraising ability. They get their votes by dividing up those donations throughout their party. This keeps their team in line. If you deign to cross the line, the party has options. They can primary you directly, as the Democrats are doing via $100M from AIPAC this election cycle or the primary challenge that Thomas Massie just had to overcome. Once every 10 years, they can just redistrict you out of a seat like they did to Dennis Kucinich over his criticisms of the war in Iraq. Now that Citizens United and SpeechNow vs. FEC are the law of the land, money is speech and that particular brand of ‘speech’ speaks louder than voters ever did.

Now let’s talk about Red and Blue AND Purple. When election season comes there are only a few parts of the election that we are allowed to focus on. For the Presidential race it is the Electoral College and ‘Key Swing States’. Of the 33-34 Senate races that happen every two years, we are allowed to talk about the handful that are ‘competitive’. Of the 435 House elections held every two years… that’s right, we only talk about the races that could ‘flip districts’. Deep Red and Deep Blue states and districts are ignored. Those voters would never change their minds. Vast swaths of the country go largely ignored over and over and over. Their opinion doesn’t matter because they won’t effect the overall game. Independents aren’t covered in the news. A third option will never be given any coverage aside from being a ‘spoiler’ from the team they may hurt. In the worst case, both parties have shown that they are glad to restrict ballot access or even sue independents off the ballot. They allow no room for dissent.

There is hope. These thin margins do have a weakness. Following the 2020 election there was a push to get the Progressive Caucus to #ForcetheVote on Medicare for All. It didn’t matter what the ask was, the point was that in exchange for their vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker they would demand something, anything. This fight shredded the ‘left’. Ultimately, the force was never applied. Only a few years later, this exact strategy was used to get provisions from Kevin McCarthy in exchange for his speaker role by the Freedom Caucus. We all know how that turned out. This proves that a small group of Representatives can wield vast power in the House. As few as four or five Senators could do the same in the Senate.

Neither party feels that they have an obligation to voters. The DNC actually argued that in a fraud lawsuit brought by Bernie supporters post 2016 and they won. They believe that the propaganda on main stream media will keep the voters in line. They’ve assured us that every election for the last several decades is ‘the most important election of our lifetimes’… every two years like clockwork. The new norm is lesser of two evils. People have numbed to the fact that this just means TWO EVILS. The voters who are ignored have no power, but only until they realize they have ALL of the power. I only hope that they don’t realize that after it’s too late.