Growing partisanship has created our own bubbles and safe spaces. We now live in different worlds and consume radically different narratives. The two-party system has failed.
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Justin’s recent article on party affiliation has gotten me thinking about my own affiliations. I am a registered Independent. I am registered as an Independent because I live in Missouri, a state with open primaries.
On March 10, I intend to take part in the Democratic primary. Even though I probably won’t vote for him in the general election, I intend to vote for my incumbent Congressman (as opposed to the Socialist running against him for the second time in the Democratic primary).
There are no Senate elections in Missouri this year, so the only primary that may matter is the gubernatorial one. Missouri’s current governor ascended to that position after former governor Eric Greitens resigned. He is the incumbent, but the voters didn’t elect him as governor, per se. Either way, as a not particularly partisan individual who votes for policies, not persons, I have nothing to lose by not being registered in any particular party.
This was not always the case. When I first registered to vote, before the McCain/Obama campaign, I was a registered Republican, voting absentee. Then, when I moved to Maryland and later to Washington, D.C., I registered as a Republican (a risky endeavor in D.C.).
After I returned to Missouri, a state I knew had open primaries, I was already pretty disillusioned with the present party structure’s partisanship. If I was more involved, or wanted to be more involved, in the local Republican party, I would want to change my registration.
I’ve considered running for Congress even though this is a safe Democratic district, and the incumbent and his father before him have been our congressional representative for decades. There are a number of reasons why I will probably never do anything like that. Still, there can be very good reasons to be part of a political party.
The two-party system has failed. We were never supposed to have just two parties. The Founders wanted to avoid this type of thing even though within a generation, there was a dominant two-party structure in American politics.
At times, individual parties have come and gone – Whigs gave way to Republicans in the mid-1800s, Teddy Roosevelt famously created his own Bull Moose party for one cycle.
Instead of working to reform one party or another, I have chosen to vote and think in a non-partisan fashion. I have voted for Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians for various positions. It is our responsibility as voters to know who is running and what they stand for.
Straight ticket voting has increased over the last decade, and that is a symptom of the growing partisanship in the country. Despite the advances in communication technology, there seems to be less communication across the political spectrum, not more. We’ve created our own bubbles and safe spaces. We live in different worlds and consume radically different narratives.
The shock and horror coming from the Left when Donald Trump was elected was not because, objectively, he didn’t have a chance. It was because so many people were deluded into thinking he didn’t have a chance to win.
The statistics news site FiveThirtyEight gave Donald Trump nearly a 30% chance of winning the election. To put that in perspective, their current 2020 Democratic Primary forecast gives Bernie Sanders a 30% chance of winning the nomination. Nate Silver and the team at FiveThirtyEight have done a good job, at times, of tempering expectations in elections. A 30% chance is not insignificant. That is only slightly worse than the odds that the Super Bowl coin toss will land on heads.
We all have a personal responsibility to diversify our political discourse consumption. In the same way that an all-meat diet is probably going to kill you, an all MSNBC or all Fox News diet will kill your perspective. If everyone on the “other” side is a Nazi or Socialist, there can be no real dialog. Without dialog, our Republic will fall. The “other” is not the enemy. Partisanship is.
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Thaddeus R. Winker is a father and husband living in the Midwest and a frequent contributor to The Liberty Hawk. By day he works as a software developer but in a past life, he earned an MA in Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and a BA in Classics from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH. He enjoys fantasy, science fiction, and spending time with his family. You can follow him on twitter @Thadypus.